I have not engaged in anything like that, so I can not stop engaging in it. If what you mean is "don't post views that you think may not be in line with the majority of HN posters" then say so. If you want a far-left only site, then put that in the rules and save yourself the hassle of dealing with people who naively believe the site is what the guidelines say it is.
If the intention is intellectual curiosity, then why is slandering people who present facts that some people don't want to hear acceptable? Who is learning from that? Yet pointing out that mathematicians have confirmed that the global warming models used to push the chicken little hysteria are based on incorrect math is not something that anyone could learn from? That is a "flamewar"?
>that the presence of hate-spewing and minority-oppressing fascists is not wanted.
But the bulk of the people being targeted are none of those things. What the average person is seeing is that anyone who dares to state a fact that far left ideologues don't like gets attacked and called racist. And if twitter doesn't censor them, twitter gets attacked too, and called "a haven for white supremacists and nazis". In reality, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are wanted, it is only a small group of vocal objectors that insist they are unwanted.
>The fascists are free to find other platforms, no one is censoring them.
The former does not support the latter. People moving to an uncensored platform does not mean the censored platform is not censored.
>We must not tolerate intolerance, because that kills tolerance overall.
I see people repeat that, but I don't see anything to indicate it is true. Quite the contrary, it would appear that one of the main factors in the growing white nationalist population is censorship and other attempts to silence people (calling them some thought terminating cliche like "racist" or "bigot" when they aren't saying anything racist or bigoted). When you say that someone's words are dangerous and they must be silenced, you imply that their views are so overwhelmingly convincing that large numbers of people will be swayed if they hear them. Since you can't actually silence them, all you do is cause them to move somewhere you don't control and then point to your censorship on platforms you do control as evidence that you know they are correct and fear the truth. You end up portraying yourself as the evil authoritarian empire, and the people you are trying to silence as the valiant freedom fighting rebels. People are sympathetic to the rebels, not the empire.
>When an ideology is built on intolerance, it must be opposed and deplatformed at every turn.
But that very ideology is built on intolerance. I presume you are going to delete your account so as to "deplatform" yourself?
The myth is that 90% were involved in food production in any way. Butchers and millers and brewers and bakers are part of that 90%, they were not doing anything in any fields. But that myth is based on England under Roman rule, where vast quantities of food were grown by slaves and shipped to Rome. After the fall of Rome, people returned to farming for the local population, and so needed fewer farmers. The period is even characterized by the three orders: those who fight, those who work and those who pray. These were societies that had enough food production that a major portion of the population could spend their time praying instead of doing anything productive. And the "those who work" includes carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, etc. not just farmers.
And that's not what is in dispute anyways. Hoeing fields is. Farmer does not equal hoeing fields. Tillage was done as little as necessary, and was done mainly using horses or oxen pulling plows and cultivators. A hoe was used seldom, and mainly in the vegetable garden. As I said, we have actual period texts on how to farm. All the way back to Rome, Greece and ancient China. None of them describe the modern hollywood portrayal of mentally handicapped peasants spending their lives hitting the ground with sticks.
We also have records of actual farm manors and how much labor each farmer was required to provide for the lord every year. They worked less than us, and had 8 weeks a year without work which they spent playing sports and games in the village green. We have skeletons that show they were taller than us, which indicates better nutrition. But because the late 1700s and early 1800s saw massive numbers of people move to cities and suffer terrible malnutrition and poverty, everyone just assumes things were even worse before that. All available evidence says otherwise. Things have always been bad in cities, especially due to disease, but rural life appears to have been pretty decent and was the majority of the population. Localized famines were rare enough to be major historical events mentioned all across Europe.
>The internet has allowed him and his ilk a bigger voice, platforms to more efficiently spread their ideology and organize.
But again, that's not authoritarianism. Quite the contrary, the left demanding that people like him not be allowed to speak, and in many cases demanding he be attacked or even killed, that is authoritarian.
No they didn't. We have books on farming that are 2000 years old, people have read them even. Just because movies show dirty peasants hoeing fields doesn't mean that was reality.
>The evidence of harm is far from conclusive, and given the replication crisis, your stating these claims as facts is completely unjustified.
Then say "I don't believe that" instead of trying to engage in silly arguments that have no possibility of productive outcomes.
>What do you think the non-existence of these things prior to the 1900s proves exactly
That people did not consume them prior to that time. As I very clearly stated, multiple times.
>completely ignoring the fact that I had already acknowledged that even if nutritional density were decreasing, the abundance is sufficient to feed the growing population.
That's a problem, not a solution. "We have to consume too many calories to get the same amount of vitamins and minerals they did" is not solved by saying "but we have lots of low quality food!". Obesity is not a solution to nutrient deficiencies.
