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Comment by adolph | Hacker News Reader

> the cause of many of humanity's biggest problems is humans

As opposed to elephants or sea urchins? How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?

The Buddha taught there are three kinds of dukkha [usually translated as “suffering”]. The first kind is physical and mental pain from the inevitable stresses of life like old age, sickness, and death. The second is the distress we feel as a result of impermanence and change, such as the pain of failing to get what we want and of losing what we hold dear. The third kind of dukkha is a kind of existential suffering, the angst of being human, of living a conditioned existence and being subject to rebirth.

https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/what-did-the-buddha-...

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> How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?

That's a pretty good indicator of a civilization's state. For an advanced one, the answer to your question would be "it's nowhere near the top worries". All human-made horrors (war, climate change, etc.) would be left far behind.

If we were as smart as we think we are, our biggest problems would be rogue asteroids, solar storms and aggressive aliens, not human geopolitical bullshit, poisoning our water, or destroying our own ecosystem.

True, but also the other way around: A less advanced civilization would have much more trouble with elephants, sea urchins, bacteria, and other natural factors than with humans.

Damn those sea urchins!

Stepping on a sea urchin is no beuno. I remember one time snorkelling and I was being pulled by a rip tide and I was like no big deal, I can just slowly head a different direction until I started being pulled barely past sea urchins on corals and then I was freaked out. They are dastardly.

I heard they taste pretty good though.

Only fresh, they quickly start to smell off.

Whenever I see them eaten on a cooking show I get the impression I couldn't handle the texture.

Sea urchins unite!

By default, nature is an aggressive and competitive environment.

It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find predatory animals cute (and even made children's toys in their image)

What is nature different from the environment? Is nature not the environment? Is it truly aggressive and competitive or does it seek balance and evolution, or maybe it is and does not seek? Does applying those adjectives personify and build emotion into nature where none exists?

> It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find predatory animals cute

I don't think that's entirely accurate. Dogs were domesticated well over 10k years ago, possibly close to 30k years ago. I see no reason to think that people didn't find puppies cute then as well since the reasons why we think of baby animals cute seems to be related to the same pattern recognition that causes us to recognize those attributes in human infants and think they are cute. The version of animals we find "cute" are all represented with infantile portions. There is something to be said for removal of danger as a prerequisite though (I doubt most people would have been receptive to the teddy bear in the 1920's if problems with bears were still frequent).

Again, question the premise holding in your mind’s hand a momento mori. All those things can and likely will happen. If the key advancement of human civilization was in virtue, would those things be a cause for worry or suffering?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori

Uhhh...yes?

I'm not sure I buy that. There's not any proof that a more advanced civilization exists. Even if we assume that one does exist, why does it follow that they are immune to war, oppression, power struggles etc? The only data point we have suggests otherwise.

Or maybe the aliens are all holding hands in a circle singing kumbayah?

Imagine you are an advanced civ with weapons hardly imaginable to current humans. Anti-Matter bombs, GRB strength energy weapons, etc, who even knows what is possible. With weapons like that even a run of the mill rogue political group, terrorist or whoever could probably trivially destroy an entire planet. It stands to reason that if they are able to continue to exist as some kind of multi-planetary species they have figured out a way to avoid killing themselves.

We have more data points in our imagination and it isn’t hard to imagine a more advanced peaceful civilisation.

Nature often seems idyllic, when it has reached a stable equilibrium. But what it really is, is a ruthless and absolute class system, where each species "knows" its place, and has settled in to make the best of its lot.

The disruptions to equilibrium that we witness are almost always man-made. But there have been others, caused by new species, ice ages, asteriods, the Great Oxygenation Event, etc.

Alien civilization might be at equilibrium. Or, if we meet them, they may more likely be in an expansionist phase.

But I think a civilization that harnesses its conflicts - as we try to, with competing businesses, scientists, olitical parties, sporting teams - will have greater long-term success than a destructive, exploutative culture, by definition. It's not that competition is "good", but they we have aggressive aspects seeking dominance, and we are better off shaping them than having tribal warfare, raiding parties, etc which is more our natural state. And something like it is part of the nature of life itself.

