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Comment by swalling | Hacker News Reader

It should not be surprising that humans find it fun to do something that we did for survival for most of our evolutionary history. The evolutionary function of play is the practice of adult skills.

What's actually bizarre is that the billions of modern humans who would find it sickening to kill any animal personally have no issue thoughtlessly living a lifestyle whose need for ever-expanding consumption of living space, energy, and other resources is directly contributing to a human-caused mass extinction.

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> It should not be surprising that humans find it fun to do something that we did for survival for most of our evolutionary history.

People did not hunt tigers for "most of our evolutionary history". In fact, it's quite recent that people have hunted tigers at all, and even then it's more of an outlier than a standard practice.

Tigers are difficult and dangerous to hunt, and they're not healthy to eat regularly, nor is their meat particularly attractive (despite the named "tiger meat", which is actually raw beef).

Furthermore, contrary to mass media depictions, tigers rarely attack humans unless provoked, and they avoid human settlements as well. So even as a matter of safety and defense, hunting tigers is a rarity.

Until, of course, you start destroying large swaths of their habitat by mass-clearing old-growth rainforest in order to produce enough food to keep up with the usurious demands of a colonial occupier. At that point, yes, you do start to combat tigers more directly.

There are larger predators like lions featured heavily in cave paintings and other forms of the earliest human art for a reason. We have never hunted predators like bears and big cats as a primary food source, but a willingness to defend humans and our food with hand weapons is actually a skillset actively practiced until very recently in societies like the Maasai. The Human Planet docuseries has a pretty incredible scene where hunter gatherers coordinate to steal a kill from an entire pride of lions. It makes you see why people on the other side of the world in highly industrialized societies would find it to be an adrenaline rush to hunt the biggest, baddest looking animal they can find (not that I do this personally).

You're completely right that the desire to hunt a tiger isn't really logical or necessary, I'm just pointing out that it is not psychologically aberrant that some people (mostly men) would find it satisfying to do things like that as a thrill-seeking activity.

Tigers are much larger and stronger than Lions in general.

You do know that global land use for agriculture has peaked and certainly in the UK energy usage peaked in 2005.

All this while the world is greening.

Most of the developed world too has declining birth rates.

So I would hardly call it an ever expanding consumption.

You're totally correct at the demographic level. Probably the best trend for tigers is the fact that India and China are getting richer and people will consequently be having fewer kids. It will result in less pressure on habitat and hopefully less demand for things like traditional Chinese medicine products made out of tigers.

I was mostly reacting to the hypocrisy of the kind of Western liberal who would crucify a trophy hunter online, but who flies all over the world for vacation and buys Shein hauls to post on TikTok. The personal consumption choices of rich people are still driving a lot of environmental degradation. Hating hunters is more of a liberal tribal shibboleth than a meaningful way to have impact on global biodiversity.

I agree with you on this. And yes, rising living standards will hopefully make people care more about their environment.

I also agree with you on the individual level with increasingly larger cars etc..

> “What’s actually bizarre…”

It’s almost like there’s a difference between shooting something in the face, and pressing a button on my phone to make food appear outside my door.

Not saying there aren’t repugnant aspects of both, but one is quite a bit more visceral and direct.

I can't help but feel that this reinforces the parent comment's point. As long as the only thing we have to do is push a button, the reality behind the food we're about to eat is shielded from us.

Despite knowing this, we continue to behave in ways that run counter to a rational examination of the realities behind pushing that button.

And we default to focusing on factors like the visceral nature of the experience instead of the implications of the choice.

This is a pretty common default in our current culture, and so the bizarre-ness to me is more about our instincts to continue making the bad choice just because it's easier right now and we won't have to pay for the long term repercussions personally.

It's bizarre upon closer examination because it's a self-harming behavior that we collectively engage in, even if it can be explained mechanically in terms of evolutionary reward systems that are in need of an upgrade.

None of this is to excuse modern forms of hunting for sport, but we are predators, and only our continued evolution of consciousness/culture will move us beyond that. That predatory behavior continues to exist is not surprising, nor is our tendency to overuse food delivery services.

Avoiding discomfort is pretty much the default operating mode of the brain. There is little to no “rational examination of the realities behind pushing that button” — because that examination hurts.

And I am not sure the behaviors are so much collective + self-harming as they are individual + collective-harming. Like you said: I don’t have to pay for the long-term repercussions personally.

I feel like this comment is drifting into gross pedantry, but I am really not trying to argue semantics. Just wanted to underscore that we might not be meeting people where they are (which is probably important if we want to change their disposition)

First, I think that calling attention to our tendency to avoid difficult things is a really good call. This mindset extends to almost everything in life, and can have serious consequences. Relinquishing this dislike of discomfort is at the center of many contemplative practices for good reason.

> And I am not sure the behaviors are so much collective + self-harming as they are individual + collective-harming.

I would argue that the behaviors are both. One gives rise to the other, and the other reinforces the former.

They are collective + self-harming because the collective behavior lulls the individual into a sense of "I don't need to think about this either". The end result is an action taken without an understanding of the consequences, even if those consequences may eventually kill me.

They are self-harming + collective because the individual who is aware of the impact but chooses to engage in it anyway is now doing so in spite of the knowledge. And that stance is also exported to the collective - "The people who have thought about this are still charging ahead anyway, so I might as well".

> we might not be meeting people where they are (which is probably important if we want to change their disposition)

Meeting people where they are is something that I care about, and I think it's a good mindset to apply to issues like this. With that said, it's not clear to me which aspects of the conversation here aren't meeting people where they are, and how the semantic distinction (if it exists) clears that up.

How can we repackage this more clearly to meet people where they are?

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