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Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?

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Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?

#71

Post by agumonkey »

klipt wrote: post #23
agumonkey wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it true or just extrapolated hint ? I like to criticize "modern" societies, but some times I think that having predictable source of food was an obvious goal for any human being.

I'm just saying that in the end, happiness isn't the metric reality optimises for so much as survival . Evolution also tends to prod happiness to correlate with survival, but there might be some lag when society/technology is moving much faster than genes can.

Can't say but my happiness, and I believe lots of others too, looks like a sunny sunday morning with a happy bunch (family/friends), and some activities to keep our local environment afloat (food, shelter, aesthetics) during the other days.

Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?

#72

Post by haihaibye »

gyrgtyn wrote: post #60
valuearb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says hunter gatherers didn’t conquer and enslave?

Anthropologists?

You might want to read this:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/30/anthroscience

You can now study ancient DNA as an alternative method of studying ancient history. It seems there was a lot of killing of males and capturing females leading to population replacement.

Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?

#74

Post by vnglst »

jampekka wrote: post #58
tonmoy wrote: post #54

Why are we trying to optimize ourselves to maximize happiness? Of course the hunter gatherers were happier, they evolved their happiness enducing brains slowly in the span of hundreds of thousands of years. In contrast we are living in a fast changing world. I think happiness can no longer keep up as being the proper reward function for success.

What should we optimize for then? Shareholder value?

Different conception of happiness?

Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?

#75

Post by CryptoPunk »

weirdstuff wrote: post #35
mjfl wrote: post #33

Maybe they are, humans have never been rational. It is much more important to have vaccines and antibiotics than to be happy. People reading this crap who then get the urge to strip down to a loincloth and run into the woods should be aware that these viewpoints always portray the best case scenario. Forget germs, starvation, or exposure (which are enough to make you miserable / kill you by themselves), what about ot…

I'm not sure you know enough to compare the two. Disease, for example, is mostly a product of settled societies, not hunter-gatherers. Crime was a different issue as well, when tribes knew all the members. And sure, tribes had conflicts, but they were often not as violent as the total wars of the last couple centuries. I'm surprised so many people who know nothing except modern society are so quick to make sweeping a…

Homicide rates in hunter gatherer societies are extremely high:

https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/no-hunter-gat...

Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?

#76

Post by aryehof »

colmvp wrote: post #24
Top19 wrote: post #14

Look I hate Facebook, Google, the news, prefer physical books, like to exercise, whatever but I always hate seeing this stuff. In Western society there are always two lies operating at once. The first lie is that technology will save us and fix everything and is the ultimate path, the second lie is that throwing away all of our technology, being as close to nature as possible, blah blah will also save us and fix ever…

> In Western society there are always two lies operating at once. The first lie is that technology will save us and fix everything and is the ultimate path, the second lie is that throwing away all of our technology, being as close to nature as possible, blah blah will also save us and fix everything. I don't think it's unfair to say that I would benefit from one less day of using my computer per week and exchange it…

> Knuth may have seemed like a luddite, but given how many people are hooked onto news/social/media/e-mail/Slack, his hard stance on email was perhaps more wise than most of us realized.

What was his stance on email?

Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?

#77

Post by tluyben2 »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #9

The only time I'm relaxed and feel happy is when I am out in untamed nature - seeing and hearing nature. It doesn't matter if its just a hike or "working" hard on trail maintenance. If this[1] is true, "Every 2.5 minutes, the American West loses a football field worth of natural area to human development." Walking down the street among human development just doesn't do anything for me, so I quit going outside. It see…

I feel the same which is why I moved to a mountain village a long time ago. We are thinking of moving to the edge of a rainforest within a year.

Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?

#78

Post by toomanybeersies »

aorloff wrote: post #36
colmvp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Western society there are always two lies operating at once. The first lie is that technology will save us and fix everything and is the ultimate path, the second lie is that throwing away all of our technology, being as close to nature as possible, blah blah will also save us and fix everything. I don't think it's unfair to say that I would benefit from one less day of using my computer per week and exchange it…

You might have picked M&M peanuts randomly, but sugar is a big part of the creeping force of civilization, and hard to fathom its impact on you until you take a break from it for several months.

I made a bet to avoid eating or drinking anything with added sugar for a month.

It made me discover how much stuff has added sugar. Things that I would assume would be fine to eat all had added sugar. Most bread was a write off, practically every sauce, and more or less every packaged food contained sugar.

To be honest, the sugar cravings weren't hard to work through, I've never really eaten much sugar, but the sheer amount of food that I wasn't able to eat because of added sugar was staggering.

At least drinking was easy, I could still drink most wines, beers, and spirits.

Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?

#79

Post by slededit »

thescribe wrote: post #66
clumsysmurf wrote: post #9

The only time I'm relaxed and feel happy is when I am out in untamed nature - seeing and hearing nature. It doesn't matter if its just a hike or "working" hard on trail maintenance. If this[1] is true, "Every 2.5 minutes, the American West loses a football field worth of natural area to human development." Walking down the street among human development just doesn't do anything for me, so I quit going outside. It see…

I feel the opposite way. In my mind raw nature is chaos and unpredictability. It's hard to relax when I'm not at least in medium sized town.

Its a giant gladiator ring with animals killing each other every minute. From our perch at the top of the food chain we can call nature peaceful. I'm not sure a rabbit would feel the same way.

Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?

#80

Post by bcook »

aryehof wrote: post #76
colmvp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Western society there are always two lies operating at once. The first lie is that technology will save us and fix everything and is the ultimate path, the second lie is that throwing away all of our technology, being as close to nature as possible, blah blah will also save us and fix everything. I don't think it's unfair to say that I would benefit from one less day of using my computer per week and exchange it…

> Knuth may have seemed like a luddite, but given how many people are hooked onto news/social/media/e-mail/Slack, his hard stance on email was perhaps more wise than most of us realized. What was his stance on email?

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html
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