Globalisation

[Eddie Teach]

I also do not think serfs and peasants were all that badly off. They tended to be basically self governing in their villages, even if that sort of sounds like living under the Home Owners Association from hell. And if they were so desperately miserable then why were they so conservative and why was there so much moaning and gnashing of teeth when they had to leave their villages during industrialization?

But could they watch porn on their phones? I rest my case.

Technology ftw.

[Admiral Yi]

In what possible situations would one be looking at porn on their phone?

[dps]

there was a philosophical belief by certain Founding Fathers that American political evolution would eventually cast off slavery as an antiquated concept--but that shit went out the window with the following generation, the cotton gin and the admission of new states.

Yeah, Southern politicians started moving from defending slavery as a necessary evil to extolling it as a positive virtue sometime around the War of 1812.  By the mid-1840s, you couldn't find hardly any politician in the South who hadn't adopted the latter notion.

[Eddie Teach]

Say they didn't want to put their contacts in, or sit in a desk chair.

[jimmy olsen]

Yes. And there is nothing really governments can do about that. The world is changing and people are upset about it. The whole reaction carries a nostalgia for the 60s and 70s that I find rather unsettling anyway. Those days were not that great. Granted I was only alive for three years of the 70s.

I'm surprised no one's tried proposing farm style subsudies to keep them at work.

[jimmy olsen]

Agricultural societies are significantly more violent than hunter-gatherer societies, as far as we can tell and on average (naturally, this only applies to the ones still around when people started to take records of such matters - and an argument could be made that these were the peaceful ones that got pushed to the margins by agriculturalists! Also, there are oddballs like West Coast native Americans). In some tribal agricultural societies, a violent death was a major cause of mortality. The reason: protecting good growing territory is very important, particularly as population densities increased (see for example Highland New Guinea). 

Healthier and longer lived is right, but this isn't remotely proven.

[jimmy olsen]

Except that the sharpest decline in the homicide rate is achieved by the end of the 16th century - not an especially shining moment of medical prowess.

The rest of your post is, paradoxically, a reiteration of technology as an independent force, and an economicist reading of it - which I am not getting into. We know where we stand on this topic anyway.

Hanging everyone who comitted a violent (or even not so violent) crime in society for 500 years likley culled some of the genes correllated with a tendency to committ impulsive violence from the population.

[Oexmelin]

Hanging everyone who comitted a violent (or even not so violent) crime in society for 500 years likley culled some of the genes correllated with a tendency to committ impulsive violence from the population.

Whereas, clearly, harsh punishments were unknown before, and endemic warfare couldn't possibly provide an outlet for the vast amount of genetically designed monsters who roamed the countryside. Amazingly, this remarkable genetic selection manifested itself in a weirdly compact moment of time, a mere 50 years.

Terrible science AND terrible history.

[Valmy]

What is supposed to be the cause of whatever happened 500 years ago and are we sure we have good enough statistics to draw conclusions from that long ago?

[PDH]

Terrible science AND terrible history.

Timmy is a dual threat.

[Oexmelin]

What is supposed to be the cause of whatever happened 500 years ago and are we sure we have good enough statistics to draw conclusions from that long ago?

Obviously, statistics have been a challenge, but specific towns and provinces have been studied with reliable accuracy in a variety of settings (good data for Lower Countries, Sweden, certain parts of Bavaria, northern France, etc.). They all indicate the same remarkable decline. (Italy is an outlier - the same level of strong decline only at the end of the 19th c.)

As for the cause, it's been debated for years. Multiple explanations have been provided since the trend has been noticed, from harsh repression (which, Tim notwhistanding, hasn't held up to scrutiny), to the rise of individualism, from internalisation of state control to the decline of honor and the end of vengeance, to the reliability of courts. It does correlate with the rise of litigation.

[Eddie Teach]

Terrible science AND terrible history.

Timmy is a dual threat.

Triple. Terrible spelling too. 

[Valmy]

What is supposed to be the cause of whatever happened 500 years ago and are we sure we have good enough statistics to draw conclusions from that long ago?

Obviously, statistics have been a challenge, but specific towns and provinces have been studied with reliable accuracy in a variety of settings (good data for Lower Countries, Sweden, certain parts of Bavaria, northern France, etc.). They all indicate the same remarkable decline. (Italy is an outlier - the same level of strong decline only at the end of the 19th c.)

As for the cause, it's been debated for years. Multiple explanations have been provided since the trend has been noticed, from harsh repression (which, Tim notwhistanding, hasn't held up to scrutiny), to the rise of individualism, from internalisation of state control to the decline of honor and the end of vengeance, to the reliability of courts. It does correlate with the rise of litigation.

That does sound likely. Lawyers are the only thing keeping us from barbarism

[viper37]

In what possible situations would one be looking at porn on their phone?

- revenge porn
- easy sharing among friends
- collectors (a recent case involved hockey players from a small town sharing pictures&vids of underage girls in sex acts amongst themselves like hockey cards)
- frequent travellers
- people with the moto "small is beautiful"

[viper37]

What is supposed to be the cause of whatever happened 500 years ago and are we sure we have good enough statistics to draw conclusions from that long ago?

Obviously, statistics have been a challenge, but specific towns and provinces have been studied with reliable accuracy in a variety of settings (good data for Lower Countries, Sweden, certain parts of Bavaria, northern France, etc.). They all indicate the same remarkable decline. (Italy is an outlier - the same level of strong decline only at the end of the 19th c.)

As for the cause, it's been debated for years. Multiple explanations have been provided since the trend has been noticed, from harsh repression (which, Tim notwhistanding, hasn't held up to scrutiny), to the rise of individualism, from internalisation of state control to the decline of honor and the end of vengeance, to the reliability of courts. It does correlate with the rise of litigation.

That does sound likely. Lawyers are the only thing keeping us from barbarism

And now we have solved Mass Effect greatest mystery.  Lawyers are the greatest evil of this universe, they are the ones pulling the strings behind the Collectors.