>The burden of proof is on you here
There is no burden of proof. This is a discussion.
>Convenient that you ignore the paper that mentions the prevalence of osteoporosis is due to the aging population
Because it is of no relevance at all. The increase in osteoporosis in recent decades is in part due to the increased average age. That does not contradict the fact that osteoporosis rates in the 20th century are far higher than we have archeological evidence for in any other period.
>Oh, do you mean it did not exist as a diagnosis?
No, it did not exist. Diabetes was entirely and solely the disease we now call type 1 diabetes. That was the only diabetes. "Type 2 diabetes" has no relation to actual diabetes, has nothing to do with pancreatic malfunction, and did not exist prior to the 1920s.
>Nice how you just skip all the mentions of how common starvation was
Because that was not fact, it was opinion. I am well aware of the popular misconception, pointing to someone else repeating it does not add anything.
>and the actual justification for feasting in early winter.
That is not what it says. It claims people starve later in winter. Feasting before that would not change that outcome, and the quote you presented does not suggest it would.
>I asked for evidence. You have not provided any.
You did.
>Numerous sources I found all discuss how no robust evidence exists.
Again, stating that all available evidence points to A but is "not robust enough" therefore we should assume the opposite of A is absurd.
>The first link I provided definitively proves otherwise.
The first link does not look at a single hunter/gatherer society. It looks at minority indigenous populations living as second class citizens in modern countries. Amerindians living on reservations are not hunter/gatherers.
>You claimed that stone age hunter/gatherer societies didn't suffer from mental illness like depression. Historical documents discussing depressive symptoms are common.
No they are not, they are rare, not from hunter/gatherer societies, and they describe the condition as one of cities. Almost as if what I said about it being caused by human settlements exceeding the population humans evolved to handle is correct.
>Except I haven't made any such claims.
You have, repeatedly. You romanticize our disease rates, our abundant toxic waste which we can consume so much of and become morbidly obese and die, thus proving how great modern society is and how healthy we are.
>Which is actually well documented, commonly known fact, and runs contrary to what you have claimed.
No it is not. Average life expectancy has increased almost entirely due to antibiotics. Lots of people lived to their 80s, and did not suffer from the modern diseases we now pretend are just part of being old. Indirectly saying "but lots of people died of bacterial infections" does not mean we can simply pretend those infections were "type 2 diabetes".
>and the evidence I've cited so far
None? Linking to something irrelevant is not citing evidence.
>Many things didn't exist before the 1900s, that still doesn't entail they are harmful.
Stop trying to reverse my statement because you think that will allow you to dismiss it. I said they are harmful, and they did not exist before the 1900s. Not they are harmful because they didn't exist before the 1900s. Their harm is known by the negative health effects of their consumption. Those negative health effects did not exist for people before the 1900s.
>Now where's the evidence that these deficiencies were not prevalent or worse throughout history, which is what you're actually claiming.
I see a pattern here where you state that common scientific knowledge is wrong unless I provide citations for it, then when I do you just ignore those citations and the entire subject and proceed to call some other common scientific knowledge wrong. You can use google too.
I am well aware that people post common misconceptions on their blogs. If I link to a blog post about how the earth is really flat will that make it so?
>Citation?
Again, this is not wikipedia. If you want to call someone a liar, do so. If you want to find out information, do so. You don't get to delete opinions you don't like if you spam "citation needed" enough in a conversation. The history of type 2 diabetes is easy to learn about, it did not exist until the early 1900s.
>And from food spoiling.
Which is obviously caused by being unable to produce enough food and requiring all adults to spend their entire lives toiling in the fields to avoid starvation, thus supporting your belief.
>So basically the reason for the feasts is so they didn't have to waste precious food on keeping animals alive, because otherwise they'd all starve
They didn't waste food, therefore they were all starving. Brilliant logic.
>I linked to evidence that quite literally say we don't have enough historical data to infer the actual rates of suicide
You linked to poor evidence for suicide rates. That is not the same as no evidence. This kind of tactic is just silly. "Oh, well the evidence that shows their suicide rate was much lower has limited sample sizes, so we should just assume that in reality they had much higher suicide rates".
>What I am saying is that your claim that modern rates are higher is baseless.
And yet you provided evidence to contradict your claim.
>Wrong
Neither of your links are even related to my statement, so going "DURRRR RONG!!11" seems a little odd.
>You've fallen into the common trap of romanticizing the past
That's possible. Or perhaps you've fallen into the much more common trap of romanticizing the present.
>but your apparent inclination to claim that rates of happiness and health are far worse today than they ever were is completely baseless.
Again, there's a big difference between "the evidence is not strong enough to know that with 100% certainty" which is the case and "completely baseless" which is what you wish.
