[HN Gopher] Risky Food-Finding Strategy Could Be a Key to Human ...
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Risky Food-Finding Strategy Could Be a Key to Human Success
Author : diodorus
Score : 55 points
Date : 2022-01-23 04:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (today.duke.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (today.duke.edu)
| master_crab wrote:
| cestith wrote:
| Individual risk of not finding food is higher, but because the
| risk is spread across the clan, tribe, or village the overall
| risk is abated. The high reward when part of the group is
| successful is plenty for everyone when shared. They just made an
| argument for cooperative living on a small, local scale.
| adventured wrote:
| > They just made an argument for cooperative living on a small,
| local scale.
|
| That depends on your individual capabilities. What you're
| capable of producing and the value of that production.
|
| If you're around the median or below, there may be an argument
| for that cooperative style of existence. In a modern,
| industrial civilization where people in the top tiers of
| competency are highly rewarded (and sometimes very far beyond
| that), it makes no sense to stick yourself in a cooperative
| small scale living context if you're in the top 1/3 to 1/4 or
| so of competency (you'd become a net charity entity, which is
| fine, however you'd just be better off donating a share of your
| surplus output in a manner of your choosing instead (which
| we've turned into taxation); or alternatively you'd be dragged
| down to the median output level or below by the cooperative
| tribe, in the style of crab mentality, they would not long
| tolerate your exceptionalism unless they get to ride you far
| beyond their fair share).
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Having the cooperation of the tribe is the reward. A single
| individual has their own strength and labor, but with the
| cooperation of others they can accomplish much more.
|
| Earning a person's full labor means paying for their
| necessities - and some extra for loyalty. Without it they
| will always be distracted by survival.
| CardenB wrote:
| Yes, this small scale disregards sociology and technology
| that can leverage individuals and widen the gap of output.
| AdamN wrote:
| You're aggregating capabilities pretty broadly. While it
| might be true that a short person might be able to walk
| farther and get some special thing, or a small person might
| be able to get into a nook and get some special thing, or a
| big person might be more able to carry a bunch of things back
| in a similar amount of time, these are complementary
| capabilities and no one of them is more valuable than the
| others independently.
|
| Even if you accept your premise that there is one dimension
| of capability, what is the metric, more tubers than you can
| eat?
| webmaven wrote:
| _> Even if you accept your premise that there is one
| dimension of capability, what is the metric, more tubers
| than you can eat?_
|
| Probably "time spent finding 'enough' tubers to eat/share."
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I am this | | close to starting a co-op just for the heck of
| it. We need more of them, if only just to make them seem more
| approachable and have people ask for them more.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| I've lived in a few co-ops while living in Berkeley, and now
| own my own home. I have to say that I prefer the co-op model,
| as you can spread the luxuries and responsibilities amongst a
| number of people. When a problem comes up the folks that deal
| with it are those that are effected, with the resources of
| the whole house behind them, instead of a property management
| company or one sole individual. The burden and pleasure of a
| huge tv room, hot tub and guest bedrooms all become something
| that other's can utilize instead of something that you feel
| guilty about having and not using.
|
| Quite a nice model.
| gbronner wrote:
| I think that the implication is that if each individual hunts
| individually, they mostly get nothing, and every so often get an
| entire animal which is too large for one person/family to eat, so
| the expected value of this strategy is low.
|
| By pooling high risk strategies with big payoffs, the expected
| value of the whole is greater.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| How can hunting and gathering be "inefficient" when the rate of
| return is "enormous"?
| tokai wrote:
| I think the journalist got it backwards. The lead sentence of
| the Science article is _Efficiency leads to leisure_. And the
| word inefficient doesn 't even appear.
|
| Gambling by putting more energy in, for the change of quicker
| and larger payout is definitely not inefficiency.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| How much of your food is from hunting and gathering?
| [deleted]
| scratcheee wrote:
| They're using efficiency in a different (and certainly
| confusing) sense.
|
| Their gas guzzling car example explains their thought process:
| humans, whilst hunting, are running hot. They're inefficient at
| the task of maintaining themselves between meals.
|
| That's made irrelevant by the fact that they're collecting more
| food on average, so they're actually more efficient overall,
| but that only becomes true once you factor in food intake.
|
| Sort of like saying that a lorry is a less efficient way to
| travel than a car. True until you mention that the lorry has
| many tons of cargo which must make the journey with you (or in
| subsequent trips), _then_ the reverse holds.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I believe they meant to argue that it is high-risk because it
| is inefficient in the sense that you expend a lot of energy
| which may or may not pay off. But since it is both high-risk
| and high-reward, I was also wondering why they used the word
| inefficient there.
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