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pinkmuffinere 6 hours ago [-]
> During their simulation of Mallory’s Everest expedition, the data showed that on summit night, the average body temperature difference between the twin in modern down and the twin in complicated layers of silk, wool, and gabardine was a staggering 1.8°C.
The human body self-regulates, and is pretty sensitive to dramatic temperature swings. So, conditioned on the fact that they both survived the adventure, we should expect their temperature differences to be relatively small. This doesn't mean the clothing is great, it means [their body] + [their clothing] is adequate.
Additionally, I'm not a doctor but 1.8 C is not small compared to normal human variation! Normal body temperature ranges between 36 and 37 C, a "high fever" starts around 39 C [0], and hypothermia is anything below 35 C [1]. The comfortable range of human temperature is 1 deg C, and the "outside of this is concerning" range is only 4 C wide. 1.8 C is quite big from that perspective.
I didn't see more details in the article, but my guess is they were taking and averaging multiple temperature reads across the body. That is, core temp should only be within a narrow range like you say, but fingertip temp will vary much more widely.
All in all I found this to be a very strange article. If you just look at the data, I think a reasonable conclusion is that modern gear is vastly better at its function than old time Mallory gear. It's much lighter and keeps the wearer much warmer than old gear. But the whole tone of the article is about "myth busting" and how there haven't been really that many improvements in gear. I'm just looking at their charts and data and wondering what they're smoking.
ginko 5 hours ago [-]
Not to be a stickler (ok I like being a stickler) but temperature delta, especially deltas between degrees celsius, should be given in kelvin. A 1.8K difference makes sense. A 1.8C difference would be 274.8 kelvin!
hexer292 4 hours ago [-]
This is probably the most ridiculous comment I've read in the history of this website.
There is no difference in the amount of energy 1 degree Celsius delta and 1 degree Kelvin delta represents.
The only (and I really mean only) difference is how zero energy is defined. It is not possible to have negative energy, and that zero Celsius represents the freezing point of water is an artifact of convenience, not of absolute definition.
hexer292 4 hours ago [-]
Also, the way Kelvin is defined necessitates that both degrees are identical. If 10 degrees Celcius defined the boiling point of water at 1 atmosphere (or whatever the actual definition is) then Kelvin would be smaller by a factor of 10. And this applies to both negative and positive K values.
Terr_ 33 minutes ago [-]
> A 1.8K difference makes sense. A 1.8C difference would be 274.8 kelvin!
I think you got confused between differences versus absolute amounts.
By definition, a 1.8C difference is exactly the same amount as a 1.8K difference.
atombender 4 hours ago [-]
Celsius is not an absolute scale, but that isn't a problem for deltas: (10C - 5C)=5C, (10K-5K)=5K. Celsius is only problematic when multiplying or dividing. 10C is not twice as hot as 5C.
hn_throwaway_99 5 hours ago [-]
That makes no sense. A difference between a read of 37C and 38.8C is still 1.8C.
ginko 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hn_throwaway_99 3 hours ago [-]
Dude, you are just completely making shit up, and it makes no sense.
So what if Celsius and Kelvin have different 0 points - they are still valid scales and you can talk about differences between 2 measurements.
According to your logic it would be impossible to state that two Fahrenheit measurements differ by some number of degrees F - why, I have no idea.
dekhn 4 hours ago [-]
I'm not entirely sure what point you are trying to make, but this is absolutely false from a scientific perspective.
If you believe otherwise, please provide some citations to your beliefs so we can understand what you are trying to say.
hexer292 4 hours ago [-]
Saying something is false and then asking for citations doesn't seem that helpful to me.
To support your argument, take the following example:
Lets take some water at 273.15 Kelvin and add 1 Kelvin of energy to it. The water is now at 274.15 Kelvin. The difference is of 1 Kelvin.
If we had the same amount of water at 0 degrees Celsius and added 1 Celsius of energy, the water would now be at 1 Celcius.
