The Majority Of People Who Have Ever Lived Are Not Alive Today.
Two teachers have independently told me that the majority of people who have ever lived are alive today. I can only think that this is a gross overestimate.
I cannot believe a teacher would actually say this to students. I hope the teacher is not teaching
math. Look at the thousands of years of human civilization and the average life expectancy. Of
course the population is bigger today, but what an outrageous distortion of truth, and logic.
The amount of people who must have lived and even died within one year because that's what babies
did in the middle ages
must account for something too
I've heard this as well...
After quickly looking it up on Wikipedia (sad, I know), the amount of people who have ever lived is
put somewhere between 45 billion and 125 billion. So whatever teacher told ya (probably Dover) is
wrong
Even if it's not true, who cares? The worldwide population is growing exponentially and will pass
nine billion within 40 years, while there are already food shortages now, and more to
come as fertilizers made from petroleum products become scarce and/or unaffordable.
It doesn't matter if it's not literally true. What's important is the possibility it infers:
Billions of deaths due to starvation and war within our own lifetimes.
Edit:
It seems innomen incapable of telling the difference between a flawed anecdote and a lie.
26 May 2008 14:45
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