Comment by lumb63 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lumb63 | Hacker News Reader

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I had a different take on his writings than yours. Rather than thinking his solution was bad, he encouraged me to question why we “spend our days improving humanity”.

What does “improving humanity” even mean? What’s the metric we are optimizing for? Are we, humanity, any happier than we were when we were hunter-gatherer tribes? I don’t think so - we’ve just found new metrics to focus on and to be disappointed in ourselves in.

His writing encouraged me to consider that we are evolutionarily ill-suited for our current situation. We have resources far in excess of our needs, and yet we struggle. We find new issues to focus on, new problems, new fights, new causes. Our desire to “improve humanity” will never end, because it cannot end. When it does, we will find something new to take its place.

Maybe our purpose in life is to find food to survive. It is the task our ancestors evolved to do for millions and millions of years. It is our inheritance, in that way.

What is stopping you from moving out in the wilderness if you think it's the best way to get truly happy?

Doesn't make sense in regards to what lumb63 said. They're talking about society as a whole

The way you put it sounds like a part of the foundational thesis of Buddhism.

> Are we, humanity, any happier than we were when we were hunter-gatherer tribes? I don’t think so - we’ve just found new metrics to focus on and to be disappointed in ourselves in.

This seems crazy to me, leaning heavily on the proof that you yourself obviously are not choosing that life when you easily could. It’s possible in the same way that anything is possible, but cmon - the world is objectively less violent, sick, and ignorant. Sure we might be sad because the economy sucks, but I’d rather be sad than, ya know, fighting for my life…

A basic rundown from GPT expresses why I think this. Curious to hear where you disagree!

“Sure, let's consider these factors:

1. *Pleasure (Epicurus)*: Likely harder in a tribal society. Threats of violence and disease may significantly limit opportunities for pleasure and heighten experiences of pain.

2. *Virtuous Life (Aristotle)*: Potentially harder in a tribal society due to the pressures of survival, which might necessitate actions that conflict with virtues like honesty and generosity.

3. *Self-Actualization (Maslow)*: Much harder in a tribal society. The constant threats of violence and disease could make fulfilling basic needs a priority, leaving little room for self-actualization.

4. *Moderation (Confucius)*: Easier in a tribal society, as the threat of violence or disease could necessitate moderation and caution to ensure survival.

5. *Freedom (Sartre)*: Likely easier in modern society. The risks of violence and disease in tribal societies may limit the opportunity for individual freedom and choice.

6. *Inner Peace (Buddha)*: Likely harder in tribal societies, where the constant threat of violence and disease might disrupt efforts towards finding inner peace.

7. *Authenticity (Heidegger)*: Likely harder in a tribal society, where survival concerns might pressure individuals to adopt roles for the group's benefit rather than personal authenticity.

8. *Community (Marx)*: Likely easier in tribal societies, as the constant threats would necessitate cooperation and mutual support, fostering a strong sense of community.

9. *Mindfulness (Thich Nhat Hanh)*: Likely harder in a tribal society, where the constant threats could make it difficult to focus on the present moment and achieve mindfulness.

10. *Acceptance (Stoics)*: Equal in both societies; acceptance is about personal perspective and can be challenging in any circumstance, including violence or disease.

11. *Physical Well-being (Plato)*: Much harder in a tribal society due to a higher risk of injury from violence, more limited medical knowledge and treatment, and potential prevalence of disease.

12. *Purpose (Nietzsche)*: Likely harder in a tribal society, where survival threats might narrow the scope of one's purpose to primarily physical survival.

13. *Knowledge (Socrates)*: Easier in modern society due to broader access to information, whereas tribal societies may lack the resources to gain knowledge beyond immediate survival needs.

14. *Creativity (Fromm)*: Harder in a tribal society where threats of violence and disease might limit the time, resources, and mental energy available for creative pursuits.

15. *Love (Fromm)*: Possibly harder in tribal societies, where the constant threats could overshadow relationships and the expression of love.”

In future discussions, you might have better luck eliciting useful responses from people when you don’t pit them to argue against an AI, IMO. It reads to me like “I didn’t want to put in the effort to generate my own thoughts, but I expect you to: good luck!”

That aside I’ll focus on the Maslow point since I think it’s the easiest to discuss and has the most obvious carryover to a lot of the other points. Maslow tells us we have a hierarchy of needs. At the top of that is self-actualization, but we need to fulfill all the lower-level needs before we feel any need for self actualization. I strongly doubt anyone would be disappointed that they are not “actualizing themselves” if they were fighting every day for food, shelter, etc. self-actualization is basically what Ted describes as a “surrogate activity” - a need we have made up because all our “real” needs have been met, and now we have all this spare time with which we have to do something. So we create new needs for ourselves to fill our time.

You can carry this concept, of our needs being relative to our position in life, over to a lot of the other philosophies you listed. Concepts like love, generosity, pleasure, purpose, are all relative. From a modern western perspective, generosity might be buying a friend a nice gift, cooking someone dinner, etc. Those are much smaller in magnitude than, say, sharing the limited food and resources you gathered with your tribe so that they can all survive. We today think of pleasure as sex, or achieving a goal, or seeing something that makes us happy in passing. Those probably pale in comparison to the sense of pleasure of knowing a hard day’s work allowed you to live another day in a hostile environment. We think of purpose as what we were put on this earth to do. Had we not all the resources we needed, and had to work for them, I think it’s very reasonable to expect our sense of “purpose” would change to match our capabilities.

