<p>aw thanks for the reply :).</p>
<p>i guess my impression was just that farming got worse so they went to cities, not it stayed the same and cities arose which were better. there is a big difference there. i specified too much. i really don’t know what happened at all. that was the story i made up to fit the impression.</p>
<p>anyway - that is the key difference. did people switch lifestyles due to determining the new way was better than the old way, or due to liking it more, or did the old way get worse or become untenable, so they had to switch it up?</p>
<p>the first way it nice support for the idea that people’s quality of life would have increased over time (over these changes), while the second one isn’t. i hope i distilled that a bit.</p>
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<p>yeah, i kind of believe people - at least not most people - don’t chose power, and it just wins. period. at least historically with tribes and stuff. of course history gets really complex around 2000 years ago or something, but before then i think it’s more possible to generalize about tribe dynamics, what’s the impetus for societal changes, how they happen, etc.</p>
<p>i would more agree with - people chose different things, but the people who chose power win. by win i just mean they are the standard-setters or whatever. and other people end up having to conform to their choices to compete. </p>
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<p>i only brought up the fact about hunter and gatherers ostensibly working much less than we do to contest the idea that, on the average, human’s quality of life has improved over time.</p>
<p>I do think it is difficult to have an accurate perception of how it was like to be a hunter and gatherer, so i’m wary of any comparisons of them to us that have to do with feelings and happiness, and so on - stuff we just cannot know. The best we can do is go by the data we have. all else being equal, a society where the people have to do things they don’t like (i.e work) less seems better. of course everything else is not equal between hunter and gatherers and us, not in the slightest, so any general comparisons - such as the one between quality of life - seems very hard to make to me.</p>
<p>===</p>
<p>i missed saying this earlier, but it’s the oxford (Oo prestigious name) Future of Humanity Institute that has produced a lot of the most highly cited, well-regarded papers on existential risks to humanity (which are rather alarming).</p>
<p>other places have reached similar conclusions too (that existential risks to humanity are serious in the near-term, and that it is something that deserves more attention) but they have less credibility right now.</p>