6 ms·

I'm not defending the nuclear family, but I don't think our primitive past says anything about what's "optimal". For example, human life expectancy is much long

by _qulr 6y ago

I'm not defending the nuclear family, but I don't think our primitive past says anything about what's "optimal". For example, human life expectancy is much longer now. I'd much rather be a modern person with modern technology and medicine than a hunter-gatherer. Evolution != good. It's just history, and history is often ugly.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
I agree with your general point, but much of the growth in life expectancy is driven by the massive drops in infant mortality. In general, modern advances have maybe added 10+ years to an average adult lifespan. The quality of the added lifespan is harder to assess though.
- _qulr 6y ago
  > The quality of the added lifespan is harder to assess though. Is it? In a sense, the choice is still available to adopt the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, if you wanted. I don't know many who would want to do that.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    I'm not aware of any plains with bountiful mammoth and fruit trees that I can colonise with my hunter-gatherer tribe, but then I'm not an expert in Google maps ;) Nonetheless, i'm not sure that the last ten years of my Dad's life (suffering from vascular dementia) were particularly good for him (I know that they were super hard for the rest of us). I think the general point is that it's hard to trade-off the quality of those extra years, which is the point I was trying (unsuccessfully, it appears) to make.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Even that increase in life expectancy is dubious, consider this passage from Psalms written in 1489 bc, which can basically be said about Americans today. > Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures
  - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
    I'm becoming more convinced that the whole "but everyone's living longer!" thing is nothing more than another gaslight attempt to ensure we continue to love our betters.
k__ 6y ago
I think, "the nuclear family is bad" and "living without modern technology is good" don't have anything to do with each other.
- mcguire 6y ago
  Silicon Valley operates on a constant influx of 22-year-olds.
  - k__ 6y ago
    They should try to outsource to Amish communities then.
    - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
      If tech companies really cared about diversity they'd have Amish representation in the product design process.
danenania 6y ago
I don't think it's a question of good or bad, but of pragmatism in not fighting against the way that our bodies and minds were designed. Software is limited by the constraints of the hardware it runs on--engineers who try to ignore this will write slow and buggy software. Similarly, if we design lifestyles and societies that ignore, clash with, or subvert our biological and bio-psychological imperatives, we are likely to produce widespread physical and mental suffering.
- _qulr 6y ago
  > not fighting against the way that our bodies and minds were designed Our minds and bodies were not designed. They evolved — slowly — under conditions of relatively harshness and scarcity that to a large extent no longer exist. The human "habitat" has changed radically in the past several hundred years. One might argue that we're no longer adapted to our environment. Evolution doesn't work quickly enough for that. I'd also suggest there was widespread physical and mental suffering in the distant past. It wasn't the Garden of Eden in prehistory.
  - danenania 6y ago
    They were in a sense designed by an impersonal process--but I agree "design" isn't the best word since it implies intention. I would agree that we are no longer adapted to our environment, and this seems to be the cause of many "modern" forms of suffering that are unrelated to scarcity, like mental illness and diseases of over-consumption. To me this implies that we have done a bad job in creating an environment for ourselves. We replaced suffering caused by scarcity (something we historically had little control over) with suffering caused by deliberate choices. The point isn't that aligning our choices with biological and psychological needs will end all suffering. It's that not doing so pretty much guarantees a lot of unnecessary suffering.
    - _qulr 6y ago
      The thing is, we don't need anthropology to tell us that inactivity and excessive calorie consumption are bad. And the solution to obesity and similar problems is certainly not to return to hunter-gatherer society. Evolution is just a red herring here. It can tell us how we got here, but not how to move forward.
FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
Instead of idealizing noble savages, we might look to present-day cultures where large extended households are normal. We would see that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you get a great network of cousins who hook you up with business opportunities. Sometimes you end up enslaved by your mother in law.
dcolkitt 6y ago
I agree and disagree. I'm certainly not arguing that industrialization isn't miraculous. Even from a parenting perspective, I think most would rather raise their kids in a stressful nuclear family than watch half of them die from preventable diseases. If you read about the anthropology of childrearing it's filled with endless heartbreaking accounts of parents having to make choices about letting one kid die to focus their resources on more viable children. But the point I do want to make is that our physiology and psychology is largely fine tuned by evolution for a certain operating environment. When we step outside that environment, it often introduces dysfunction in unpredictable ways. An extreme example: as land animals we wouldn't survive very long at the bottom of the sea. More prosaic example: it's undeniable an environment with many more and tastier calories creates chronic health problems. Metabolic disease is virtually unknown in hunter-gatherers. A rough heuristic is that removing purely adversarial elements from the evolutionary environment produces an improvements. Pathogens, predators, physical injuries, birth-related traumas, and famine. Removing or mitigating those elements are the main reason life expectancies have improved relative to hunter-gathers. But once you step outside the totally hostile elements, most environmental changes tend to be neutral at best and harmful at worst. Physiology and psychology rely on delicately tuned equilibria, which are easy to disrupt. The consequences aren't terrible, but do tend to subtly accumulate over time. Hunter-gathers die fast because they get a concussion and bleed out. Westerners die slow from the accumulation of plaque in their arteries.
- _qulr 6y ago
  > Physiology and psychology rely on delicately tuned equilibria, which are easy to disrupt. Agreed. My point is just that we should look at physiology and psychology as guides, not anthropology (which is interesting but not necessarily prescriptive). A diet of Twinkies and Coke is obviously terrible. But a finely tuned, balanced modern diet guided by nutritional science is likely superior to a primitive hunter-gatherer diet. There are plenty of people today who are in great physical condition; this is very feasible within our modern society. Similarly, different modern countries often have differing familial arrangements, so we can look at empirical outcomes there instead of trying to guess at what our distant ancestors did, who had little choice but to do what they did, not having modern civilization as an option.
- 6y ago
bnralt 6y ago
I've seen a decent amount of evidence suggesting that hunter-gatherer societies are generally quite a bit happier than members of modern society (here's an example of an article discussing this[1]). I think we often make the assumption that more is better, but it's quite possible that in our search for more we're putting ourselves in situations that run counter to our biological nature. Animals in captivity have many advantages over their wild brethren (they don't have to worry about food, about being eaten, they have access to advanced medicine, etc.), but I don't think we can say that they're clearly better off or happier. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/551018759/are-hunter-gatherers-the-happiest-humans-to-inhabit-earth https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/5510187...
csomar 6y ago
Longer life expectancy is a statistical lie. My grandparents died around ~95 but life expectancy at that time was probably lower than ~40. My grandmother had 4 kids who died very young (around 1-2 years of age) and that skews the numbers significantly. We are baby-sitting lots of adults that couldn't make it past 1-3 years old of age before the medical revolution. Some of them might never be able to be productive and only consume resources from their families or the public. So maybe evolution was not such a bad idea after all.
nsajko 6y ago
Indeed, it seems the post you replied to is using a flawed argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
aylmao 6y ago
I largely agree with you, but I don't think there's reason to believe this is the only way to live modernity. Being an industrialized nation with modern technology and medicine doesn't come as a single package with the nuclear family. For example, I'm Mexican. Here it's quite normal to spend plenty of time with your extended family, live near them, have your parents help you take care of your kids for extended periods of time, etc. at least in my experience. We're an industrial nation and have modern medicine, but this is more a matter of culture and social attitudes I think.

