Humans are living longer than ever no matter where they come from

arstechnica.com

19 points·rntn··12 comments

Humans aren't living longer. The average is moving up because they aren't dying early. It's not quite the same thing.

Exactly. I think our cultural norm around thinking about things in terms of averages causes us to grossly misinterpret reality. Averages are rarely a meaningful way to summarize anything.

The study specifically addresses that:

“We used e0,t and e65,t to denote life expectancy at birth and at age 65, respectively. By including both indicators in our analysis, we aim to capture the different dimensions of the mortality phenomenon in the different age groups. While e0,t provides the impact of mortality in the infant and child ages, e65,t examines the mortality patterns among the elderly and minimizes the extrinsic factor associated with infant mortality”.

So no, it isn’t because of not dying early. Check it out. There’s a lot more to it.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Yep, its good that most countries don't have to worry about going to war with the next tribe just over the hill, also modern improvements in medicine helps a lot. The amount of people who died from open wounds and drinking water that has not been chlorinated or boiled back in the old days... Also people who have food allergies living a lot longer. Also health and safety on construction sites.

Odd that the USA scores high while male longevity is less the last few years

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Do we "live" longer, or die slower?

Usually I like arstechnica articles. But 'longer than ever' is not what the paper says.

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