Comment by coldtea
17 days ago
The GDP per capita of the world has been slowly increasing for several millenia. Same for the advancements in core technology.
The industrial revolution increased the pace, but it was already there, not flat or randomly flunctuating (think ancient hominids versus early agriculture vs bronge age, vs ancient Babylon and Assyrian empires, vs later Greece, and Persia, later Rome, later Renaissance and so on).
Post 1970s most of the further increase has been based on mirages due to financialization, and doesn't reflect actual improvement.
If you got a random cancer in 1970, your chances of survival would be only somewhat better than during the Roman Empire, so slightly better than zero, but not very much so. Even Hodgkin's lymphoma, nowadays a very manageable disease, was reliably deadly.
In 2026, unless you are really lucky your chances of being treated into remission are much better. That is a meaningful improvement.
Medical science made a HUGE progress in the last 50 years alone. The oldest IVF baby is not even fifty yet.
> Post 1970s most of the further increase has been based on mirages due to financialization, and doesn't reflect actual improvement.
Of course it does. It would be good if you would try to actually support such controversial claims with data.