
Political theorist James Scott thinks civilization is overrated - mathgenius
https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/11/22/16649038/civilization-progress-humanity-history-technology?utm_campaign=vox&utm_content=entry&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
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zokier
This again...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425374)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15410969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15410969)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15352268](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15352268)

~~~
tomxor
I understand others have seen them before, but I wish dups wouldn't get nuked
into oblivion on HN as soon as they are identified.

Nobody has read _all of hacker news_. Can't there be a place for re-posts, if
not on the main page?

~~~
dvdhnt
This.

Often, the top 50 or so posts will remain relatively static for days, while
posts like this never make it far enough up the rankings for to actually see
them.

~~~
zokier
In this case my comment was not as much against dupes in general as it was
expressing disappointment that yet another post about "Against the Grain"
should reach front page and thus showing that it likely resonates with
significant portion of HNers which I would rather not be the case.

~~~
tomxor
Oh, what is it about this article you find so displeasing to associate with HN
readers?

I realise some people will be more marginal to the concept of being a hippy-
anti-civilisation hunter gatherer... but regardless, the answers given by the
interviewee were well reasoned and objective, I thought most HN reader would
have appreciated them. The title however is poor and misleading.

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taejavu
More like, "A journalist critical of modern society attempts to coerce answers
that align with his worldview from an author that wrote a book on how our
history isn't as straight forward as we typically think it is".

My version is less catchy, I admit.

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rntz
I'm reading "Against the Grain" at the moment. It's good, but James Scott (the
author) is also clearly a little out of his academic comfort zone in it -
Scott is a political scientist & anthropologist, not an archaeologist. He also
tends to repeat himself a lot.

Scott has also written "Seeing Like A State", a great book about, in its own
words, "how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed" \- in
particular, grand schemes by powerful central governments which forced pre-
existing social and ecological arrangements into a form more understandable to
central management, but in the process lost some essential flexibility.

Also related, an older piece in the same vein as "Against the Grain" is Jared
Diamond's short essay "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race":
[http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html](http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html)
(Jared Diamond is also not an archaeologist, however. I'm curious what
archaeologists have to think about this line of reasoning in general.)

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baddox
It’s really hard to form these arguments and hypotheses rigorously, and I
rarely see anyone try to do so. What does it mean to ask “were we happier
before the agricultural revolution than we are now?”

Are we talking about the mean happiness of all humans at one instant? If
that’s our only goal, maybe we can achieve it by killing or sterilizing
everyone below a certain level of happiness, but obviously that goes against
most people’s moral beliefs.

Or are we talking about maximizing the sum of all humans’ happiness? If that’s
our only goal, maybe we can achieve it by maximizing birth rates and thus
maximizing the human population regardless of each human’s quality of life,
but obviously that also goes against most of our moral beliefs. Perhaps we can
get around this reductio ad absurdum by allowing for negative happiness
values, e.g. for people born into starvation or poverty, but calculating an
absolute utility value for each human is difficult or impossible anyway (which
affects all of these proposals).

Or how about Pareto efficiency? If our only goal is to achieve a state wherein
no one’s happiness can be increased without decreasing someone else’s
happiness, that could perhaps be achieved by having one rich despot on whom
everyone else is dependent, which again goes against most people’s moral
beliefs.

~~~
baddox
One thought experiment occurs to me: would you rather be born to a random pair
of parents in the world now, or a random pair of parents 15,000 years ago?
This seems like a very personal way to phrase the central question: do you
believe that humans were happier then or now?

Granted, I suspect most people reading this would have the same gut reaction
as me: to choose being born to random parents now. But how much of that is
influenced by our experiences with and dependence on modern society? Most
readers of this comment are probably well above the current global average of
quality of life according to any plausible definition. Perhaps people
currently living in poverty would have different gut reactions to the
proposal.

It’s outside the scope of this article, but the question could be extended
into the future, where we have even less data (none). Would you rather be born
to random parents now, or random parents some period in the future?

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jahaja
I really think it's important to highlight one of the points being made: That
modern society - even western if you'd like - while begin awfully smug about
it's freedoms, rarely translates this to literal freedom - leisure - for the
vast majority of its people.

