7 ms·

You first. And no cheating by bringing antibiotics with you.

nurettin 10mo ago
To be fair, antibiotics are needed much more now that we have billions of hosts these organisms can evolve on rapidly.
defrost 10mo ago
A lack of antibiotics wasn't sufficient reason to stay in western society for those members of the Pintupi Nine and other hunter gather families that came in, looked about, and left again. Some can't imagine life without antibiotics, others can't fathom living with everything else that comes with it.
- Aloha 10mo ago
  They had a place that was familiar and comforting to go return to. Anyone who is of a modern industrialized society who is waxing poetically about becoming a hunter gatherer is both, looking at history thru very rose colored goggles and welcome to go find a place to do just that.
  - defrost 10mo ago
    Alternatively they grew up with a foot in both worlds, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmCX7R-W4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmCX7R-W4c Many people that have lived side by side with indigenous people across northern australia, the islands, PNG, et al have a clear idea of exactly what living off the land entails. A good many have done exactly that for extended periods, dropping in and out from one to the other. They would have done this sans any condescending permission from those wishing them well - such opinions count for naught.
    - Aloha 10mo ago
      Agreed.
- tor825gl 10mo ago
  But you've selected one particular group. The thousands of groups and individuals who merged their way of life with that of farming/toolmaking/industrialised/modern human society do not have a name, they are just part of the human mainstream. Of course some of these adaptations happened by force or coercion. But many didn't. So many groups have wanted to participate in technological progress, even at the cost of giving up their previous way of life, that in fact extreme degrees of control and/or hostility have often been needed just to keep parallel societies uncontacted.
  - defrost 10mo ago
    > But But? > you've selected one particular group. I used as examples some specific individuals of one named group, yes. I also had in mind other specific individuals of a few other families - all these groups share the same major language group. There are other similar examples across the globe, of course, there's an entire island that famously prefers no contact- but I'm making a brief comment not writing a book. > Of course some of these adaptations happened by force or coercion. But many didn't. If I were to pursue this I'd likely argue that a majority of adaptions happened with more force, less willingness, and at a pace faster than desired by the less technologically advanced side. > So many groups have wanted to participate in technological progress, Indeed. Many are curious about water but didn't expect a hose shoved down their throats with a bucket load funnelled in endlessly with no off tap. > that in fact extreme degrees of control and/or hostility have often been needed just to keep parallel societies uncontacted. I'm assuming this refers to those groups that want to retain autonomy but have difficulty doing so. In many such cases that I'm aware of the problem stems less from former group members wanting to bring the outside in, more from outsiders (eg: loggers) wanting to clearfell habitat, miners wanting pits, etc. eg: The entire West of PNG not wanting rule by Indonesia, various "Indonesians" not wanting their dense jungle homes cleared for palm oil plantations, various groups in Brazil, Native American Indians not wanting pipes to cross ther lands, giant copper mines on sacred grounds, etc.
    - tor825gl 10mo ago
      You are making the same two errors again. You are focusing on the 0.01% of humanity which isn't part of mainstream modernity rather than the 99.99% which is. And you're discussing cases of extreme differential in technological knowledge and worldview (Amazon jungle, Papua New Guinea), rather than the vastly more common smaller gaps and asymmetries. If a majority of adaptations happened with force, how do you explain the ones that didn't? Don't they suggest that even without any force there would have been convergence, just more slowly? European settlers committed genocide against the native peoples of North America. I'm not denying that. But that happened in a context of a 400 year process of cultural exchanges and mergers in both directions. Arguably North Americans could not have ignored the written word or manufactured textiles in perpetuity, just as their societies adapted and mutated to accept the horse and steel tools.
rurp 10mo ago
Many people did choose to live as hunter gatherers all over the world, until they were universally slaughtered and subjugated. We don't really know if industrial societies lead to more fullfilling lives or not, because they clearly lead to better and more expansive armies that quickly destroy anyone trying to live outside of that.
- andsoitis 10mo ago
  > Many people did choose to live as hunter gatherers all over the world, until they were universally slaughtered and subjugated. There are still a number of uncontacted peoples and international groups that advocate for them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples
throwawaylaptop 10mo ago
Maybe it's a herd immunity thing or something and others are keeping me safe, but I'm 41 and Ive never taken an antibiotic and neither has anyone else in my family to my knowledge. I still can't figure out if it's the chicken or the egg.. have I never been sick because I don't take part in the medical system, or do I not take part because I've never been sick.. Then again last time my cuticle got infected I sterilized a knife and drained it myself. My friend said he had something similar and they gave him an antibiotic yet DIDNT drain it until it got worse and then they just did what I did. But at least they got to sell some antibiotics.
- manmal 10mo ago
  Antibiotics should IMO be reserved for life threatening situations, or likely upcoming life threatening situations. In the 80s as a toddler I was given antibiotics for measles (they can’t possibly work on viruses), and had half a year of diarrhea afterwards.
  - mcny 10mo ago
