Do you agree or disagree with the following statement:（2020.12.12）

实际上， 人类各个方面都变得更好了  

人们的生活不仅更加富足，健康状况也有明显改善，甚至好于过去的富人。原因之一是医学的飞速进 步。2009年猪流感的流行眼看就要导致灾难，但科学家一天之内就完成了对这种病毒基因组的测序， 并在不到六个月的时间里生产出了疫苗。

Not only have people grown much more prosperous; they also enjoy better health than even rich folk did in the past. This is due partly to galloping progress in medical science. When the swine flu pandemic threatened to become catastrophic in 2009, scientists sequenced the genome of the virus within a day and were producing a vaccine in less than six months.

基础技术的传播让人们有了清洁的饮用水和室内管道系统，这些可能更进一步改善了人们的生活。路易十四的宫殿是18世纪辉煌建筑的顶峰之作，然而甶于没有抽水马桶，难免臭气熏天。一位当时的观察 家写道："通道、走廊和庭院里到处都是屎尿。”现在，全球68%的人口都能享受到现代卫生设施，这可 是"太阳王’’路易十四无福消受的，而这一比例在1980年时只有24%。

（能想象这么漂亮的宫殿，结果到处是屎尿吗? ）

The spread of basic technology, allowing for clean water and indoor plumbing, may have helped even more. Louis XIV's palace was the pinnacle of 18th-century grandeur. Nonetheless, without flush toilets, it stank. "The passageways, corridors and courtyards are filled with urine and faecal matter” wrote a contemporary observer. Now 68% of the worlds population have modern sanitation—a luxury denied to the Sun King—up from 24% in 1980.

People are growing smarter too. Americans scored, on average, 100 points on IQ tests just after the second world war. By 2002, using the same test, this had risen to 118, with the biggest improvements in answers to the most abstract problems.  The most likely reasons are better nutrition and the spread of education—brains that are well-fed and well-stimulated tend to work better—and environmental improvements such as the removal of lead from petrol.

甶于人们更加擅长抽象思维，他们更容易站在他人的角度思考问题。有充分的证据显示人类社会已变得越来越包容。就在1964年，连美国公民自由联盟（theAmericanCivilLibertiesUnion)都认为应禁止同性恋者在政府工作。在1987年，只有48%的美国人赞同跨种族约会；到2012年这个数字则是86% 。

As people grow more adept at abstract thought, they find it easier to imagine themselves in other people's shoes. And there is plenty of evidence that society has grown more tolerant. As recently as 1964, even the American Civil Liberties Union agreed that homosexuals should be barred from government jobs. In 1987 only 48% of Americans approved of interracial dating; in 2012 that figure was 86%.