4 ms·

This view always facinates and alarms me. Don't we know that at 7bn people this hasnt been true for millenia? We're talking c. 5,000 apes in a jungle last time

This view always facinates and alarms me. Don't we know that at 7bn people this hasnt been true for millenia? We're talking c. 5,000 apes in a jungle last time this made sense. Don't we know that the earth isnt just provided by god designed for human life? We have been nearly extinct many times, and our labour is required (via, at least, hunting) to make the world habitable for us. Don't we know that nature is a place of choas and extremes, and technology and economics exist primarily to prevent the day-to-day mass death which was common? Don't we know that half of the 100bn who've ever lived died before 20? Don't we know that famine, mass death, mass infant death, mass death in child birth (5-10%), etc. are "the default" ? This strange "nature utopianism" I have always found profoundly pesimissitic and "evil-projecting", since it locates evil in all the solutions to the problems of nature we have struggled to create. If you think "turning off civilisation" will have us wandering around forests, you're about gauarneteed to see what people have done over the last 200k years as evil.

mach1ne 4y ago
While hunter-gathering is no Garden of Eden, I don't think it's as bad as you describe for the simple fact that evolution has molded us to it specifically. Earth isn't designed for human life, but human life most certainly is designed for Earth.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  No, I dont think so. Would you say that to all the extinct species? There's nothing guaranteeing you don't starve. There is no design. Genes are just "random reproductive bets" with fairly high probabilities of failure over the long-run. The environment is basically guaranteed to change faster than your species can evolve, including via meteor. I dont think the rabbits who die alive eaten by foxes, and the foxes which starve from eating all the rabbits regard that cycle as "designed for them". Nor likewise, were the dinosaurs that impressed by the sky going dark. This idea that "we had a home" or "there was once Eden" in any respect is wrong. The life which we were evolved for is one in which if you survived 10, then you might not survive the lion, and if you survive that, not the volcano, and so on. Your body is just a bet made over millions of years, and not one any conservative gambler would take.
  - mach1ne 4y ago
    Extinct species become extinct because there is some change in their environment to which they are not successful at adapting. Generally speaking, neither the human genome or the wilderness of Earth has changed since we built our first huts. You're correct in your regard for exceedingly high child mortality, though it bears no weight on the survival of humanity as a whole in a technology-breaking event. The human body is indeed a bet, and one that has paid off for ~300,000 years and about 12,000 generations, if we start counting from Homo Sapiens. I'd very much take that bet any day.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - wiredfool 4y ago
      There's not that much wilderness left. Globally, The max distance to a road is something like 250km, in the middle of the Sahara. In the lower US, it's more like 40 miles. Entire ecosystems are gone (e.g. tallgrass prairie), or are only present in chunks that are only a few square miles. There are basically no old growth landscapes in Ireland/England. All the old trees were harvested, and sheep were farmed in the high places. Biomass of land mammals is heavily skewed to Humans and their livestock.
      - wrycoder 4y ago
        It will revert very quickly. In two hundred years (outside of the dead cities and major highways), you'll have to look hard to find traces of the old civilization.
        wiredfool 4y ago
        It may revert -- some -- but without the previous genetic diversity because what's gone is gone. Apex predators are mostly gone over large parts of their former range. The species of trees in the forests that we had in UK/Ireland just aren't there any more. It will probably be taken over by hedge laurels. Deer have been introduced where they used to not be. Florida is going to be a hellscape of escaped pets, like the pythons. The old growth forests of the PNW aren't going to come back for 1000 years or more, if they even can at all due to the extinction of some species and the addition of invasives.
- _tom_ 4y ago