by _qulr 6y ago

disgruntledphd2 6y ago

I agree with your general point, but much of the growth in life expectancy is driven by the massive drops in infant mortality. In general, modern advances have maybe added 10+ years to an average adult lifespan. The quality of the added lifespan is harder to assess though.

_qulr 6y ago
> The quality of the added lifespan is harder to assess though. Is it? In a sense, the choice is still available to adopt the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, if you wanted. I don't know many who would want to do that.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  I'm not aware of any plains with bountiful mammoth and fruit trees that I can colonise with my hunter-gatherer tribe, but then I'm not an expert in Google maps ;) Nonetheless, i'm not sure that the last ten years of my Dad's life (suffering from vascular dementia) were particularly good for him (I know that they were super hard for the rest of us). I think the general point is that it's hard to trade-off the quality of those extra years, which is the point I was trying (unsuccessfully, it appears) to make.
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Even that increase in life expectancy is dubious, consider this passage from Psalms written in 1489 bc, which can basically be said about Americans today. > Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  I'm becoming more convinced that the whole "but everyone's living longer!" thing is nothing more than another gaslight attempt to ensure we continue to love our betters.

k__ 6y ago

I think, "the nuclear family is bad" and "living without modern technology is good" don't have anything to do with each other.

mcguire 6y ago
Silicon Valley operates on a constant influx of 22-year-olds.
- k__ 6y ago
  They should try to outsource to Amish communities then.
  - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
    If tech companies really cared about diversity they'd have Amish representation in the product design process.

danenania 6y ago

I don't think it's a question of good or bad, but of pragmatism in not fighting against the way that our bodies and minds were designed. Software is limited by the constraints of the hardware it runs on--engineers who try to ignore this will write slow and buggy software. Similarly, if we design lifestyles and societies that ignore, clash with, or subvert our biological and bio-psychological imperatives, we are likely to produce widespread physical and mental suffering.

