No, human life was not a misery until the 1950s

Not everybody agrees with you that simply having more people alive is better, and not everybody shares your intuitions. For example, I think it's a "no brainer" that counting noses is insane, and trying to add up "utilons" is even more so. I see no reason to increase the population at modern levels of well being.

I doubt that argument by extended, aggressive assertion is going to change anybody's mind.

People like being alive. They show this by their actions. Very few people kill themselves.

This reminds me of a couple of comments I made on another post [LW(p) · GW(p)]. I think the most appropriate quote from my comments is this:

I don't think I agree that suicide is a sufficient proxy for whether an entity enjoys life more than it dislikes life because I can imagine too many plausible, yet currently unknown mechanisms wherein there are mitigating factors. For example:

I imagine that there are mental processes and instincts in most evolved entities that adds a significant extra prohibition against making the active choice to end their own life and thus that mental ability has a much smaller role in suicide "decisions".

In the world where there is no built-in prohibition against ending your own life, if the "enjoys life" indicator is at level 10 and the "hates life" indicator is at level 11, then suicide is on the table.

In, what I think is probably our world, when the "enjoys life" indicator is at level 10 the "hates life" indicator has to be at level 50.

What's more, it seems plausible to me that the value of this own-life-valuing indicator addon varies from species to species and individual to individual.

People like being alive. They show this by their actions. Very few people kill themselves.

Both David Hume and Arthur Schopenhauer—LessWrong-aligned philosophers from the 18th and 19th centuries respectively—wrote of suicide favorably, and asserted that ordinary people did not live net-positive lives. Hume, for his part, proposed that the reason why people did not commit suicide was because they feared death itself, the offense it would bring to God, and could not bring themselves the courage to do it at any one instant. From his essay, Of Suicide,

The superstitious man, says Tully^[1], is miserable in every scene, in every incident of life. Even sleep itself, which banishes all other cares of unhappy mortals, affords to him matter of new terror; while he examines his dreams, and finds in those visions of the night, prognostications of future calamities. I may add, that, tho' death alone can put a full period to his misery, he dares not fly to this refuge, but still prolongs a miserable existence, from a vain fear, lest he offend his maker, by using the power, with which that beneficent being has endowed him...

So great is our horror of death, that when it presents itself under any form, besides that to which a man has endeavoured to reconcile his imagination, it acquires new terrors, and overcomes his feeble courage. But when the menaces of superstition are joined to this natural timidity, no wonder it quite deprives men of all power over their lives; since even many pleasures and enjoyments, to which we are carried by a strong propensity, are torn from us by this inhuman tyrant.

Schopenhauer cites many philosophers since ancient times who viewed suicide favorably, including Pliny the Elder who wrote,

Not even to God are all things possible; for he could not compass his own death, if he willed to die, and yet in all the miseries of our earthly life, this is the best of his gifts to man.

I am personally emotionally drawn to a passage from one of Hume's posthumous works, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, in which the character Philo tries to convince others that God cannot be benevolent, since the misery and discontent in life exceeds the happiness we find in it. Hume's writing is engaging and poetic; a summary would not suffice, and therefore I will quote it in full. He writes,

The whole earth, believe me, Philo, is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong and courageous: Fear, anxiety, terror, agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent: Weakness, impotence, distress, attend each stage of that life: and 'tis at last finished in agony and horror...

Man alone, said Demea, seems to be, in part, an exception to this rule. For by combination in society, he can easily master lions, tygers, and bears, whose greater strength and agility naturally enable them to prey upon him.

On the contrary, it is here chiefly, cried Philo, that the uniform and equal maxims of Nature are most apparent. Man, it is true, can, by combination, surmount all his real enemies, and become master of the whole animal creation: but does he not immediately raise up to himself imaginary enemies, the dæmons of his fancy, who haunt him with superstitious terrors, and blast every enjoyment of life? His pleasure, as he imagines, becomes, in their eyes, a crime: his food and repose give them umbrage and offence: his very sleep and dreams furnish new materials to anxious fear: and even death, his refuge from every other ill, presents only the dread of endless and innumerable woes. Nor does the wolf molest more the timid flock, than superstition does the anxious breast of wretched mortals.

Besides, consider, Demea; this very society, by which we surmount those wild beasts, our natural enemies; what new enemies does it not raise to us? What woe and misery does it not occasion? Man is the greatest enemy of man. Oppression, injustice, contempt, contumely, violence, sedition, war, calumny, treachery, fraud; by these they mutually torment each other: and they would soon dissolve that society which they had formed, were it not for the dread of still greater ills, which must attend their separation.

But though these external insults, said Demea, from animals, from men, from all the elements, which assault us, form a frightful catalogue of woes, they are nothing in comparison of those, which arise within ourselves, from the distempered condition of our mind and body. How many lie under the lingering torment of diseases? Hear the pathetic enumeration of the great poet.

Intestine stone and ulcer, colic-pangs,
Dæmoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence.
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans: DESPAIR
Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch.
And over them triumphant DEATH his dart
Shook: but delay'd to strike, tho' oft invok'd
With vows, as their chief good and final hope.

The disorders of the mind, continued Demea, though more secret, are not perhaps less dismal and vexatious. Remorse, shame, anguish, rage, disappointment, anxiety, fear, dejection, despair; who has ever passed through life without cruel inroads from these tormentors? How many have scarcely ever felt any better sensations? Labour and poverty, so abhorred by every one, are the certain lot of the far greater number: and those few privileged persons, who enjoy ease and opulence, never reach contentment or true felicity. All the goods of life united would not make a very happy man: but all the ills united would make a wretch indeed; and any one of them almost (and who can be free from every one) nay often the absence of one good (and who can possess all) is sufficient to render life ineligible.

Were a stranger to drop, on a sudden, into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, an hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strowed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.

There is no evading such striking instances, said Philo, but by apologies, which still farther aggravate the charge. Why have all men, I ask, in all ages, complained incessantly of the miseries of life? - - - - They have no just reason, says one: these complaints proceed only from their discontented, repining, anxious disposition. - - - And can there possibly, I reply, be a more certain foundation of misery, than such a wretched temper?

But if they were really as unhappy as they pretend, says my antagonist, why do they remain in life? - - -

Not satisfied with life, afraid of death.

This is the secret chain, say I, that holds us. We are terrified, not bribed to the continuance of our existence.

Another comment says this post is unlikely to change anyone’s mind. But it changed mine! I agree more people alive is better and that the flat line of the malthulsian “trap” elides this - but I’d never connected these ideas before.

I agree with a fair amount of this post.

But you overestimate agriculture's effect on population size. In 1492, a substantial fraction of New World societies were foragers who were approximately as civilized as Europe. I don't see good evidence about their population size, but based on info from the books 1491 and The Dawn of Everything, there were probably 10s of millions of foragers who lived better lives than European farmers.

Also, see my comments here about why I reject the repugnant conclusion.

Just a note that this has a very anthropocentric perspective about utility. Humans do not live in isolation, however, and our numbers and behaviours affect the rest of the "system" (essentially, all other macroscopic life forms and plenty of microscopic ones). Taking a step back, human happiness may not be a good indicator, at all, of total utility to the system. There is probably a number of humans that just about maximises total utility and going beyond it only hurts the whole.

Holden Karnofsky has written some about average quality of life, including talking about that chart.

https://www.cold-takes.com/has-life-gotten-better/

 I think he thinks that the zero point was crossed long before 1900, but I'm not sure.


I think the phrase "10,000 years of misery" is perfectly consistent with believing that the changes were net good due to population growth, and "misery" is pretty much equivalent to "average quality of life".