Jared Diamond: World's Worst Mistake?

[Cory Duchesne]

Just reread parts of Jared Diamond's essay - Agriculture: World's Worst Mistake. I was impressed with this essay when I was younger, but now that I'm older, I'm starting to wonder if it is seriously misleading. Jared Diamond does admit that it isn't solely just agriculture that is the problem, it is the human propensity toward population growth that brings about a need for agriculture. Diamond himself writes:

"Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny."

So is it right to conclude that just because we couldn't control our reproductive instincts that agriculture is to blame for that? Agriculture arguably permitted less warfare, because by being able to feed more people, there was less of a reason to go to war. Steven Pinker covers the subject of violence in his TED talk, A brief History of Violence. His argument is that the hunter gatherer mode of existence was equally if not more prone to violence due to the much larger land space required to support a small tribe, so when there was any kind of population pressure or if there was a need to migrate due to change in environment, there was a reason to go to war with neighboring tribes.

Here's an interesting and relevant clip:

General Miles Blows off American Indian Myths

Now, that clip is from a movie, so I'm taking it with a grain of salt, but it is a compelling and intuitive point of view.

Here is the graph Steven Pinker uses in his TED talk on warefare among hunter gathers:



Now, this is suddenly a dramatically flattering view of agriculture. Pinker and Diamond are amazingly opposed ideologically, so one of them is being very dishonest or deluded.

Now, I acknowledge that the graph just links to a standalone image - no website with text to explain the graph. As for the graph itself, it's a bit suspicious and I will go onto the official TED site to see if I can find any citations that support Pinker's graph. Also to note, is that there are thousands of tribes in the world, but it shows eight specific (and perhaps obscure) tribes. It doesn't show overall averages across tribal societies in general, so there's no indication that these eight tribes are representative of tribal societies in general. So these examples could be cherrypicked.

Diamond refers more than a couple times to the Kalahari bushmen, who he seems to see as a model for sustainable living. I wonder how often the Kalahari go to war? Why don't their populations start to spill out into other areas causing conflict? These are questions I plan on researching over the next month or to, I just thought some of you may find this interesting, or perhaps you have an insight into these issues you might share.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

So is it right to conclude that just because we couldn't control our reproductive instincts that agriculture is to blame for that?

And what exactly might lie at the base of these blind reproductive instincts ? Could there be anything other than the obvious benefits outweighing the risks for the species or perhaps for certain specific genes (check Dawkin's "Selfish Gene" concept)? It's already obvious there can be way more recombinations in a large, now even global population. More mixture with "alien" material as well, as they keep finding traces of viruses and bacteria in the human genome too (8% of our genome is constructed of what used to be retroviruses).

As argued in "The 10,000 Year Explosion" by anthropologists Cochran and Harpending, the development of agriculture might have caused a huge increase in the rate of human evolution, and "numerous evolutionary adaptations to the change in lifestyle and society". So while mass agriculture seems needlessly destructive, it might serve another goal of "nature" altogether. One that doesn't have to include the welfare or happiness of the average person, or even the longevity of a certain social system or civilization.

Just food for thought. Perhaps this can be delved in somewhat deeper as these are just the things springing to mind right now.

[Cory Duchesne]

I will be sure to check out that book by Cochrane and Harpending, sounds interesting. I too see agriculture with metallurgy and everything that has followed as the means toward further evolution, or the furnace of which the ore of humanity is broken. The progress of civilization itself could be seen as a dangerous trek up a steep mountain, and the higher we climb the more perilous yet potentially glorious the situation becomes. Like you say, happiness has little to do with it, it's the ideal toward a higher state, it is the love of danger, adventure and transformation. Or perhaps more commonly and less flatteringly, a panicked scramble for (and a stumbling onto) imaginative solutions, with some incidental impressive results.

Diamond's big thing seems to be "sustainability", and I suppose if indefinite survival is what we value, then there are virtues to hunter gather existence, provided you are willing to have significantly higher death ratios through tribal warfare (at least if you go by Pinker's data) and also provided, and this is a big one, you are willing to sacrifice accumulation of scientific knowledge and technology. You can’t practice metallurgy without the kinds of populations that only agriculture can support, and without metallurgy you are going to accomplish squat scientifically and technologically. And the lack of science and tech of hunter gatherer existence has long term survival drawbacks as well. Also, and I realize such ideals may be too fanciful and far fetched, but will state them anyway: under hunter gatherer existence, there is no opportunity to escape the earth through space migration, no opportunity to engineer our biology to overcome irrational urges to reproduce and be violent, no opportunity to engineer ourselves to be more intelligent and brave - and with that, more resilient.

On the other hand, hunter gather existence, with it's relative renunciation of ambitious scientific learning, denial of elaborate entertainment and fashion, increased leisure and raw exposure to the elements is, at least on the surface, more in line with the ideals of Eastern Sages and stoics like Diogenes, so I can understand how some see a connection between wisdom and hunter gatherer existence.

