[extropy-chat] how sleep deprivation skews perception

[Damien Broderick]

>" But your "and wrt capitalist countries, there are fewer people with
>running water now than at any time in history.... thanks to capitalism."
>
>And though I wont speak for Mike Lorrey, I will wager that is was a
>typo, and he meant to say that fewer people are 'without' running water
>than ever before in the history of humanity.
>
>Michael
>
>-------------------------------------------------------
>You win, I lose. Obvious, in hindsight...

Well, the typo was obvious, but not necessarily the truth of the intended 
observation.

For a start, it might be that Mike should have written `...thanks to the 
increase in technological knowledge', since a lot of the running water 
infrastructure in the world has been put in place by non-capitalist societies.

(Farther back in the chain of logic, one might argue that this knowledge 
would not have existed were it not for early capitalism in Europe, but then 
we might as well praise autocracy and monarchy, which would be foolish, 
since these links were historically contingent.)

The question then is whether fewer people really *are* without running 
water than ever in history. If history starts 10,000 years ago, this has a 
certain plausibility (although access to streams and rivers might count, 
which means for the longest portions of early history *almost nobody* was 
without access to running water, since nobody could live anywhere without 
it). But since the populations of the `underdeveloped' parts of the world 
are larger and growing faster than the rich remainder, I suspect that at 
least the *proportion* without running water might be *increasing*. But I'm 
too busy just now to go hunting for data. Just checking the underlying 
logic here...

Damien Broderick