[crazygringo]

Counterpoint: nearly all of those of us in developed countries are now better-off with agriculture, due to:

- Even more variety of fresh, healthy fruits, vegetables, and meats than before (especially in winter)

- Lives that are incredibly richer (all of reading, writing, culture, and art)

- Vastly lower mortality (fell from a tree and seriously injured yourself? Thanks to modern medicine, you're not dead)

The way I look at it, agriculture made things way worse... until we advanced far enough to get way, way better.

And even if you argue there are some populations in developing countries which are still worse-off, it's hard to believe that's going to last long as economic development progresses.

[thrden]

Even in the least developed countries on earth life expectancy is nearly double the 26 years quoted in the article. This article feels less like serious analysis, and instead the product of over-problematizing

[waterhouse]

The article specifies "Life expectancy at birth", which, many people have pointed out, is strongly skewed by the number of kids that die in childbirth or at a very young age. I'd be much more interested in life expectancy for those who survive to, say, 15 or 18. Unfortunately, Diamond doesn't give those numbers.

[drb91]

A long life does not imply a quality life. A short life does not imply a lesser life.

[chaboud]

I have two flush toilets where I live.

That, and protection from mosquitos, basically assures that I'm living a better life.

[drb91]

Well, I see this as a fearful worldview. Imagine instead a world without working in an office, or a world without living in a city. It takes a little, but not much, imagination to understand how that might be attractive to someone. Or perhaps imagine living in your evolutionarily suited habitat, if that’s easier to see. Sure, the shitty lives are particularly violent. But it’s a world where your life is dictated by your relationship with your environment and the people you know, not by people far away you have no access to.

[dogma1138]

Imagine a world where you can’t get clean water so you live a life where a worm uses acid to dig it self out of your foot once every few months then you contract some tropical disease and shit yourself to death.

[drb91]

...a fearful worldview, and a lack of imagination.

[Pimpus]

> - Even more variety of fresh, healthy fruits, vegetables, and meats than before (especially in winter)

You have more variety, but not of more “fresh” foods. The only fresh food you can eat will always be local, so the variety only went up for foods transported from elsewhere… but fresh food in general is getting harder to acquire in Western society. Most people don’t eat fresh food at all so this point is just wrong. In traditional villages people are not afraid to eat vegetables with bugs and dirt on them -- that's what it means to eat fresh, and they don't need pesticides or preservatives.

> - Lives that are incredibly richer (all of reading, writing, culture, and art)

Our culture is richer, but I'm not sure if the life of the average person is. You do have access to an absolute wealth of rich cultural material, but the majority of people do not utilize it. I’ve lived in traditional villages* and people there have surprisingly rich cultures, even if it was not mass-produced and massively-available, vapid nonsense. Also, contact with nature is more meaningful than most modern time-wasting activities like working in an office, commuting, or checking social media.

*Agricultural societies, but I suspect pre-agricultural cultures were also very rich.

- Vastly lower mortality

Not sure what the data says about mortality rates. As far as health goes, most people in Western society are incredibly unhealthy. The amount of obese people in America is frankly revolting, not to mention the epidemics of hormone imbalances, digestive issues, awful posture, awful skin, etc. and the medicine/supplement regimens of pills that people have become dependent on to function or live, etc. The means to live more healthily are available, but the average person is not healthier than people with traditional lifestyles. We are weaker, more useless and have poorer sex lives.

> (fell from a tree and seriously injured yourself? Thanks to modern medicine, you're not dead)

Thanks to modern medicine, you’re not dead, but you’re bankrupt due to medical fees and addicted to painkillers and your gut flora is destroyed by antibiotics. The modern diet has little gut-promoting effect so you have to buy probiotic pills now. Etc.

[djtriptych]

Counter counters:

- re variety of food: Americans are among the fattest people in history.

- re richer lives: reading and writing is for the literate. Not guaranteed by agriculture. I might argue that the creation of excess directly contributed to a treatment of education as a precious resource.

Culture and art are not dependent on and predate agriculture.

- re: mortality rate. We don’t die by falling from trees, but we’re also much worse at being in trees. Monkeys are pretty unlikely to die by falling out of a tree. We are worse at operating our own bodies in proportion to our reliance on modern medicine

[bjourne]

Better off at the cost of destroying most ecological systems in the world and pumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. We'll see how long it lasts.

[autokad]

if we continued to live as 'chimps' as some have worded it, the chances of extinction for humans, and all life on this planet is 100%.

for all the damage done to ecological systems, now the chances of humans and some of those systems actually surviving beyond the life left in this planet is now some number above zero. that's a good thing imo

[sk5t]

Due to the expanding Sun / asteroid / supervolcano / superbug / something else? Do you think the universe cares about the inevitable, natural cessation of life on this planet?