Converting these values leave us with 273.15 Kelvin and 274.15 Kelvin respectively.
You can repeat this experiment (ignoring latent heat) for any value of Kelvin or Celsius, therefore Kevlin and Celsius are interchangeable in reference to temperature comparasion.
dekhn 4 hours ago [-]
I believe any chemistry or physics textbook will state (possibly indirectly) how temperature deltas work.
But I think it's sufficient to just say that Kelvin and Celsius have the same scale magnitude and just a constant offset.
alistairSH 4 hours ago [-]
Kelvin and Celsius use the same unit magnitudes. It would be a 1.8* difference either way.
altairprime 4 hours ago [-]
"A 1.8C difference" expands as "A difference of 1.8C" expands as, and here's the ambiguity, either:
"An absolute difference of 1.8C, or 274.8K, measured between A and B"
or
"A relative difference of 1.8C, or 1.8K, is added/subtracted to A/B in order to reach B/A"
I don't think the context-free variant with K will improve understanding and decrease confusability in this discussion context, but I appreciate the pointer about it in general. I'll take a lot more care around it in a future thread about space apparel!
hightrix 5 hours ago [-]
To be a stickler, communication requires respect for your audience. The vast majority of everyone understands a 1.8 degree C delta. I would argue that very few people anywhere would understand a temperature delta given in kelvin.
ginko 4 hours ago [-]
How is expecting readers to not understand what a kelvin is respecting the audience?
hightrix 2 hours ago [-]
You misread.
Most people do not understand temperature on the Kelvin scale. As such, you should not use it to communicate in a general setting such as this.
hexer292 4 hours ago [-]
The same way expecting you understand what a Kelvin is isn't respectful to you.
3 hours ago [-]
aidenn0 1 hours ago [-]
So other than being easier to use, cheaper to buy, lighter, and warmer: modern apparel isn't any better than old apparel.
rationalist 14 minutes ago [-]
It appears the only drawback in the article, was moisture.
aetherspawn 32 minutes ago [-]
I was wondering if they’ve taken into account that one of the test subjects had a prior fractured vertebrae (and the other not). I know a lot of time has passed, but I expect that it would probably never be possible to fully recover from an injury like this? And therefore there would be differences in overall fitness between them?
For example … skeletal and muscular compensation. Nerve damage. Damage to lymph system due to surgeries.
jldugger 7 hours ago [-]
> the data showed that on summit night, the average body temperature difference between the twin in modern down and the twin in complicated layers of silk, wool, and gabardine was a staggering 1.8°C.
> “In a hundred years, you’ve gained—arguably—one degree of efficiency per 50 years,” Ross reveals.
Depending on where the baseline is, 1.8 degrees could be huge! But more importantly, heat dissapation is a non-linear function. The warmer you are relative to your environment, the more energy is lost. While Shackleton's kit forms a lower baseline, it probably makes sense to imagine how some imaginary perfect vacuum insulated sleeping bag would perform.
Aurornis 6 hours ago [-]
Is that really core body temperature?
Normal core body temperature is around 37C.
Hypothermia starts around 35C, only 2C less.
If they're actually measuring body temperature (using that swallowed pill they mention?) then 1.8C is a huge difference.
This whole article does feel like they started with a conclusion and they were going to report that conclusion regardless of what they measured or experienced. Content that claims to debunk things is hot right now.
systemsweird 6 hours ago [-]
Also the body will increase metabolic rate in the cold to maintain body temperate which is an externality they aren’t measuring. The user of the worse clothing is very likely burning more calories and still not as warm. This would mean increased fatigue and greater food weight on expeditions.
throwaway173738 3 hours ago [-]
Or they can move faster or carry more weight. You can warm yourself by moving or by metabolism.
margalabargala 6 hours ago [-]
This whole article is kind of a straw man anyway.