_qulr 6y ago
> not fighting against the way that our bodies and minds were designed Our minds and bodies were not designed. They evolved — slowly — under conditions of relatively harshness and scarcity that to a large extent no longer exist. The human "habitat" has changed radically in the past several hundred years. One might argue that we're no longer adapted to our environment. Evolution doesn't work quickly enough for that. I'd also suggest there was widespread physical and mental suffering in the distant past. It wasn't the Garden of Eden in prehistory.
- danenania 6y ago
  They were in a sense designed by an impersonal process--but I agree "design" isn't the best word since it implies intention. I would agree that we are no longer adapted to our environment, and this seems to be the cause of many "modern" forms of suffering that are unrelated to scarcity, like mental illness and diseases of over-consumption. To me this implies that we have done a bad job in creating an environment for ourselves. We replaced suffering caused by scarcity (something we historically had little control over) with suffering caused by deliberate choices. The point isn't that aligning our choices with biological and psychological needs will end all suffering. It's that not doing so pretty much guarantees a lot of unnecessary suffering.
  - _qulr 6y ago
    The thing is, we don't need anthropology to tell us that inactivity and excessive calorie consumption are bad. And the solution to obesity and similar problems is certainly not to return to hunter-gatherer society. Evolution is just a red herring here. It can tell us how we got here, but not how to move forward.

FooBarBizBazz 6y ago

Instead of idealizing noble savages, we might look to present-day cultures where large extended households are normal. We would see that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you get a great network of cousins who hook you up with business opportunities. Sometimes you end up enslaved by your mother in law.

dcolkitt 6y ago

I agree and disagree. I'm certainly not arguing that industrialization isn't miraculous. Even from a parenting perspective, I think most would rather raise their kids in a stressful nuclear family than watch half of them die from preventable diseases. If you read about the anthropology of childrearing it's filled with endless heartbreaking accounts of parents having to make choices about letting one kid die to focus their resources on more viable children. But the point I do want to make is that our physiology and psychology is largely fine tuned by evolution for a certain operating environment. When we step outside that environment, it often introduces dysfunction in unpredictable ways. An extreme example: as land animals we wouldn't survive very long at the bottom of the sea. More prosaic example: it's undeniable an environment with many more and tastier calories creates chronic health problems. Metabolic disease is virtually unknown in hunter-gatherers. A rough heuristic is that removing purely adversarial elements from the evolutionary environment produces an improvements. Pathogens, predators, physical injuries, birth-related traumas, and famine. Removing or mitigating those elements are the main reason life expectancies have improved relative to hunter-gathers. But once you step outside the totally hostile elements, most environmental changes tend to be neutral at best and harmful at worst. Physiology and psychology rely on delicately tuned equilibria, which are easy to disrupt. The consequences aren't terrible, but do tend to subtly accumulate over time. Hunter-gathers die fast because they get a concussion and bleed out. Westerners die slow from the accumulation of plaque in their arteries.

_qulr 6y ago
> Physiology and psychology rely on delicately tuned equilibria, which are easy to disrupt. Agreed. My point is just that we should look at physiology and psychology as guides, not anthropology (which is interesting but not necessarily prescriptive). A diet of Twinkies and Coke is obviously terrible. But a finely tuned, balanced modern diet guided by nutritional science is likely superior to a primitive hunter-gatherer diet. There are plenty of people today who are in great physical condition; this is very feasible within our modern society. Similarly, different modern countries often have differing familial arrangements, so we can look at empirical outcomes there instead of trying to guess at what our distant ancestors did, who had little choice but to do what they did, not having modern civilization as an option.
6y ago

bnralt 6y ago

I've seen a decent amount of evidence suggesting that hunter-gatherer societies are generally quite a bit happier than members of modern society (here's an example of an article discussing this[1]). I think we often make the assumption that more is better, but it's quite possible that in our search for more we're putting ourselves in situations that run counter to our biological nature. Animals in captivity have many advantages over their wild brethren (they don't have to worry about food, about being eaten, they have access to advanced medicine, etc.), but I don't think we can say that they're clearly better off or happier. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/551018759/are-hunter-gatherers-the-happiest-humans-to-inhabit-earth https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/5510187...

csomar 6y ago

Longer life expectancy is a statistical lie. My grandparents died around ~95 but life expectancy at that time was probably lower than ~40. My grandmother had 4 kids who died very young (around 1-2 years of age) and that skews the numbers significantly. We are baby-sitting lots of adults that couldn't make it past 1-3 years old of age before the medical revolution. Some of them might never be able to be productive and only consume resources from their families or the public. So maybe evolution was not such a bad idea after all.

nsajko 6y ago

Indeed, it seems the post you replied to is using a flawed argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

aylmao 6y ago

I largely agree with you, but I don't think there's reason to believe this is the only way to live modernity. Being an industrialized nation with modern technology and medicine doesn't come as a single package with the nuclear family. For example, I'm Mexican. Here it's quite normal to spend plenty of time with your extended family, live near them, have your parents help you take care of your kids for extended periods of time, etc. at least in my experience. We're an industrial nation and have modern medicine, but this is more a matter of culture and social attitudes I think.