Interesting—I was thinking it was going to be about the analogy with collapse of civilization and how far we might fall. Because I am concerned that if we have a loss of industrial civilization, we might not be able to figure out how to go back to subsistence farming, or even hunting and gathering (Secret of Our Success), so we may fall to extinction. But I think there are ways of not pulling up the ladder behind us in this case as well (planning for meeting basic needs in low tech ways).
Yeah. Zoomed way out, has human civilization made it easier or harder for hunter/gatherers to build back up to a highly technological point? It’s easier in some ways (our artifacts are lying around, showing it can be done and providing a point of study) and harder in others (we probably mined all the easily mined coal, though maybe the fact that we left mineshafts with the dregs helps?)
I don’t really have an actionable solution there, so I’m using the civilization wide version to point at things closer to human scale.
Interesting—I was thinking it was going to be about the analogy with collapse of civilization and how far we might fall. Because I am concerned that if we have a loss of industrial civilization, we might not be able to figure out how to go back to subsistence farming, or even hunting and gathering (Secret of Our Success), so we may fall to extinction. But I think there are ways of not pulling up the ladder behind us in this case as well (planning for meeting basic needs in low tech ways).
Yeah. Zoomed way out, has human civilization made it easier or harder for hunter/gatherers to build back up to a highly technological point? It’s easier in some ways (our artifacts are lying around, showing it can be done and providing a point of study) and harder in others (we probably mined all the easily mined coal, though maybe the fact that we left mineshafts with the dregs helps?)
I don’t really have an actionable solution there, so I’m using the civilization wide version to point at things closer to human scale.