Warmth of clothing isn't actually what people care about. What people care about, and what the article does not mention, is warmth per unit weight.
altairprime 5 hours ago [-]
I disagree. People also may care about the cognitive load of thermal management. As the article notes:
> the gear of the past is capable, but it has a narrower operating window. If you stop moving in Mallory’s kit at 8,000 meters, you will freeze quickly. Modern gear buys you a safety margin if you become static.
In modern terms, this means that stopping to take a photo — whether Ansel or selfie — would carry a material risk of harm in the classic gear that is addressed by modern gear. The example of a selfie is perhaps too easily dismissed unconsidered, but the cognitive load is real for casual hikers, and is a benefit to modern gear that deserves the mention it gets. If I had to choose between a cap that has perfect heat management and a cap that weighs 10g less but requires me to constantly take it off and put it on every five minutes to allow evaporation, I would choose the heavier and lower annoyance cap. Each person’s preferences and skills apply; if one seeks to minmax weight/thermal then that’s a negligible price to pay to improve — but only some truly do strive for the limit of lowest mass without regards to complexity.
There was an enviro-scifi book from the eighties that noted that a few people will pursue ‘one piece of apparel serves all functions’ skinsuit to the exclusion of all other concerns (such as natural fabrics or apparel design), at which point we would plausibly expect to see at one extreme the folks who make a discount-ultralight vented bodysuit out of FedEx envelopes. I am taking for granted that someone has tried this, because of course someone has tried this! And that starts to verge on why, in a different enviro-scifi book of that same relative era, the stillsuit existed: the lightest way to have convenient purified water in an absurd climates. Even the stillsuit as we see it described prioritizes convenience, the sip tube, over a more efficient system that doesn’t expend calories on pumping water up. That’s purely because human beings have a cognitive annoyance limit; and we do variably prioritize convenience when assessing the weight-complexity tradeoff.
throwawaytea 4 hours ago [-]
I go mushroom picking in the Oregon forest every year.
The only real dangerous moment I ever had was getting soaking wet, and when the storm cleared, I stopped like a fool to eat lunch in a sunny for breezing opening. I finished lunch, and realized I was shockingly cold. Like, dangerously cold. I did jumping jacks as long as I could and then started walking uphill even though that wasn't where I wanted to go really. Weird moment.
throwaway173738 3 hours ago [-]
I didn’t wear my rain gear hiking uphill in a quarter inch per 4 hours downpour and started feeling sleepy by degrees until I caught myself looking for a place to lie down for a nap. At that point I realized I’d better turn around posthaste.
bryanrasmussen 4 hours ago [-]
It must just be that the way the stillsuit functions is because of the limits of Herbert as a engineer and designer had been reached and he did not think or realize that there was a more efficient system than the sip tube possible.
altairprime 4 hours ago [-]
Dunno. I'm content analyzing the analogy as if authorial limitations did not apply; it helps fend off the entropic forces of IDIC given the necessity of using flawed examples to communicate at all.
stevejb 6 hours ago [-]
Their bar graph showed that in almost every category except for accessories, the weights were pretty much identical.
margalabargala 6 hours ago [-]
"Pretty much identical"
Add up the numbers in the bar graph and you'll see that the old gear sums to two kilograms heavier than the modern gear.
foxglacier 2 hours ago [-]
Add body weight and the old gear sums to about three percent heavier than the modern gear. I'd say total weight matters more than gear weight alone, doesn't it?
4 hours ago [-]
next_xibalba 6 hours ago [-]
Isn’t there a chart showing weight by body part midway through the article?
margalabargala 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, it shows the old gear is about two kilograms heavier than the new gear, which is huge.
Considering that someone carrying 2 extra kilos will also be generating more body heat etc, the focus on heat over the rest of the article is in question.
altairprime 6 hours ago [-]
To clarify slightly: it shows the old gear is significantly heavier in three areas: head, hands, and ‘accessories’. I think that suggests where investment in technical fabric has been most successful at improving the burden of mass in surviving extreme cold.
