[justthinkhn]

Don’t eat the bugs. You have an innate disgust reaction to bugs and to the idea of eating them. It evolved over millions of years. Heed nature’s warning. They only eat bugs in places where it was historically necessary due to extreme famine. These activists trying to get you to eat bugs don’t have your best interests at heart. Eat meat. It is one of the great liberties man enjoys.

[bloak]

I don't think disgust is "innate". A typical English person finds squid disgusting, but is happy to eat various kinds of cheese, including ones like Stilton with mould on them. Someone in Japan, on the other hand ...

Also, everyone has heard at least one story of a young child eating an earthworm they found in the garden. It seems to be only after seeing the reaction of older children and adults that they learn to find that disgusting.

[HighlandSpring]

> I don't think disgust is "innate".

Oh it is and what til you hear about couple more fears we didn't have to learn through experience:

> Examples of innate fear include fears that are triggered by predators, pain, heights, rapidly approaching objects, and ancestral threats such as snakes and spiders. Animals and humans detect and respond more rapidly to threatening stimuli than to nonthreatening stimuli in the natural world.

Some adaptations are so worthwhile they get wired into our biology!

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32852735

[prometheus76]

Also, fear of loud, sudden noises, and fear of heights/falling are very ancient and show up very early in development.

[ZeroGravitas]

Some fun science on babies and fear of falling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WanGt1G6ScA

[goethes_kind]

> A typical English person finds squid disgusting

Not true.

[xienze]

> I don't think disgust is "innate".

Sure it is. Did someone have to teach you not to eat shit? Or green meat that smells like death? Certain smells and physical appearances trigger reactions in our bodies that tell us "stay away." That there might be certain groups of people that act in contrary ways is an exception, and doesn't disprove anything.

[mrguyorama]

You haven't been around many babies have you? You absolutely have to stop them from trying to eat shit

[jessaustin]

Babies in my family have gorged on giant cockroaches when not sufficiently supervised...

[ZeroGravitas]

What's with the sudden uptick in people talking about eating bugs and eating meat (and liberties, billionaires, elites?)?

Those two things aren't the only two options, and no one is forcing anyone to do anything, which makes me think this is some attempt by the meat industry to paint all the people who are telling you to eat less meat (like your doctor) as authoritarian lunatics out to undermine civilization.

[mypastself]

They’re likely alluding to articles posted on The World Economic Forum’s website. WEF is a group of wealthy, influential individuals whose goals include building what they believe is a more sustainable global economy (and society). Some of their more infamous articles have become memes (“You’ll own nothing and be happy”, “You will eat the bugs”).

The kookier versions of anti-WEF arguments veer into conspiracy theory territory, but there’s something to be said about out-of-touch wealthy individuals attempting to wield their influence to reduce e.g. developing nations use of cheap-but-nonrenewable energy sources, or reduce their consumption of more efficient sources of protein.

[ZeroGravitas]

I checked out their site, their news section has this link at the moment:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-world-econom...

> Own nothing, be happy. You may have heard the phrase. It started life as a screenshot, culled from the internet by an anonymous antisemitic account on the image board 4chan. “Own nothing, be happy – The Jew World Order 2030,″ said the post, which went viral among extremists.

Well, that's reassuring.

Meanwhile, the actual content on the WEF site is monumentally boring:

> Greater action on food loss to ensure more food is preserved for human consumption

> According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, globally 13.8% of food is lost from harvest to retail. And, of course, mitigating food loss also brings cost savings and economic benefits, while reporting can help assess the efforts to minimise food loss.

[mypastself]

The article was removed from the website after the uproar, 4chan crazies or not. It’s preserved here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s...

The author later clarified they were predicting a possible future, “for better or for worse”. They didn’t outright deny they supported that specific idea, though, nor does it directly contradict WEF’s stated goals (although it’s on a much shorter timeline).

[ZeroGravitas]

So the secret conspiracy is clean energy, self-driving taxis, protected environment, and more leisure time due to increased automation?

