The author makes a good point and seemingly provides good data to support their thesis, but it doesn't overcome the bias I have against several argument templates which are almost always wrong:
* Idealization of "hunter-gatherer" societies -- this is the root of many a fad diet and self-improvement methodology, but whenever I'm faced with a choice of doing something a hunter-gatherer would have done or doing what I can do now in modernity, I almost always choose modernity. Medicine, sanitation, pooping indoors, and not dying at 20 is very appealing. The "freedom" afforded to people in the past is a great attractor (as a communist in undergrad, I'd frequently hear how people in pre-industrial societies rarely worked, and how THAT was the inflection point where everything went to shit). But ultimately, most of us agree the future is better than the past.
* Argument ad Evolution -- Evolution frequently produces working machines, but it nearly never produces optimal machines. No architect would design a building with one central support structure, and no camera-maker would occlude the light sensor with a wire. Most of the advances of human society have come from disregarding evolution and the "natural" order of things, not from adhering to them.
* "____ cannot be taught" -- in this case, creativity. Artistic schools have existed for millennia; whole areas of modernity are dedicated to creatively solving problems, and it would be very surprising if there were really no verbally expressible heuristics or even systematic exercises that lead to a person subjected to them becoming better at creating ideas. I'm not sure what the measures used in the article are, and am skeptical of them because good measures are hard to create. But I can note that society as a whole remains fairly creative, and that we haven't descended into a pit of Idiocracy as of yet.
As with most things, it's likely that some combination of the two approaches is correct. The current educational system and parental culture could probably use significant overhaul, but it's also not currently based in very much science. It's likely that whatever optimal solution exists relies on brain machinery created by evolution, but the way that machinery is honed will be by a process that has never existed in nature (similar to how the fat-creation process is honed by hyperstimulating foods). I would personally like it if the best way for education to happen were by a process that was fun, engaging, and centered around the autonomy of learners, but that may not be the case, and I'd rather have well-educated and capable future generations of humans than have humans that are as similar as possible to their ancestors.
> Medicine, sanitation, pooping indoors, and not dying at 20 is very appealing.
IIRC, the low life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is mostly due to the high infant/child mortality. You can see similar life expectancy graphs in several animal species. Basically, once you reach a certain age, you have a high probability of living up to a decently high age.
Regarding "Medicine, sanitation, pooping indoors", well, all of these became problems because of the Agricultural Revolution, where people lived in densely populated areas together with their domesticated animals. Diseases slowly spread from the animals to the humans, and the density and lack of sanitization increased mortality by helping disease spread quickly. The Agricultural Revolution also forced humans to do back breaking jobs for which our bodies were not built for (working hunched over in the fields, or carrying heavy weights on our backs), and shrunk our varied diet into mostly eating grains and grain-based foods.
So I think you should probably re-think your poor view of hunter-gatherer societies.
People always quote this, and I always wonder why it makes any difference.
People in hunter-gatherer societies weren't "more healthy" than we are (as you imply in a later comment). Most people in hunter-gatherer societies died as infants. I don't consider that healthy, and I consider infants people.
On average, most hunter-gatherers died at 20. In reality, virtually all hunter-gatherers died at 0, and the few that survived might live to 60.
Again: this is the "things were better in the past" / "evolution is always right" argument template, and it's virtually always wrong.
It makes a difference because people assume that it's been a constant improvement ever since hunter-gatherer times, and it probably wasn't. I'm saying that the quality of life for most people probably went downhill ever since the Agricultural Revolution, and what humanity has been doing ever since was trying improve it using medicine, science, sanitization, and more.
I'm not saying that the hunter-gatherers were healthier than we are today (note my use of "might've" in the original post), but evidence shows that the lives of people in post-hunter-gatherer societies was worse.
Nothing. I was just pointing out the fact that the low life expectancy doesn't necessarily mean that people were less healthy. In fact, they might've been even healthier than we are (more active, a varied diet, etc...).
* Idealization of "hunter-gatherer" societies -- this is the root of many a fad diet and self-improvement methodology, but whenever I'm faced with a choice of doing something a hunter-gatherer would have done or doing what I can do now in modernity, I almost always choose modernity. Medicine, sanitation, pooping indoors, and not dying at 20 is very appealing. The "freedom" afforded to people in the past is a great attractor (as a communist in undergrad, I'd frequently hear how people in pre-industrial societies rarely worked, and how THAT was the inflection point where everything went to shit). But ultimately, most of us agree the future is better than the past.
* Argument ad Evolution -- Evolution frequently produces working machines, but it nearly never produces optimal machines. No architect would design a building with one central support structure, and no camera-maker would occlude the light sensor with a wire. Most of the advances of human society have come from disregarding evolution and the "natural" order of things, not from adhering to them.
* "____ cannot be taught" -- in this case, creativity. Artistic schools have existed for millennia; whole areas of modernity are dedicated to creatively solving problems, and it would be very surprising if there were really no verbally expressible heuristics or even systematic exercises that lead to a person subjected to them becoming better at creating ideas. I'm not sure what the measures used in the article are, and am skeptical of them because good measures are hard to create. But I can note that society as a whole remains fairly creative, and that we haven't descended into a pit of Idiocracy as of yet.
As with most things, it's likely that some combination of the two approaches is correct. The current educational system and parental culture could probably use significant overhaul, but it's also not currently based in very much science. It's likely that whatever optimal solution exists relies on brain machinery created by evolution, but the way that machinery is honed will be by a process that has never existed in nature (similar to how the fat-creation process is honed by hyperstimulating foods). I would personally like it if the best way for education to happen were by a process that was fun, engaging, and centered around the autonomy of learners, but that may not be the case, and I'd rather have well-educated and capable future generations of humans than have humans that are as similar as possible to their ancestors.