[Scott_Sanderson]

(Paraphrasing Sapiens): 1,000 years ago a person living in China had a varied diet, spent time catching food in a forest, was not exposed to industrial pollution, had large amounts of free time and time spent socializing with other humans.

Today, a person living in the same spot in China works 6.5 days per week doing the same task all day in an electronics factory, lives in a dorm with other workers and away from family, has no privacy, suffers from massive industrial pollution and noise.

Humans are adapted for the hunter gatherer life and this is likely the environment wherein human flourishing can be expected.

Each revolution (agricultural, industrial, information) has chipped away at that life more and more until it does not exist.

When Jared Diamond said in the 1990s that the agricultural revolution was the worst thing to happen to humans, there was outrage and he was forced to apologize. Now, that thinking is becoming accepted.

[mediumdeviation]

This comment is the following Douglas Adams quote, but unironically

> Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

Also if you believed the Chinese were hunter-gatherers 1000 years ago then you might want to read up on Song dynasty (960–1279AD) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_dynasty

[jeanjogr]

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human being to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.

- Industrial Society and its future, by Dr. Theodore John Kaczynski

[jessep]

I know this is pedantic, but I think your point applies to 10,000 years ago :) 1000 years ago many empires had already risen and fallen in China and it was a centralized agricultural civilization. Not an expert.

Also fall of civilizations podcast is awesome!

Here’s a timeline of dynasties.

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chem/hd_chem.htm

[killtimeatwork]

> 1,000 years ago a person living in China had a varied diet, spent time catching food in a forest, was not exposed to industrial pollution

There was plenty of pollution in the middle ages. People were burning wood to heat up their non-isolated homes. Not to mention that, at least in Europe, 1000 years ago homes were heated up in central open fire (chimneys were not invented yet) and so basically the whole house was a chimney. People sometimes literally couldn't see the other end of the room they were in, due to smoke. Welcome to primitive technologies...

[Animats]

Here's a writeup of a sustenance hunter in Alaska.[1] He has guns, steel traps, ammo, and satellite TV now, but he did grow up without electricity.

Not many people can be supported that way. He has 35 miles of traplines.

[1] https://www.nrafamily.org/articles/2019/7/12/forty-below-and...

[platistocrates]

Have you considered some people actually ENJOY the work, leisure, convenience, busy-ness and thrill of fast paced modern life?

In what other era could I instantaneously, from the comfort of my home, despite a raging pandemic, inform you of your ignorance?

Technology is as essential to utopia as milk is to milkshake. Your cynicism has destroyed your sense of LIFE!

The internet is educating you! Wake up! You live in the future!

[slopey]

> Have you considered some people actually ENJOY the work, leisure, convenience, busy-ness and thrill of fast paced modern life?

I wouldn't consider the modern system of wage-slavery to be a life of leisure, convenience, and certainly not enjoyable for the thrill of a fast paced modern-life. As the above commenter observed, the lifestyle of the modern worker is anything but leisurely and thrilling, rather, more reminiscent of the life of a caged bird. While this may not be true for the privileged, for millions of factory workers this is an everyday reality.

> Technology is as essential to utopia as milk is to milkshake. Your cynicism has destroyed your sense of LIFE!

My take on this is more similar to what the author of culture.io's manifesto wrote:

"To blindly reject technology is to reject an aspect of our humanity. To blindly embrace technology is similarly misguided. We should approach technology in the same way we approach any other human system: by evaluating how it supports or undermines individual well-being."

Technology aids the development of the utopia, but to simply accept all forms of technological development as beneficial for humanity is short-sighted. Indeed, in the words of the author, "The point is simply that we should always treat individuals as ends, never as means." If the utopia is not individual-centric, then it is no utopia at all. Therefore, if technological innovation comes at the cost of the livelihood and well-being of individuals, then we must reject it.

This, I think, was what the above commenter was communicating and what I agree with.

[killtimeatwork]

> I wouldn't consider the modern system of wage-slavery to be a life of leisure, convenience, and certainly not enjoyable for the thrill of a fast paced modern-life. As the above commenter observed, the lifestyle of the modern worker is anything but leisurely and thrilling, rather, more reminiscent of the life of a caged bird.

Being a farmer in the middle ages wasn't no picnic either. That's just the nature of work, I'm afraid, to the degree that it was even put into the story of Adam and Eve's banishment ("In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread").

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> Have you considered some people actually ENJOY the work, leisure, convenience, busy-ness and thrill of fast paced modern life?

Some people enjoy getting kicked in the balls for the sexual thrill. Is that supposed to mean that we should all be getting kicked in the balls?

[redisman]

> agricultural revolution was the worst thing to happen to humans

Funny because that was one of Rousseaus core ideas from the 1700s.

