
The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (by Jared Diamond) - Tichy
http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html
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portLAN
Repeatedly on Reddit, e.g. <http://science.reddit.com/info/1rssu/comments>

Agriculture simply multiplied everything. Hunter-gatherers still had and have
tribal wars, murder, rape, rapine, torture, high infant mortality, much lower
male life expectancy (due to fighting), plus the usual disease, famine, and
social inequality of women.

The average college student in a dorm room enjoys greater luxury and comfort
than kings of yesteryear; they have climate control, hot and cold running
water, antibiotics, corrective eyewear, and of course a far greater selection
of food year-round, not to mention a better selection of healthy mates.

Whether people are happier in modern technological society or hunter-gatherer
society is almost beside the point; evolution seems to have selected for
worried, discontented people -- they outcompete the easily satiated. Even as
we precipitate the extinction of traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles, we
can imagine them at some point in the past wiping out even less
technologically-savvy people who perhaps were even more happy and contented,
leading an existence akin to our bonobo relatives. A similar article written
then by gatherers might blame the widespread adoption of hunting for
increasing societal violence and leading to a new class division: warrior, due
to the ensuing upswing in human-human "hunting".

Increased population can be thought of as a tool; it has been exploited for
ill much of the time, but it can also be used for the betterment of all. When
we start to live in "The Matrix" (a pleasurable one), we may well rely on
aquaculture to produce high-yield algae we farm for biofuel and for nutrients
for our IV drips. At that point we may instead regard agriculture, regardless
of temporary blips, as the best thing to happen to humanity.

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davidw
Ok, time for a bit of hand wringing. I said I'd wait a week, but this needs to
be pointed out. In the space of one day, we've gone from startup news to
rehashed reddit news.

<http://reddit.com/info/3895/comments>

Not only that, but the article itself is _20 years old_ , and is not an
attitude I have read in Diamond's later works like 'Collapse', where he
certainly underlines the dangers and problems that face the human race, but
does manage to strike a good balance between gloomy and cautiously optimistic
about the possibility for improvement.

Harumph.

~~~
Tichy
I don't read reddit, anyway, I guess it takes time to find out what is
considered appropiate for the new hacker news. I went by the definition of "is
not shown on TV". It's 20 years old, but old articles have been posted before,
and I only found it today... If nobody is interested, nobody will mod it up?

Besides, I thought this article also relates to startupping, because of the
average work hours aspect. But granted, Jared Diamond is not exactly unknown.

~~~
davidw
It's not that bad a link... it just seems so drastic a change:-/ It seems also
to illustrate that the intersection of interesting startup links is very well
defined, whereas the intersection of interesting 'hacker news' is rather less
well defined, and will probably be more prone to disagreement, even if the
people posting are the same ones as with the old yc.news, because our
interests and beliefs are likely to be quite varied.

Add to that people who didn't see or take part in the original, and while I
hope the change will go ok, it will be a lot of work.

~~~
mangodrunk
>news interesting to hackers generally.

Obviously hackers have found this interesting, but I agree it is on the border
of being irrelevant. I think it is useful to use PG's rule of thumb that if
it's covered on TV news then it's off topic which I think this is an exception
to.

I like this new direction that yc is taking, the site was rather boring to me
before which I barely frequented until I saw that it changed on reddit.

I shouldn't come here to often because each time I read something by PG I feel
like quitting my job and starting a company.

~~~
davidw
I think part of what bugs me is that it's also somewhat sensationalist, which
is why reddit keeps reposting it.

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pg
Anyone who thinks hunter gatherers had pleasant lives should stop to think
what happened to people who were too old to follow the tribe when it moved, or
what happened when a mother who was already nursing had another baby.

~~~
ivankirigin
Indeed. I love this comic:
<http://static.flickr.com/100/267584452_4c7f35863f.jpg>

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run4yourlives
>Astronomy taught us that our earth isn't the center of the universe but
merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we
weren't specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other
species.

Neither of which would have been possible if we were too busy hunting for food
every waking hour.

~~~
veritas
>>It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good
deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the
average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for
one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania.

FTA... please read it :p

You can make the argument that by increasing population size and crowding, it
also made collaboration, partnership, and the growth of ideas easier but the
article itself debunks the whole "they spent their entire life looking for
berries" argument.

