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Comment by faitswulff | Hacker News Reader

Human societies never destabilized the entire global ecosystem before, either. Viewing it as "progress" to be able to cause climate change, mass extinction and pollution is a bias that we should check.

This article takes a lot of essentialist positions based on a single point of data: the Yanomamö. Single point of data as a counterpoint: the Mosuo people, who are a matriarchal society. Viewing other cultures as primitive and current society as "advanced" is a long discarded idea in anthropology due to ethnocentrism and racism.

This is also incorrect:

> The default condition of humans is no different from the default condition of other animals: Males fight each other over females.

Male bonobos will have sex with each other as a way to defuse tensions, for instance, and male wolves and lions will form groups to support each other.

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> Human societies never destabilized the entire global ecosystem before, either. Viewing it as "progress" to be able to cause climate change, mass extinction and pollution is a bias that we should check.

Aside from the fact this is incorrect, it's also rooted in a false assumption. It's a common mistake to believe the ecosystem is in some sort of steady state or equilibrium. It is not and never has been. The climate changes. The geology changes. Invasive species arrive. Someone wins an evolutionary arms race and wipes out the rest. Populations go through booms and busts - or even extinctions - because they consume resources too rapidly. There is no variable that is not in continual flux. Things only appear to be "steady state" on very short timescales, but attentive people have always noticed this - the ancient Greeks were aware of massive geographic changes, for example.

When too many variables change too fast or too far, we see mass extinctions (really just an increase in the extinction rate) as different species don't make it through the selection pressure. Are we causing one now? Sure, absolutely. But not because we're special. Because we're not. We like to believe we are wise, rational technocratic masters of nature. We are not. We are causing climate change and extinctions like every other species that begins to dominate (dominate may not even be the right word - some species that don't dominate produce massive 'destructive' changes.) Probably the earliest known example is the Great Oxygen Catastrophe. No amount of trying to be more 'rational' and 'sustainable' will produce an ecological equilibrium over anything but the very short term.

> Human societies never destabilized the entire global ecosystem before

No, but Mother Nature has ample evidence of doing so. If we want to continue as a species we need a way to persist after the next apocalyptic natural disaster. We’re fortunate some ancient peoples lived in environments that forced them to build societies and progress technology - otherwise we might not know we’re one meteor away from extinction!

Or one mass CO2 release away from extinction! https://www.montclair.edu/newscenter/2021/09/22/new-research...

> male wolves and lions will form groups to support each other.

They band together to fight the male who has the pride so they can get the females.

The difference between humans and other mammals in these fights is that we are much more efficient at killing and that females are fertile all year round.

> They band together to fight the male who has the pride so they can get the females.

Not necessarily: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/gay-lions-ma...

And if your definition of default must expand in order to include homosexuality then you really need to examine the benefit of saying that it is a "default."

"it is written".

You hear that, in movies and books. It basically means that, because it is is asserted in textual form, it is authoritative.

Which is absurd of course.

But it that how we think?

Since you brought up the Mosuo, it’s entirely possible that the harmonious feudal depiction of their society is exaggerated for reasons of national politics; to the same extant Chagnon was accused of exaggerating the Yanomamö.

That’s exactly my point.

The Mosuo are _matrilineal_ (figure out which kinship group you're in based on Mom's line) but not _matriarchal_ (women hold most of the political power).

You'll occasionally see it argued that the Mosuo are matriarchal, but what's going on is many people are desperate to try to find an example of matriarchy, and the Mosuo are as close as it gets. So yeah, if you squint, stand on one leg, and crook your head a bit it sort of looks like they might be.

What's really the case is that every single human society we know of has been some flavor of patriarchal.

> Viewing it as "progress" to be able to cause climate change, mass extinction and pollution is a bias that we should check.

How could that not be progress?

If we've never been able to do that before, but now can, we've moved from a state of inability to a state of ability. That is progress.

