"The study assumes"
No, the study concludes.

This political debate waged in selective pseudo-scientific microquibbles is silly. It's really pretty simple.

1) You can trust the process and presume that if the research scientists are converging on the basics, they're probably on the right track.

2) You can prove them wrong - on scientific turf, not the comments section of a news article - and earn yourself a nobel prize and the undying thanks of millions of concerned citizens

3) You can shut the fuck up.

"should the government have the right"

No, only individual persons have rights. Government has no "right" to anything, not even to exist. It exists because the governed or the power-hungry created it.

Government has power. For "free" countries, theoretically the power we delegate ti. But in practice it eventually assumes the power it can get away with.

"The village is strangers"

Wrong. By definition.

"It takes a village ...to raise a child poorly."

I don't get it. I think the point of "It takes a village" is to increase a child's face-to-face social interactions with a respectable variety of people.

So this article would seem to support the idea that it takes a village to raise a child well.

Yep. When your job is to find a needle, the best strategy is always to pay top dollar for a few million haystacks and see if there are any needles there.

I have a life. A wife who loves me, an ex that hates me, ingeniously dramatic kids, engaging friends. I feel slightly bad that I'm not investing extra time to stay at the profession's bleeding edge. But I genuinely prefer the company of warm bodies, music, games, conversation, food, physical work, and laughter.

So I doff my hat to all you die-hards with the ambition and drive to advance our profession, and I thank you. But that's not for me.

"Humanity's evolutionary path has been a long littany of advances in how to modify the environment to better suit themselves. Tools, agriculture, medicine, culture-- they all converge on the unified objective."

First I'll point out that modifying the environment involves moving dirt and clearing areas of wildlife and vegetation to be replaced by agriculture and the construction of buildings, walls, and roads. It also includes pollution.

Making tools, in the sense of chipping rocks and whittling sticks, does not really modify the environment. Sustainably harvesting wild plants for medicinal or nutritional use does not modify the environment.

"Culture" is orthogonal; some cultures try to make nature fit themselves, some try to make themselves fit into nature.

Second, your idea that the entirety of humanity is unified across space and time in the singular objective of modifying the environment.to better suit themselves is preposterous. There have been countless cultures, and the most enduring ones have been those who, if they had an "objective", strived for exactly the opposite of what you claim.

That your culture is one of self-indulgence to the point of mass suicide does not make every culture thus. It's a mistake to project your cynical culture onto an entire species that sustained a stable population for tens of thousands of years.

I think the word "civilization" implies a dense population; sparse populations don't require complex societies.. Would you agree with that?

Any time an area is densely populated, the population will consume local resources faster than nature can replenish them, and they will rely on trade and transportation systems to sustain the population, and complex laws to maintain order.

Even outside of densely populated areas, humans like any other species will reproduce until the point their population can not be sustained by their habitat, and individuals will die as equilibrium is restored.

But none of those facts disprove the notion that some aboriginal cultures evolved philosophies, morals and superstitions that encouraged them to live as a part of their environment rather than attempting to place themselves beyond the reach of nature.

Whether because nature imposed it or because cultures accepted it, the aboriginal population numbers were relatively stable over millenia, and their activity over time had little environmental impact compared to the european immigrants'.

Native cultures were far more sustainable than ours. GP's points are valid.

That's wonderful. But doesn't change a thing.

"If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory."

What's with this "if"? Either He does or He doesn't.

And using boat rudders, we could in theory target multiple tree-huggers with only one water cannon.

"The issue is always budgets, and the $1 here, $4 there for better components supposedly adds up ... Sometimes that is true, sometimes I want to...whack someone upside the head with a baseball bat."

While baseball bats may be suitable, we here in accounting will only approve the less expensive 1-meter steel pipe from Dai Yung Enterprises.

I invented some noise-cancelling headphones that work perfectly beyond the atmosphere.

"The Mediterranean wasn't even there 5 or 6 million years ago"

Not sure if I understand the implications.

Are you suggesting that because the Mediterranean wasn't there 5 million years ago we shouldn't care all that much what happens to it tomorrow?

Or are you suggesting that the environmental disaster of having Syria's chemical weapons actually deployed would be smaller than the disaster of making the Mediterranean uninhabitable?

Thank you - finally an american who understands.

The rest of your pathetic little ignorant country just calls us "arrogant frenchies."