    It is funny you say that. Where do you draw the line? I had what was most likely poison ivy. Covered both arms. And was spreading. What do you propose my nurse practitioner to do? Not prescribe any antibiotics? To what end? I should continue to suffer because of what reason?
    - SturgeonsLaw 10mo ago
      Antibiotics do one thing, and one thing only - kill bacteria. They don't do anything for viruses, fungal infection, inflammation, chemical irritants or pain relief. In the case of poison ivy, all antibiotics would do is lower the already slim odds of a secondary infection. They wouldn't prevent the contact dermatitis/inflammation from urishiol.
      - mcny 10mo ago
        No. I had broken skin barrier. Pus coming out and dripping. The use of antibiotics was definitely warranted. Again, who do you want to decide whether the use of antibiotics is ok and under what conditions? Should I be dying before you grant me antibiotics? What kind of nonsense is this?
Gud 10mo ago
You can’t survive as s hunter gatherer in the modern world.
manmal 10mo ago
Hard to catch a disease when it’s always the same 15 people around you, with no communication to the outside world; and no factory farming that incubates most of these diseases. Regarding your reference to how brutal and never-ending work was; As far as we know, many European medieval farmers had 1500-1800 working hours per year. It’s also a bit gloomy to assume the household was run by two parents and their kids - often, grandparents were colocated and helped until they couldn’t. What you‘ve described was certainly the case during famines and war, but not a permanent state.
- majormajor 10mo ago
  insects, predator animals, cuts+bacteria all seem like quite hard-to-avoid disease vectors. we can spread disease quickly these days, but there are no shortage of ancient diseases you could've come across in a small hunter-gatherer society I believe the modern world creates a lot of mental health problems, loneliness, and unhappines, but it's absolutely physically safer and more survivable (and more comfortable) for a huge percentage of the developed world. (It creates those mental problems unnecessarily, given the level of technology we have, but deeply baked into our fairly-antisocial individualistic culture)
  - manmal 10mo ago
    I‘m not sure I agree on your second point. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and others are endemic to the developed world. My personal opinion here is that constant oversupply with calories is not something humans have been able to adapt to, yet.
    - WA 10mo ago
      We just live longer than back then and have way more opportunities to see these (mostly) late-life diseases. Same with cancer. Yes, average life span was shorter back then because of child mortality. But the vast majority of surviving adults never reached age 80. Old age was 60-70 and many of these diseases only occur at 70+ in significant numbers.
- 10mo ago
palmotea 10mo ago
> You first. He wasn't talking about going back, he was talking about staying. > And no cheating by bringing antibiotics with you. I don't recall where I read this, but (probably hundreds of years ago) some explorer in Africa was on a boat with some hunter-gatherers. A bloated, rotting dead rat floated by, they picked it up, said "yum" and dug in. They didn't get sick. I've also read some speculation that (initially) fire wasn't needed so much for cooking meat, because hunter-gatherers can (and did) accomplish the same effect by letting meat rot a little. Fire was more useful for vegetables. So actual hunter gatherers probably had less need for antibiotics than a modern person thrust into a similar situation.
- tumult 10mo ago
  That's from Arnold Henry Savage Landor and I suspect it was fabricated or exaggerated, like many Victorian era British tales of savages abroad.
Aloha 10mo ago
Indeed! Antibiotics and Insulin - those two things have saves untold lives. Before about 1920, the difference between rich and poor and the likelihood to recover from disease had more to do with ability to rest and diet. The rich and poor alike died to tuberculosis (which was often a death sentence until antibiotics), simple cysts, all sorts of very basic bacterial infections killed in droves. At the risk of sidetracking this further - it was only after insulin where the idea that healthcare could be somewhat that could be a right became somewhat reasonable (before the late gilded age, doctors often did as much harm as good) - every lifesaving innovation we have made sense, were often very modest amounts of money is the difference between life and death make that argument stronger.
- robocat 10mo ago
  > Antibiotics and Insulin - those two things have saves untold lives. Type 1 is about 0.5% prevalence. Type 1 diabetes was a rapid death sentence before insulin discovery in the 1920s. Type 2 is more common (maybe 10% but highly dependent on country) and it is a relatively modern problem Infant mortality has dropped to 0.5% from 7% 100 years ago - so that's more significant.
  - Aloha 10mo ago
    Better food, living conditions and sanitation has helped greatly.
Qwertious 10mo ago
Stone age hunter-gatherers had better lives than stone-age farmers, assuming that they had enough land to hunt/gather on. Modern farming is usually far easier than modern hunting/gathering, although if you go far enough north you'll find that hunting is still the only viable option.
- rhubarbtree 10mo ago
  Oh, really? Then why did they choose farming? And no, it wasn’t a trap, they experimented with farming and could have gone back to hunting if as you imply it truly was better.
  - amenhotep 10mo ago
    Farming supports war better than hunter gathering does.
    - troupo 10mo ago
      Translation: farming supports larger populations and more complex lifestyles better than hunter gathering.
- carlosjobim 10mo ago
  Ever since the invention of the rifle, hunting has been far easier than farming.
  - bloomingeek 10mo ago
    I would argue that with the invention of the rifle, it was easier IF you could find game, especially since others living in your vicinity were hunting also. Despite the risk of weather and insects, farming was much more predictable as a food source.
    - carlosjobim 10mo ago
      That same logic should be applied to farming. Where would you find free farmland that nobody else is claiming?

