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I don't think it makes sense to include all of that in the calculation. A human doesn't need all of that, they just need 900 calories. You can just eat berries,

I don't think it makes sense to include all of that in the calculation. A human doesn't need all of that, they just need 900 calories. You can just eat berries, no need to cook anything, for example.

amanaplanacanal 2y ago
A human cannot live on just berries. Even if they could, where are those berries gonna come from?
- auggierose 2y ago
  I am pretty sure they can. Berries grow in bushes, often.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    Berries are missing essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, and essential vitamins. You could live on them for a while, I guess. Actually you can live without eating at all for a while. Both would lead to a painful death though.
- ben_w 2y ago
  "Where" is easy. I think more importantly is that uncooked food is harder to digest, so we need more of it. Most years I pick free blackberries growing wild in the city. Won't scale to all of us, not seasonal, and I'd need to eat 6kg of them a day for my RDA of calories, and 12x my RDA of dietary fibre sounds unwise, but that kind of thing is how we existed before farming. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6kg%20blackberries http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6kg%20blackberries
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > Even if they could, where are those berries gonna come from? By that logic, the "true cost" of boiling a cup of water for my tea somehow involves the Big Bang and rest of the formation of the observable universe up until now. It's kinda-true, but not in a useful way.
Teever 2y ago
A human may not technically need all that but the humans who do exist in our society do. A measurement of a hypothetical human foraging in the bush is a useful one but a much more useful one is the energy expenditure to keep a human alive in our society.
- auggierose 2y ago
  > A measurement of a hypothetical human foraging in the bush is a useful one but a much more useful one is the energy expenditure to keep a human alive in our society. Which society? An American one? A German one? What about the iPads manufactured in China for both of them? A human of what income? If you do not draw the boundaries of the system you want to observe, asking how much energy that system uses is not very sensible.
  - Teever 2y ago
    A table of data with all the different variables that you pointed out would be fascinating and very useful.

I don't think it makes sense to include all of that in the calculation. A human doesn't need all of that, they just need 900 calories. You can just eat berries, no need to cook anything, for example.

amanaplanacanal 2y ago

A human cannot live on just berries. Even if they could, where are those berries gonna come from?

auggierose 2y ago
I am pretty sure they can. Berries grow in bushes, often.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  Berries are missing essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, and essential vitamins. You could live on them for a while, I guess. Actually you can live without eating at all for a while. Both would lead to a painful death though.
ben_w 2y ago
"Where" is easy. I think more importantly is that uncooked food is harder to digest, so we need more of it. Most years I pick free blackberries growing wild in the city. Won't scale to all of us, not seasonal, and I'd need to eat 6kg of them a day for my RDA of calories, and 12x my RDA of dietary fibre sounds unwise, but that kind of thing is how we existed before farming. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6kg%20blackberries http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6kg%20blackberries
Terr_ 2y ago
> Even if they could, where are those berries gonna come from? By that logic, the "true cost" of boiling a cup of water for my tea somehow involves the Big Bang and rest of the formation of the observable universe up until now. It's kinda-true, but not in a useful way.

Teever 2y ago

A human may not technically need all that but the humans who do exist in our society do. A measurement of a hypothetical human foraging in the bush is a useful one but a much more useful one is the energy expenditure to keep a human alive in our society.

auggierose 2y ago
> A measurement of a hypothetical human foraging in the bush is a useful one but a much more useful one is the energy expenditure to keep a human alive in our society. Which society? An American one? A German one? What about the iPads manufactured in China for both of them? A human of what income? If you do not draw the boundaries of the system you want to observe, asking how much energy that system uses is not very sensible.
- Teever 2y ago
  A table of data with all the different variables that you pointed out would be fascinating and very useful.