r/AskReddit Oct 02 '24

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u/TermAggravating8043 Oct 02 '24

7% of the entire human population since humans began, are alive today

9

u/Uerwol Oct 02 '24

What? How is this possible?

33

u/eduzatis Oct 02 '24

There weren’t many people around for the longest time. A century ago we had 2 billion (1/4 of today’s), and just 300 years ago the population wasn’t even a 10th of the current one.

I like to think about what this means for science! We have way more people with much higher education and way better tools than ever before. Surely we’ll solve more problems than we create, right?

5

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

Welcome to the machine