To be fair, antibiotics are needed much more now that we have billions of hosts these organisms can evolve on rapidly.

A lack of antibiotics wasn't sufficient reason to stay in western society for those members of the Pintupi Nine and other hunter gather families that came in, looked about, and left again. Some can't imagine life without antibiotics, others can't fathom living with everything else that comes with it.

Aloha 10mo ago
They had a place that was familiar and comforting to go return to. Anyone who is of a modern industrialized society who is waxing poetically about becoming a hunter gatherer is both, looking at history thru very rose colored goggles and welcome to go find a place to do just that.
- defrost 10mo ago
  Alternatively they grew up with a foot in both worlds, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmCX7R-W4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmCX7R-W4c Many people that have lived side by side with indigenous people across northern australia, the islands, PNG, et al have a clear idea of exactly what living off the land entails. A good many have done exactly that for extended periods, dropping in and out from one to the other. They would have done this sans any condescending permission from those wishing them well - such opinions count for naught.
  - Aloha 10mo ago
    Agreed.
tor825gl 10mo ago
But you've selected one particular group. The thousands of groups and individuals who merged their way of life with that of farming/toolmaking/industrialised/modern human society do not have a name, they are just part of the human mainstream. Of course some of these adaptations happened by force or coercion. But many didn't. So many groups have wanted to participate in technological progress, even at the cost of giving up their previous way of life, that in fact extreme degrees of control and/or hostility have often been needed just to keep parallel societies uncontacted.
- defrost 10mo ago
  > But But? > you've selected one particular group. I used as examples some specific individuals of one named group, yes. I also had in mind other specific individuals of a few other families - all these groups share the same major language group. There are other similar examples across the globe, of course, there's an entire island that famously prefers no contact- but I'm making a brief comment not writing a book. > Of course some of these adaptations happened by force or coercion. But many didn't. If I were to pursue this I'd likely argue that a majority of adaptions happened with more force, less willingness, and at a pace faster than desired by the less technologically advanced side. > So many groups have wanted to participate in technological progress, Indeed. Many are curious about water but didn't expect a hose shoved down their throats with a bucket load funnelled in endlessly with no off tap. > that in fact extreme degrees of control and/or hostility have often been needed just to keep parallel societies uncontacted. I'm assuming this refers to those groups that want to retain autonomy but have difficulty doing so. In many such cases that I'm aware of the problem stems less from former group members wanting to bring the outside in, more from outsiders (eg: loggers) wanting to clearfell habitat, miners wanting pits, etc. eg: The entire West of PNG not wanting rule by Indonesia, various "Indonesians" not wanting their dense jungle homes cleared for palm oil plantations, various groups in Brazil, Native American Indians not wanting pipes to cross ther lands, giant copper mines on sacred grounds, etc.
  - tor825gl 10mo ago
    You are making the same two errors again. You are focusing on the 0.01% of humanity which isn't part of mainstream modernity rather than the 99.99% which is. And you're discussing cases of extreme differential in technological knowledge and worldview (Amazon jungle, Papua New Guinea), rather than the vastly more common smaller gaps and asymmetries. If a majority of adaptations happened with force, how do you explain the ones that didn't? Don't they suggest that even without any force there would have been convergence, just more slowly? European settlers committed genocide against the native peoples of North America. I'm not denying that. But that happened in a context of a 400 year process of cultural exchanges and mergers in both directions. Arguably North Americans could not have ignored the written word or manufactured textiles in perpetuity, just as their societies adapted and mutated to accept the horse and steel tools.

