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by shod 5608 days ago
25 reasons I know Mark Peter Davis isn't living in the stone age:

1. He drives a car.

2. He owns keys, cash, and cards.

3. He receives medical care.

4. His life expectancy is above 35 years.

5. He owns a computer.

6. His basic survival doesn't automatically involve exercise.

7. He has alternatives to walking when traveling long distances.

8. Universities exist in his time.

9. He sleeps on a mattress.

10. Medicine exists to help control many causes of death. He'll likely die of natural causes after a long life.

11. Flight is possible for humans.

12. He's able to express his thoughts in a way that can be recorded and processed by non-living machines.

13. He's able to consider nutrition in his diet.

14. He meets people outside his immediate community without necessarily considering them a threat.

15. He considers his own impact on the wellbeing of the planet.

16. When contemplating his family's safety, he is able to consider the assistance of police, firemen, and medical professionals.

17. Monetary investment exists in his time.

18. Monetary transactions exist in his time.

19. He's learning a foreign language.

20. His child's education includes reading, writing, and arithmetic.

21. He recognizes the concept of mental health.

22. He recognizes that disease has medical causes.

23. He is able to form written contracts to help counter the deceit of others.

24. Industry exists in his time.

25. He typed that post.

2 comments

Life expectancy was only 35 because of infant mortality. Once you grew up, people tended to live almost as long as we do today.

And medical care is not by any means new. Cesarean section is named after Cesar, and it was a well established medical practice before he was born.

He sleeps on a mattress.

Well golly, call the patent office, tell them to shut down and go home, we can't possibly improve on this.

Honestly, where are all of you present defender coming from? Is the future too awesome for you? Sour grapes over the fact that you too get sick, age and can die?

> Life expectancy was only 35 because of infant mortality. Once you grew up, people tended to live almost as long as we do today.

Ok, so why we calculate it this way? Shouldn't we look at median instead of an average? Or average on data between lower and upper quartile? I thought that quartiles exist exactly for those kind of situations...

I'm not sure the author meant stone age literally. I think it might have been a more long-winded way of saying, "Where's my flying car?" Flying car being a metaphor, of course.