What has been the median level of aggregate human joy/misery since 4000 BC?

[loinburger]

Start date was chosen because it was the start date of Civ 1; you can instead choose 4004 BC if you prefer start date according to the Bible, or 10000-ish BC if you want to start at the beginning of the Neolithic period, or whatever.

The scale is from -100 to 100, where -100 indicates that somebody was absolutely miserable their entire lives, and 100 means that somebody was ecstatic their entire lives. This means miserable/ecstatic according to the individual, not according to some objective scale.

For example, Bob Jones was a serf in the middle ages who led a rather boring life, but he didn't get sick much, he did some drinking and procreating (often at the same time) both of which he enjoyed, and he wasn't particularly ambitious i.e. he was content with his lot of working, drinking, and procreating, and so he'd rate himself at about a 30 on the scale. He was later accused of being a witch and burnt alive, but he discovered that being burnt alive was his fetish and so this raised his joy level to 35. In this hypothetical universe there were exactly two billion and one people who ever existed since 4000 BC (or whenever); if one billion people scored less than 35 and one billion people scored greater than 35 then the median level of aggregate human joy/misery would be 35.

Also, we're only counting time here on earth - time in heaven/hell/purgatory/limbo/nirvana/wherever doesn't count. If you believe in reincarnation then every incarnation is counted separately.

[giblets]

Most people have spent their lives performing menial tasks waiting for the next holiday to arrive

[KrazyHorse]

More importantly, something like half of all people who have ever lived did not survive past early childhood. How are you counting them in your calcs?

[Lorizael]

Well, the very rapid exponential population growth of the last century or so means any median value is probably going to take on the human joy/misery (jisery?) level of someone living today, unless there's some very weird distribution to modern happiness.

[giblets]

Well, the very rapid exponential population growth of the last century or so means any median value is probably going to take on the human joy/misery (jisery?) level of someone living today, unless there's some very weird distribution to modern happiness.

I think the number of people who've ever lived is estimated at 100 billion or something like that. There's only 7 billion now.

[KrazyHorse]

Your statement is untrue. Although human populations have increased rapidly, a large fraction of this increase is due to increased survival rates, not increased birth rates. The integrated total human population is something like 100 billion. My guess is that the median person was born in the early middle ages.

[KrazyHorse]

According to this infographic I am correct. Look at the table which has the column "births since last period". 107 billion total births, 46 billion occurred before 1ad, a further 26 billion before 1200ad. So the median person was born somewhere around 500 ad.

http://m.livescience.com/18336-human-population-dead-living-infographic.html

[Lorizael]

You're absolutely right. I've even trotted out the 100 billion/7 billion figures before, so I'm not sure what my brain was doing there.

[KrazyHorse]

That includes the half of all people who died in infancy, of course. If you instead integrate by life lived then you get an answer more like the enlightenment (that the median human moment was 1650 or so).

[giblets]

Since life apparently begins at conception we'd better factor in miscarriages.

[Lorizael]

I'm very tired. I'm going to go play D&D now.

[KrazyHorse]

Since life apparently begins at conception we'd better factor in miscarriages.

Don't have good data on that. Paleodemographers are clearly pro-abortion

[loinburger]

More importantly, something like half of all people who have ever lived did not survive past early childhood. How are you counting them in your calcs?

Hmm, might make sense to apply some sort of weighting based on somebody's lifespan since somebody who lived for a hundred years experienced more joy/misery than somebody who lived for a day.

[Jon Miller]

I am going to assume that the average happiness remains the same for people unless it was an abnormally peaceful or abnormally violent/diseased/etc time. I am also going to assume that relative wealth/health/etc matters and not absolute. I am going to assume that to within 10% error abnormally peaceful and abnormally violente/diseased times are equal.

This suggests to me that the median level of aggregate human joy is 30ish.

JM

[Proteus_MST]

Considering the fact that the question asks for an aggregation over 6000 years of mankind and in most of these years the majority of the human population didn´t lead all too happy lives (in many cultures only a tiny upper class did) I would go for -50/-60 (under the assumption that negative values = more misery than joy)