5 ms·

Hunter gatherer times were certainly not superior to today. That's a pervasive myth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w

Hunter gatherer times were certainly not superior to today. That's a pervasive myth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage

forkandwait 9y ago
While nobility is bullshit, better nutrition as evidenced by height and tooth remains is true, only catching up in the 20th century, except for the rich of course. Sorry I don't have a source. (The benefits of civilization may have only accrued to a small proportion of the population for most of history. )
- dublinben 9y ago
  Jared Diamond's essay The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race makes this argument quite convincingly: http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html
  - wefwef233 9y ago
    Ordered this book but haven't touched it yet: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/551018759/are-hunter-gatherers-the-happiest-humans-to-inhabit-earth http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/55101875...
    - dogruck 9y ago
      Doesn't look too happy to me -- maybe because I'm over 30 and would be dead. Also, I loved my mother (who is dead) -- but at least she didn't die in childbirth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
      - red75prime 9y ago
        Life expectancy at birth was low because of high children mortality. If you've made it to adolescence, you could expect to live 50-80 years. https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expectancy-in-hunter-gatherers-and-other-groups/ https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expec...
        dogruck 9y ago
        Losing many of my children, wives, and loved ones sure would make me sad.
        red75prime 9y ago
        It would surely make you sad, if you had time-traveled there. If you had been living there, you probably would be a bit more fatalistic and willing to accept untimely deaths as a part of natural order, having no experience of better life.
        dogruck 9y ago
        Does your logic also apply to the millions of people living in slavery and profound poverty today? I concede that people adjust their expectations to norms that surround them. But I also feel there are certain floors in the human condition -- the death of a child being one of those rock bottoms.
  - dogruck 9y ago
    Jared Diamond is not an expert. He's a pop culture writer. If you want to explore the other side to that old essay, try this: https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Worst+Mistake+in+the+History+of+the+Human+Race+refutation https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Worst+Mistake+in+the+His...
    - Nomentatus 9y ago
      He's a physiologist, who moved to other disciplines, with a touch of anthropology. There are no experts-on-everything-human, of course, so that'll probably have to do for now. One can imagine better combinations for such a synthetic interdisciplinary topic, I agree - but there weren't a lot of other volunteers. Academia likes narrow specialists. No need to falsely disparage him as a self-appointed writer whose only credential is popularity, it isn't true. "After graduating from Cambridge, Diamond returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow until 1965, and, in 1968, became a professor of physiology at UCLA Medical School. While in his twenties he developed a second, parallel, career in ornithology and ecology, specialising in New Guinea and nearby islands." - Wikipedia
      - dogruck 9y ago
        I'm not convinced by that call to authority. For example, what about Larry Summers? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers Do you dispute his position on women in science? Or, should we take his position as correct for the same reasons that you list. I did not say his only credit was popularity. I said he's a pop-writer, as opposed to, say, a peer reviewed expert in the domain. In any case, my primary request is that people consider the long list of refutations to the claims in his mass-market publications.
        Shorel 9y ago