Fricken 5 hours ago [-]
Wool, down, silk and leather are still commonly used in technical apparel and compete on weight.
2 big new innovations that matter are Gore-tex and Nylon fabrics that are very durable and wind resistance for their weight.
margalabargala 3 hours ago [-]
Tech fabrics were a prerequisite to the widespread use of down in adventure clothing. Earlier fabrics were either too heavy, like leather, and would collapse the down and negate its insulating properties, or would get wet like cotton/linen and saturate the down.
dehrmann 26 minutes ago [-]
> On the vast, blinding expanse of the Greenland Ice Cap
But not double-blinding. If I were the twin in the retro gear, I'd subconsciously be trying harder to try to make a point.
jancsika 5 hours ago [-]
Key paragraph:
> The data proves that the gear of the past is capable, but it has a narrower operating window. If you stop moving in Mallory’s kit at 8,000 meters, you will freeze quickly. Modern gear buys you a safety margin if you become static.
chis 15 minutes ago [-]
We’ve had the ability to make water/wind-proof garments long before Gore-Tex. The crucial thing is that Gore-Tex is water vapor permeable. So it has a way better ability to shed excess heat without needing to take off a layer.
Traditional materials still have a place though. Material science has not beaten down feathers or wool yet, for the most part.
intrasight 1 hours ago [-]
That was the key takeaway for me as well and is very consistent with articles I've read in the past about mountaineers with gear that was adequate except when it was not - and that can make the difference between life and death.
jancsika 5 hours ago [-]
Important-- when they say "cotton" in the article they're talking about gabardine cotton as a water repellent layer.
Neither one of these dudes is wearing cotton base layers, midlayers, socks, etc. It's too slow to evaporate moisture which can cause blisters on feet and rapid drop of body temperature drop in cool/cold weather.
croisillon 5 hours ago [-]
nice pics, nice font, pity the text went through translopification
Gigachad 5 hours ago [-]
Couldn't help but think the same. Clearly they went through a lot of work to do the experiment and take all these pics, and then it's all let down by such bad text.
XorNot 7 hours ago [-]
I feel like downplaying 1.8 degrees C of performance is a weird choice in the article.
1.8 degrees C is a huge temperature change in biology. Human bodies keep thermal equilibrium in a margin smaller then that.
adonovan 6 hours ago [-]
Also weird phrasing: "a staggering 1.8 degrees" begs the reader to think of it as a large number (which in fact it is, as you point out) yet their intent seems to be, ironically and paradoxically, to diminish it.
altairprime 5 hours ago [-]
I felt like that’s more like a rhetorical device for shorthand-saying “one might expect a ten or twenty degree difference based on modern marketing”, and I’m annoyed the article didn’t say that because it’s a pretty good point delivered rather poorly.
alistairSH 4 hours ago [-]
A 20* swing in body temp would render you dead…
altairprime 4 hours ago [-]
Yep! That's what makes marketing against the imaginary foil of death so impactful: the alternative, "if not for our technical fabric, you'd have to fluctuate between zero and six layers of fabric based on exertion, humidity, inclement weather, and personal thermal comfort", is a lot less manipulative than "wear our fabric or die before the peak". Sure, it's true that you have to wear something or die (unless you're a statistical anomaly, anyways), but marketing based on glove weight doesn't cause as many sales as marketing based on frostbite.
bryanrasmussen 4 hours ago [-]
One might expect to be dead if following Modern marketing guidelines.
pinkmuffinere 2 hours ago [-]
It would be hilarious if they did find a 10 degree difference. “Old gear keeps you chilly but fine. Modern gear straight up kills you!”
fellowniusmonk 7 hours ago [-]
Also: Freezing right away when you stop moving at 8k altitude? I was just skiing at 11k and it never even crossed my mind.
