<p>enfield: decrease in brain size is not equivalent to becoming more stupid. It’s hard enough for human female to give birth.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how your second sentence is relevant. </p>
<p>the conventional explanation for why the average brain-size decreased from 1500-1300cm^3 is something along the lines of - we domesticated ourselves by becoming agrarians, and it is well established that domestication reduces the brain size in animals.</p>
<p>This sounds reasonable to me - we stop hunting as much, our lifestyle changes dramatically, and the parts of our brain that was responsible for that the things that are now not needed shrink. I don’t suppose to know how that happens of course.</p>
<p>the second thing i said - about height - is better evidence for the agrarian diet being lower quality and less healthful than the hunter and gatherer one.</p>
<p>an alternative explanation is that more, less-fit people (smaller people) were able to pass on their genes in agrarian societies because you didn’t have to be big and strong to hunt enough meat to survive. this sounds plausible to me too.</p>
<p>A smart hunter gatherer probably discover how to grow crops, then soon others began to imitate him. They probably didn’t even think much, the only thing they wanted is to survive, since agriculture is more reliable.</p>
<p>My second sentence is implying that the wrinkles on your cerebral cortex is more important than the size. I am implying that perhaps the big headed ones died along with their mommies and thus their genes did not pass on. And the ones with smaller head but a lot of wrinkles survived (becuz their mamas were able to give birth to them).</p>
<p>I would actually prefer a long hour of office job over hunting or gathering. You are more likely to die from the latter.
I don’t think hunter gatherers spent less time working; in fact, they often had to travel long distances in bad seasons, when there were fewer preys. To me, their life seems harder than ours. We can kick back and relax once we return home from work, and most of us don’t even have to worry about when we will have our next meal.</p>
<p>yeah, you bet those hunter and gatherers who discovered how plants worked were extremely smart :).</p>
<p>my vision of how the transition happened is crude ‘farming’ was slowly incorporated into the hunter and gatherer tribes who knew about the technology. they still mostly hunted and gathered, but got some help from their crops (it took a long time to domesticate and breed plants to they could be a significant food source). eventually - because it did turn out to be more reliable once it was sufficiently advanced - those groups of people who practiced it did the best, grew the most, and dominated their neighbors (i could be wrong of course… i want to look this up). that sounds like a fair story to me though.</p>
<p>I would rather live now too. the consensus of the research is that they worked much less and there was more leisure … it seems hard to dispute that. it would be nice if i could make enough money for food and shelter only working a 6 hours a few days a week. alas, i think i would have to invest in education significantly for that to be a possibility. </p>
<p>personally, i would rather not work and have be given enough money for food and basic shelter and a few other things so i could spend my time how i want to. of course, some people are happy working jobs (the idea of having a ‘career’ makes is one thing that makes it appealing) and they would be more lost without one than with one.</p>
<p>but i do think the amount people are working is too much on the average. too much in the sense that people would be happier if they could work less - if their job was 6 hours a day, not 8, or four days a week, not five. i know some research shows that in countries where the work week is shorter people seem to be happier. </p>
<p>it is true that there is this pernicious consumer culture i think where people are willing to work more to buy things that society pressures them to, not because those things improve their life or make them happier. all they do is ward off the pressure from society, which is easier to pay to relieve that to face. not sure to what extent that is true, of course.</p>
<p>I take issue with this factual claim:</p>
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<p>[Family</a> Farms](<a href=“http://www.nifa.usda.gov/nea/ag_systems/in_focus/familyfarm_if_overview.html]Family”>http://www.nifa.usda.gov/nea/ag_systems/in_focus/familyfarm_if_overview.html)</p>
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<p>Source?</p>
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<p>In other words, we’ve removed selection pressures towards intelligence and brute force? In other words, life’s become easier and less demanding on our physique and our intelligence?</p>
<p>Either way, your assertion is wrong in that it has been* since* 10000 years that there has been a mild decrease in brain size, and height shows the opposite trend (though this likely due only to our awful quality of living and despicable ability to avoid scurvy and other dietary deficiencies) after the end of the 19th century.</p>
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<p>In other words, people choose power and houses over unstable, hard-to-secure means of living.</p>
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<p>Not ungrateful. Just a mix of unappreciative and, not entitled, but something close to it. I don’t know how to communicate the difference, but long story short: it’s hard taking someone seriously who professes the desire to give up cell phones, antibiotics, and quick bites for a dirt hut, half-rotten meat, and occasional bad winters that inflict starvation. And, though you say you do not have this desire, your comments only make sense in light of a fetishization of the “unencumbered” primitive state of man. </p>
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<p>Well, duh. I would also be happier if I could get free money, but I can’t.</p>
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<p>Now, this is probably true. But I would like you to consider that many people do not prioritize happiness over a larger house and a bigger ego. And that’s their choice. In many Scandinavian countries, it is not entirely their choice, so they get slightly more happiness and they don’t get a slightly larger house and a slightly larger ego. </p>
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<p>Not everyone wants to be happy in the same way. Some people prefer other things.</p>
<p>As for consumerism, I’ll take a few broken Slap-Chops* and a ripped Snuggie* for everything else I buy that I do like having. </p>
<p>*DISCLAIMER: I have never bought either of these things.</p>
<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>
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<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>
<p>Are we unilaterally better off than our ancestors were?</p>
<p>Do the Scandinavian countries have socialism? Maybe they feel more secured.</p>
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<p>I like the idea of the 50’s, but in general, I think so. </p>
<p>They did have fewer body image issues, though. And they probably had fewer contrived problems, such as ennui and alienation.</p>