4 ms·

Utopia's scaffolding: What civilization took from us, I think we will get back.

20 points by KennethMyers 16y ago

mike_organon 16y ago
Similarly, there's the paleo diet which claims (based on science) that hunter-gatherer food (meat and plants) is more healthy than agricultural food (grains, sugar, grain-fed meat, and processed food). Fortunately, we can choose to take back our healthy food, even living in a city.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
chrismealy 16y ago
In "Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution" Sam Bowles notes that the customs and economics of open source software have more in common with small-scale societies (99% of human history) than capitalism: The project that began with the "Fable of the Bees may be of even less practical relevance in the future. The reason is that the technologies and social interactions of the modern economy increasingly depart from these canonical assumptions. Direct noncontractual interactions with positive feedbacks arise increasingly in modern economies, as information-intensive team production replaces assembly lines and other technologies more readily handled by contract, and as difficult to measure services usurp the preeminent role -- as both outputs and inputs --- once played by measurable quantities like kilowatts of power and tons of steel. Danny Quah (1996) calls the modern system of production “the weightless economy.” The key characteristics of the information-intensive economy are generalized increasing returns, with near zero marginal costs in many cases, along with the fact that most information is either not subject to complete and enforceable contracts, or will be inefficiently allocated if it is. ... The information-intensive economy of the future may more closely resemble the economy of the mobile foraging band in human prehistory, rather than the economy of grain and steel that displaced it. Pursuing good ideas with practical applications is a costly and uncertain project, much like hunting large game. Success is rare, but its fruits are immensely valuable. The private appropriation of the prize is both difficult to accomplish and socially wasteful, for the foregone benefits to the those excluded from access to the prize far outweigh the gains to the individual appropriator to be had by excluding others. A new drug or a new software application is not so different in this respect from an antelope. Thus it is not surprising that the system of prestige and norms of sharing in some parts of the modern information-intensive economy -- those involved in open source software, for example -- in many ways parallel the culture of the foraging band. (page 500)
tjmaxal 16y ago
If hunter gather society was so perfect why did we ever change?
- hugh3 16y ago
  Hunter-gatherer lifestyles aren't something we need to theorise about... as recently as a couple of hundred years ago people were living "unspoiled" pre-agricultural lifestyles in Australia and to a lesser extent South America. It's so easy to think that such a thing sounds idyllic when you're clothed, bathed, have a secure food/water supply, all your teeth, are not currently dying of any diseases, and are not subject to the whims of some village strongman who will kill you if you step out of line. Personally I believe that a portion of the Australian outback (and any other country with room for it) should be set aside for people who want to live hunter-gatherer lifestyles. The primary purpose would be to stop the Australian Aborigines from complaining about the whole European-settlement thing (as in "fine, you want to go back to the way things were before? Here ya go!") but it would be open to anyone of any race who felt like living there. Only two conditions: a) Nothing goes in except the people who want to live there, who can take nothing except a loincloth and one day's food supply. b) Nobody comes out except by giving two months' notice (this stops people from being able to leave to get medical treatment). We could start with a few thousand acres and let it grow if it actually becomes popular.
  - protomyth 16y ago
    Your point relies on the fact that their was no technology advances that would have been made between colonization and now. On the North American continent there was serious trade up and down which would have helped. I don't know anyone here (on a reservation) that really wants to go back, they just want the paper the government signed to be honored. On point (a), really?!? Is that what the natives there wore? That sounds rather unkind of you.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      In Australia at least, technology was pretty stagnant for 40,000 years, so it's unlikely that an extra 200 years of isolation would have produced much innovation. The American context is quite different, as several quite advanced civilizations flourished there at various times. Of course anyone going onto my hypothetical reservation would take with them a lot of knowledge unavailable to the true stone age folks, but not much can be done about that. As for clothing, a loincloth would be on the modest side: http://www.gondwananet.com/aboriginal-clothing.html http://www.gondwananet.com/aboriginal-clothing.html
hernan7 16y ago
"whose writings you should get to know if you haven't already" -- can you really write that with a straight face?
- KennethMyers 16y ago
  Hernan7, you're right. I'm going to change that right now. Like most people's blogs, mine is mostly read by friends. In my case, we're all book nerds who get together and talk on themes like these. But in a public context that does look like an idiotic, pompous thing to write.
  - hernan7 16y ago
    Hi Kenneth, thanks for taking my comment as intended. The rest of the article is much better :-)
    - KennethMyers 16y ago
      God I love civil dialogue. Please, nobody ever tell the rest of the internet about Hacker News.
CodeMage 16y ago
(3) Less work. People need to work and be useful, but they don't need to slave away for 40-50 hours a week. Humans evolved to work for about 20 hours a week, and I think that as soon as automation and society permit it, we'll get back to that. That's a very naive view. The prevalent mentality is "If you can make me $2000 by working 20 hours, then you can make me $5000 by working 50 hours. Why should I settle for $2000 a week if I can get $5000 a week?" How do you envision technology changing that mentality?
- KennethMyers 16y ago
  I think that the value of money has diminishing returns, so that more than $60K per annum doesn't make you more happy (http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper.... If automation and efficiency could bring most people to the point where they could hit this point of diminishing returns at 20 hours a week, I think we'd find more (though not all) people opting for that kind of life.
  - reitzensteinm 16y ago
    You're expecting people to behave rationally. I expect them to work 50 hours a week and buy an Aston.
    - mquander 16y ago
      "People" are not a homogeneous blob. I'll work 20 and live cheaply, thanks. If other people work 50 and wind up comparatively wealthy, that's fine.
  - CodeMage 16y ago
    You're making an implicit assumption that the only thing that matters is the happiness of the "experiencing self" and that the happiness of the "remembering self" is not important. I'm not convinced of that at all and, frankly, watching the video didn't leave me with an impression that Daniel Kahneman prefers one over the other. You're also making an assumption about which variable will be influenced by "automation and efficiency", as you put it, and how it will be affected. Throughout the human history, the technology has helped us overcome obstacles and "optimize" our lives. Where before you would need to invest significant effort to overcome an obstacle, now you have technology to do it for you. What's the consequence of that? The human effort that was previously needed to overcome that obstacle has become devalued. In other words, technology is more likely to make someone's work obsolete than to allow them to lay back and enjoy having a 20-hour work week. Simply put, whenever technology simplifies a part of your work, you either get more work or you're out of work. It's not that I wouldn't like having a 20-hour work week. It's just that I don't think technology is going to solve that.
sprout 16y ago
Generally I think we've evolved a lot more than orthodox thinking gives us credit for since the agricultural revolution. We still have some vestiges of our hunter-gatherer roots, but most of us have had ancestors cultivating crops for millennia. As for life in the metropolis, we're a little less well adapted to us.
- KennethMyers 16y ago
  You may be right. Most anthropologists see technological/memetic evolution as largely supplanting genetic evolution after the sedentary shift (so that we, say, invent glasses rather than getting better eyes), but I often wonder myself how much we've changed in the last 10,000 years or so. And I agree that the city is (speaking emotively and not scientifically here) especially brutal. And yet strangely inescapable. I've adopted Emerson's strategy of living in the countryside in the orbit of a great city, and descending on it from time to time.

