alt Hacker News> Since when is "assigning virtuous environmental brownie-points" the topic of discussion?
I think it's very straightforward. Here's a recap of the thread, you can see it in the quote for the first item:
1. khanhnguyen8386 implied that they were "sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it."
2. smt88 challenged that by pointing that 97% of "the rainforest" was probably untouched by this group, as opposed to shaped deliberately.
3. I (Terr_) chime in to emphasize that we shouldn't assume a region was intentionally left-alone when the much simpler explanation is that it wasn't practical to exploit it.
> Your original claim which GP responded to is unrelated to that.
You have also confused me with some other user.
Yeah, I confused you for another user.
Still, I don't get where "virtuous environmental brownie-points" enter the discussion or how the first reply pertains to them. It seems like a simple factual statement that is either true or false and can be evaluated as such without invoking virtuous brownie points.
That the Amazon remained largely untouched is true regardless of whether that was the result of a deliberate effort, a technological limitation, a lack of need or any other reason. No one uses "preserved" until now. It can simultaneously be true that the populated areas of the Amazon where deliberately and carefully managed by the population and that the Amazon was largely untouched for any other reason.