And when intentionally publishing the plan for this secret conspiracy, on their website, cunningly disguised as a fictional take on the near future, they accidentally left in bits where they worried about digital surveillance which luckly the anti-semites on 4Chan noticed, and saved us from this dark future?

> Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.

[california2077]

>So the secret conspiracy is clean energy, self-driving taxis, protected environment, and more leisure time due to increased automation?

I agree. It's completely idiotic. Clearly, all those billionaire, industrialists and politicians have our best interests in mind. They simply want a better future for all. They would probably be more inclusive in their decision-making, but it's just that an average person out there is too dumb to make any important decisions.

[mypastself]

Completely agreed. The conspiracy theories are both stupid and evil. But I don’t think being vary of the WEF or their ideas is completely misguided.

[throwaway4aday]

Nice of you to cherry pick the "good" stuff from the article. The things people take issue with are being forced to rent everything from some unknown overlords who now are the only ones allowed to own anything. You're also required to share your personal accommodations with others. Apparently money is not allowed either since no one actually pays rent but they do work so it's some version of "from each according to their ability, to each according to his needs"

> we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.

It also posits that anyone who does not submit to this regime is simply left to rot in the countryside. Implying that they live the equivalent of 19th century life probably with no electricity, running water, or medicine. Sorry, you don't get any technology if you don't want to be a serf.

> My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.

Living in this society also apparently means that everything you do or think is recorded and that it can be used against you, presumably by the people in power should your behavior ever displease them.

> I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.

And apparently a whole lot of people died on the way to this utopia.

> We lost way too many people before we realized that we could do things differently.

No wonder a lot of people reacted poorly to this but I think that was the point. They wanted to do a limited hangout to gauge public reaction to some version of their envisioned future. That allows them to manage the blowback by saying it was just a silly article after which they delete it and then paint all of its detractors as racists and right wing nutjobs which is SOP at this point.

[somenameforme]

The issue which really started the discussion on this was not the article, which I suspect relatively few read, but the Tweet/Video that the World Economic Forum published. You can find an archive of it here: https://archive.org/details/world-economic-forum-presents-th....

It was universally poorly received, which led to them removing the video/Tweet, and it's now being censored on platforms like YouTube. Their predictions, as stated in the video, to happen by 2030, include:

- You'll own nothing.

- You'll rent everything.

- You'll eat less meat.

- "Western values will have been tested to the breaking point."

The WEF, if you are not aware, is not just some random crazy think-tank. It's a collective that, as a whole, is arguably the single most influential group in existence. Their backing companies [1] include Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Mozilla, WalMart, the banks, and the vast majority of massive companies you can think of. Their individual members/delegates [2] include chief executives, heads of state, and so on. The sort of group that doesn't just make predictions, but makes predictions happen.

That such a group thought society at large would respond positively to that video is simply odd. That they hold the views expressed in that video are something much worse than odd. These people, are at a minimum, unimaginably far out of touch with a society that they overtly aim to puppeteer.

[1] - https://www.weforum.org/partners#A

[2] - https://qz.com/1787762/davos-delegates-are-categorized-from-...

[ZeroGravitas]

Your link seems broken, but by googling I think I found the video on youtube.

Is this the same one that says "1 Billion people will be displaced by climate change"?

Because, that seems like a prediction of what might happen in the future, rather than a wishlist item of Bill Gates and the rest of the Pentaverat.

The video seems to be a very brief summary of this process:

https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GFC_Annual_Report_2019_202...

I've already found their plans for another dystopia linked from there, they are so brazen:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/backcasting-from-a-fu...

[somenameforme]

The URL is quite odd in that it ends with a period which it seems that Hacker News is parsing, more normally, as a period instead of a part of the URL. In the following URL, manually add a period at the end:

https://archive.org/details/world-economic-forum-presents-th....

[justthinkhn]

It’s not a secret agenda. The elite intellectual class is coalescing around the idea that meat consumption is bad for the planet and needs to be phased out by dramatically raising the cost of meat.

[MichaelCollins]

> needs to be phased out by dramatically raising the cost of meat.

