[paganel]

> (i.e. loud and busy environments with many strangers, often physically closer than comfortable) is unnatural to begin with.

That's very natural when it comes to life in an urban setting. Love it or hate it, we wouldn't have been here now (I'm talking from a civilizational pov) without us humans moving into the cities.

[randallsquared]

I think the argument is that the urban setting itself is ancestrally unnatural. Only a tiny proportion of humans lived in areas full of strangers in close proximity until the last hundred or two hundred years, which is not long enough for any related changes to spread widely given generation length.

[steve1977]

> I think the argument is that the urban setting itself is ancestrally unnatural.

That was my point, yes.

[datsci_est_2015]

I would even argue that being surrounded by people is a natural state. Being isolated in a suburban home or an automobile is probably just as unnatural as being “surrounded by strangers”.

Our ancient ancestors probably did all of the following within eyesight and earshot of around 40 people:

  - Eating
  - Drinking
  - Defecating
  - Fornicating
  - Bathing
  - Exercising

Privacy and isolation are a very modern phenomenon. Even in the 19th century social norms around fornication and defecation and the privacy expected are much different than today.

Edit: I’m also deeply fascinated by the ability of historical sociolinguistics to give us insight into cultural attitudes towards different topics. Consider the evolution of and the attitude towards the expletives “fuck” and “Jesus Christ!”

[steve1977]

But those 40 people were likely more or less consistent and known to you and you also had direct or implied trust built up with them.

That's fundamentally different from an anonymous mass of people in a city. I've seen and heard much more than 40 people (many of them different every day) before I even reach the office in the morning.

[watwut]

> you also had direct or implied trust built up with them

This part is definitely not true. By all I read about the history, the abusive or hostile "I cant escape" situation was simple fact of life. They get less prevalent when you can leave easily, more prevalent when you are dependent.

> But those 40 people were likely more or less consistent

Not necessarily, people started to organize into larger groups basically whenever they could.

[datsci_est_2015]

Two extremes, equally unnatural, was simply my point.

Either you have to trick your mind that the people who are going about the same rituals with you shoulder-to-shoulder are part of the same tribe as you: using the same bus, coffee shop, elevator.

Or you have to trick your mind that being completely alone and going hours, sometimes days, without opening your mouth to communicate with someone or exercise the part of your brain that reads facial cues or even smell the hormones of another human (good or bad) is also somehow okay.

Having done both (2 major metros, as well as suburban and WFH life), I’ve found the former to be easier for me, personally. I also find suburban and rural people to be generally more misanthropic than urban people, which of course has some selection bias. Exurban people seem to be the most misanthropic, by far (shout out Dallas-Fort Worth).

But the point is, being surrounded by people day-in and day-out doesn’t seem to me to make people misanthropic on aggregate - otherwise cities would be an even worse place to exist. It’s the humans that make it bearable.

[steve1977]

> we wouldn't have been here now (I'm talking from a civilizational pov) without us humans moving into the cities.

What do you have in mind specifically?

Edit: I'm aware that statistically, there's more inventions in metropolitan areas. However I'm not sure how much of that we can really attribute to causal effects that are unique to cities, especially today. Obviously, many universities are in metropolitan areas, but on the other hand, we have many tools for remote collaboration that we didn't have 200 years ago. So I'm not sure if cities are not an outdated concept.