• aubeynarf@lemmynsfw.com
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    21 hours ago

    average lifespan in the 1770s was 35 years.

    In the early 1900s it was still only 55 years.

    • dnick@sh.itjust.works
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      20 hours ago

      When you use those statistics you should be careful to consider what the averages mean. Most people didn’t die around age 35 back in the 1700s, it’s just that childhood mortality was so high that it skews the average. ‘If’ you lived past 5 years old, you were likely to have at least a comparable lifespan to today, even if it wasn’t necessarily 70-80s.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Yep. As time goes by, I’d fully expect the age of politicians as an average to only go up [1]. And that’s just fine as long as they are getting assessed on cognitive function.

      [1] I expect we’ll all be caught rather off-guard by this, much like AI.