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How can hunting and gathering be “inefficient” when the rate of return is “enormous”?
by VeninVidiaVicii 5y ago
How can hunting and gathering be “inefficient” when the rate of return is “enormous”?
- zeckalpha 5y agoHow much of your food is from hunting and gathering?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fxtentacle 5y agoI believe they meant to argue that it is high-risk because it is inefficient in the sense that you expend a lot of energy which may or may not pay off. But since it is both high-risk and high-reward, I was also wondering why they used the word inefficient there.
- tokai 5y agoI think the journalist got it backwards. The lead sentence of the Science article is Efficiency leads to leisure. And the word inefficient doesn't even appear. Gambling by putting more energy in, for the change of quicker and larger payout is definitely not inefficiency.
- scratcheee 5y agoThey're using efficiency in a different (and certainly confusing) sense. Their gas guzzling car example explains their thought process: humans, whilst hunting, are running hot. They're inefficient at the task of maintaining themselves between meals. That's made irrelevant by the fact that they're collecting more food on average, so they're actually more efficient overall, but that only becomes true once you factor in food intake. Sort of like saying that a lorry is a less efficient way to travel than a car. True until you mention that the lorry has many tons of cargo which must make the journey with you (or in subsequent trips), _then_ the reverse holds.