[yarky]

A 1000 years ago a stronger someone could easily decide to steal your lunch, not today. Well it depends where I guess ...

[throwaway42212]

Someone infinitely stronger than me takes part of my lunch everyday and punishes me if I make a mistake.

Humans have been conquered, for lack of a better word.

[yarky]

Sure but anybody can arguably choose between living in the forest and being part of civilization. I agree with the philosophical point, just not sure of why would somebody rather fight in the forest

[throwaway42212]

It is illegal to live in the forest in most "civilized" societies.

[jay_kyburz]

>> agricultural revolution was the worst thing to happen to humans

I think its an outrageous statement because having an abundant supply of food is unquestionably good. It's allows us to not worry about food supply and focus on other problems in our society.

We can have full-time scientists, doctors, police etc.

I think its outrageous to say everybody should be gathering food all day because they can't find anything more useful to do.

There is so much around us that needs doing!

[DC1350]

> having an abundant supply of food is unquestionably good

It's not unquestionably good. It allows a small number of people to have really great lives but blows up the population of people with terrible lives. Most people in all of human history had short and miserable lives where they slaved away all day to make bread and die from war or disease. They would have been better off as hunter gatherers. Is that worth it? I don't really know

[LargoLasskhyfv]

The great hunters gathered it would be more convenient to have the spoils of war served to them by slaves. Ecofacism will hold the masses managable, while still allowing for real hunting in the forbidden natural reserves and great adventures in space!

Spaceward Ho!

[kmonsen]

I think that is a questionable statement. Without agriculture there is no modern medicine which provides a lot of life quality, also there is very little starvation in the world today.

[teeray]

I would recommend reading the referenced title (“Sapiens”), as it has some interesting arguments that may surprise you. It’s difficult to boil down the nuance of its argument into an HN comment.

[michaelbrave]

makes me think of children of dune wishing for the desert

[api]

If the implicit goal of life were the enjoyment of it, the world would be a radically different place. A rational hedonic species would have a peaceful society, use some technology but only when it directly improved life, and would regulate things like economy and reproduction to keep them within strict limits and to keep any system from "running away." Preventing the emergence of any "Red Queen's race" would be a high priority.

But that's not the world we live in, and that's not what we are.

The implicit goal of life, as resulting from the nature of its embodiment as a self-replicating catalytic system, is the replication of genes, organisms, ideas, societies, and possibly eventually biospheres. Life makes life to make life.

The runaway industrial/technological system has been driven by the implicit drive of various living systems to replicate. There are more humans today than ever before, and more ideas in human brains than ever before. The fact that this has been achieved at the expense of other living things is an artifact of the limited size of our biosphere, but run this system long enough and it's possible that it will lead to the full-scale replication of entire biospheres:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8JyvzU0CXU

Over a long enough time span, life as a whole may come out ahead.

When life gets to other biospheres what will it do? Replicate, diversify, evolve, and replicate more. Remember "grey goo" from 90s nanotechnology speculation? It already exists. It's you. Life is grey goo, and if nothing stops it it will eventually convert as much matter and energy in the universe into life as physically possible before heat death.

Pleasure is an effect, not a cause. The things that please you do so because they've been wired that way to get you to survive and reproduce. Since humans are complex and social, our pleasures and motives are similarly complex. We experience pleasure from eating protein, fat, and sugar because it nourishes us. Socializing is pleasurable because we are semi-colonial organisms that depend on socializing for survival. Sex feels good because it leads to reproduction and in humans (and many other complex creatures) cements critical social bonds.

Change some neurological wiring and you'd derive immense pleasure from sitting in front of a screen solving problems for 40 hours a week. There are a few non-neurotypical people who do.

I am not necessarily arguing that this is all there is to existence or consciousness. We don't really know what consciousness is, and it may be a broader phenomenon somehow than biological life. But as far as biological embodied life is concerned, this is how it works.

I'm also not arguing that no improvement to our condition is possible. Being intelligent and self-aware we have some ability to drive this thing. Yet nature to be commanded must be obeyed. Anything we do to improve things probably has to work with the overall thermodynamic direction of life, not against it. This is probably why all utopian ideologies that revolve around constraint and reaction eventually fail or are washed away by a tide of less conservative social phenomena.

[DC1350]

Take the Tedpill my brother

[btown]

Counterpoint: communications and the creation of a global community can be profoundly life-changing for the better for many individuals. People who are LGBTQIA+, people who are neurodiverse, people who are curious about deeply learning about specific subjects, people who have any interests that differ from the social orthodoxies of their immediate physically-colocated tribes - finding that one is not alone can be transformative. Certainly there is a balance, and perhaps we have seen examples where user-generated content has become so prevalent and hyper-optimized that it permits dangerous levels of propaganda to spread. But I truly believe that a balance can be found.