As opposed to other externally-caused problems like natural disasters, beating eaten by lions, etc. I would guess that a large chunk of human history was dominated by these problems.

Or just hunger in general. Before the agriculture revolution starvation was the primary cause of human death.

I would have thought the opposite would be true, hunter gatherers are generally well fed from a variety of food sources, would have lived in low densities and would have been highly mobile, so in the event one food source become scarce they could move elsewhere, or switch foods. Early agriculturalists would have been stuck in once place reliant on a single, or few, food source/s and therefore vulnerable to failed harvests for a variety of reasons, droughts, natural disasters, theft (of stores, if they are lucky enough to farm food that can be stored) etc.

You would be correct.

Preagricultural peoples exerted reproductive control so they were not vulnerable kind of population crunches that affect other species.

Diverse food webs were also more reliable and nutritious than what was available to the early agriculturalists, as you say.

Are there good studies that show this? Like a big survey of recovered bone/dental evidence over centuries?

It certainly seems plausible to me, but I'd be fascinated to review the data and how it correlates to time and geography.

Was it?

I know a couple books[1] that suggest life prior to the agricultural revolution wasn't nearly as famine-stricken as we tend to think it was. These books claim hunter gatherers were quite proficient at finding enough sustenance.

Obviously starvation was still possible and likely, but was it the primary cause of death? Is there some more evidence that humans were suffering from starvation before agriculture? Wouldn't populations thin out and stabilize accordingly if starvation was such a problem?

[1] - _Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind_ and _Sex at Dawn_

"Thin out" is this another word for dying?

It could also mean just spreading out. So less dense civilizations, but the same amount of people.

In could, but that's generally not what it means when applied in this way. You don't thin out a a herd (which is where I think that phrase is most often used in English) by spreading it over a larger area, but by removing a percentage of the individuals that make up the herd.

If you have lived a good life, is dying a problem?

Dying from starvation (and watching the people you love also suffer and some die from it)? Yes, I'd say it's a problem.

Starving to death together with the rest of your tribe - your parents, your siblings, your friends, your kids - must be mentally excruciating. Famine has been considered one of the worst curses of humanity since the dawn of written records at least.

How happy are we who have never experienced that! How would our ancestors envy us!

Truly if one was to know the excruciating pain of those who have gone before these things of today thought of as worthy of attention would fade to nothingness.

Would our ancestors envy us or be happy for the fruit of their effort? There are setbacks and frustrations about the slow state of progress sometimes for certain. Maybe they would also be sad for the material orientation of many people and the loss of spirituality that gave them much hope and fortitude.

Or, If you like something, would you want less of it?

I for one think, this is a subjective question.

That same book claims that the agricultural revolution was responsible for human specialization. We were able to feed larger families/tribes and develop non-food related skills. Without agriculture, those extra people would've died aka "thin out" as you mentioned.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Are you going to boom and bust in both scenarios

Agriculture encourages large families since children can help out in the field. Meanwhile with a hunter gatherer lifestyle the amount of food that can be acquired is not limited by labor but rather by the local environment. The effect is that you have lots of people doing backbreaking work every day.

Was it? I wasn’t aware of that? Is this also the case of non-human omnivores? If not, at which point in our evolution did this start to be the case, e.g. during Australopithecus or Homo Erectus? And is it also the case for humans that don’t live in agricultural or industrial societies today (such as tribes deep in the jungles of Papua New Guinea)?

This is incorrect:

> "The bones of 'domiciled' Homo sapiens compared with those of hunter-gatherers are also distinctive: they are smaller; the bones and teeth often bear the signature of nutritional distress, in particular, an iron-deficiency anemia marked above all in women of reproductive age whose diets consist increasingly of grains"

from Against the Grain

Mineral deficiency is a chronic lack of a particular nutrient, starvation is an acute lack.

There is such a thing as chronic starvation, and the smaller bones reflect that, not mineral deficiency.

The linked article addresses famine more specifically.

It does not.

I don't think having the poor in cities like SF root in trash for nutrients counts as solving starvation

One year into a worldwide pandemic affecting every aspect of life and you have a hard time finding examples of really bad things not caused by human? That's some committed misanthropy, I got to give you that.