You can even see evidence of this in modern society by comparing high and low income areas. Children from lower income areas, where their physical and emotional needs are not being met, don’t get as good of grades. Why should they care about who built the pyramids or how to work a Bunsen burner when they don’t know where dinner is coming from?

Sorry if I offended by bringing up the AI - I was trying to use it to offer many possible avenues of more specific disagreement, so I could understand their stance better. Less about convincing or arguing.

On the rest of it… I think i asked a bunch of questions last night and am now facing the harsh reality that the answer is “some people see the whole shape of the world and human experience completely differently than I do and always have”. So not too much to discuss lol

To illustrate that, consider “ I strongly doubt anyone would be disappointed that they are not “actualizing themselves” if they were fighting every day for food, shelter, etc.”. I find this absolutely insane (no offense). You bring up poor modern people in the end, and I think that’s a great example of my concerns: being poor sucks, not knowing where your next meal come from feels terrible, and watching loved ones die of preventable causes is fucking heartbreaking. The idea that poverty/primitivism would lead to better self-actualization is so, so far from how I see the world that I think debate is impossible

Thanks for the detailed response! Appreciate the dialogue, for sure.

EDIT: on re-read it appears your point is that if we’re struggling for the lower needs, we won’t miss the higher ones. That’s not my understanding of Maslow, but since his theory isn’t really about happiness at all but motivation, I can’t appeal to the author there. It just seems very counter-intuitive that higher needs would not be missed while struggling to achieve lower ones; for example, does someone without shelter not miss love?

Of course I’m only speculating on how someone who has lived their entire life primitively might feel - I haven’t done that myself. I’m looking at things from the perspective of if I were born into a tribal, primitive society. As you alluded to in your previous post, things clearly change when you’ve lived a modern life.

Having lived a modern life, we know that the diseases primitive societies face are preventable. We know that we don’t need to struggle for food. If we didn’t know that, we’d probably feel differently. For example, a lot of primitive cultures have very different relationships and views of death.

I think that “going from modern to primitive life” versus “always living a primitive life” is a huge difference.

> This seems crazy to me, leaning heavily on the proof that you yourself obviously are not choosing that life when you easily could.

Yeah, you know who already did that? The Unabomber! And instead of just keeping to himself, he eventually realized by all the development being done near him that Civilization would eventually encroach upon him and keep him out.

As a politics, “choosing that life” is not sufficient because only a small amount of people can do that; it is not sustainable for a large mass of people to opt into that lifestyle since we (at least in population dense areas) haven’t been able to live like that for thousands of years.

The idea that you can just shut up, f off and “choose that life” is a liberal fantasy. But political liberalism is the dominant ideology so that’s the usual response.

Well Tbf he saw a road - not exactly “forced out”. His campaign of violence was over a decade long and I don’t think I’ve read anything about him starving or caving on his self-sufficiency ideals in the meantime. But maybe this is covered in the manifesto?

I’d say that if people who value a self-sufficient primitive existence decide they can’t coexist with me in my tech-enhanced world, my natural response is “suck it up”. The idea that they like something that a huge majority of people don’t so we all need to comply to make room for them feels selfish to the point of narcissism. It doesn’t help that, as you said, going this route today would necessitate a massive… let’s charitably say “intentional population decrease”.

Not sure if you're endorsing such views or not, but point well taken - I see how some would find self-sufficiency unsatisfying if they can’t escape all traces of the rest of society.

> This seems crazy to me, leaning heavily on the proof that you yourself obviously are not choosing that life when you easily could.

Can someone do this? Find a place you can live and hunt for free that isn't incredibly difficult to survive in because of its inhospitable climate or lack of resources.

I mean, Africa and LA seem like strong contenders. Most non-rich nations, really. One could say “but I want somewhere safer” but obviously that would be a little bit self-defeating, ideology-wise.

“For free” is also pretty much impossible, especially if you factor in travel, but my intuition tells me that a very modest American or European savings could buy access to land somewhere. Especially if you sold all your possessions, or used credit without intending to pay it back.

Re: resources… I mean that’s kinda the deal? Living immersed in nature without society’s support doesn’t mean relaxing in Eden in the vast vast majority of places, it means fighting like hell. Imo.

I mean, humans are a social species, and tribal societies that live off the land have a chain of countless generations passing down wisdom and customs to train their people on how to effectively survive in their respective environments, and still they rely on their community to effectively do so.

To take a single (or even a couple) of fully formed adults without any of that lifelong education and training, who are accustomed to a wholly different environment and way of life, and to drop them into a survival situation without that surrounding community to rely on, seems like an obvious recipe for failure.

Not that I’m arguing that tribal life is actually desirable over a modern western lifestyle.

I agree, well put! Overall I’m arguing against primitivism but Ted’d particular brand of it (schizophrenic complete isolation) is even easier to find problems with as a political or social message.

The man needed health care, not a shack in the woods…

It's not for everyone, but FWiW the overwhelming majority of people I went to primary school with did exactly that, as had their families since they'd walked across the world to get there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmCX7R-W4c

you misunderstand inner peace.

inner peace is a peace which cannot be disturbed by external circumstances.

inner peace means peace even amid disease. peace even amid violence.

Fair enough! I’d say it’s “equally possible in either scenario” then.

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