alt Hacker News> humans, on average, are healthier and live longer than ever in human history.
Kinda. We also have incredible rates of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes.
While I do mostly buy that the mind and the body are connected, I don't think being able to bench press 250lbs is a necessary, fundamentally human capability. I do think being able to think is. Literally Rene Descartes cogito ergo sum. If we lose cognition, executive function, analysis, skepticism, etc., I don't think we're human anymore.
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> We also have incredible rates of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes.
To me, this is kinda like saying we have incredible rates of autism. While technically true, the science is still fairly new, so we simply don't have very much historical data. In all likelihood there isn't a sudden epidemic of autism, only improvements to how it's diagnosed.
The higher rates don't make any sense if you don't try to take into account the fact that we live longer. Of course we will accumulate more diseases if we last longer.