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PG wrote about how he considers many religions to have a culturally-evolutionarily useful bit ('don't eat tainted pork' over time will increase your economic gr
by pbh101 10y ago
PG wrote about how he considers many religions to have a culturally-evolutionarily useful bit ('don't eat tainted pork' over time will increase your economic growth) and a viral one, which perpetuates and reinforces the belief.
- leatherdaddy 10y agohe's so dreamy
- wrsh07 10y agoHm not unlike CrossFit... (I'm sure there are other successful businesses built that way, too)
- kpil 10y agoIs pork actually worse than eating other omnivores?
- tnsi 10y agoOf course! Pork tastes like people.
- pbh101 10y agoI don't know. But I don't think too many other omnivores were usually eaten: cows, chickens, sheep, even horses are all herbivores. To a larger point, the imprecision of the rule would have been dictated both by customs and limitations in knowledge of the time: culture inasmuch as there would be no need to restrict eating omnivores that nobody ate anyway, and knowledge would dictate how precise you could be while still being safe: we now know that pork is ok to eat, but only because we have the tools to reliably determine whether pork is tainted, and build processes and supply chains that minimize that. For civilizations that didn't yet have that insight, much safer to avoid the whole thing.
- yen223 10y agoChickens are omnivores - they'll happily eat worms off the ground.
- pbh101 10y agoGood point... I forgot they'll eat just about anything, including eggs. You don't want to feed them brunch scraps, otherwise they may start poking at unharvested eggs sitting around.
- jessaustin 10y agoAlso, chicken carcasses.
- labster 10y agoHistorically both pigs and dogs were seen as unclean in the middle east because they roamed the streets eating whatever they could find, which included human waste. Cities used to be pretty dirty. Roman started ranching pigs and shipping them to cities, as the latin folk were really into pork. This solved a lot of the disease problem, as do sewer systems and the like. So if basic precautions are taken against disease, pork is not worse than any other meat. I know there was an HN article about this, but I can't find it.