It should make you happy with the present, though, if you use the past and the future as the baseline for comparison. As John Derbyshire once said in a different context, “We are living in a golden age. The past was pretty awful; the future will be far worse. Enjoy!”
Well, if we (the present humans) are indeed extraordinarily fortunate to live in a brief and exceptional non-Malthusian period—what Hanson calls “the Dreamtime”—then you should be happy to be so lucky that you get to enjoy it. Yes, you could have been even luckier to be born as some overlord who gets to be wealthy and comfortable even in a Malthusian world, but even as a commoner in a non-Malthusian era, you were dealt an exceptionally good hand.
No, I’m UN-lucky. I’d prefer a different, counterfactual universe where EVERYONE is happy at all times, and given any set universe I see no reason how which entity in it is me should matter.
It should make you happy with the present, though, if you use the past and the future as the baseline for comparison. As John Derbyshire once said in a different context, “We are living in a golden age. The past was pretty awful; the future will be far worse. Enjoy!”
Now I’m confused, how’s other people being even worse of supposed to make me feel better?
Well, if we (the present humans) are indeed extraordinarily fortunate to live in a brief and exceptional non-Malthusian period—what Hanson calls “the Dreamtime”—then you should be happy to be so lucky that you get to enjoy it. Yes, you could have been even luckier to be born as some overlord who gets to be wealthy and comfortable even in a Malthusian world, but even as a commoner in a non-Malthusian era, you were dealt an exceptionally good hand.
No, I’m UN-lucky. I’d prefer a different, counterfactual universe where EVERYONE is happy at all times, and given any set universe I see no reason how which entity in it is me should matter.