5 ms·

I think I agree with the thrust of what you are saying, in that we do need to think about the negative externalities of different technologies before scaling th

I think I agree with the thrust of what you are saying, in that we do need to think about the negative externalities of different technologies before scaling them out as a species. I am getting a little tripped up on your usage of 'the natural world' and 'environmental destruction' though. Aren't humans 'natural'? And if we are natural, shouldn't anything that springs from us also be 'natural'? We are subject to the 'laws of nature'. Is a beaver dam a natural thing? An ant hill? A bee hive? A bird's nest? It's obviously nitpicking semantics and word usage, but I think people often use 'natural world' to refer to their own human preferences for how the world should look (often just as it looked as they were growing up), and by using the term 'nature', it carries a sense of absolute purity, and anything that goes against it must be wrong. 'Natural' arguments have been used throughout history, and still get frequently used today as a cudgel to dismiss any sort of social/technological change happening. Now this is not to say that there can't be arguments against certain changes or that all change is the same, but the invocation of what's 'natural' always feels like a cheap rhetorical tactic in place of a stronger argument about why one state of the world is inferior to another state of the world.

revolvingocelot 4y ago
Are you serious? An ant hill or a beaver dam are mere reorganizations of known matter types, and could be analogized to humans building things like walls. Stone, and even some types of mortar, participate in the great cosmic dance of Gaia [0], just like the works of the animals cited above. They decay, they are broken down by various processes over time, they are fashioned of things found in the environment. PFAS, by comparison, does not, cannot, and is not, respectively. It doesn't break down, and was never present in any ecosystem nor any part of the water cycle until a few decades ago -- an fraction of an eyeblink in the sort of evolutionary time it'll take for PFAS' presence to be integrated into the cosmic dance of Gaia, and until then it's just gonna cause cancer. I can agree that invoking the naturalistic fallacy isn't good argumentative practice, but some things are decidedly unnatural. Creating novel waterproofing chemicals that don't have naturally-occurring ways to break down and then dumping them into the water supply isn't something beavers, or ants, or birds, can do. Humans have transcended the natural world. I can tell because of all the new types of things we're adding to it. [0] should be read less as some pseudoreligious thing and more a handwave about the ancient, stable systems that repurpose atoms from moribund things into newer, more vital things: microbes, fungus, rot, uptake of substances by plants, etc
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Not sure that's accurate. Animals aren't trying to create things that break down easily; they're not trying to do anything but survive. The argument is circular: if animals make it, it's part of Gaia else it's 'unnatural'. Animals didn't make plastics, so they're 'unnatural'. By definition I guess, not by any real difference between them and bone or termite mounds or dinosaur bones or geodes...you know, things that can last for millennia. Hell, even the Earth itself is made of crystals and granite and lead and arsenic and on and on. What's more natural than mother earth? I don't applaud plastics entering the environment carelessly. But not sure we have a handle on why it's bad, when we say its not natural.
  - revolvingocelot 4y ago
    >The argument is circular: if animals make it, it's part of Gaia else it's 'unnatural'. Animals didn't make plastics, so they're 'unnatural'. Er, this is your argument, not mine. Mine is: "if animals make it, and it is unmade (or remade, or recycled, or broken down [0]) by something else, then this is 'natural'." Plastics nor PFAS meet that standard. Those matter types stay static. The animals called 'humans' make plenty of other stuff that can't be adapted by microbes and fungus and rot that keep things from the natural world participating. >By definition I guess, not by any real difference between them and bone or termite mounds or dinosaur bones or geodes...you know, things that can last for millennia But this is the real pièce de stràwman: the objects under discussion have expanded from things that animals build, to natural features that don't chemically interact with the environment. Of course fucking bones and geodes aren't the same as nonbiodegradable plastics or PFAS -- not only are they contained physically by virtue of their properties, but they are also regularly destroyed by the various systems of Earth, like UV light or multicellular life, or the same geological processes that create them, respectively. Every example provided in the parent is, and has been, a part of the world for so long that they're not disruptive to other systems, or at least are physically contained. >I don't applaud plastics entering the environment carelessly Should they be introduced more thoughtfully? The point is that the system is unfamiliar with it. It can't be broken down and reused by something new. [0] Plastics 'break down' into smaller plastics. I don't think that quite counts.
daoist_shaman 4y ago
I guess when I say “natural,” what I truly mean is “that which is not made by man.” Any substance which is found in the natural environment and mechanically altered does not count in my definition of man-made; this is essentially the same notion of natural that revolvingocelot points out. I think the crusade against “natural bias” is unfounded. Of course there are plenty of natural things that are not good for us—such as viruses— but the painful and uncomfortable truth about natural maladies like viruses is that they represent nature working as intended (protecting us from the ills of overpopulation, for example). The bottom line is that changing everything we dislike about nature can lead to our demise. She’s already thought a million steps ahead of whatever we hope to accomplish.
- xvilka 4y ago
  A lot of, probably even majority of viruses are a good thing - they add horizontal gene transfer to improve the evolution[1] and survival chances of species, sometimes even multiple ones at once, also making our own human virome[2]. [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220105111420.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220105111420.h... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_virome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_virome
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- alexvoda 4y ago
  You are still anthropomorphousising nature. Nature does not intend to protect us from anything, much less from overpopulation. Nature does not intend anything as a whole. Each living creature simply intends to survive and multiply. Not changing anything about nature will also lead to our demise. Most non-human organisms (maybe all other than domesticated dogs and lifestock) are either ambivalent or opportunistically trying to kill us. Because we are made of carbon and therefore contain useful energy. Anthropomorphousising I believe is the greatest and most wide spread cognitive limitation of humanity.
  - daoist_shaman 4y ago
magpi3 4y ago
You're just playing with semantics. If everything humans do is natural than everything is natural: computers, plastics, concrete, etc. The purpose of using the word natural is to distinguish from what is unnatural, and without grabbing a dictionary, for me that generally means something that does not "naturally" occur (i.e. without human intervention specifically) in the natural world. Chemical engineers create unnatural things, things that don't exist in the natural world.
- drdaeman 4y ago
  That's the whole point. Word "natural" is not good in any serious argument because it simply doesn't have well-recognized unambiguous semantics most people can agree on. Ask a bunch of folks if some things are natural and while they'll most likely agree on the basics (wild forest flower is most likely would be called "natural", while a mobile phone is most likely not) the opinions will start to diverge on less obvious stuff (e.g. penicillin). It's like a concept of "god" - everyone has their own idea what it might mean. (full disclosure: I'm ignostic). With such words it's best to either start with a definition, or pick some different, less ambiguous term.
  - ludston 4y ago
    I disagree. It's easy to choose this as a position if you intend to argue disingenuously, and therefore you always ensure that your argument positions are logically sound, and complex and abstract enough so as to exclude most others from being able to argue back. On the other hand, if you are steel manning the other person's argument, instead of playing a complex word definition game that invalidates what they've said on account that they haven't explicitly defined for you all of the axioms of their position, (and if they did you can attack their argument with a different set of nit picking fallacies such as "too long didn't read"), you would probably find their argument compelling, or at the very least you would be forced to reveal the true reason you disagree with them. It's much easier to attack somebody else's argument for using the wrong language than it is to present your own position.
taylorius 4y ago
I would define "natural" as meaning something that has evolved on this planet, and through that process has reached a sustainable, though arbitrarily complex balance in the ecosystem.

