The Worst Year Ever?

How bad or good is 2020 by historical comparison? Should we stop moaning and just be glad we weren’t living through 536 AD or 541 AD? We mull over how to go about determining the overall amount of suffering in a given year and what constitutes the worst year ever. How should it be measured? Is the size of the human race at the time relevant? And are we predisposed to recency bias, where terrible events in the past are largely ignored? A few things we mentioned in this podcast: Is 2020 the worst year ever? List of natural disasters by death toll List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll The Toba Catastrophe Theory The ‘536 AD’ theory For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected] This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Jul 29, 2020

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How bad or good is 2020 by historical comparison? Should we stop moaning and just be glad we weren’t living through 536 AD or 541 AD? We mull over how to go about determining the overall amount of suffering in a given year and what constitutes the worst year ever. How should it be measured? Is the size of the human race at the time relevant? And are we predisposed to recency bias, where terrible events in the past are largely ignored? A few things we mentioned in this podcast: - Is 2020 the worst year ever? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECfXI_A39bA - List of natural disasters by death toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll - List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll - The Toba Catastrophe Theory https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/toba_catastrophe_theory.htm - The ‘536 AD’ theory https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive Find more Cognitive Engineering episodes here https://link.chtbl.com/SQeIgc44 Image: via pxfuel