[perl4ever]

Many of the first Europeans attempting to colonize North America starved/froze to death until they utilized the knowledge of the people who were already living here. So I think the omni-competence that people like to believe in from living closer to nature doesn't actually exist.

[derefr]

That's a fun point: we aren't differentiated eukaryotic cells in an organism, each fixed in our purpose. We're humans with malleable brains that can—if some disaster befalls us—respond by finding the people with the specialized disaster-response knowledge and learning from them. We don't have to pre-load the compendium of all human knowledge into every human; we can just communicate skills as they become needed.