Are You Comparing Us to 50 or 100 Years Ago?

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A certain sort of subset of Americans actually is experiencing declining life expectancy for the first time. Compared to 50 or 100 years ago these people are still leading much better lives on average at least in straightforward stuff terms but compared to 10 years ago they may not be so how do we think about that? I find it hard when you look at the argument of somebody like Stephen Pinker in his writing about the decline of violence, he's convinced me that those nostalgic treatments of how wonderful the hunter-gatherers had it as is deeply naive.

Charles Kenny is a writer-researcher and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. Previously, he spent fifteen years as an economist at the World Bank. His books include The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease and The Upside of Down: Why the Rise of the Rest is Good for the West.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Charles Kenny discuss why development aid is more effective than its critics claim; why it is easier to solve "stuff" problems than it is to solve "non-stuff" problems; and why effective altruists need to start thinking bigger.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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