The jury’s out on whether this one was our own fault too.

Maybe we made it in a lab, or even if we didn’t, maybe we should have been much smarter about preventing or containing it.

It’s not like an alien virus we never predicted and can’t understand. Experts had been warning about this exact thing for years.

> maybe we should have been much smarter about preventing or containing it.

That doesn't mean humans were responsible for the pandemic, though. That means humanity might bear responsibility for not as effectively containing the pandemic.

If an asteroid strikes the earth, and causes a mass casualty event that doesn't mean humans caused the asteroid strike (even if we maybe should have invested more in preventing the asteroid strike).

I think it's reasonable to expect more effective human preventative measures, without confusing the disaster for ones caused by human activity.

Naw, even the mildest and laziest of misanthropes could find reasons to blame humanity for the pandemic and all its effects. Commitment not required.

The virus either originated in a human lab (unlikely) or jumped cross-species in an environment created by humans (exotic animal markets with poor hygiene controls). So...yeah this one is kinda on us.

Is a virus a problem or is it a new challenge for humanity to take on, just as our understanding of molecular biology has become ready to address it? I respect the loss of people just as I respect the loss of all who have gone before, soldiers, explorers, pioneers, even those who did not intend risk but lived unknowingly under risk that existed nonetheless.

These “problems” are opportunities to serve.

It's always important to remember that we live in a thin sheet of self-sustaining complexity in a cold, hostile universe, perhaps unique and if not incredibly rare. The "human" problems are a luxury when our fragile existence seems like little more than an accident.

As opposed to external non-human controlled factors, such as meteorites, I suppose.

TBH the perspective that humans will learn to control meteorites is a bit frightening.

Because I would like to believe that this capability will only ever be used to protect the Earth from them, but our history says otherwise. Anything that can be used as a weapon will ... well, at least enter the arsenals, and only fear of devastating retaliation will stop people from actually using it. Or has, so far.

The cause of most problems for any biological creature on earth is external. All animals compete fiercely for survival among the elements, among other creatures, among each other. Survival is the biggest problem for all animals.

Except humans. More humans die each year due to other humans, or due to things other humans have created (for example humans ignoring mask mandates).

Point is, we are the only specie who has become its own worst enemy.

Idk, what am I saying? I think we can improve eachother's lives quite a bit if we just kick out the assholes from power.

Evolutionists like Dawkins pose that most organisms are in fiercest competition with members of their own species. You and I compete for identical resources: mates, jobs etc.

Other species have mostly arranged not to kill one another in these competitions. E.g. vipers & komodo dragons don't bite while wrestling. Walruses get pretty ripped-up, but usually don't die.

Ganging up to kill seems to be mostly a primate thing.

Fighting is only a subset of competition.

Male lions will kill cubs fathered by another male without remorse. It is not the same as our primate instincts of war, but remarkably close to ethnic cleansing.

> I think we can improve eachother's lives quite a bit if we just kick out the assholes from power.

What other species creates scalable, global solutions to large scale problems? Example (not real, but realistic) - a group of scientists in India create a vaccine that a company in Germany manufactures, so that people in the US can avoid a deadly virus.

Only one I can potentially think of is Fungi, as they appear to have large scale symbiotic relationships, but nothing is comparable to humans.

>How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?

Think in simpler terms, like a technology used at work, or a tool used at home; I've been in enough changes in the former that tell me many people believe a new thing will be better than the old thing, even after going through that same process several times.

The introspection needed to understand that people will break the process if they want or need to is hard to come by.

> As opposed to elephants or sea urchins? How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?

Dinosaurs' biggest problems was asteroids. There are plenty of externalities outside of human control, or that humans are only marginally responsible for (asteroids, gamma ray bursts, volcanic eruptions, famine due to crop diseases, pandemics, etc).

i suspect the assertion was thought of as "nowadays", whereas 150 years ago infectious disease might have been humanity's biggest problem.

Some might say humans are what contribute to infectious diseases being such a serious problem.

Wasn't penicillin a major breakthrough not even 100 years ago?

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