Now, if you view "progress" as something that is inherently positive, that is a bias you should check.

> This article takes a lot of essentialist positions based on a single point of data: the Yanomamö.

The article feels very much like a thesis in search of support, which might explain the laser like focus on one particular data point that appeared to support the author's premise. It also explains why criticism of the original research is dismissed as "cancel culture" rather than taken as a sign to at least look for other supporting data.

The motivation makes more sense if you look at the rest of that substack (I wasn't familiar with it, so I poked around a bit). The author evidently has a deep interest in sex and gender role topics viewed through a particular lens. The second post I looked at was basically incel ideology 101, complete with Becky, Chad, and links to Jordan Peterson. I'll save you a click, but apparently teenage girls are depressed because they're not having sex with incel teenage boys.

Given the rest of that blog, it's probably not surprising the author managed to boil down a topic as complex as the development of societies into a simple explanation about sex, backed by a single data point that's out of favor with actual professionals in the field.

I assume you're referring https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/becky-is-depressed

And your take on it is so utterly bizarre I can't believe you actually read it. He literally talks about how strange it is that the "Becky" concept exists as it never did when he was a teen (it seems equally weird to me).

Right but the point she (I think the author is actually a woman) seems to be making is that the "Becky" concept is a legitimate reaction to actual (and problematic) societal change, rather than an incorrect belief about the world among incels fostered by people like Jordan Peterson. It's less "Becky is an insult now because people are poisoning the minds of young men" and more "Becky is an insult now because of society and feminism".

The reason I brought that up was less that I think that viewpoint is wrong (although obviously I do), but more that it pervades a lot of the content on that substack, so the original post claiming societal development can also be boiled down to sex (and in particular, more 'primitive' sexual roles) should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt.

Ah, yes, of course Tove would be female. I hadn't looked at the name and I thought the picture of Napoleon Chagnon at the top of the article was a picture of the author!

I consider the popularity of arseholes like Peterson to be more symptom than cause but I could be wrong. I'll think about it.

I read it and can confirm that the take is basically the same as my take on it. Totally sexist garbage. Or pro-restrictive gender roles.

Also, charmingly unaware of history. Moving to the cities for free love, gender flexibility, and parties is not some new 2000s thing. That was disco and cocaine in 80s. That was the hippies back when the boomers were young, and that was the 1920s. “How you going to keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen gay Paris”.

Sexism and anti-sexism have neither been newly created nor nearly defeated in the past ten or twenty years.

Now, social media on the other hand…

Really? I read through and it doesn’t seem sexist to me - it’s naïve, sure, but it doesn’t sound like it’s buying into the Stacy/Chad/Petersonian stuff, it’s just acknowledging their existence, and guessing at why they might appeal to people now. It doesn’t seem like it’s pro gender roles.

The focus on the Yamomamö appears to be simply to ground the article in something concrete, making it more interesting. He does claim that this once heretical view is now widely accepted in anthropology and it's a description of many tribes, not just one.

The author is a woman, unusually for this sort of subject matter and terminology employed (alpha / beta males, etc).

You're right. I thought tove was a man's name for some reason.

I agree. I only skimmed their other work but was curious if anybody here thought so.

It's not a direct analog, but the pacing, attitude and tactics suggest they have a worn and dogeared copy of Allan Bloom's treatise Closing of the American Mind on their desk. Though well written and speckled with reasonable arguments, Bloom plainly argued that 'civilized' 'reasonable' white protestant moral and cultural values are correct, and everyone will be better off once they adopt them. Anecdotally, the vast MRA diaspora also coats toxic ideological bullshit in truth nuggets to muddy the lines between them.

> Human societies never destabilized the entire global ecosystem before, either

The pleistocene megafauna would like to have a word with you.

Pretty sure his version of developed only happened recently is because the climate has been really stable for the last 10k or so years meaning we can actually have agriculture based societies not get screwed when their climate suddenly changes

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