Most of the early outdoor writers like Nessmuk and Kephart stressed keeping the weight down but when I go back and re-read some of the weights they quoted, I begin to wonder about the truthfulness of some of the numbers, honestly. I do weigh some of my own gear now and then, although the total is more interesting than individual weights. I find that it is difficult to keep it under 20 pounds if water is included and that it jumps to over 30 pounds very quickly, for some reason. I also note that those early writers I mention apparently did not carry water or at least not very much. But Kephart went in a lot of detail about purifying water so it wasn't as if he thought he could take water from anywhere. In my case, I've noticed that the weight of water in my standard load is the single heaviest item. So if I carry no more than one pint and purify the rest that I need by boiling with my gas stove, I more than make up for the weight of the stove. (I don't own a filter). That is, provided you have a source of water to begin with. Again in my case, I have been places where the trail was crossed by creeks in several places and was like that over half of my trip, but the other half of the trip (of a ten mile circle hike) was perfectly dry with no water source anywhere. I guess you can't have everything.
However, there is more to it than simple weight.
For one thing, a pack that fits well and is comfortable, yet weighs a few pounds more, just might be a better choice for covering ground pain-free. That also applies to boots. Did you ever notice, by the way, that armies use boots that most backpackers would find too high or too heavy and more recent ones are even more so. But as Horace Kephart also said, "They are not out for the fun of it."
The question of weight is also a compromise between the discomfort and effort of carrying things and the comfort of having them. You could probably get by with a ground sheet, a bottle of water, a handful of something to eat and so on, but would you want to?
In response to the person referring to wilderness here in the U.S., it is my assertion that there is practically none east of the Mississippi (outside of Maine, perhaps). This is not to say that there are no remote, secluded or isolated places with wild animals and no roads. It's just that I define wilderness a little more narrowly than that. Just the way I define emergency.