Edit:

The graph in Pinker's ted talk can be found in his book The Blank Slate. Apparently it comes Ed Hagen's 1996 book, War before civilization: The myth of the peaceful savage, New York, Oxford University Press, figure 6.2 on page 90.

[Ryan Rudolph]

Just to comment:

I see history as a sort of progression to higher complexity, with every advancement, as both a solution to old problems, and causing new problems in the process. It seems almost every advancement does this - a double edged sword so to speak.

Wind turbines are a good example. They seem less destructive than fossil fuels, but bird species fly into the blades drastically reducing certain species numbers in some areas.

I suspect computer systems are probably going to evolve to be able to emulate each new solution to determine what new problems it creates in the process, and then based on the analysis, only select those solutions that create the fewest and less harmful problems to be faced with as a result.

History has been blind in the sense that humans merely solve present problems with a solution, without being able to predict what new problems will be created by the introduction of this new thing into the environment.

btw, why focus on agriculture and metallurgy more than others? Just because they were some of the first major advancements doesn't mean that they are necessarily the most significant.

I suppose it comes down to the fact that man is a clever animal, that is able to come up with crafty solutions that are solved through the filter of his animal nature, so new problems ever persist, and he is forever chasing solutions to old problems. Not to mention that the nature of invention is to solve a problem, but create others as a byproduct. perhaps this is because an invention is like a sword cutting into the heart of nature's ruthlessness, it kills a foe, yet creates new enemies in the process.

It is something we have to live with I suppose, at least for now, until a better solution to our solutions emerge..: )

[Cory Duchesne]

btw, why focus on agriculture and metallurgy more than others? Just because they were some of the first major advancements doesn't mean that they are necessarily the most significant.

I just meant that these two are the foundation that allows just about everything in civilization to flourish, and if they are suddenly taken away, particularly agriculture, civilization almost immediately implodes. Aside from carbon, metals like iron, copper, silver and gold are some of the easiest elements to isolate for undeveloped peoples (yet still very challenging), and without the utility of these metals, you could not likely extract vast quantities of such metals efficiently, and thus you could not extract the other elements, nor do the vast array of advanced behaviors which are essential to a stable and advanced civilization. Off the top of my head: without metals, you are not defending yourself effectively against competing populations, you aren't isolating vast quantities (or difficult to acquire) elements, you aren't producing microscopes and telescopes, batteries, wires, useful compounds, electronics, syringes, airplanes, cars, computers, shuttle missions, etc.

If we woke up tomorrow and had no metals, we'd lose almost everything. If we woke up tomorrow and had no computers, we could just make more.

[Cory Duchesne]

I should also add that I don't for a minute think that it's even slightly plausible for humanity to ever intentionally return to hunter gatherer existence, to entertain such a notion is to really lose your mind, which I don't mind saying I've done before. I just find it interesting to compare civilization with the hunter gatherer state, to weigh the pros and cons of each, and to compare how the two lifestyles deal with the common themes of population pressure and war, and like Diebert has done, contrast egalitarian and static meadows of happiness with a dynamic and perilous drive up mountains toward continuous transformations in culture, technology, biology and consciousness.

Jared Diamond really went off the deep end in his essay, and I wonder if this is simply an instance of a man breaking under the pressure created by a moral sensitivity to what is a highly stratified civilization with very ugly elements. He has extremely egalitarian politics, to the point of what seems like soft headedness and a lack of nerve. But to be fair, "the world's worst mistake" is an old essay and he has likely changed his tune somewhat, and to his credit, I think he's correct to state that life as a hunter gatherer was not uniformly brutish and short like Pinker asserts, but in some ways healthier compared to earlier agricultural societies.

[Cory Duchesne]

This is what he's working on lately:

Jared Diamond TED talk on why societies collapse.

[Loki]

Someone brought to my attention something interesting, when you analyze bone densities you get this: http://www.anthro.ucdavis.edu/facult...nry/ajpa29.pdf

In periods of malnutrition, you get bands of different bone densities, but they tend to even out back again when you get enough food for a few years. The bones from hunter-gatherer tribes are reportedly the worst cases by far. It shows not only that malnutrition did happen, but it was more regular and more severe than what you get even in bones from the saxon dark ages.

Analysis of tooth enamel, same thing, shows that a lot of those tribesmen grew up severely starved.

Warfare in tribal societies is arguably permanent and endemic, with attrition rates going up to two thirds. Yes, of all people born there, up to that many can die in tribal warfare. More median cases like the Yanomamö had over a third attrition, which is to say, over a third die in endemic warfare.

It is also said that the most peaceful American Indian tribes "only" attacked their neighbours once a year.

And while warfare in agriculture age became better documented and more organized, and more clearly for resources, violence in tribal societies tends to be for just about any reason whatsoever, usually related to accusations of sorcery. For the aforementioned Yanomamö, the chief reason for warfare seems to be accusations of sorcery.

