[tptacek]

Help me understand why this isn't a sublimely silly argument. The era of hunter-gatherers spans the time from 12:00 midnight on Diamond's metaphorical clock all the way to 11:54PM. Virtually every advancement in human history, from the Enlightenment through the germ theory of illness all the way to the Internet, occurred after that time. What ordinary person would elect to time-travel one-way to 11:30PM on Diamond's clock, as opposed to living at 11:59PM?

By Diamond's reasoning, we could live far longer on this planet if we lived like chimpanzees, scavenging what we could from the natural bounty of the land without bending it to our will. But I don't particularly want to be a chimp. Couldn't his argument be reframed as "the worst mistake in the history of the world is the human race"?

[kryogen1c]

> By Diamond's reasoning, we could live far longer on this planet if we lived like chimpanzees

The funny thing about that argument is that chimpanzees, and all other creatures, exist in some kind of hierarchy, usually involving sex and power. His premise is simply wrong.

For a more convincing argument along these lines, see Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_%28novel%29?wprov=sf...

It posits that, amongst other things, agriculture (food supply) is allowing us to violate laws of nature by overextending population beyond what is sustainable. Of course, you can't violate a scientific law, so the metaphor used in the book is akin to a plane careening towards the ground and everyone claiming they took off and flew so there can be no problem now.

[maxerickson]

That he lives in Los Angeles rather than New Guinea suggests that the framing is a device more than it is a serious argument.

[vondur]

I’m seriously wondering if the article is just trolling.

[RachelF]

No there's a serious belief in this, mainly among well-fed white intellectuals who believe in the "noble savage'.

Yuval Harari, author of the excellent "Sapiens" also believes it.

[chx]

> Yuval Harari, author of the excellent "Sapiens"

Uh huh, Sapiens as excellent... there are ... problems. Some:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5613ac/in_hi...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4xvsia/how_d...

[couchand]

I'm confident it is, though back in 1987 it was just called sarcasm.

[worldsayshi]

I'm all for enlightenment, in principle and ideologically. But if it fails to solve our existential problems it also looses much of its raison d'etre.

I'm not sure if I would rather live in a doomed and enlightened (sounds like an oxymoron) society than an ignorant but stable world of hunter gathering tribes.

What good is all our technological advances if it also leads to ecological collapse that nullifies all of it?

[tboughen]

This is false dichotomy. For me the question is “of hunter-gathering and agriculture, which better leads to sustained and sustainable technological development to ensure the permanent* survival of our species”.

*permanent being like Musk’s notion of humanity being a multi-planetary species

[bad_user]

“Permanent survival of the species” is not a goal.

When in the current climate I worry about the life my 8 year old son will have and that of my future grandchildren, I couldn’t give a damn about any permanent survival of the species plan that people like Musk might have.

I am also not convinced that technological advancement couldn’t have happened with hunting-gathering societies. At the very least people would have had more time, whereas right now I worry we might not survive another century.

Also, fun fact: life on Mars would be much worse and much more expensive than anywhere on Earth. Fixing Earth to ensure our survival for another 1000 years is more doable than colonizing Mars in any meaningful way. And yes, we should colonize Mars, but we are unable to fix problems in our own back yard and the clock is ticking.

[pvg]

why this isn't a sublimely silly argument.

It's not really intended to be much of a serious argument, is my guess. In 1987 the idea that members of agricultural societies didn't necessarily live better lives than hunter-gathers wasn't as widely known or accepted. He presents that idea in a popular magazine in proto-clickbaity terms.

[imbokodo]

> What ordinary person would elect to time-travel one-way to 11:30PM on Diamond's clock, as opposed to living at 11:59PM?

Perhaps those immigrants getting on boats that are so much in the news in Europe and the US?

Things exist which did not then, but many of the problems which exist now did not exist then. Global warming, anthropocene mass extinction, discussion of a new nuclear cold war on Russia's western border - go back 10,000 years and these problems fade away, particularly ones that could lead to human or other mass species extinction.

Of course being human in 2018 seems ok to white American heterosexual makes of the upper middle class (or higher), but that is a small percentage of humanity.

The hunter-gatherer bands in the Amazon don't seem anxious to enter Brazilian wage slavery. Why should they, mining interests are currently massacring them.

[maxerickson]

In the alternative hunter gatherer world, the majority of us just wouldn't exist.

(The carrying capacity of the Earth for that lifestyle is likely in the low hundreds of millions)

So you'd be exchanging your privileged few for those privileged to be alive.

[WalterBright]

More like a few tens of millions.