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Scott doesn't go as far as an author like Jared Diamond, who called the move away from nomadism "the worst mistake in human history," but it's hard not to read his book as anything but deeply suspicious of the state.
斯科特得出的结论不像贾里德·戴蒙德等作家那么强硬——后者将摆脱游牧制度的做法称为“人类历史上最严重的错误”——但人们读过他的书后肯定能感受到他对国家制度怀有很深的质疑。
His critics have accused him and his state-skeptical colleagues of romanticizing the life of the hunter-gatherer.
他的批评者指责斯科特和他团队对国家制度的怀疑态度，认为他们将狩猎采集人群的生活浪漫化。
While modern hunter-gatherer societies can be seen, in some ways, to evince more egalitarian principles than their state-bound counterparts, there is also compelling evidence of high homicide rates and infant mortality amongst these populations.
虽然现代狩猎采集社会在某些方面比国家管理的社会更平等，但也有可信的证据表明，狩猎采集社会的杀人率和婴儿死亡率很高。
And while some interesting research has indicated that hunter-gatherers didn't suffer from famine as frequently as previously thought, it's hard to be certain how food-secure hunter-gatherers were at the time of early statehood.
虽然一些有趣的研究表明，狩猎采集者并没有像人们之前认为的那样经常挨饿，但很难确定在国家出现初期，狩猎采集者是否每天能获得足够的食物。
For our purposes, though, a moral reading of the move to agriculture is beside the point.
然而，就我们今天的主题而言，关于人类向农业社会转移在道德方面的解读并不重要。
Whether you view it as an unmitigated boon to humanity or, in the words of Yuval Noah Harari, "... history's biggest fraud," agriculture may not have caused sedentism, but it certainly accelerated it immeasurably through grain farming and the taxation that was born from it.
无论你将农业视为对人类的绝对恩惠，还是用尤瓦尔·诺亚·哈拉里的话来说，是“历史上最大的骗局”，农业可能不是人类定居的根本原因，但种植粮食的农业劳作和由此产生的税收肯定大大加速人类定居的进程。
Any attempt to answer a question as broad as "what food has done the most to impact human development?" is likely to reveal as much about the person answering it as anything else.
回答像是“什么食物对人类发展影响最大？”这样一个宽泛的问题很可能会反映出回答者的一些信息。
If I was making this video in Mexico, I might say maize.
如果我在墨西哥制作这期视频，我可能会说玉米影响最大。
If I were making it 500 years ago, I might say pepper, and also I might say, "what is video?"
如果在500年前制作这期视频，我可能会说胡椒影响最大，也可能会说，“什么是视频？”
So while the real answer may be "there is no answer," that would probably feel like a total copout at this point.
因此，虽然真正的答案可能是“没有答案”，但这可能会让人感觉完全是在逃避问题。
Instead, I'll reveal my own biases.
因此，我会表达一点我自己的看法。
I'm coming to you via the Internet, which was created in part through publicly funded research.
我与大家通过互联网相识，而互联网部分是通过公共资助的研究建立起来的。
I give away a healthy chunk of every paycheck to taxes, and taxes are partially responsible for funding the public transit agency that I use to get to work everyday - well, when my life isn't being interrupted by a zoonotic virus spreading rampantly through a highly connected world, that is.
我从薪水里拿出很多来交税，而税收在一定程度上为我每天上班所使用的公共交通提供了资金——当然，是我在这个高度联系的世界中的生活没有被人畜共患疾病病毒的肆虐影响的时候。
Industrial farming may be killing our planet, and yet the specialization of labor that agriculture helped usher in gives us Keanu Reeves movies.
农业工业化可能正在扼杀我们的星球，但农业推动了劳动力专业化，为我们带来了基努·里维斯的电影。
Life is complicated.
生活是复杂的。
If nothing else, the last few months have shown me how much we rely on one another.
至少，过去几个月的情况表明，人类相互依赖的程度有多深。
James Scott's book tells us that that interreliance didn't necessarily have to take the form of state-building, but - perhaps because of grains like wheat - that is the form it took.
詹姆斯·斯科特的书告诉我们，这种相互依赖并不一定体现在国家建设里，而是体现在小麦等谷物中。
So sitting here in mid-2020, that feels like as good an answer as any.
因此，在2020年年中坐在这里，这大概就是我能给出的最佳答案。
Plus, you know: bagels.
还有，你知道的：贝果。
Thanks for watching.
感谢您的收看。
