Which single human invention has caused the most net harm than help to the human race as a whole?

Agriculture. There would be far less humans to kill if we remained hunter-gatherers.

Deodorant.

Medicine on the long term. Mass extinction is coming due to overpopulation.

Gunpowder. Name one GOOD thing it has been used for besides fireworks

Clearing natural obstacles.
Legal and controlled building demolitions.
Secret chinese immortality elixir.

Touchè. And about the immortality elixir, did anyone tried consuming it before they found out its true purpose

If the emperor is willing to shotgun mercury trying to live forever there's probably a few semi-literate nobles willing to choke down boomdust.

Some Chinese dude also travelled around the seas to look for the elixir supposedly
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Fu

Anal sex.

Fractional reserve banking

>He was sent by Qin Shi Huang to the eastern seas twice to look for the elixir of life.[2] His two journeys occurred between 219 BC and 210 BC. It was believed that the fleet included 60 barques and around 5,000 crew members, 3,000 boys and girls,[2] and craftsmen of different fields. After he embarked on a second mission in 210 BC, he never returned.
>Emperor is so fucking retarded due to mercury posioning that thinks sending out a snake-oil merchant to uncharted waters was a good idea

Agriculture: literally all of history, with all of it's evil was caused by it. The avrage hunter-gatherer had a much more pleasant life (less and more fulfilling work, more free time, better diet) then the avrage man basically ever (maybe nowdays, in developed countries we have surpassed that quality of life).

>Early man spread across the ocean in a grand migration covering nearly all the Earth.
>Polynesians island hop for thousands miles looking for land to settle and thrive in.
>Europeans circumnavigate the globe looking for resources and trade.
>The Chinese do it to find more mercury.

>The avrage hunter-gatherer had a much more pleasant life

>Dies from animal attacks
>Dies from a feud between neighbouring tribes
>Dies from lack of nutrition
>Dies from hunger due to unregulated hunting of game

Yeah, real great times

>The Chinese do it to find more mercury
>What is the Treasure Fleet of Zheng He?

Capitalism.

>dies of hunger
The whole point of hunter-gathering is that there is a limited population of humans so that resources don't get exhausted.

>muh overpopulation
The Earth is huge. 90% of the landmass unused by humans. The only real overpopulation that exists is in cities, and even then you still can go outside and not bump into each other like sardines. Plus right now with our food making technology we can feed the world's entire population several times, so there is no shortage and most likely not be in several centuries if not millenia as technology for food production keeps advancing.

Pretty much the only real threat for mass extintion is a massive nuclear war or a deadly pandemia, but even then I doubt humanity as an species would disappear as there are a lot of isolated locations in the globe that would most likely be spared in those situations.

>And to show off how fucking rich they are to the rest of Asia.

Twitter.

the steam engine.

Look at how the earth's population has only sky-rocketed since the mid-1800's, and will keep growing until the environment and all economies break.

It started when the steam engine caused machines to stretch across first continents then oceans to better distribute resources, which ccaused the earth's population to do nothing but skyrocket ever since.

Capitalism was inevitability. However its collapse is just as inevitable

It wasnt the steam engine. It was the entire industrial revolution

Anime

>Dies from animal attacks
It was not as common as one might think. Wild animals are not stupid, they usually don't attack armed men in large groups accompanied by dogs, and even then they would have the ability to defend themselves. Unless you went out alone to the wilderness (which was a bad idea until quite recently) you'd bee fine.

>Dies from a feud between neighbouring tribes
Happened just as much or even more frequently after the agricultural revolution. Also, wars between states tend to be much more brutal (look up what the Assyrians did), tribal warfare is often ritualized and comes with few casualties.

>Dies from lack of nutrition
Famine happened much much more often in agricultural societies until quite recently.

>Dies from hunger due to unregulated hunting of game
While it's true that hunter-gatherers hunted some animals to extinction, it should be noted that this way of life prevailed for many tens of thousands of years. In any case, you can't argue it was less sustainable then either agrarian or industrial society.

>90% of the landmass unused by humans
You are missing the point. Overpopulation is not a problem because Earth is getting crowded. It's a problem because even now, 7 billion people living in the current life standards is already causing serious ecological problems. Now imagine the degree of pollution if both the population and production of goods keeps expanding. Unless green tech gets super cheap we are fucked.

We could always send everyone to a moon colony

Explain how is it a bad thing.

The birth control pill
>inb4 muh population growth

I agree human population should be reduced. There should be a massive campaign which would paint having children as shameful. Homosexuality should be promoted too.

>Agricultural revolution
FTFY

Not that guy, but I don't believe there's any reason to believe a hunting-gathering life would be any more pleasant than later times. Disease killed much more often, life simply didn't have the same pleasures and there was not much individuality.

Judaism

I don't think that's an invention.

People really didn't have any problems killing each other before guns.

Guns simplified it to the point where anyone can kill anyone. Before you had to know how to use a weapon or get bested

Dynamite. Fuck you Nobel.

Non-meme answer would be shopping centers

Everyone is going for philosophical "look how deep I think" and missing some of the easiest one. lol

>Guns simplified it to the point where anyone can kill anyone.
This is a good thing. Now the 5 foot 1 85-year old grandma can defend herself against the 6-4 thug.

Like what?

Mustard gas? Even Hitler wouldn't touch it.

lead based fuel.

t. malthusian brainlet

google the demographic transition

laughed so much at this conversation, thanks anons

Except niggers don't go through said transition.

You mean the rich

It'll be fine, we just need to invest into infrastructure to teach them javascript :^)

that boom was mostly because of the second industrial revolution in wich steam engines became increasingly irrelevant