I have a recollection that the house collar was invented around 1000 CE. This technology expanded the amount of land a ploughman could turn in a day, enabling increased cultivation. There coincided, I believe with substantial population growth and other indices of prosperity such as the Gothic cathedral boom. That came crashing down with the Black Death. How would this fit with the rather grim picture of subsistence you paint here.
A very nice Sunday. Thank you for your detailed description of the ideas index. You've cited it before but never explained in detail how it was derived.
"average real income per capita not $12,000 but more than $50,000 per year. The typical human ..."
I can't protest every time I see something like this ... but still!
<rant>
If you want to use one number for this purpose, try the median, which is what people mean when they say "average" even if they think (because they've been told that) that the mean is how it is calculated. The use of arithmetic means is a crime against humanity. They have all kinds of uses, and they behave well under all sorts of transformations, and one can do clever things with them, but they don't measure anything intrinsically valuable in its own right.
The larger issue is that the meanings of words should matter as much as the words do. (Cf. "statistically significant.") A utopian view but worth aiming at.
What's the chance that the next person you meet will have more than the average number of arms?
I have a recollection that the house collar was invented around 1000 CE. This technology expanded the amount of land a ploughman could turn in a day, enabling increased cultivation. There coincided, I believe with substantial population growth and other indices of prosperity such as the Gothic cathedral boom. That came crashing down with the Black Death. How would this fit with the rather grim picture of subsistence you paint here.
A very nice Sunday. Thank you for your detailed description of the ideas index. You've cited it before but never explained in detail how it was derived.
"average real income per capita not $12,000 but more than $50,000 per year. The typical human ..."
I can't protest every time I see something like this ... but still!
<rant>
If you want to use one number for this purpose, try the median, which is what people mean when they say "average" even if they think (because they've been told that) that the mean is how it is calculated. The use of arithmetic means is a crime against humanity. They have all kinds of uses, and they behave well under all sorts of transformations, and one can do clever things with them, but they don't measure anything intrinsically valuable in its own right.
The larger issue is that the meanings of words should matter as much as the words do. (Cf. "statistically significant.") A utopian view but worth aiming at.
What's the chance that the next person you meet will have more than the average number of arms?
</rant>