I clarify:
Let’s say scientists can’t come up with solutions to global problems, AI gets out of control and turns almost everyone into paperclips during wars, and in the 2040s or 2050s, the surviving people (about a few tens of millions around the world or even less) gradually return to the level of intelligence of their distant ancestors?
I mean…the short is answer is “die” almost certainly from unclean water, for at least 60% of the general western population.
Our distant ancestors had just as much capacity for learning as we do, they just used it in different ways because that was what the nature of their daily lives demanded. Where we can recognize dozens of brands by their logo alone, they recognized plants by their leaves, useful stones, and scat. Our accumulated knowledge we pass on doesn’t make any one of us any “smarter”. Some of us alive today are not rocket scientists but have the capacity to be, just as there were people thousands of years ago that had that capacity but not the thousands of years of science and engineering that was needed to build on to take that last step and achieve it.
Solitary living is a luxury made easier by the abundance of technology we have, going it alone in a Stone Age state would be very, very difficult, then and now. Folks who understand things like tool making, agriculture, medicinal plant identification, bushcraft, animal husbandry, hunting/fishing/trap making, and clothing making would have a leg up. Those who have all that and the ability to form small cooperative groups would stand an even greater chance of success. I’d also throw out that despite the rise of digital storage, we have a lot, a lot of printed material in the world. Even if we forget how to read, there’s pictures and illustrations. Kids aren’t raised in isolation, knowledge (even diluted knowledge) gets passed on, and we wouldn’t forget where we once were, and the ruins of civilization would be all around. You’d almost need some sort of sci-fi level disease to wipe all of our minds to get us back to true Stone Age levels of living and prevent us from understanding how scavenged tools could be used. We might forget how to forge steel but we’d keep scavenging it for blades rather than revert to stone.
The level of intelligence in the Neolithic was exactly the same as today. The level of science is the difference. And the only way to go back to the Neolithic is to erase all knowledge and all memories.
Let’s say scientists can’t come up with solutions to global problems
We already have the solution, the French made it in the 1800. We just lack the will to use them again.
No I assume they mean the problem of people being stupid assholes.
Which one?
The world can support less than 1% of its current population if everyone reverted to a neolithic lifestyle. And countless species would be hunted to extinction during the collapse.
So in short, the answer to what I would do? Like nearly everyone else, just die. The folks from Sentinel Island will inherit the Earth.
I would be in the roughly 8 billion dead for sure.
Rejoice.
Well given the extinction of more than a half million essential crop species and the previously universal knowledge of farming that occurred in the last century. Expect to die alongside billions of others.
die
You’ve confused if with when.
I’d become a craftsperson that’s for sure, whatever I end up doing will probably be creative manual labor of some kind - pottery for example, but not limited to. It depends on the situation wherever I’m at in the hypothetical moment.
Also, as a side hustle I’d be running something like a DnD table. I’d be on a personal quest to reconstruct the rules, I’ll be pretty much asking everyone I meet if they played, what they remember and if they’d be interested in joining my group. I believe with no Internet, tv, or radio, ttrpg would become extremely popular.
The only possible answer is that I would eek out an existence foraging for twigs and berries as a neolithic hunter gatherer. However, in my case I would only do that for several months before I died from a chronic health condition I manage with medication, so there’s that.
I don’t know if it’s really possible for us to go back to the stone age. There’s so much steel and iron lying around. I don’t really know much about metallurgy but I’m pretty sure I could figure out how to flatten some rebar into a blade if it was all I had to do all day.
We also have domesticated breeds of livestock and know how to raise crops.
So, at worst it would be some kind of modern iron age, neolithic isn’t really possible.
In the novel Star’s Reach, in a post-collapse society, one of the main characters is a ‘miner.’ Their mining guild basically tears apart old concrete buildings, by hand, with sledge hammers to extract the old rebar from them.
I’d probably just jerk off again tbh.
What would I do? Probably flee the settlements and take my chances as a swamp shaman.
Reinvent myself. Take no shit. Get a girl and be happy. Also, die at the age of 32.