~~~
Tasboo
The notion that you can have all the benefits of a centrally governed society
with all the liberties of total freedom is an unrealistic expectation. In
order to ensure basic societal services are readily available for an entire
nation, certain personal liberties must be given up in exchange. You can't
have it both ways. For some people, this is news to them. Myself, and
apparently most of the western world, we'd rather give up those liberties for
the massive benefits that we get in exchange. The idea of absolute freedom is
chaos.

~~~
jahaja
I'm not sure what you're even talking about. All I'm saying is that given the
vast progress we've made, leisure for the masses has been disproportionately
disfavoured. To say that, if I follow you correctly, this situation is somehow
inherently "how it go to be" is just dogmatic.

> Myself, and apparently most of the western world, we'd rather give up those
> liberties for the massive benefits that we get in exchange.

Never mind that this is a blatant false dichotomy, there is no such choice
offered.

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B1FF_PSUVM
One intellectual vice we acquired since the middle ages is a fanatical belief
in 'progress'.

It got progressively worse, by the 18th century it got to be a reason for
killing people, something that in the 20th was done to tens of millions.

And the funny bit is that the theorists behind the mass murders had stated
that "historical progress" was inevitable anyways. Blood sacrifices to hurry
up the tide, how quaint ...

~~~
Veen
The left and the techno-obsessed have a fanatical belief in progress. The
right is more aware of the fragility of human nature and human institutions.

But both groups make their beliefs into reasons for killing people. The left
kills people it thinks stand in the way of progress towards utopia. The right
kills people it thinks threaten the purity or safety of what has already been
built.

~~~
Fricken
It's not a partisan. The House of Representatives was unanimous in passing the
Self Drive act, which proposes sweeping and permissive regulation to empower
the development and deployment of autonomous vehicles. It's like the only
thing everybody in Washington agrees on.

Conversely, there are plenty of anti-technology people on the left. I follow
Urban planning, there are strong advocates for more traditional forms of
transportation such as cycling and trains, and those are generally regarded to
be left of centre views. Environmentalism is a deeply conservative movement,
but in the twisted times we live in, those people for some reason fall left of
centre.

~~~
Veen
Yeah, when I first wrote this, I used "conservative" instead of "right",
because most of the right aren't conservatives: they're market fundamentalists
or religious zealots - neither of which puts conservation of the good at the
top of their list of values, regardless of their rhetoric. And yes, many on
the left aren't interested in freedom at all: they're intensely authoritarian,
which is no surprise when "equality" is the highest good in your value system.

And plenty of people from all parts of the political spectrum are simply
exploiting the intuitions of their "tribe" for status advantages.

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cdancette
If you're interested, you might like Sapiens (A brief history of Humankind) by
Yuval Noah Harari.

~~~
hux_
I don't like Sapiens. In a complex world the time it takes for an average
second grader to become a subject matter expert is about 30 years. And it's
increasing not decreasing.

Reading Sapiens will make you feel and sound like you know what you are
talking about. And therefore it is for people who cannot put in the thirty
years to feel like subject matter experts.

It's like what Jon Stewart/Rush Limbaugh and their clones do for their fan
clubs.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _And therefore it is for people who cannot put in the thirty years to feel
> like subject matter experts._

So 99.9% of everybody? That sounds more like a recommendation than a
criticism.

~~~
hux_
A recommendation to what end? Pseudo subject matter experts?

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jokoon
I sometimes wonder if the libertarian future where governments, nation and
civilization disappear to let technology reign over everything, is actually a
relevant prediction.

~~~
Tasboo
That sounds awful.

~~~
jokoon
I know it is, but there are many people with wealth who are wishful for that
sort of future.

