system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Arguments against "back in the day people were tougher and smarter" and the "good times create weak men" viewpoints?

Some time ago i had a "conservative" classmate who used to talk about these types of views a lot and constantly argued that "people nowadays are dumber and weaker than people in the past" and seemed to believe the "weak men create hard times --> hard times create strong men" type view which i feel like is a huge simplification of history and is generally wrong.

What are some good arguments against and for both of these ideas?

edit: thanks for all the replies!
gpt
I guess that's a more complicated question than it appears at first glance. There are several different problems to solve:

1. Were people smarter and stronger in general populace on average? Or people that were notable enough to remembered by next generations? If the latter, you must account for survivorship bias.
2. Stronger by what measure? Psychologically? Physically?
3. Smarter at solving which problems? Maybe the problems they are faced were simpler, so apparent intelligence was then higher.