Agriculture made humanity a lot more resilient to changes in food supply. Maybe this has negative consequences at the individual level but as a species level it's pretty clear which one is more favorable.
> Agriculture made humanity a lot more resilient to changes in food supply. Maybe this has negative consequences at the individual level but as a species level it's pretty clear which one is more favorable.
Sounds like it would be a trade-off then, not a clear favorite, depending on what you're optimizing for. Especially when we can afford to focus on maintaining health at an individual level too.
I don’t buy this. It’s not like humans had a species-wide conference and decided to adopt agriculture. It must have taken lots of tiny steps, each one somehow beneficial to the individuals taking them. The end result is not a guarantee either — we only think it was beneficial to the species because it survived. There could have been other “good ideas” in the area of food production that lasted for a hundred or a thousand years and then got wiped out in a single unfortunate event.