rurp 10mo ago

Many people did choose to live as hunter gatherers all over the world, until they were universally slaughtered and subjugated. We don't really know if industrial societies lead to more fullfilling lives or not, because they clearly lead to better and more expansive armies that quickly destroy anyone trying to live outside of that.

andsoitis 10mo ago
> Many people did choose to live as hunter gatherers all over the world, until they were universally slaughtered and subjugated. There are still a number of uncontacted peoples and international groups that advocate for them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

throwawaylaptop 10mo ago

Maybe it's a herd immunity thing or something and others are keeping me safe, but I'm 41 and Ive never taken an antibiotic and neither has anyone else in my family to my knowledge. I still can't figure out if it's the chicken or the egg.. have I never been sick because I don't take part in the medical system, or do I not take part because I've never been sick.. Then again last time my cuticle got infected I sterilized a knife and drained it myself. My friend said he had something similar and they gave him an antibiotic yet DIDNT drain it until it got worse and then they just did what I did. But at least they got to sell some antibiotics.

manmal 10mo ago
Antibiotics should IMO be reserved for life threatening situations, or likely upcoming life threatening situations. In the 80s as a toddler I was given antibiotics for measles (they can’t possibly work on viruses), and had half a year of diarrhea afterwards.
- mcny 10mo ago
  It is funny you say that. Where do you draw the line? I had what was most likely poison ivy. Covered both arms. And was spreading. What do you propose my nurse practitioner to do? Not prescribe any antibiotics? To what end? I should continue to suffer because of what reason?
  - SturgeonsLaw 10mo ago
    Antibiotics do one thing, and one thing only - kill bacteria. They don't do anything for viruses, fungal infection, inflammation, chemical irritants or pain relief. In the case of poison ivy, all antibiotics would do is lower the already slim odds of a secondary infection. They wouldn't prevent the contact dermatitis/inflammation from urishiol.
    - mcny 10mo ago
      No. I had broken skin barrier. Pus coming out and dripping. The use of antibiotics was definitely warranted. Again, who do you want to decide whether the use of antibiotics is ok and under what conditions? Should I be dying before you grant me antibiotics? What kind of nonsense is this?

