I’m a doctor. My job exists because nature hates you, and we can do better.
I have to hold my tongue when patients tell me they don’t want vaccines because they “want to do it naturally.” Fuck nature. Nature made polio, and polio paralyzes children. Nature can kiss my ass.
Yep, tool use evolved pretty early in animals (some insects and fish can use tools,) though of course humans have gone a step further and use tools to make other, better tools.
The smallpox vaccine was developed in 1796, nearly a century before the first phone and a good 20 years before the first bicycles. The tech in COVID-19 vaccines was discovered 20 years before the first iPhone, but people act like it was invented yesterday.
You could just as easily say nature wants empathy, cooperation and collective action. Also that tool use that Mr Frum seems so fond of, nature wants that too.
But of course the nature doesn't want, it just is.
Is that David Frum, speechwriter to the Bush Jr administration? Writer of speeches about the axis of evil? Writer of speeches to whip up frenzy for an invasion of Iraq? An invasion based on lies? That David Frum?
That study looks at lifespan after reaching 5, and 50 might still be a little generous with the care that humans could provide each other 50,000 years ago. 50 is about the lifespan of a king 3,000 years ago, I can't imagine gen pop faired better.
Me too. We have plenty of bones of people who lived into old age with signs of disability or having been crippled.
But the overall stats not only do I not know, but since we only have a relatively minor number of data points it's hard to really say any of us will ever know.
What we have does tend to point to being better than a medieval city iirc, and I think the general consensus amongst anthropologists is that the transition to agriculture saw a decrease in life expectancy.