Jared Diamond is awesome.

~~~
Darmani
I think it is moreso the ability to settle in one place that caused the growth
of technology. The hunter-gatherers, no matter how numerous, certainly did not
spend their free time building forges and experimenting with metal.

Also note that the time spent gathering food likely does not include preparing
to gather food (e.g.: making weapons). Although they could spend plenty of
time playing games, note that games originated to prepare children to spend
time gathering food (and practice other necessary survival skills).

~~~
Darmani
I must rescind this statement. As a result of these discussions, I began
reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, which, in the chapter "To Farm or not to
Farm," makes clear the disconnect between agriculture and sedentary living:

"Another misconception is that there is necesarrily a sharp divide between
nomadic hunter-gatherers and sedentary food producers. In reality, although we
frequently develop such a contrast, hunter-gathers in some productive areas,
including North America's Pacific Northwest coast and possibly southeastern
Australia, became sedentary but never became food producers. Other hunter-
gatherers, in Palestine, costal Peru, and Japan, became sedentary first and
adopted food production much later. Sedentary groups probably made up a much
higher fraction 15,000 years ago, when all inhabited parts of the world
(including the most productive areas) were still occupied by hunter-gatherers,
than they do today, when the few remaining hunter-gathers survive only in
unproductive areas where nomadism is the sole option.

Conversely, there are mobile groups of food producers. Some modern nomads of
New Guinea's Lake Plains made clearings in the jungle, plant bananas and
papayas, go off for a few months to live again as hunter-gatherers, return to
check on their crops, weed the garden if they find the crops growing, set off
again to hunt, return months later to check again, and settle down for a while
to harvest and eat if their garden has not produced. Apache Indians of the
southwestern United States settled down to farm in the summer at high
elevations and toward the north, then withdrew to the south and to lower
elevations to wander in search of wild foods, during the winter. Many herding
peoples of Africa and Asia shift camp along regular seasonal routes to take
advantage of predictable seasonal changes in pasturage. Thus, the shift from
hunting-gathering to food production did not always coincide with a shift from
nomadism to sedentary living."

(<i>Guns, Germs, and Steel</i> p. 106)

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zach
Obnoxious. This article manifests the worst mistake in the contemporary world
-- the triumph of modern cynicism over progressive idealism.

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comatose_kid
I can't believe this article was up-voted. What does this have to do with
hacking or startups???

I'm a little worried this site will go the way of reddit...

~~~
chaostheory
Yeah I agree - this belongs on reddit not the site formerly known as startup
news...

There are enough reddits and diggs in the world, if hacker news is going the
way of reddit and digg I'll probably pass

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mnemonicsloth
Massive self-aggrandizing factual error in the third paragraph:

 _It's a life that philosophers have traditionally regarded as nasty, brutish,
and short._

Um, Jean Jacques Rousseau? Noble Savage? Only a few decades after Hobbes?

It may not be relevant to the case being made here, but _come on_. I remember
writing "compare and contrast" papers on Hobbes and Rousseau in high school.

~~~
mynameishere
Yes, the basic idea has been re-hashed endlessly:

<http://www.thecourier.com/manifest.htm>

It sort of bothers me that this is getting upmodded--not because it's off-
topic, but because it's so painfully banal--every high schooler has already
thought these things through completely, just like this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42398>

~~~
Tichy
I didn't see the article as a manifesto against industrialism, despite the
sensationalist title. Jared Diamond is a researcher, after all - I just found
it informative to learn something about ancient societies, without jumping to
conclusions from that.

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corentin
This article certainly is well documented... still I don't see why agriculture
is a mistake. Yes, our ancestors were intelligent enough to understand that
progress usually involves a temporary loss of comfort to achieve long-term
benefits. Why is it a mistake?

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rms
One of the recurring off-topic discussions on Startup News was the evolution
of humanity from nomadic tribes through the Industrial Revolution and beyond.
Now that the scope of the site has expanded, it would make sense that one of
the most popular discussions is still the evolution of humanity. If this topic
doesn't interest you, maybe you should submit a story that you find
interesting.

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FatBastard
This story is only interesting as a historical artifact in itself. It was a
nice example of the current "conventional thinking" refuted by that other
story yesterday about how England escaped the malthusian trap. Why is this
story still here and the newer one gone already? Jared Diamond is very useful
in this field, so maybe vote up some of his newer stuff?