20 points by KennethMyers 16y ago

Similarly, there's the paleo diet which claims (based on science) that hunter-gatherer food (meat and plants) is more healthy than agricultural food (grains, sugar, grain-fed meat, and processed food). Fortunately, we can choose to take back our healthy food, even living in a city.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

chrismealy 16y ago

In "Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution" Sam Bowles notes that the customs and economics of open source software have more in common with small-scale societies (99% of human history) than capitalism: The project that began with the "Fable of the Bees may be of even less practical relevance in the future. The reason is that the technologies and social interactions of the modern economy increasingly depart from these canonical assumptions. Direct noncontractual interactions with positive feedbacks arise increasingly in modern economies, as information-intensive team production replaces assembly lines and other technologies more readily handled by contract, and as difficult to measure services usurp the preeminent role -- as both outputs and inputs --- once played by measurable quantities like kilowatts of power and tons of steel. Danny Quah (1996) calls the modern system of production “the weightless economy.” The key characteristics of the information-intensive economy are generalized increasing returns, with near zero marginal costs in many cases, along with the fact that most information is either not subject to complete and enforceable contracts, or will be inefficiently allocated if it is. ... The information-intensive economy of the future may more closely resemble the economy of the mobile foraging band in human prehistory, rather than the economy of grain and steel that displaced it. Pursuing good ideas with practical applications is a costly and uncertain project, much like hunting large game. Success is rare, but its fruits are immensely valuable. The private appropriation of the prize is both difficult to accomplish and socially wasteful, for the foregone benefits to the those excluded from access to the prize far outweigh the gains to the individual appropriator to be had by excluding others. A new drug or a new software application is not so different in this respect from an antelope. Thus it is not surprising that the system of prestige and norms of sharing in some parts of the modern information-intensive economy -- those involved in open source software, for example -- in many ways parallel the culture of the foraging band. (page 500)

tjmaxal 16y ago

If hunter gather society was so perfect why did we ever change?

