On 07/06/18 12:57, Terry Reedy wrote:
On 7/5/2018 9:40 PM, Jim Lee wrote:
On 07/05/18 18:25, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Thu, 05 Jul 2018 11:27:09 -0700, Jim Lee wrote:
Take a village of people. They live mostly on wild berries.
Because of course a community of people living on one food is so
realistic. Even the Eskimos and Inuit, living in some of the harshest
environments on earth, managed to have a relatively wide variety of
foods
in their diet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine
Pedantics again. Didn't even get the point before tearing apart the
*analogy* rather than the *point itself*.
The irony of both Steven's interruption and your reaction is that the
Inuit story somewhat supports your point:
"There has been a decline of hunting partially due to the fact that
young people lack the skills to survive off the land. "
-- because they are 'growing more accustomed to the Qallunaat ("white
people") food that they receive from the south.'
If 'white people' food stopped coming, they would starve where they are.
But change scenarios that assume that everything else remains the same
are flawed. Maintaining traditional skills comes up in every culture
that is changing, which now is most all. But the same dynamism tends
to generate new solutions where needed.
Finally, a person with sense enough to contribute a rational thought to
this thread!
>"But the same dynamism tends to generate new solutions where needed."
Yes. However, technological evolution happens at a blindingly faster
rate than cultural evolution. Because of this, there are many of us
still alive who have been here "from the beginning" of the computer era.
That gives us a unique perspective, in that we have seen first-hand many
cycles of these "solutions" being invented, re-invented, and
re-re-invented. We lament the continual re-emergence of bad ideas that
have failed in the past (and applaud the good ones).
People like that, in a cultural context, are treated as wise elders; in
the technology context, they're treated as doddering old fools.
Somehow, we've adopted the notion that old == obsolete == useless when
it comes to technological ideas. I've seen more than one person refuse
to consider some software application (even though it fit their
requirements perfectly) simply because it hadn't been updated in 9
months. That's too "old". You'd think they were shopping for a gallon
of milk.
-Jim
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