From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri May 23 2003 - 07:56:57 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> So while agriculture was a mistake that did in fact create powerful
> benefits, we must ask whether those benefits could have been obtained
> without the mistake.
Exactly.
> Causally the answer may be yes; the mistake may be
> inexorably correlated but not really *necessary*.
Yes.
Diamond emphasizes that this worst mistake in the history of the human race
was the result of *choice*:
"Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food
production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and
tyranny."
Of course the decision to domesticate plants and animals was not made
consciously by some World Committee of HG Overseers. It was a choice made
gradually in small steps by many people over several thousand years.
But let us say for the sake of argument that such a World Committee of HG
Overseers did exist, and that it was comprised of intelligent, worldly
people (they were the prehistoric ancestors of extropians :) Let us say
further that the committee was given access to a crystal ball to see into
the future, and that despite the ability to peer into the future, the future
nevertheless remained undecided. How might they have deliberated?
I suppose the argument against the agriculture decision might look something
like this:
"Why, fellow Overseers, should we choose to expand the world population of
humans unless doing so will in some way benefit all humanity? We can see
here in our crystal ball that agriculture will allow for a greatly increased
population, but what good is an increased population in and of itself? The
population explosion will come at the expense of even more hunger, poverty
and tyranny. Would it not be better instead to control the population now so
that we have no need for these cheap sources of calories that make such poor
substitutes for the wild plants and animals upon which we thrive? Look there
into the future -- our 20th century our progeny will invent convenient birth
control methods. Perhaps we should be trying to develop birth control
methods now when it is most needed, rather than then when it will be all but
too late to make a difference. We could then still work to develop other
technologies that might benefit our species."
Diamond mentions that infanticide was a choice made by HG'ers to keep the
population low before the advent of agriculture. An HG woman would have
needed to wait until a child was about four and no longer in need of
carrying before she could rear another child, so Diamond supposes that
HG'ers must have killed those born during the years between.
However as moderns we are not forced to kill newborns. We have birth
control, and we have a choice to avoid the poor quality foods that come from
agriculture and animal husbandry.
We moderns have the ability to learn from our mistakes, in this case even
the worst mistake in the history of the human race.
-gts
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