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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

Agriculture made humanity a lot more resilient to changes in food supply. Maybe this has negative consequences at the individual level but as a species level it's pretty clear which one is more favorable.

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> Agriculture made humanity a lot more resilient to changes in food supply. Maybe this has negative consequences at the individual level but as a species level it's pretty clear which one is more favorable.

Sounds like it would be a trade-off then, not a clear favorite, depending on what you're optimizing for. Especially when we can afford to focus on maintaining health at an individual level too.

I don’t buy this. It’s not like humans had a species-wide conference and decided to adopt agriculture. It must have taken lots of tiny steps, each one somehow beneficial to the individuals taking them. The end result is not a guarantee either — we only think it was beneficial to the species because it survived. There could have been other “good ideas” in the area of food production that lasted for a hundred or a thousand years and then got wiped out in a single unfortunate event.

You dont need to buy it. Humans who relied on agriculture thrived in numbers or at least survives compared to the ones who relied on other means.

Your first comment made sense but this one just sounds like you’re making stuff up. Did you read the hypothesis? It’s been around since the 80s.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mist...

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