Live data from Hacker News

What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

strangeloopcanon.com

41–50 of 101 posts

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans weren't built to live in massive societies with 100s of millions of people. Humans were built to socialize and live in societies though. It's part of our own nature to group up and form communities.

Yes, but the size of community matters. In a 100 people tribe everybody knows everyone else. In 1M city most people are strangers, a.k.a. competitors, enemies even.

People competed all the time within tribes, even to the point of violence. Myths like Cain and Abel didn't come from nowhere.

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#42

Humans weren't built to live in massive societies with 100s of millions of people. No wonder we love minecraft and Satisfactory and playing murder-hobos in ttrpgs. I would be in favor of restructuring society to be in smaller units, communities where people know and understand eachother, but nobody has that power. One thing I disagree with "We won’t live in small villages with cobbled streets en masse anymore because…

I feel like you can have both. A big society with industry and laws and markets etc. and a circle of like 10-50 people that you consider close. That's basically how I see my own life.

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#43
post #39

Title is unrelated to content. If you want "a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools" read "Walkaway", by Cory Doctorow. This is the 3D printer fantasy future, where everything can be made easily with small and easily available high-tech equipment. It sort of works in the story. But in reality, 3D printers aren't that good. Somewhere, you need aluminum smelters, steel mills, and copper mines. Those don't scal…

A more interesting question might be, "What would homesteading independence look like in the 21st century in terms of sustainability and so forth?"

An interesting extension on this is that the pencil manufacture which made his family wealthy is now workable on a small scale (allowing for the input of materials):

https://bridgecitytools.com/products/pp-1-pencil-precision

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#44

I always feel so disconnected to my fellow humans when I hear people longing for "simpler times" where they are just out in nature with no technology or modern tools. I would be miserable living simply like that. I don't like spending too much time in nature, I get hot and sweaty and itchy and bothered by bugs. I am always wishing to be building something with electronics, or playing a game, or watching a show or mov…

Have you spent lots of time out in the wilderness before? Those you describe aren’t pleasant, but you learn to accept and deal with. I’m sure the are all kinds of unpleasantness in a “civilized” lifestyle that you no longer even notice because you’re just so used to accommodating them: traffic noise, pollution, artificial light, etc.

I once spent a week hiking and camping in a rain forest. The first day I was trying to keep dry and comfortable as much as possible, and I was miserable.

The second day I realized I’m just not going to be dry, and I accepted it, and being wet didn’t bother me again the rest of the week. At the end of the day you hang you socks and clothes up near the fire and dry your boots.

Being hot and sweaty and dealing with bugs are irritating, but it’s just part of being outdoors and if you spend significant time outside doing stuff you stop noticing it and just accept it as a part of life.

Don’t let a little discomfort stop you from enjoying nature. You might even start to notice the discomforts of modern life that you’ve accepted as a part of life.

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#46
post #6

Humans weren't built to live in massive societies with 100s of millions of people. No wonder we love minecraft and Satisfactory and playing murder-hobos in ttrpgs. I would be in favor of restructuring society to be in smaller units, communities where people know and understand eachother, but nobody has that power. One thing I disagree with "We won’t live in small villages with cobbled streets en masse anymore because…

We also don't want to die of pneumonia at 11.

People in villages of 1000 don't die of pneumonia at 11 either.

We can let the weirdos that want to live in huge cities make the anti-pneumonia medicine and use it elsewhere.

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#47
The conundrum, as I see it. To master our environment and achieve comfort, we needed the "congealed intellect of our multi billion population". But we also had to trash ecosystems, on which we remain stubbornly dependent (if not for literal survival then certainly for our quality of life). With 8 billion of us, we now have no option but to pool our impacts and live in massive anonymous cities. Even that is damage control. Notwithstanding the fantasies of tech utopians, the only possible solution to all this is to get humanity's population back down to a sustainable level. At which point we can have all the "cobbled villages" we apparently want.

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#48

I always feel so disconnected to my fellow humans when I hear people longing for "simpler times" where they are just out in nature with no technology or modern tools. I would be miserable living simply like that. I don't like spending too much time in nature, I get hot and sweaty and itchy and bothered by bugs. I am always wishing to be building something with electronics, or playing a game, or watching a show or mov…

Good thing your ancestors did not think like that!

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#49
post #39

Title is unrelated to content. If you want "a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools" read "Walkaway", by Cory Doctorow. This is the 3D printer fantasy future, where everything can be made easily with small and easily available high-tech equipment. It sort of works in the story. But in reality, 3D printers aren't that good. Somewhere, you need aluminum smelters, steel mills, and copper mines. Those don't scal…

I had a friend who believed that large cities should be abolished and society should be made agrarian by law. She believed that that way we would have more free time to pursue our intellectual curiosities, unburdened by our dependence on and duty to urban society. I was like... I'm descended from farm folk. My mom grew up in a farmhouse that had no television and not even indoor plumbing for the first few years of her life. Have you no idea how grueling agrarian life actually is? Sunup to sundown, backbreaking labor, even for kids and women. (Especially women.) You wouldn't have time to write your stories and essays and play RPGs. The animals would need feeding, the cows milking, the eggs gathering, the crops planting or harvesting. And now that there are no cities and hence no economies of scale, there's no industrially produced farm equipment to help you with your labor, nor industrially produced clothing. You'd have to make those yourself, or source them from local small-scale craftspeople. You'd have to mend or repair them yourself.

As miserable as cities can get, there's a reason why people sang "How can you keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?" And as oppressive as today's rat race can be, it's paradise compared to even the cities of the past. You mean I only have to work for eight hours a day, five days a week? In an office where there's always adequate light and the air is constantly freshened and temperature controlled? And the company, by law, has to take reasonable measures to protect my safety and compensate me in case I do get hurt doing my job? Sign me the fuck up!

The first thing I thought of when I read the headline was "so, TFA wants us to become the Yautja?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_(fictional_species)

(btw, RIP to the OG Yautja voice... Peter Cullen)

Re: What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)

#50
This makes me think back to Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Whether or not you agree with all his points I do think he has one very good point that’s worth reflecting on: the way we currently live is not the only way to live.

I think another important point to take away from the book is that even if we are not currently on the right path, agriculture and civilization are not inherently exclusive to living in such a way that is in harmony with the world.

There is a world that is possible where we live as good citizens of nature while still retaining civilization and agriculture.

So tying it back to article I think a middle ground is possible, but whatever that might look like, there are other ways to live.

Post reply on HN