They of course will continue to eat meat, continue to own rural property, continue to drive cars and travel for leisure on jets. Their solution to all problems is to maintain their privilege while forcing the underclasses make all the sacrifices.

[namdnay]

who is the "elite intellectual class"? does it include everyone on this forum?

[landemva]

I thought this was just speculative until I was recently in a Hilton that had the changing video displays in the lobby and elevators. The displays were promoting their 'sustainable' pasta with crickets dish in the restaurant.

[smcl]

You can get parasites from eating meat too, you know

[JoachimS]

Calling people idiots (as OP did) is unnecessary, but do we really need whataboutism?

The point here is that insects are proposed as a new, high volume source of proteins, as a way to reduce meat consumption.

Humans have fairly good understanding of parastites, bacteria etc related to meat. And have established routines for raising animals and preparing meat to minimize the problems.

As far as I know, humans have not the same level of knowledge, nor processes related to mass production and consumption of insects.

The paper shows that there are substantial parasitical risks with eating insects. Something, at least as far as I am aware, is not generally known or talked about. Importantly things like applying heat (cooking), which generally works to reduce problems with meat, according to the artible, seems NOT to be effective against parasites in insects.

Let's focus on that discussion.

[mrpopo]

> seems NOT to be effective against parasites in insects.

I don't see this in the article. They explain in a paragraph that cooking and/or freezing are effective, and that simple drying was "considered promising". With a little drop of caution.

> However, there is a need of thorough evaluation of insect processing methods, including temperatures and time of cooking / freezing to prevent possible parasitic infections

[pessimizer]

> Calling people idiots (as OP did) is unnecessary, but do we really need whataboutism?

Let's say I propose cars as an alternative to motorcycles, and you respond by citing the enormous numbers of deaths from car accidents. Am I doing a whataboutism if I mention that motorcycles have accidents too?

edit: "whataboutism" is an anticommunist propaganda term meant to defend segregation, but to the extent that it has a meaning, that meaning is: When I mention thing A that you do, it's a distraction when you mention totally unrelated thing B that I do. It's not when I criticize you over doing thing A, and you mention that I also do thing A.

[smcl]

Your edit contains a really nice concise definition of what is and what isn't whataboutism. Sadly I find that it's often deployed as a defense like "you can't accuse me of X, I accused you of X first!" and it's tiresome

[smcl]

This isn't whataboutism at all. The topic at hand is parasitic diseases coming from eating insects. Someone is saying this is a reason not to eat any insects and to stick to meat. Hence my comment about meat, in fact it is not only relevant but is one of the reasons two of the major religions to shun certain types of meat.

[fredley]

Have you ever witnessed an animal being slaughtered? I have an innate disgust reaction to that too.

[throwaway41423]

Only the human species is able to surviva in all climate zones. Cultural evolution allows us to utilize everything around us, including certain insects.

You are making a sweeping statement by saying, "eating [all] the bugs" is dangerous and _contrary to our nature_. Also, you should be careful with the word "idiot".

[Moosdijk]

Do you have a source for such wild claims?

[boxed]

We have an aversion to insects for other reasons, don't get confused.

[epgui]

Just decades ago people in the West had the same reaction to lobster, crab and other seafood. Modern society needs to go beyond animal instinct.

[chucktingle]

> Modern society needs to go beyond animal instinct.

Yes, especially when it's a certain minority of "modern" society that determines those needs for the society as a whole. I can assure you billionaires won't be eating bugs.

[MichaelCollins]

> Just decades ago people in the West had the same reaction to lobster,

Aversion to lobster was an American phenomenon, lobsters have been considered a delicacy in coastal communities around Europe since the Roman era, possibly earlier than that. In the American north-east, people were initially averse to eating lobster because they were originally from inland parts of Europe and didn't know much about seafood. But they did figure it out as they developed their own coastal palates.

We've all been living alongside bugs this whole time. If they were good to eat, they'd be popular by now.

[richarddaystrom]

Meat is murder

Tasty, tasty murder

[mildmotive]

>Meat is murder

So are bugs. It’s also worse because you have to kill more of them.