Tribal mind set was likely: If your shaman says he summoned more animals for you to hunt, but your tribe still starves, it must be because the evil shaman of another tribe is driving the animals away from your hunters. (It can't be that your shaman is full of it.) Time to teach that evil tribe a lesson.

And they likely often had codes of violence escalation for it. Starting from premeditated murder of someone from the other tribe, and at least theoretically going all the way to complete genocide. Yes, genocide too is one thing that agriculture-children didn't invent.

Of course, this is history and hearsay, I don't like to get dogmatic on these issues, but Jared Diamond is seems like he's trying to incite social change by believing and telling people fairy tales hoping he can rouse them and himself into some kind of positive action. Unfortunately, life has no neat, simple solutions.

[Nick]

Tribal mind set was likely: If your shaman says he summoned more animals for you to hunt, but your tribe still starves, it must be because the evil shaman of another tribe is driving the animals away from your hunters. (It can't be that your shaman is full of it.) Time to teach that evil tribe a lesson.

Kind of like how the Christian Right is told by their leaders that if they have faith in God and Jesus as their savior they will be rewarded both now and after they die. So when they're still struggling to get by even though they remain faithful, they become much more willing to lash out at others(voting for republicans and the like), especially atheists, muslims, and most ironically, poor people on welfare. I guess Jesus was just playing around when he talked about helping the poor.

[Ryan Rudolph]

Cory, ok I see your point now.

Moreover, one might also ponder if technology inevitably evolves into new novel ways of doing old things, until those very foundations have become eroded and replaced...

For instance: Could commercial agriculture ever be replaced by something better that can handle large populations without the environmental damage?

Or can fresh water be created without the reliance of the present fresh water reserves?

And so on... Take any present day problem, and is there a technological solution that can help humanity? Because people aren't going to become wise overnight, and reduce their populations, so technology may have to pick up the slack.

[Cory Duchesne]

Cory, ok I see your point now.

Moreover, one might also ponder if technology inevitably evolves into new novel ways of doing old things, until those very foundations have become eroded and replaced...

For instance: Could commercial agriculture ever be replaced by something better that can handle large populations without the environmental damage?

Nanotech perhaps, where you somehow assemble an appetizing blob of proteins, lipids and carbohydrates laced with vitamins. A long ways off I imagine, but certainly not impossible. And lots of sentimentality and romanticism about "natural food" to slow progress, but perhaps some valid rational concerns as this synthetic food might have drawbacks, but you'd think it could be perfected to work ideally.

Or can fresh water be created without the reliance of the present fresh water reserves?

Cheap desalination definitely seems within reach in the near future. If we could easily desalinate, the only worry related to water we would have would be floods, pollution, and electric eels.

Spain is doing well with desalination apparently:

http://www.technologyreview.com/microsi ... index.aspx

Access to clean fresh water right now is a big problem as climate changes and populations grow past their ideal carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is one of the more interesting subjects for me, but hugely complicated. Hard for a layman to have much of an opinion on it without access to a lot of data that the professional themselves likely feel lacking in.

And so on... Take any present day problem, and is there a technological solution that can help humanity?

I would say so. Well, besides the very last problem: the implosion of the universe, the big crunch. Gonna be difficult to escape that if the day comes, probably impossible. I will be long gone, but I might have a descendant looking nervously out the window of his spacecraft to see how much more time he has (as he's frantically shooting just one last set of bad guys, striving for an all time high score in a final game of Galaga).

Because people aren't going to become wise overnight, and reduce their populations, so technology may have to pick up the slack.

As long as we don't have any extinction events from fatal mistakes, natural disasters, or drastic, insane acts of deliberate destruction, humanity will do amazing things technologically. If you think of how drastically we've changed civilization in such a short time, just think of what 2000 more years will do. We might become unrecognizable.

[Loki]

Oh yeah, and one more thing... the idea of egalitarianism back in the good ol' days? I think that's bunk too.

Consider infanticide.

It reportedly happened pre-ag, seemingly more prevalent before agriculture. So think of it as retroactive birth control, I guess. No one seems to asked how those enlightened hunter-gatherers practiced birth control, always emphasizing those evil agricultors who wanted lots of offspring.

I guy was telling me not too long ago that almost all over the world evidence points out that female infants were far more killed than male ones, even in the paleolithic. If you find a little beheaded skeleton, chances are a lot higher it will be a little female baby. In some places the estimates are as high as 50% of all females born were killed. In the paleolithic.

Then there's the interesting issue of height. While in the paleolithic males seemed to have been indeed quite tall and thin, the disturbing thing are female skeletons - disproportionately shorter than the males, and there's also a lot more variability in size among females, and even more important a lot of regional variation. E.g., if you look at the prehistoric skeletons in Menorca, the females have been reported to be practically dwarves.

I would ascribe the size differences to just nutrition, which implies it was the girls who went to bed hungry when food was scarce.

None of this suggests "gender equality" as we usually hear associated with pre agriculture lifestyle. It's what you'd expect in a society where the boys matter (e.g., because they'll be great warriors and carry your name and so on) while the girls are a liability.