  Hunter gather doesn't work so well in a paved city of a million. The Amish would likely be fine. Farmers with land and skill would likely survive, but would be able to provide crops for large numbers of people. People in cities would die.
  - mach1ne 4y ago
    I wouldn't hedge by bets on the Amish either though. The starving majority can be nasty, and permanent positions difficult to defend. Most people anywhere would starve, but intelligence has a cockroach-like ability to survive in the crevasses.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
    Cannibals could actually thrive, at least for a while, I think...
- jfk13 4y ago
  Most of us have little idea how to go about hunting and gathering. And if we tried, we'd soon find out that there are far too many of us to subsist on what can be hunted and gathered around us. Soon enough, we'd be at each other's throats.
  - mach1ne 4y ago
    It is very true that the Earth can simply not support 7-8 billion people without machine-based agriculture. The population would quickly collapse to a level which hunter-gathering can support, likely overshooting by some amount due to initial adjustment.
- brabel 4y ago
  > While hunter-gathering is no Garden of Eden... Without electricity, we would be back to 200 years ago. That's still like 10,000 years after most humans were hunter-gathering. Did we forget that for most of civilization's time, we had technology to help us do stuff, just not electricity-based technology? For example vapor engines would work just fine without electricity. Agriculture would require a lot (really a lot) more people, but would still be possible with manpower and animalpowered machines, like it was for thousands of years. Also, it's not like our knowledge of electricity would just disappear... we would just have to repair and make new machines, which may take a while but most people would probably survive that.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    It would be more like 1200 years ago. Because almost no one today has the tools, skills, experience, and supply chains needed to recreate the Industrial Revolution. It's one thing to know that a steam engine is possible. It's another to build steam engines at scale when you're starting from iron ore or perhaps recycled scrap metal, and the most sophisticated available practical skill - and exceptionally rare at that - is blacksmithing.
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      > Because almost no one today has the tools, skills, experience, and supply chains needed to recreate the Industrial Revolution. And even if we did, there is no easily-accessible source of energy anymore. All the accessible coal and oil have already be exhausted. We're now digging under thousands of meters of sea water and seabed to get to the sources of energy that are left.
      - jobs_throwaway 4y ago
        wood, peat, and there's still a decent amount of natural gas
        dotancohen 4y ago
- kaashif 4y ago
  > Earth isn't designed for human life, but human life most certainly is designed for Earth. The word "designed" isn't correct here, unless you believe in a designer. I think it's more correct to say humans are adapted to life on Earth.
sph 4y ago
> Don't we know that at 7bn people this hasnt been true for millenia? What has been true for millenia? That we need electrical machines to survive? Because that's what I was talking about. > This strange "nature utopianism" I have always found profoundly pesimissitic and "evil-projecting", since it locates evil in all the solutions to the problems of nature we have struggled to create. Please do not rationalise your total misunderstanding by saying I am projecting evil. My comment was a simple reflection that a solar flare is one of those massive natural disaster with no direct (again for those in the back: direct) threat to life, yet has somehow sparked some ferocious disagreement as if I was calling for the end of times. Weird. Sorry I spoke out of line I guess. That said, your comment is ripe with pessimism and fatalism, as if humanity in its entirety would be wiped out if we stop having light, hot water and stocked shelves in stores. We are more resilient than you give us credit for. You went on a complete tirade that one should be grateful of modern life, because without it the only fate is unmitigated disaster, mayhem and apocalypse. We have thrived without medicine, massive child mortality and wolves roaming the woods. I never said if it were to happen today it would be easy, nor I called for the end of times, geez. I guess I'll stop here, I had no idea I would strike such a nerve with a simple observation.

