Thank you, George Dvorsky & io9, for writing & publishing an article that for once doesn’t make me furious and/or despairing. As a next step, just sayin’, I’d love to see a follow-up article arguing that an everyday personal and cultural relationship with a local terrain, and the other-than-human elements and…

“If science fails to explain this simple fact...then it’s a failure.” My advice? Get used to disappointment.

Ah, my old friend the "LEECHES" jar. This is mine, from 2006ish, I think.

I honestly don't know what I expect from io9 anymore. I also don't know why I feel compelled to say these things in this forum. I haven't read a single questioning comment here; everyone is rushing, sometimes angrily, always slavishly, to support your point.

Dood, c'mon! Can animals "domesticate" themselves by altering their environments?

Hah! Thank you for changing the tone of the discussion; I'd rather be less acrimonious, all told. (TL:DR to follow.)

Teleological progress, sir, is the 19th century myth you are currently worshipping. And as 21st century humans, we're pretty busy dying ourselves.

Heh. To me, this is the big picture context of this argument: does winning at evolution mean outgrowing and overtaxing our finite resources so hard that we ultimately population-spike ourselves into extinction?

This is often quoted, but completely wrong. The average human lifespan of hunter gatherers is just that; an average. The real downside of a tribal lifestyle is actually an enormously greater infant death rate (this, I concede, does suck), which drives down the average considerably.

Really? We're really going to make this about corporatism in the comments?

Yeah species traitor! I am completely on board (with some modifications, as I myself am not for reform and change and progress, and teleological manifest-destiny history, and stuff like that.) Modifications:

This is from a Discover blog post, apparently; I was gonna post and ask someone to find a similar time frame graph for me, then realized I was being really, really lazy :) The obesity epidemic, so to speak, seems to have increased steadily since the late 1970s; I'm not seeing it get considerably worse "only in the…

Uh, exercise, yes. But too bad there's not actual consistency between the scientific literature and the official nutritional guidelines (and yes, I'm getting this mainly from the grand project in process over at Authority Nutrition.)

Aha — maybe I was skimming that part :) Quote, time permitting?

Net positive article, in terms of attempting to debunk the willpower "theory", and presenting alternative hypotheses. Like some other commenters, though, I do think it's a little weird that the article fails to even mention the rise in the availability/ubiquity of processed foods. Might not be an industrial conspiracy…

Unknowable = not able to be communicated verbally, but I'm aware that's a cop-out, so I'll take a stab: how bout the totality of the universe; our own consciousness; and the meanings of same?

First off, sorry I insulted your sense of the natural; that was kinda overstated/mean.

But why not acknowledge that the unmeasurable is, in general, necessary and important? Where's the harm in admitting we can't quantify everything, that there is mystery in the universe (and as far as I know, this is consistent with physics at the quantum level, right?) I neither grew up with nor am currently…

Oh man I don't believe things got this far and you're the *first person* to look up the study. Sample size of 50? Indeterminate peer review? Give me a break, amirite?

Okay, here's what really discomfits me about this article: there's a near-automatic assumption that lying is value-neutral.