Life expectancy at birth in Afghanistan is 64, which is 2 or 3 times in the Stone Age. Suggesting worse general health back then, with attendant suffering. (Infant deaths are of course a substantial part of the lower life expectancy, but by no means all.)
Indeed there’s a wider ranges of potential causes of suffering now, but I’m not convinced they’re worse overall. E.g. being shot is not clearly worse than being stabbed. People are rarely burnt at the stake now. Chemical pollution is fairly new, but there were plenty of other poisons before. Disease/death from air pollution is predominantly a problem of non-industrial societies (from cooking over open fires), not cars etc.
And of course modern medicine provides ways of alleviating suffering, via treatments and anaesthetics, mostly unavailable in the Stone Age (though at least to some extent available in Afghanistan).
Re Stone Age suffering, as you probably know, violence has been in long-term big decline, and much higher in non-states than states:
https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/title-slide
Life expectancy at birth in Afghanistan is 64, which is 2 or 3 times in the Stone Age. Suggesting worse general health back then, with attendant suffering. (Infant deaths are of course a substantial part of the lower life expectancy, but by no means all.)
Indeed there’s a wider ranges of potential causes of suffering now, but I’m not convinced they’re worse overall. E.g. being shot is not clearly worse than being stabbed. People are rarely burnt at the stake now. Chemical pollution is fairly new, but there were plenty of other poisons before. Disease/death from air pollution is predominantly a problem of non-industrial societies (from cooking over open fires), not cars etc.
And of course modern medicine provides ways of alleviating suffering, via treatments and anaesthetics, mostly unavailable in the Stone Age (though at least to some extent available in Afghanistan).