Scarblac 6 hours ago [-]
8k meters. There is no place at 11k where you can ski.
idontwantthis 6 hours ago [-]
You could be on skis they might make it harder to control your parachute.
Yes. They were talking about 8,000 metres of altitude. (Talking about Mallory should have been a clue too.)
ghaff 6 hours ago [-]
Not right away. But a lot depends on the wind.
jhellan 6 hours ago [-]
The article says meters, not feet.
eagsalazar2 4 hours ago [-]
I remember sleeping in old canvas tents - in the heavy rain - on boyscout camping trips around seattle as a kid. I remember waking up in a puddle, cotton lined bag soaked through, not being dry even after 12 hours of laying it out after the rain stopped.
By comparison my RIE UL2 is 100x, no 1000x better in every single way. Same for my 15 degree duck down mummy.
Are sweaters better now than then?? I don't know, maybe. But seriously, get out of here with the general notion that 19** is within a hundred miles of good modern backpacking gear.
About boots, unless you are in snow, boots are scam. Period full stop with whatever expansive definition you want to use. Comfy $30 sneakers from Big 5 are great. I do have some trail running shoes I use personally that cost me about $100. I'm sure they had great options 100 years ago.
no-name-here 2 hours ago [-]
> $30 sneakers from Big 5
Big 5 seems to be a western US sporting goods chain. I wonder if there's an equivalent in other parts of the country?
> Today, their biometrics are tracked by ingestible sensor pills that monitor core temperature from the inside out
I wonder if those are pills they've developed themselves, or if it's an existing product available to consumer?
suzzer99 7 hours ago [-]
I've read about them being used in other studies.
obsidianbases1 6 hours ago [-]
I thought weight would be where the modern wear performed best.
More surprisingly, the footwear of yore was apparently lighter
ehaveman 3 hours ago [-]
really interesting - except the charts are impossible to read for colour blind people.
ChrisMarshallNY 6 hours ago [-]
That's pretty cool. They talk about how getting period clothes basically required custom work.
Must be pricey.
eucyclos 5 hours ago [-]
My wife studied costume design with a focus on historical European garments a few years back. Fascinating field!
And yes, when you can't mass produce clothing it goes up in price massively. Most mass produced clothing costs slightly more than the fabric, but even a very fast couturier will spend hours on a single piece. On top of that, it's one of those industries where price sensitivity inverts at the upper end.
robocat 2 hours ago [-]
> it's one of those industries where price sensitivity inverts at the upper end
What does that mean?
tenuousemphasis 6 hours ago [-]
There was a time not all that long ago that the most expensive thing most people owned was clothing.
jauntywundrkind 1 hours ago [-]
On the one hand I think critical assessment & deep review is vital.
But this feels so not far from anti-Wayland pro-X11/Xorg grumblers. You'll hook 15% of people by being against the modern world. Theres a niche demanding rejection of modernity, current offering. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448328
There are some valid areas of investigation. I want deep critique. But mostly it's just noise, is filler, to give people their outlet against reasonability. Mostly it's not serious. It doesn't have to be: these marks want to believe. And alas alas, that 15% of fans you have against modernity: they are hot to go be loudly obnoxious against any and everything new or popular. They will be unreasonably loud for you.
How humanity copes with basically anti-informed vice-signalling is our most outstanding problem of the 21st century, is our noospheric challenge.
sneak 6 hours ago [-]
The idea that full grown identical twins are identical humans for purposes of analysis is also fundamentally flawed. Just because they share DNA and look the same doesn’t mean anything about their relative health, fitness, metabolic rates, etc.
The human body self-regulates, and is pretty sensitive to dramatic temperature swings. So, conditioned on the fact that they both survived the adventure, we should expect their temperature differences to be relatively small. This doesn't mean the clothing is great, it means [their body] + [their clothing] is adequate.
