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Comment by handoflixue | Hacker News Reader

Are we just going to totally ignore the Polio vaccine? Modern medicine? Modern agriculture?

If you had a magic button that turned off all those "benefits of civilization", millions would die. If you managed to drag agriculture down with the rest, the death toll would be in the billions.

I don't understand how you can possibly think you "know history" without recognizing that technological progress has taken us from constant warfare to such a state of abundance that war is actually rare and noteworthy in much of the world.

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> technological progress has taken us from constant warfare to such a state of abundance that war is actually rare and noteworthy in much of the world.

Let's try to have an actual argument. How many people, in absolute numbers, were affected by that constant warfare of past, which past exactly do you mean, and how many people were/are affected by "rare" wars of modern history?

80 million people killed or maimed with arrows, swords and catapults over centuries and 80 million killed or maimed with fruits of industrial revolution over 6 years of WWII are very different figures.

Ratios > absolute numbers, of course.

If only 4 people die violent deaths out of a total population of 5, that’s an extremely violent population to be a part of.

If 8 people die violent deaths out of a total population of 100,000. That’s a much more peaceful population to be a part of, despite the greater number of absolute deaths.

Ok, if we’re only taking absolute numbers, let’s flip it around. How many people live happy, peaceful, healthy lives now?

Orders of magnitude more than in prehistoric days.

You are mixing numbers and percents. 1B people and 100 hurt vs 1K people and 100 hurt vs 100 people and 100 hurt.

Is it better to have lived as an individual one of these fictional cohorts? Is it better for the group in the same or different one?

Is it better to live and suffer than to not live?

I think the answers are obvious.

Do those 100 hurt out of 1B experience less pain than 100 out of 100?

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