        It should not be a call to authority. The only thing that matters are the individual arguments he exposes in the books, not the fact he's not an expert. And history has also shown some experts can be wrong when the paradigm change of new ideas is too big. However, and I say this is particularly important: all refutations I have read about his work focus on some particular detail, they are of the type: 'this number is wrong'. Of course it can be, he's speculating. And that's the easy part to fix! Just change the number in his argument with the correct one. Be constructive. But I have never read a refutation that says: 'this line of reasoning is wrong'. In fact, his work has been cited as an inspiration for 'Sapiens', which is a current best seller and it follows the same modus operandi.
  - zeristor 9y ago
    As ever HackerNews discussed this ten years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43118 (Tichy’s karma is just 110 short)
    - dogruck 9y ago
      Would be fun to do a serious analysis of HN discussion, on the same topic, separated by 10 years. I don't mean identifying the occurrence -- I mean various characteristics of the discussion. For example, perhaps certain facts have been more/less passionately supported after 10 years. Also aspects like tone.
- dogruck 9y ago
  Weak effort of combining "is true" with "don't have a source."
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
nether 9y ago
The noble savage is just a fictional trope. No one denies that people in past times had materially worse-off lives than we do today. But they probably had more freedom. In medieval times, you might have half of the year off for vacation: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medie... http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medie.... You could largely do what you wanted, were not surveilled, and could live on your own as long as others around you weren't disturbed. The point isn't that it was a superior way of life, but it evokes a qualitative perspective on life. Would you rather live in perfect health for 100 years in prison, or as a diabetic paraplegic in the outside world for 40? What about 20? What about a prison that was full of your closest friends, versus a world of your enemies? Quality of life defies a mere "but healthcare, science, infrastructure etc. is better today!" metric that everyone on HN seems to stick to. There are profound cultural changes that we can't assess objectively. Culturally, emotionally, we may be worse off today. Our 60 years of wage slavery in windowless offices might seem unconscionable to a medieval peasant drinking mead all day by a stream with his friends, even if he ends up dying at 50.
- vacri 9y ago
  That's a very romantic view of medieval times (link is broken, by the way). Half the year off for vacation? I hope you enjoy vacationing at home, because if you're a serf, you're going nowhere. If you're a noblewoman, you're as likely to be married off for politics as not. Women in general were markedly less free - barred from education, property, public life, so on and so forth. To further your analogy, would you prefer to be a diabetic paraplegic in the modern era, or the medieval? Because you're not going to be able to medicate yourself with the insulin you need, and there's not much work for paraplegics to do if they're not born into money. > Our 60 years of wage slavery in windowless offices might seem unconscionable to a medieval peasant drinking mead all day by a stream with his friends, even if he ends up dying at 50. We have the opportunity to change our lives if we don't want the wage slavery; entrepreneurialism is the whole reason why this site exists. For a medieval peasant, they can't move into the nobility, their inventions are not protected, they frequently aren't allowed to move around, travel is dangerous, communication with anyone outside the area they grew up in is more difficult due to language differences, hobbies are limited largely to what you can build yourself, since trade for items is difficult and expensive... the list of restrictions goes on and on. In any case, the peasants of yesteryear are analogous to the working class of today, and they don't work in offices, windowless or otherwise.
Nomentatus 9y ago
Actually, nutritionally they were far better off. Domestic plants have a broader spectrum of vitamins but far less of any one vitamin; a varied wild diet is vastly superior to what we eat now. Plus less work per day (except during times of starvation, due to little rain.) Give the book "The Old Way" a read for more direct information about just how much we've lost.

