Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.
This is typical of many examples, perhaps most examples of human progress. No matter how perfect a solution is, the human condition causes humans to move on, find a new solution which can be sold as ‘better’ even though the new solution is worse. Can artificial intelligence solve this? Only if humans are willing and able to permit Godly artificial intelligence to rein in human excess.
There are many examples of more horrendous acts by humans than agriculture. The only ones that preceded agriculture were humans extinguishing hundreds of species, including every other hominoid species. Nuclear weapons & power, global warming, automobiles, mechanised weaponry, to name just a few, are much worse than agriculture. Importantly, all these horrible things Homo sapiens have done after agriculture would have been difficult without agriculture.
