The claim has never been that it had no advantages.
The claim has always been that, although agriculture is a dominant strategy at the cultural level (obviously, from history!), it allegedly involves a less pleasant life experience for the individuals (more work, higher rates of malnutrition, whatever else).
If I understand correctly (big "if"), agriculture scales better with population, and so while the HGs are inherently limited in population size, the farming society ends up larger and swamps them. 1000 HGs vs 10k farmers is going to have a pretty straightforward outcome, even if it's the case (as these theses claim) that the HG is happier, healthier-on-average, stronger, smarter, etc. (After all, the per-individual advantages are not alleged to be enormous).
The claim has always been that, although agriculture is a dominant strategy at the cultural level (obviously, from history!), it allegedly involves a less pleasant life experience for the individuals (more work, higher rates of malnutrition, whatever else).
If I understand correctly (big "if"), agriculture scales better with population, and so while the HGs are inherently limited in population size, the farming society ends up larger and swamps them. 1000 HGs vs 10k farmers is going to have a pretty straightforward outcome, even if it's the case (as these theses claim) that the HG is happier, healthier-on-average, stronger, smarter, etc. (After all, the per-individual advantages are not alleged to be enormous).