Hunter gatherer times were certainly not superior to today. That's a pervasive myth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage

forkandwait 9y ago

While nobility is bullshit, better nutrition as evidenced by height and tooth remains is true, only catching up in the 20th century, except for the rich of course. Sorry I don't have a source. (The benefits of civilization may have only accrued to a small proportion of the population for most of history. )

dublinben 9y ago
Jared Diamond's essay The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race makes this argument quite convincingly: http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html
- wefwef233 9y ago
  Ordered this book but haven't touched it yet: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/551018759/are-hunter-gatherers-the-happiest-humans-to-inhabit-earth http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/55101875...
  - dogruck 9y ago
    Doesn't look too happy to me -- maybe because I'm over 30 and would be dead. Also, I loved my mother (who is dead) -- but at least she didn't die in childbirth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
    - red75prime 9y ago
      Life expectancy at birth was low because of high children mortality. If you've made it to adolescence, you could expect to live 50-80 years. https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expectancy-in-hunter-gatherers-and-other-groups/ https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expec...
      - dogruck 9y ago
        Losing many of my children, wives, and loved ones sure would make me sad.
        red75prime 9y ago
        It would surely make you sad, if you had time-traveled there. If you had been living there, you probably would be a bit more fatalistic and willing to accept untimely deaths as a part of natural order, having no experience of better life.
        dogruck 9y ago
        Does your logic also apply to the millions of people living in slavery and profound poverty today? I concede that people adjust their expectations to norms that surround them. But I also feel there are certain floors in the human condition -- the death of a child being one of those rock bottoms.
- dogruck 9y ago
  Jared Diamond is not an expert. He's a pop culture writer. If you want to explore the other side to that old essay, try this: https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Worst+Mistake+in+the+History+of+the+Human+Race+refutation https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Worst+Mistake+in+the+His...
  - Nomentatus 9y ago
    He's a physiologist, who moved to other disciplines, with a touch of anthropology. There are no experts-on-everything-human, of course, so that'll probably have to do for now. One can imagine better combinations for such a synthetic interdisciplinary topic, I agree - but there weren't a lot of other volunteers. Academia likes narrow specialists. No need to falsely disparage him as a self-appointed writer whose only credential is popularity, it isn't true. "After graduating from Cambridge, Diamond returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow until 1965, and, in 1968, became a professor of physiology at UCLA Medical School. While in his twenties he developed a second, parallel, career in ornithology and ecology, specialising in New Guinea and nearby islands." - Wikipedia
    - dogruck 9y ago
      I'm not convinced by that call to authority. For example, what about Larry Summers? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers Do you dispute his position on women in science? Or, should we take his position as correct for the same reasons that you list. I did not say his only credit was popularity. I said he's a pop-writer, as opposed to, say, a peer reviewed expert in the domain. In any case, my primary request is that people consider the long list of refutations to the claims in his mass-market publications.
      - Shorel 9y ago
        It should not be a call to authority. The only thing that matters are the individual arguments he exposes in the books, not the fact he's not an expert. And history has also shown some experts can be wrong when the paradigm change of new ideas is too big. However, and I say this is particularly important: all refutations I have read about his work focus on some particular detail, they are of the type: 'this number is wrong'. Of course it can be, he's speculating. And that's the easy part to fix! Just change the number in his argument with the correct one. Be constructive. But I have never read a refutation that says: 'this line of reasoning is wrong'. In fact, his work has been cited as an inspiration for 'Sapiens', which is a current best seller and it follows the same modus operandi.
- zeristor 9y ago
  As ever HackerNews discussed this ten years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43118 (Tichy’s karma is just 110 short)
  - dogruck 9y ago
    Would be fun to do a serious analysis of HN discussion, on the same topic, separated by 10 years. I don't mean identifying the occurrence -- I mean various characteristics of the discussion. For example, perhaps certain facts have been more/less passionately supported after 10 years. Also aspects like tone.
dogruck 9y ago
Weak effort of combining "is true" with "don't have a source."
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

nether 9y ago

The noble savage is just a fictional trope. No one denies that people in past times had materially worse-off lives than we do today. But they probably had more freedom. In medieval times, you might have half of the year off for vacation: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medie... http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medie.... You could largely do what you wanted, were not surveilled, and could live on your own as long as others around you weren't disturbed. The point isn't that it was a superior way of life, but it evokes a qualitative perspective on life. Would you rather live in perfect health for 100 years in prison, or as a diabetic paraplegic in the outside world for 40? What about 20? What about a prison that was full of your closest friends, versus a world of your enemies? Quality of life defies a mere "but healthcare, science, infrastructure etc. is better today!" metric that everyone on HN seems to stick to. There are profound cultural changes that we can't assess objectively. Culturally, emotionally, we may be worse off today. Our 60 years of wage slavery in windowless offices might seem unconscionable to a medieval peasant drinking mead all day by a stream with his friends, even if he ends up dying at 50.

vacri 9y ago
That's a very romantic view of medieval times (link is broken, by the way). Half the year off for vacation? I hope you enjoy vacationing at home, because if you're a serf, you're going nowhere. If you're a noblewoman, you're as likely to be married off for politics as not. Women in general were markedly less free - barred from education, property, public life, so on and so forth. To further your analogy, would you prefer to be a diabetic paraplegic in the modern era, or the medieval? Because you're not going to be able to medicate yourself with the insulin you need, and there's not much work for paraplegics to do if they're not born into money. > Our 60 years of wage slavery in windowless offices might seem unconscionable to a medieval peasant drinking mead all day by a stream with his friends, even if he ends up dying at 50. We have the opportunity to change our lives if we don't want the wage slavery; entrepreneurialism is the whole reason why this site exists. For a medieval peasant, they can't move into the nobility, their inventions are not protected, they frequently aren't allowed to move around, travel is dangerous, communication with anyone outside the area they grew up in is more difficult due to language differences, hobbies are limited largely to what you can build yourself, since trade for items is difficult and expensive... the list of restrictions goes on and on. In any case, the peasants of yesteryear are analogous to the working class of today, and they don't work in offices, windowless or otherwise.

Nomentatus 9y ago

Actually, nutritionally they were far better off. Domestic plants have a broader spectrum of vitamins but far less of any one vitamin; a varied wild diet is vastly superior to what we eat now. Plus less work per day (except during times of starvation, due to little rain.) Give the book "The Old Way" a read for more direct information about just how much we've lost.