Gud 10mo ago

You can’t survive as s hunter gatherer in the modern world.

manmal 10mo ago

Hard to catch a disease when it’s always the same 15 people around you, with no communication to the outside world; and no factory farming that incubates most of these diseases. Regarding your reference to how brutal and never-ending work was; As far as we know, many European medieval farmers had 1500-1800 working hours per year. It’s also a bit gloomy to assume the household was run by two parents and their kids - often, grandparents were colocated and helped until they couldn’t. What you‘ve described was certainly the case during famines and war, but not a permanent state.

majormajor 10mo ago
insects, predator animals, cuts+bacteria all seem like quite hard-to-avoid disease vectors. we can spread disease quickly these days, but there are no shortage of ancient diseases you could've come across in a small hunter-gatherer society I believe the modern world creates a lot of mental health problems, loneliness, and unhappines, but it's absolutely physically safer and more survivable (and more comfortable) for a huge percentage of the developed world. (It creates those mental problems unnecessarily, given the level of technology we have, but deeply baked into our fairly-antisocial individualistic culture)
- manmal 10mo ago
  I‘m not sure I agree on your second point. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and others are endemic to the developed world. My personal opinion here is that constant oversupply with calories is not something humans have been able to adapt to, yet.
  - WA 10mo ago
    We just live longer than back then and have way more opportunities to see these (mostly) late-life diseases. Same with cancer. Yes, average life span was shorter back then because of child mortality. But the vast majority of surviving adults never reached age 80. Old age was 60-70 and many of these diseases only occur at 70+ in significant numbers.
10mo ago

palmotea 10mo ago

> You first. He wasn't talking about going back, he was talking about staying. > And no cheating by bringing antibiotics with you. I don't recall where I read this, but (probably hundreds of years ago) some explorer in Africa was on a boat with some hunter-gatherers. A bloated, rotting dead rat floated by, they picked it up, said "yum" and dug in. They didn't get sick. I've also read some speculation that (initially) fire wasn't needed so much for cooking meat, because hunter-gatherers can (and did) accomplish the same effect by letting meat rot a little. Fire was more useful for vegetables. So actual hunter gatherers probably had less need for antibiotics than a modern person thrust into a similar situation.

tumult 10mo ago
That's from Arnold Henry Savage Landor and I suspect it was fabricated or exaggerated, like many Victorian era British tales of savages abroad.

Aloha 10mo ago

Indeed! Antibiotics and Insulin - those two things have saves untold lives. Before about 1920, the difference between rich and poor and the likelihood to recover from disease had more to do with ability to rest and diet. The rich and poor alike died to tuberculosis (which was often a death sentence until antibiotics), simple cysts, all sorts of very basic bacterial infections killed in droves. At the risk of sidetracking this further - it was only after insulin where the idea that healthcare could be somewhat that could be a right became somewhat reasonable (before the late gilded age, doctors often did as much harm as good) - every lifesaving innovation we have made sense, were often very modest amounts of money is the difference between life and death make that argument stronger.

robocat 10mo ago
> Antibiotics and Insulin - those two things have saves untold lives. Type 1 is about 0.5% prevalence. Type 1 diabetes was a rapid death sentence before insulin discovery in the 1920s. Type 2 is more common (maybe 10% but highly dependent on country) and it is a relatively modern problem Infant mortality has dropped to 0.5% from 7% 100 years ago - so that's more significant.
- Aloha 10mo ago
  Better food, living conditions and sanitation has helped greatly.

Qwertious 10mo ago

Stone age hunter-gatherers had better lives than stone-age farmers, assuming that they had enough land to hunt/gather on. Modern farming is usually far easier than modern hunting/gathering, although if you go far enough north you'll find that hunting is still the only viable option.

rhubarbtree 10mo ago
Oh, really? Then why did they choose farming? And no, it wasn’t a trap, they experimented with farming and could have gone back to hunting if as you imply it truly was better.
- amenhotep 10mo ago
  Farming supports war better than hunter gathering does.
  - troupo 10mo ago
    Translation: farming supports larger populations and more complex lifestyles better than hunter gathering.
carlosjobim 10mo ago
Ever since the invention of the rifle, hunting has been far easier than farming.
- bloomingeek 10mo ago
  I would argue that with the invention of the rifle, it was easier IF you could find game, especially since others living in your vicinity were hunting also. Despite the risk of weather and insects, farming was much more predictable as a food source.
  - carlosjobim 10mo ago
    That same logic should be applied to farming. Where would you find free farmland that nobody else is claiming?