Re:The curse of the potato
by wz1000 on Saturday April 30, 2016 @10:39PM
(#11604613)
Here's a hypothetical model of two societies:
1. Everybody starves equally for many years until technology progresses to the point where no one has to starve. The quality of food is a small percentage better each year.
2. Everybody starves in the beginning, and after every few years some small x℅ of people don't have to starve anymore.
Depending on the specifics of the numbers, it is possible that is you had to be born in one of the societies at a random time in their existence, you would choose the former. I don't see how it is possible to dismiss the former as worse than the latter for the average person without any more evidence.
1. Everybody starves equally for many years until technology progresses to the point where no one has to starve. The quality of food is a small percentage better each year.
2. Everybody starves in the beginning, and after every few years some small x℅ of people don't have to starve anymore.
Depending on the specifics of the numbers, it is possible that is you had to be born in one of the societies at a random time in their existence, you would choose the former. I don't see how it is possible to dismiss the former as worse than the latter for the average person without any more evidence.