hugh3 16y ago
Hunter-gatherer lifestyles aren't something we need to theorise about... as recently as a couple of hundred years ago people were living "unspoiled" pre-agricultural lifestyles in Australia and to a lesser extent South America. It's so easy to think that such a thing sounds idyllic when you're clothed, bathed, have a secure food/water supply, all your teeth, are not currently dying of any diseases, and are not subject to the whims of some village strongman who will kill you if you step out of line. Personally I believe that a portion of the Australian outback (and any other country with room for it) should be set aside for people who want to live hunter-gatherer lifestyles. The primary purpose would be to stop the Australian Aborigines from complaining about the whole European-settlement thing (as in "fine, you want to go back to the way things were before? Here ya go!") but it would be open to anyone of any race who felt like living there. Only two conditions: a) Nothing goes in except the people who want to live there, who can take nothing except a loincloth and one day's food supply. b) Nobody comes out except by giving two months' notice (this stops people from being able to leave to get medical treatment). We could start with a few thousand acres and let it grow if it actually becomes popular.
- protomyth 16y ago
  Your point relies on the fact that their was no technology advances that would have been made between colonization and now. On the North American continent there was serious trade up and down which would have helped. I don't know anyone here (on a reservation) that really wants to go back, they just want the paper the government signed to be honored. On point (a), really?!? Is that what the natives there wore? That sounds rather unkind of you.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    In Australia at least, technology was pretty stagnant for 40,000 years, so it's unlikely that an extra 200 years of isolation would have produced much innovation. The American context is quite different, as several quite advanced civilizations flourished there at various times. Of course anyone going onto my hypothetical reservation would take with them a lot of knowledge unavailable to the true stone age folks, but not much can be done about that. As for clothing, a loincloth would be on the modest side: http://www.gondwananet.com/aboriginal-clothing.html http://www.gondwananet.com/aboriginal-clothing.html

hernan7 16y ago

"whose writings you should get to know if you haven't already" -- can you really write that with a straight face?

KennethMyers 16y ago
Hernan7, you're right. I'm going to change that right now. Like most people's blogs, mine is mostly read by friends. In my case, we're all book nerds who get together and talk on themes like these. But in a public context that does look like an idiotic, pompous thing to write.
- hernan7 16y ago
  Hi Kenneth, thanks for taking my comment as intended. The rest of the article is much better :-)
  - KennethMyers 16y ago
    God I love civil dialogue. Please, nobody ever tell the rest of the internet about Hacker News.

CodeMage 16y ago

(3) Less work. People need to work and be useful, but they don't need to slave away for 40-50 hours a week. Humans evolved to work for about 20 hours a week, and I think that as soon as automation and society permit it, we'll get back to that. That's a very naive view. The prevalent mentality is "If you can make me $2000 by working 20 hours, then you can make me $5000 by working 50 hours. Why should I settle for $2000 a week if I can get $5000 a week?" How do you envision technology changing that mentality?

KennethMyers 16y ago
I think that the value of money has diminishing returns, so that more than $60K per annum doesn't make you more happy (http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper.... If automation and efficiency could bring most people to the point where they could hit this point of diminishing returns at 20 hours a week, I think we'd find more (though not all) people opting for that kind of life.
- reitzensteinm 16y ago
  You're expecting people to behave rationally. I expect them to work 50 hours a week and buy an Aston.
  - mquander 16y ago
    "People" are not a homogeneous blob. I'll work 20 and live cheaply, thanks. If other people work 50 and wind up comparatively wealthy, that's fine.
- CodeMage 16y ago
  You're making an implicit assumption that the only thing that matters is the happiness of the "experiencing self" and that the happiness of the "remembering self" is not important. I'm not convinced of that at all and, frankly, watching the video didn't leave me with an impression that Daniel Kahneman prefers one over the other. You're also making an assumption about which variable will be influenced by "automation and efficiency", as you put it, and how it will be affected. Throughout the human history, the technology has helped us overcome obstacles and "optimize" our lives. Where before you would need to invest significant effort to overcome an obstacle, now you have technology to do it for you. What's the consequence of that? The human effort that was previously needed to overcome that obstacle has become devalued. In other words, technology is more likely to make someone's work obsolete than to allow them to lay back and enjoy having a 20-hour work week. Simply put, whenever technology simplifies a part of your work, you either get more work or you're out of work. It's not that I wouldn't like having a 20-hour work week. It's just that I don't think technology is going to solve that.

sprout 16y ago

Generally I think we've evolved a lot more than orthodox thinking gives us credit for since the agricultural revolution. We still have some vestiges of our hunter-gatherer roots, but most of us have had ancestors cultivating crops for millennia. As for life in the metropolis, we're a little less well adapted to us.

KennethMyers 16y ago
You may be right. Most anthropologists see technological/memetic evolution as largely supplanting genetic evolution after the sedentary shift (so that we, say, invent glasses rather than getting better eyes), but I often wonder myself how much we've changed in the last 10,000 years or so. And I agree that the city is (speaking emotively and not scientifically here) especially brutal. And yet strangely inescapable. I've adopted Emerson's strategy of living in the countryside in the orbit of a great city, and descending on it from time to time.