Comment by ajb
2 hours ago
There is a tribe in Ecuador, the Huaorani. They were only brought into contact with the world 70 years ago. Because they live at the equator, they never needed to think ahead to store food over the winter. They could see that the oil companies were destroying their land by polluting it with spoil from operations, cutting down swaths of the forest, etc, and they became activists pushing back against this; but a good hunter who can hand out food to others is very highly regarded in their culture, so they would queue for handouts from the oil companies and became dependent on them, doing low-wage work. When I read about this years ago, I thought that people from modern cultures would not be so naive, but I see that I was wrong.
How does that allegory apply?
The parent is preaching to not become dependent (like the Huaorani).
Further, should the Huaorani also not use the most advanced technology and retain obsolete scaffolding?
Edit: eek! don't think these people had it better off prior to modern contact
>The Waorani may have the highest rate of homicide of any society known to anthropology. [0]
[0]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2688884/
The GP is preaching not to become dependent; the parent seems to be saying it's pointless to try, although perhaps I have misinterpreted them. In any case, many are rushing to become dependent.
No analogy is perfect; I don't argue that the details of the Huaorani's situation are a guide here.
I see your take.
IMHO, the parent's point ties to the Bitter Lesson.
Use the best tool available knowing that advances in compute dominate clever optimizations.
If models stopped leapfrogging each other, then it wouldn't hold. But it appears to hold for now.