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Comment by pojntfx | Hacker News Reader

The industrial revolution and it’s consequences have been a disaster for the human race

how can anybody believe such bullshit?

Put your money where your mouth is: you can still live without industrialization. Find some wood, build your hut, and go for it.

Come back in five years and tell us how much you hate industrialization. If you haven't "efficiently died", that is.

Living in a hut in the woods is quite different from living in pre-industrial society.

I do wonder whether the Amish would take converts. There are certainly communes around that would. And yet, here we all are.

Granted, here we'd still be if half the population was voluntarily leaving modern society.

Nevertheless, you are still free to do it. Maybe join the Amish, for starters (although afaik they don't shun all technology).

In any case, you can get together with a group of friends and live the way you imagine. There are enough people who dream of that kind of lifestyle, that you should be able to find a group that is large enough.

It's not so easy for the individual to do that. The skills necessary for pre-modern life are only taught by being raised by a group who lives that life. Nearly all such groups have been destroyed -- and even if you wanted to, you couldn't go join a tribe at the edge of civilization as an individual.

Not to mention that in many areas, it's not possible to make life by hunting and gathering because biodiversity in the natural environment has been destroyed. So, it's not really possible as you say.

Even though it's not really possible, such bullshit is worth giving a bit of thought, at least.

You can use the internet for two more years to learn, THEN go into the wilderness. I would even allow you to take some tools from industrialization, maybe a knife made from steel and proper clothing and a tent. Fair?

As for suitable areas, there are still undiscovered tribes living in the Amazonas. I think you may still be able to find some places where you can live your dream.

If you think longer term, what's the point of having a higher quality of life if we die because of pollution and irreversible climate change anyway?

We won't die because of that - pollution has gone down anyway, whether climate change will really become catastrophic has yet to be seen.

But even if you believe it will - what's the point to anything? In the end everybody dies, no matter what you do.

Says person who wrote this on his computing device connected to the internet, powered by electricity.

yeah, because nothing beats working whole day in fields to grow food, and then still dying of hunger because it was too rainy, or there was no enough rain or hailstorm destroyed everything. Also using any spare moment to weave and repair old clothing because you couldn't afford to buy any new clothing, as everything was hand made and super expensive; traveling on horses or foot that takes days; occasional plague or small pox epidemic and all the other great things about ol' way of life...

You mean by saving billions from abject poverty? Yes, what a disaster.

Billions that didn't exist beforehand and thus didn't need to be saved from anything?

Poverty and deprivation are not post-industrial inventions

Quoting the Unabomber's manifesto is an interesting choice.

The industrial revolution is the greatest thing to ever happen to humanity. It allowed the planet to host seven and a half billion people instead six hundred million. Do the lives of all these people mean nothing to you? What about all their positive experiences? Would you return us to the Malthusian limit to live out your agrarian fantasy? Which 6.9 billion people would you let die?

Nobody would die since they wouldn‘t even exist in the first place.

And what about the negative experiences? Especially for the vast majority of poor people?

I agree that in the end the industrial revolution was a wonderful thing. But not because of the number of people.

Number of poor people has gone down thanks to industrialization - even while at the same time total population numbers have exploded.

https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=508

That's a rather fallacious argument. 6.9bn people never existing != killing 6.9bn people.

And the hosting of those 7bn people has caused irreperable damage to ecosystems. Why are you so happy for the extinction of entire species, but not for 6.9bn people not existing?

In case you are unaware we were losing babies by the truckload just a century ago. There was death, but we all forgot since we dont see it anymore.

I am aware. And that is progress that is good for humanity. However air quality is decreasing and global temperatures are increasing.

A century from now we'll be losing a truckload more babies

Its like we rose to the top of the bell curve and are now hurtling down the other side

Where exactly is air quality decreasing? At least in developed nation air quality, and water quality, improved over the last decades.

Climate Change is another topic but there seems to be some movement as well on that front.

> Why are you so happy for the extinction of entire species, but not for 6.9bn people not existing?

Why should I care about "entire species"?

I'm happy that we made smallpox extinct. Likewise, I'd be ecstatic if we decided to drive the mosquito out of existence. I'm all for caring about nature, but towards the end of improving human welfare. Where saving some random species conflicts with saving people, choosing anything but the latter is just monstrous. Sentient creatures (only humans, currently) have moral worth. Non-sentient creatures, none.

Thats such a selfish outlook. The same outlook that leads to overfishing, soil erosion and monoculture agricuture. We think we are optimising for human welfare and happiness whilst simultaneously destroying our ability to give future generations the same prospects that we have.

So why are you happy for the untold billions who will never be born because we've ruined out planets ability to sustain us?

Sustainability is about being able to give future generations the same quality of life that you have had. And society as it stands is not sustainable

Depends what you value more I guess. These lives or the many more lives that could live in the future?

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