I have not made any extraordinary claims, I have repeated the very standard scientific consensus, which is constantly repeated in the popular media. I do not presume that every piece of common knowledge is going to be considered an "extraordinary claim" by someone who hates search engines.
>Worrying about society overeating wasn’t even a thing in the US until the 50s.
So, our modern lifestyle is good because we've only been worried about it killing us since we've had it?
People like the indigenous Kitava have no such problems. Because they are not living as an underclass minority in another culture. They have contact with modern people, but they choose to live traditionally.
>Additionally, if they are in any kind of environment where they have to do manual labor for food
That would be every kind of environment...
>they work way more than most Americans do.
They do not. Again, see the Kitava. They barely have a concept of work.
>Standing around for 40 hours a week making coffees for people is a walk in the park compared to tilling a field with a hoe
Tilling a field with a hoe is a completely unnecessary act. Your cultural bias makes you assume this is some universal penance that must be paid in order to extract food from the soil. It is not.
>Nobody lives in the Stone Age today. That’s a period of time.
Yes they do. It is a period of technological development. There is no singular timespan that makes up the stone age or bronze age or iron age, those periods are different depending on the people.
>If you’re referring to primitive tribes with no outside world contact
They have outside world contact, they simply choose to continue living the way they prefer instead of adopting modernity.
>then you’ll need to provide evidence and definitions for healthier/happier
The dictionary already does.
>They have high infant mortality rates, they kill disabled children, they die from treatable illnesses, and they starve during bad years.
The first three things are not healthy, and the last thing is false.
>Of course they have mental illness, there is no evidence they are immune to Down syndrome, schizophrenia, or anything else.
Please attempt to read what is being said rather than intentionally taking an obviously contrary definition so you have something to argue about. I am talking about the modern "mental illnesses", note the quotes, like depression and social anxiety which are epidemic in modernity, and do not exist in primitive cultures.
>Ugh, you accidentally forgot to provide any evidence of its harm again
Almost as if this is a discussion and not me publishing a scientific paper. You are welcome to look up the data linking omega 6 polyunsaturated fats to the modern disease epidemic.
>You just preceded it with another naturalistic fallacy that implied that it must be harmful because it’s industrial.
Simply repeating the fallacy fallacy is not going to accomplish anything.
It is not a naturalistic fallacy. The things I mentioned are harmful. Industrial waste may not be necessarily harmful, but it is also not necessarily food. We consume it because it is industrial waste, not because it is food. It is harmful, we consume it in vast quantities, it did not even exist before the early 1900s.
>"More people" is an irrelevant metric, what matters is the percentage of people relative to the total. That's a meaningful measure of progress.
It is more as a percentage.
>Such as?
Do you think nutritional deficiencies don't exist any more? Common deficiencies include iron, B12, D, calcium, A, iodine, magnesium, zinc and folate. People now eat fewer vegetables, which contain fewer micronutrients, and we have almost completely removed organ meat from our diets altogether.
>The latter of which was either common back then also, or uncommon because they didn't live long enough to develop it.
Those are conflicting explanations. You can't dismiss a problem by throwing out random conflicting excuses. No, osteoporosis was not common then. "Type 2 diabetes" and heart disease both didn't even exist, and now are so widespread that they are top killers.
>As for type II diabetes, it's a disease of abundance, which proves my point.
No, it is a disease of consumption of toxic omega 6 polyunsaturated fats. Fat people existed in medieval times. They did not get "type 2 diabetes". And it still would not prove your point, as overeating is not the same as healthy. I said people ate healthier. People eating high calorie low nutrient food and getting morbidly obese now supports my point, it does not contradict it.
>That often starved during campaigns.
Only if you have an unusual definition of "often". And those incidents were due to being cut off from supplies. Another army preventing your food from getting to you is not an indication that you are unable to grow enough food and thus "everyone is spending all day trying to stave off starvation".
>During which they had to ration food, developed nutritional deficiencies, and died of exposure
Except none of those things. Those are the times they spent feasting. We still have several of the same traditional feasts, just renamed to pretend they are christian.
>So your claims that modern rates are higher are also pure conjecture.
Modern rates are higher than any other point in recorded history. We have poorer data from ancient times, but we do still have data. You even linked to some. And it indicates that suicide was rare, and when it did happen it was mainly out of shame or a sense of honor having done something wrong. There is no reason to assume suicide rates were higher in medieval times just because you want to believe the iron age was some horrific time. Again, the people who still live in the stone age today and are healthier and happier than us right now, and have essentially no modern "mental illnesses" like depression or social anxiety and no modern dietary diseases like "type 2 diabetes", even the ones with BMI scores in the "morbidly obese" category. Because they do not possess the technology to create petrochemical solvents necessary to extract toxic seed oils. We are just supposed to ignore that because they inconveniently point to modern society being harmful?