Those who are convinced that there is more to things spend their time chasing it and not finding it often as not, and those who are convinced there isn't find themselves frustrated at the abyss.
I once got curious and explored the topic of hunting efficiency to try and unpack what exactly “hunter gatherer” even means beyond our stylized romantic cultural tropes. The most efficient “classical” hunters are certain small cats with a 90% kill rate. Larger cats are 10-30%. That made me realize that the hunting vs gathering distinction is actually just a spectrum. As efficiency nears 100% the predator/prey asymmetry is so high, hunting is basically gathering. Think whales and krill, or small cats and mice vs lions and zebras. But this means the energy per kill is low so they have to spend more time hunting. This means it’s all on the same spectrum as vegetarian “gathering” feeders. Cows have to graze almost continuously because of the low energy/nutrient density. For them, food security risk turns into seasonal risk of drought etc. And farming is just a technological extension of the same spectrum. Point being, “Hunter gatherer lifestyle” is simply a matter of where the risk frontier is for a kill rate that matches our biological instincts. Humans are primates who learned to hunt a range of game. Our risk appetite ranges from near zero (gathering berries in a rich harvest) to low probability kills (hunting big game with primitive weapons). It’s also much more tunable and abstractable/reifable, which is why we’re happy to sublimate our instincts by taking “hunter” vs “farmer” sales jobs to match our personalities for eg. There’s an interesting theory that our adaptive trait is in fact being able to handle variability in food distribution and other factors, which is why humans have spread to so many geographies, including aquatic. See the paper by Potts on variability selection in hominins. I don’t know if this theory is true but I like it.
Isn't this every generations gripe to discover again and again? You could roll back the clock and write this article 100 years ago and basically be making the same thesis.
This is a fantastic post! Really thought-provoking. It makes me wonder how modern infrastructure can support the kind of tribal living people want. One difficulty with major social media services, which are supposed to help us find our tribes, is that they exert constant pressure to *expand* our connections. This makes sense for those services; more connections benefits them. And obviously we want our tribes to be flexible and expandable. But it seems difficult to form an effective tribe on Twitter, for example (which is perhaps one reason I see more and more people set up Discords).
I think we'll start seeing it reemerge, as it already seems to be starting to, whether through new tools or new corners of existing tools. Twitter also seems to have it, though with more porous borders, whether its the vibecamp creation or econtwitter etc. The thing we're learning is how to use the tools to get what we want.
This is a great piece which implicitly explores that impractical relationship between intuitive idealism and pragmatic realism.
I’ve often become disheartened by looking deeply into a subject only to realise that things are the way they are for good reasons. They’re well thought through, the trade-offs are both understandable and understood, and the reasons for “fine-tweaking” is that, annoyingly, things are already as good as they can be.
Then my feeling-and-vibing brain wakes up and says “be quiet, loser” and I’m back to my old self.
The trick is that "things are the way they are for good reasons" does double duty. Sometimes the reasons are genuinely good: physics, deep tradeoffs, mathematical constraints. Sometimes they're just load-bearing: regulatory capture, coordination costs, sunk infrastructure. Both feel identical when you survey them analytically. The vibing brain can't distinguish them either, but at least it doesn't mistake the second kind for the first.
I once got curious and explored the topic of hunting efficiency to try and unpack what exactly “hunter gatherer” even means beyond our stylized romantic cultural tropes. The most efficient “classical” hunters are certain small cats with a 90% kill rate. Larger cats are 10-30%. That made me realize that the hunting vs gathering distinction is actually just a spectrum. As efficiency nears 100% the predator/prey asymmetry is so high, hunting is basically gathering. Think whales and krill, or small cats and mice vs lions and zebras. But this means the energy per kill is low so they have to spend more time hunting. This means it’s all on the same spectrum as vegetarian “gathering” feeders. Cows have to graze almost continuously because of the low energy/nutrient density. For them, food security risk turns into seasonal risk of drought etc. And farming is just a technological extension of the same spectrum. Point being, “Hunter gatherer lifestyle” is simply a matter of where the risk frontier is for a kill rate that matches our biological instincts. Humans are primates who learned to hunt a range of game. Our risk appetite ranges from near zero (gathering berries in a rich harvest) to low probability kills (hunting big game with primitive weapons). It’s also much more tunable and abstractable/reifable, which is why we’re happy to sublimate our instincts by taking “hunter” vs “farmer” sales jobs to match our personalities for eg. There’s an interesting theory that our adaptive trait is in fact being able to handle variability in food distribution and other factors, which is why humans have spread to so many geographies, including aquatic. See the paper by Potts on variability selection in hominins. I don’t know if this theory is true but I like it.
Isn't this every generations gripe to discover again and again? You could roll back the clock and write this article 100 years ago and basically be making the same thesis.
And I would've been right then too. Now it's just more so.
This was plucked directly from my brain.
Well put.
This is a fantastic post! Really thought-provoking. It makes me wonder how modern infrastructure can support the kind of tribal living people want. One difficulty with major social media services, which are supposed to help us find our tribes, is that they exert constant pressure to *expand* our connections. This makes sense for those services; more connections benefits them. And obviously we want our tribes to be flexible and expandable. But it seems difficult to form an effective tribe on Twitter, for example (which is perhaps one reason I see more and more people set up Discords).
I think we'll start seeing it reemerge, as it already seems to be starting to, whether through new tools or new corners of existing tools. Twitter also seems to have it, though with more porous borders, whether its the vibecamp creation or econtwitter etc. The thing we're learning is how to use the tools to get what we want.
You can't retrofit specifics using our hyperarbitrary binary. They're in total conflict.
The future is only accessible by tossing symbols aside.
This is a great piece which implicitly explores that impractical relationship between intuitive idealism and pragmatic realism.
I’ve often become disheartened by looking deeply into a subject only to realise that things are the way they are for good reasons. They’re well thought through, the trade-offs are both understandable and understood, and the reasons for “fine-tweaking” is that, annoyingly, things are already as good as they can be.
Then my feeling-and-vibing brain wakes up and says “be quiet, loser” and I’m back to my old self.
The trick is that "things are the way they are for good reasons" does double duty. Sometimes the reasons are genuinely good: physics, deep tradeoffs, mathematical constraints. Sometimes they're just load-bearing: regulatory capture, coordination costs, sunk infrastructure. Both feel identical when you survey them analytically. The vibing brain can't distinguish them either, but at least it doesn't mistake the second kind for the first.
What we want changes as soon as we get it. There is no satiation. We are restless creatures.
Great read you earned a sub from me.
Welcome!
We don't want to return, we want to overthrow the initial conditions of the mythological.
The very thing that forced religion and causality as folk psychology onto our emotions and events that gave us leaky stories and myths.
Forget the past. There's nothing there. Omit the words (and code) they are arbitrary fossils.
Know the future, it is analog.