Additionally, I'm not a doctor but 1.8 C is not small compared to normal human variation! Normal body temperature ranges between 36 and 37 C, a "high fever" starts around 39 C [0], and hypothermia is anything below 35 C [1]. The comfortable range of human temperature is 1 deg C, and the "outside of this is concerning" range is only 4 C wide. 1.8 C is quite big from that perspective.
[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/treat...
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hypothermia/s...
All in all I found this to be a very strange article. If you just look at the data, I think a reasonable conclusion is that modern gear is vastly better at its function than old time Mallory gear. It's much lighter and keeps the wearer much warmer than old gear. But the whole tone of the article is about "myth busting" and how there haven't been really that many improvements in gear. I'm just looking at their charts and data and wondering what they're smoking.
There is no difference in the amount of energy 1 degree Celsius delta and 1 degree Kelvin delta represents.
The only (and I really mean only) difference is how zero energy is defined. It is not possible to have negative energy, and that zero Celsius represents the freezing point of water is an artifact of convenience, not of absolute definition.
I think you got confused between differences versus absolute amounts.
By definition, a 1.8C difference is exactly the same amount as a 1.8K difference.
So what if Celsius and Kelvin have different 0 points - they are still valid scales and you can talk about differences between 2 measurements.
According to your logic it would be impossible to state that two Fahrenheit measurements differ by some number of degrees F - why, I have no idea.
If you believe otherwise, please provide some citations to your beliefs so we can understand what you are trying to say.
To support your argument, take the following example:
Lets take some water at 273.15 Kelvin and add 1 Kelvin of energy to it. The water is now at 274.15 Kelvin. The difference is of 1 Kelvin.
If we had the same amount of water at 0 degrees Celsius and added 1 Celsius of energy, the water would now be at 1 Celcius.
Converting these values leave us with 273.15 Kelvin and 274.15 Kelvin respectively.
You can repeat this experiment (ignoring latent heat) for any value of Kelvin or Celsius, therefore Kevlin and Celsius are interchangeable in reference to temperature comparasion.
But I think it's sufficient to just say that Kelvin and Celsius have the same scale magnitude and just a constant offset.
"An absolute difference of 1.8C, or 274.8K, measured between A and B"
or
"A relative difference of 1.8C, or 1.8K, is added/subtracted to A/B in order to reach B/A"
I don't think the context-free variant with K will improve understanding and decrease confusability in this discussion context, but I appreciate the pointer about it in general. I'll take a lot more care around it in a future thread about space apparel!
Most people do not understand temperature on the Kelvin scale. As such, you should not use it to communicate in a general setting such as this.
For example … skeletal and muscular compensation. Nerve damage. Damage to lymph system due to surgeries.
Depending on where the baseline is, 1.8 degrees could be huge! But more importantly, heat dissapation is a non-linear function. The warmer you are relative to your environment, the more energy is lost. While Shackleton's kit forms a lower baseline, it probably makes sense to imagine how some imaginary perfect vacuum insulated sleeping bag would perform.
Normal core body temperature is around 37C.
Hypothermia starts around 35C, only 2C less.
If they're actually measuring body temperature (using that swallowed pill they mention?) then 1.8C is a huge difference.
This whole article does feel like they started with a conclusion and they were going to report that conclusion regardless of what they measured or experienced. Content that claims to debunk things is hot right now.
Warmth of clothing isn't actually what people care about. What people care about, and what the article does not mention, is warmth per unit weight.
> the gear of the past is capable, but it has a narrower operating window. If you stop moving in Mallory’s kit at 8,000 meters, you will freeze quickly. Modern gear buys you a safety margin if you become static.
