I actually think this is the opposite of noble savage imagery, and that's actually what you're doing. They're not saying things were better in the past when technology was more primative, you're the one saying that the past was better and that getting to where we are now how we have is "screwing up" something (presumably a good thing that existed in the past that is no longer present).

Then I am mistaken in my labelling. Maybe something more like the "pathetic savage"?

Or what other name might we give to this phenomenon of dismissing extinction level mistakes with the appeal to the idea that "hey, it's progress"?

I think "bad tradeoffs" is the term you're looking for. If you think the negative outcome has infinite negative value, there's not really a lot that can be said to that as it becomes a Pascal's wager.

If you don't acknowledge any of the tradeoffs involved in pollution and instead just make a point about harm in a vacuum, it's hard to know how to consider it.

No, I think everyone recognises tradeoffs here and your belief that I'm creating a dichotomy is unwarranted. I'm addressing distorted perception of the parameters of tradeoffs.

Like the overwhelming exceptionalism of how we all care about the environment and the future health of our children... just don't take our gas-guzzling cars and non-stick pans way!

We are not rational beings, but we so deeply believe we are.

Im on my 4th electric car, every single one has been remarkable in terms of cost, build quality, innovation etc.

If the cybertruck was out a year earlier, I suspect I know a few people driving "gas guzzling" trucks that would have bought that instead, because it would have been cheaper, faster, and in almost every measurable and unmeasurable quality, better.

Why do you think people will forever hold on to ICE? It strikes me that electric cars are a step change in almost every way, maybe the reason people still have ICE is they didnt have a compatible electric alternative at the time.

Noble savage doesn't mean that you think the environment of the past was better than the present, it means that you think the people were better before being corrupted by civilisation. I.e. it's about thinking that the changing environment under progress corrupts humans, which is the opposite of what the person you are replying to is saying and is exactly what the person they're replying to is saying...

Noble savage = humans fundamentally corrupted by civilisational progress

lol that's definitely not what he's doing, way to miss the point

unless you're actually arguing for toxic chemicals in the water that didn't exist more than 60 years ago

> way to miss the point

All of those commenters deconstructing my clumsy use of "Noble Savage" (I admit it's not quite the right thing) - are indeed (maybe wilfully) missing the point.

A better expression might be the "Parochialism of the present". But that doesn't quite get to it. Nor even Thomas Hobbes' flowery and overblown conceit of past life as "Nasty, brutish and short".

It's about a phenomenon of lionising a one dimensional idea of "progress" in a patently self-deceiving way.

The way these people talk about the past makes it sound like people in the past were somehow perfectly stoic in the face of discomfort or disease, but it's extremely easy to find historical documents showing that this isn't the case. I think the reason people fall into this "noble savage" trap is because they (rightfully) can't imagine living without modern technologies like refridgerators and flushing toilets, and therefore (wrongfully) conclude that the people in the past were simply more rugged to be able to live without it.

Also, as you say, it's an easy way to explain away our problems, to say that people in the past were better and if they were here today then they wouldn't be complaining like we are.

You have also entirely missed the point

I thought I was agreeing with you, what was your point then?

I think the parent comment made a reasonable point and did so in a calm manner. It in no way overplayed the misery of the past (I'd argue it vastly underplayed it).

Now, to your contention that "we've screwed up as a civilisation". What do you mean exactly? What civilization and when did the screwing up start?

> I think the parent comment made a reasonable point and did so in a calm manner.

As I have pointed out in other remarks here today, calmness reasonableness do not make a bad position good. If anything they add a palatable veneer to the harm.

> It in no way overplayed the misery of the past

I completely disagree. The idea that in the past people were "lucky to see their children grow up" is dramatic, and a tautology anyway since we are all "lucky" to see our children grow up in any epoch. It paints a needlessly bleak picture of some awful past that technological progress is implied to have eliminated with justifiable costs.

> What do you mean exactly? What civilization?

Actually, you know what. You're right [0].

"What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea."

[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

> I completely disagree. The idea that in the past people were "lucky to see their children grow up" is dramatic, and a tautology anyway since we are all "lucky" to see our children grow up in any epoch. It paints a needlessly bleak picture of some awful past that technological progress is implied to have eliminated with justifiable costs.

You got me there, I do think the costs for (almost) eliminating famine and diseases with double-digit mortality rates are justifiable. That said you didn't really answer my question, but I'll roll with it.

Consider the extinction of megafauna [0], the deforestation of China [1] or Mesopotamian farming practices [2]. It would be hard to blame these on Western civilization (real or imagined). I'd say we have been operating in the same unsustainable way for a long time. I wish it were otherwise because it would make everything easier.

[0] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2013.325... [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003101822... [2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.128.3334.1251

> you didn't really answer my question

Fair remark, I brushed it off.

> when did this start?

It started when science and technology changed from something we do, into something we believe in.

I don't think that actually happened any time around the Enlightenment of even the Industrial Revolution, but we're definitely deep in it now. I'll leave you to put the pin in the map.

Also, the cause and effect are not so simple. It's not as if we changed our culture and beliefs, and then embarked on a century of planet-destroying madness. Rather, like the sunk-cost bias of an addict, we realised we are on a bad road, labelled that as "inevitable", surrendered before the forces of "technological determinism" and found we had no choice but to believe.

But that was a false choice.

Obsessing about ‘how we screwed up’ instead of actually working on making things better is a sign of clinical depression. FYI.

Sorry to hear that's what's eating you my friend [0]. Just hit the Xanax, heh? But as soon as you feel well come and join the rest of us working on making things better.

[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/projection