Poll Men: would you carry a pregnancy? Women: would you want your man to?

[Thorsten]

Actually, I think casting this into the alternative 'either we have computers or we become hunter-gatherers sitting in caves' is nothing but a cheap rhethorical device to ridicule the others' position and not have to seriously discuss anything.

Reality is nothing like this, because it provides lots of other options.

To give an example from forestry: It is not true that we only have the options to leave the forest untouched and do hunting/gathering or to cut it down wholesale.

In reality, there's things called sustainable forest management which are designed to be close to how nature works. You do like nature does and just pull out a few trees every year. You keep a mixed tree population that way - both in terms of species and age cohort. You leave it to the trees to find which spot they grow and thrive rather than planting.

In reality, counted over a few decades, that leads to higher harvests than old-school managed forest with cutting down the whole lot and planting fast-growing monocultures supplied with fertilizer. Evolution knows pretty well how to make a well-working forest, and by staying close to that solution, you benefit in the long run. Trees grow better when they're sheltered by older trees. Disease doesn't spread so easily because different species grow adjacent to each other.

Similarly, just because I believe we don't have to mindlessly apply every bit of technology because we can doesn't mean I propose to forsake all technology.

And because some parts of the planet are only suitable for hunting/gathering/low level grazing and turn to desert if you try intensive farming doesn't mean I believe this for the whole planet.

We all have the tendency to want some things to be true and technology is great for each of us individually, so we want it to be okay continue to do what we're doing - I know that quite well.

But well, sometimes that blinds us to the facts. Making jokes, however funny, doesn't change that.

P.S.: I do grow and gather a sizable fraction of what I eat myself in a sustainable setup - getting better at this every year.

 

[Urwumpe]

First of all - I see no connection of this discussion to male pregnancy anymore. Can we continue this somewhere else?

Actually, I think casting this into the alternative 'either we have computers or we become hunter-gatherers sitting in caves' is nothing but a cheap rhethorical device to ridicule the others' position and not have to seriously discuss anything.

No, it isn't - it simply does not ignore technology. You mention modern sustainable forestry - which is a technology. Not even a primitive one. But even that does not put food on the table. Even my hunter-gatherer data assumes specialization and division of labor already. Its just having a "minimal" change to the habitat, it is assumed to not be intentionally modified for humans. Of course, even without intent you will change. Often even worse than by technology.

All ridicule is now something you should properly feel - but the jester should be sitting in the back of your own head. Your position is extremely hypocritical, I doubt you are not sensing it yourself.

First of all, its you who put hunter-gatherers into the discussion as example of a population that does not require any modern technology or active manipulation of their environment. That is true - all their effects are unintentional and uncontrolled as nature should be.

Next we are talking about seven billion humans. No calculation is around telling that even in a very optimistic scenario, a sustainable population could exist as hunter-gatherers. So, you are talking about dividing the world into "humans worthy to survive as hunter-gatherers" and "unworthy, who should starve and die for the sake of my ecologism". And it will be a large population that will need to be actively killed if you are not risking a population center of hunter-gatherers to die as whole.

You don't want to? Then we are talking about the key point of me and many others here:

There is no good or bad technology and no good or bad manipulation of the environment. Anything of this has consequences and you can't know all effects ahead of time. Its a very complex system. So you need to cut down complexity and handle it. By reviewing your technology, improving it, even stopping new technology for something older, should it prove to be harmful.

But you will never reach the point, that humans will have no effect at all.

 

[jedidia]

I feel like I missed part of the debate... to me it seems like the two of you are essentially making the same argument, just with a bias in enthusiasm:
One is "embrace technology, but be aware of the consequences" while the other is "be wary of technology, but embrace it when you think you can deal with the repurcussions".