In modern terms, this means that stopping to take a photo — whether Ansel or selfie — would carry a material risk of harm in the classic gear that is addressed by modern gear. The example of a selfie is perhaps too easily dismissed unconsidered, but the cognitive load is real for casual hikers, and is a benefit to modern gear that deserves the mention it gets. If I had to choose between a cap that has perfect heat management and a cap that weighs 10g less but requires me to constantly take it off and put it on every five minutes to allow evaporation, I would choose the heavier and lower annoyance cap. Each person’s preferences and skills apply; if one seeks to minmax weight/thermal then that’s a negligible price to pay to improve — but only some truly do strive for the limit of lowest mass without regards to complexity.
There was an enviro-scifi book from the eighties that noted that a few people will pursue ‘one piece of apparel serves all functions’ skinsuit to the exclusion of all other concerns (such as natural fabrics or apparel design), at which point we would plausibly expect to see at one extreme the folks who make a discount-ultralight vented bodysuit out of FedEx envelopes. I am taking for granted that someone has tried this, because of course someone has tried this! And that starts to verge on why, in a different enviro-scifi book of that same relative era, the stillsuit existed: the lightest way to have convenient purified water in an absurd climates. Even the stillsuit as we see it described prioritizes convenience, the sip tube, over a more efficient system that doesn’t expend calories on pumping water up. That’s purely because human beings have a cognitive annoyance limit; and we do variably prioritize convenience when assessing the weight-complexity tradeoff.
Add up the numbers in the bar graph and you'll see that the old gear sums to two kilograms heavier than the modern gear.
Considering that someone carrying 2 extra kilos will also be generating more body heat etc, the focus on heat over the rest of the article is in question.
2 big new innovations that matter are Gore-tex and Nylon fabrics that are very durable and wind resistance for their weight.
But not double-blinding. If I were the twin in the retro gear, I'd subconsciously be trying harder to try to make a point.
> The data proves that the gear of the past is capable, but it has a narrower operating window. If you stop moving in Mallory’s kit at 8,000 meters, you will freeze quickly. Modern gear buys you a safety margin if you become static.
Traditional materials still have a place though. Material science has not beaten down feathers or wool yet, for the most part.
Neither one of these dudes is wearing cotton base layers, midlayers, socks, etc. It's too slow to evaporate moisture which can cause blisters on feet and rapid drop of body temperature drop in cool/cold weather.
1.8 degrees C is a huge temperature change in biology. Human bodies keep thermal equilibrium in a margin smaller then that.
By comparison my RIE UL2 is 100x, no 1000x better in every single way. Same for my 15 degree duck down mummy.
Are sweaters better now than then?? I don't know, maybe. But seriously, get out of here with the general notion that 19** is within a hundred miles of good modern backpacking gear.
About boots, unless you are in snow, boots are scam. Period full stop with whatever expansive definition you want to use. Comfy $30 sneakers from Big 5 are great. I do have some trail running shoes I use personally that cost me about $100. I'm sure they had great options 100 years ago.
Big 5 seems to be a western US sporting goods chain. I wonder if there's an equivalent in other parts of the country?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_5_Sporting_Goods
I wonder if those are pills they've developed themselves, or if it's an existing product available to consumer?
More surprisingly, the footwear of yore was apparently lighter
Must be pricey.
And yes, when you can't mass produce clothing it goes up in price massively. Most mass produced clothing costs slightly more than the fabric, but even a very fast couturier will spend hours on a single piece. On top of that, it's one of those industries where price sensitivity inverts at the upper end.
What does that mean?
But this feels so not far from anti-Wayland pro-X11/Xorg grumblers. You'll hook 15% of people by being against the modern world. Theres a niche demanding rejection of modernity, current offering. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448328
There are some valid areas of investigation. I want deep critique. But mostly it's just noise, is filler, to give people their outlet against reasonability. Mostly it's not serious. It doesn't have to be: these marks want to believe. And alas alas, that 15% of fans you have against modernity: they are hot to go be loudly obnoxious against any and everything new or popular. They will be unreasonably loud for you.
How humanity copes with basically anti-informed vice-signalling is our most outstanding problem of the 21st century, is our noospheric challenge.