“While there are substantial ups and downs, long-term progress in science, technology, and values have tended to make people’s lives longer, freer, and more prosperous. We could represent this as a graph of quality of life over time, giving a curve that generally trends upwards.” Is there good evidence for this? I think after agriculture one can argue that things got better for many. But what about pre agriculture? Given that we were specifically evolved for hunter gather societies, and that anxiety and depression are wide spread today, I find it intuitively plausible that we might not, on average, be better of today than pre agriculture. But I am far from an expert but did understand that something like “a history of happiness” is sorely lacking as an academic discipline.
“While there are substantial ups and downs, long-term progress in science, technology, and values have tended to make people’s lives longer, freer, and more prosperous. We could represent this as a graph of quality of life over time, giving a curve that generally trends upwards.” Is there good evidence for this? I think after agriculture one can argue that things got better for many. But what about pre agriculture? Given that we were specifically evolved for hunter gather societies, and that anxiety and depression are wide spread today, I find it intuitively plausible that we might not, on average, be better of today than pre agriculture. But I am far from an expert but did understand that something like “a history of happiness” is sorely lacking as an academic discipline.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Karnofsky has written about this and I agree that this could be extremely high impact. https://www.cold-takes.com/hunter-gatherer-happiness/