mach1ne 4y ago

While hunter-gathering is no Garden of Eden, I don't think it's as bad as you describe for the simple fact that evolution has molded us to it specifically. Earth isn't designed for human life, but human life most certainly is designed for Earth.

mjburgess 4y ago
No, I dont think so. Would you say that to all the extinct species? There's nothing guaranteeing you don't starve. There is no design. Genes are just "random reproductive bets" with fairly high probabilities of failure over the long-run. The environment is basically guaranteed to change faster than your species can evolve, including via meteor. I dont think the rabbits who die alive eaten by foxes, and the foxes which starve from eating all the rabbits regard that cycle as "designed for them". Nor likewise, were the dinosaurs that impressed by the sky going dark. This idea that "we had a home" or "there was once Eden" in any respect is wrong. The life which we were evolved for is one in which if you survived 10, then you might not survive the lion, and if you survive that, not the volcano, and so on. Your body is just a bet made over millions of years, and not one any conservative gambler would take.
- mach1ne 4y ago
  Extinct species become extinct because there is some change in their environment to which they are not successful at adapting. Generally speaking, neither the human genome or the wilderness of Earth has changed since we built our first huts. You're correct in your regard for exceedingly high child mortality, though it bears no weight on the survival of humanity as a whole in a technology-breaking event. The human body is indeed a bet, and one that has paid off for ~300,000 years and about 12,000 generations, if we start counting from Homo Sapiens. I'd very much take that bet any day.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wiredfool 4y ago
    There's not that much wilderness left. Globally, The max distance to a road is something like 250km, in the middle of the Sahara. In the lower US, it's more like 40 miles. Entire ecosystems are gone (e.g. tallgrass prairie), or are only present in chunks that are only a few square miles. There are basically no old growth landscapes in Ireland/England. All the old trees were harvested, and sheep were farmed in the high places. Biomass of land mammals is heavily skewed to Humans and their livestock.
    - wrycoder 4y ago
      It will revert very quickly. In two hundred years (outside of the dead cities and major highways), you'll have to look hard to find traces of the old civilization.
      - wiredfool 4y ago
        It may revert -- some -- but without the previous genetic diversity because what's gone is gone. Apex predators are mostly gone over large parts of their former range. The species of trees in the forests that we had in UK/Ireland just aren't there any more. It will probably be taken over by hedge laurels. Deer have been introduced where they used to not be. Florida is going to be a hellscape of escaped pets, like the pythons. The old growth forests of the PNW aren't going to come back for 1000 years or more, if they even can at all due to the extinction of some species and the addition of invasives.
_tom_ 4y ago
Hunter gather doesn't work so well in a paved city of a million. The Amish would likely be fine. Farmers with land and skill would likely survive, but would be able to provide crops for large numbers of people. People in cities would die.
- mach1ne 4y ago
  I wouldn't hedge by bets on the Amish either though. The starving majority can be nasty, and permanent positions difficult to defend. Most people anywhere would starve, but intelligence has a cockroach-like ability to survive in the crevasses.
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  Cannibals could actually thrive, at least for a while, I think...
jfk13 4y ago
Most of us have little idea how to go about hunting and gathering. And if we tried, we'd soon find out that there are far too many of us to subsist on what can be hunted and gathered around us. Soon enough, we'd be at each other's throats.
- mach1ne 4y ago
  It is very true that the Earth can simply not support 7-8 billion people without machine-based agriculture. The population would quickly collapse to a level which hunter-gathering can support, likely overshooting by some amount due to initial adjustment.
brabel 4y ago
> While hunter-gathering is no Garden of Eden... Without electricity, we would be back to 200 years ago. That's still like 10,000 years after most humans were hunter-gathering. Did we forget that for most of civilization's time, we had technology to help us do stuff, just not electricity-based technology? For example vapor engines would work just fine without electricity. Agriculture would require a lot (really a lot) more people, but would still be possible with manpower and animalpowered machines, like it was for thousands of years. Also, it's not like our knowledge of electricity would just disappear... we would just have to repair and make new machines, which may take a while but most people would probably survive that.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  It would be more like 1200 years ago. Because almost no one today has the tools, skills, experience, and supply chains needed to recreate the Industrial Revolution. It's one thing to know that a steam engine is possible. It's another to build steam engines at scale when you're starting from iron ore or perhaps recycled scrap metal, and the most sophisticated available practical skill - and exceptionally rare at that - is blacksmithing.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    > Because almost no one today has the tools, skills, experience, and supply chains needed to recreate the Industrial Revolution. And even if we did, there is no easily-accessible source of energy anymore. All the accessible coal and oil have already be exhausted. We're now digging under thousands of meters of sea water and seabed to get to the sources of energy that are left.
    - jobs_throwaway 4y ago
      wood, peat, and there's still a decent amount of natural gas
      - dotancohen 4y ago
kaashif 4y ago
> Earth isn't designed for human life, but human life most certainly is designed for Earth. The word "designed" isn't correct here, unless you believe in a designer. I think it's more correct to say humans are adapted to life on Earth.

sph 4y ago

> Don't we know that at 7bn people this hasnt been true for millenia? What has been true for millenia? That we need electrical machines to survive? Because that's what I was talking about. > This strange "nature utopianism" I have always found profoundly pesimissitic and "evil-projecting", since it locates evil in all the solutions to the problems of nature we have struggled to create. Please do not rationalise your total misunderstanding by saying I am projecting evil. My comment was a simple reflection that a solar flare is one of those massive natural disaster with no direct (again for those in the back: direct) threat to life, yet has somehow sparked some ferocious disagreement as if I was calling for the end of times. Weird. Sorry I spoke out of line I guess. That said, your comment is ripe with pessimism and fatalism, as if humanity in its entirety would be wiped out if we stop having light, hot water and stocked shelves in stores. We are more resilient than you give us credit for. You went on a complete tirade that one should be grateful of modern life, because without it the only fate is unmitigated disaster, mayhem and apocalypse. We have thrived without medicine, massive child mortality and wolves roaming the woods. I never said if it were to happen today it would be easy, nor I called for the end of times, geez. I guess I'll stop here, I had no idea I would strike such a nerve with a simple observation.