revolvingocelot 4y ago

Are you serious? An ant hill or a beaver dam are mere reorganizations of known matter types, and could be analogized to humans building things like walls. Stone, and even some types of mortar, participate in the great cosmic dance of Gaia [0], just like the works of the animals cited above. They decay, they are broken down by various processes over time, they are fashioned of things found in the environment. PFAS, by comparison, does not, cannot, and is not, respectively. It doesn't break down, and was never present in any ecosystem nor any part of the water cycle until a few decades ago -- an fraction of an eyeblink in the sort of evolutionary time it'll take for PFAS' presence to be integrated into the cosmic dance of Gaia, and until then it's just gonna cause cancer. I can agree that invoking the naturalistic fallacy isn't good argumentative practice, but some things are decidedly unnatural. Creating novel waterproofing chemicals that don't have naturally-occurring ways to break down and then dumping them into the water supply isn't something beavers, or ants, or birds, can do. Humans have transcended the natural world. I can tell because of all the new types of things we're adding to it. [0] should be read less as some pseudoreligious thing and more a handwave about the ancient, stable systems that repurpose atoms from moribund things into newer, more vital things: microbes, fungus, rot, uptake of substances by plants, etc

JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Not sure that's accurate. Animals aren't trying to create things that break down easily; they're not trying to do anything but survive. The argument is circular: if animals make it, it's part of Gaia else it's 'unnatural'. Animals didn't make plastics, so they're 'unnatural'. By definition I guess, not by any real difference between them and bone or termite mounds or dinosaur bones or geodes...you know, things that can last for millennia. Hell, even the Earth itself is made of crystals and granite and lead and arsenic and on and on. What's more natural than mother earth? I don't applaud plastics entering the environment carelessly. But not sure we have a handle on why it's bad, when we say its not natural.
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  >The argument is circular: if animals make it, it's part of Gaia else it's 'unnatural'. Animals didn't make plastics, so they're 'unnatural'. Er, this is your argument, not mine. Mine is: "if animals make it, and it is unmade (or remade, or recycled, or broken down [0]) by something else, then this is 'natural'." Plastics nor PFAS meet that standard. Those matter types stay static. The animals called 'humans' make plenty of other stuff that can't be adapted by microbes and fungus and rot that keep things from the natural world participating. >By definition I guess, not by any real difference between them and bone or termite mounds or dinosaur bones or geodes...you know, things that can last for millennia But this is the real pièce de stràwman: the objects under discussion have expanded from things that animals build, to natural features that don't chemically interact with the environment. Of course fucking bones and geodes aren't the same as nonbiodegradable plastics or PFAS -- not only are they contained physically by virtue of their properties, but they are also regularly destroyed by the various systems of Earth, like UV light or multicellular life, or the same geological processes that create them, respectively. Every example provided in the parent is, and has been, a part of the world for so long that they're not disruptive to other systems, or at least are physically contained. >I don't applaud plastics entering the environment carelessly Should they be introduced more thoughtfully? The point is that the system is unfamiliar with it. It can't be broken down and reused by something new. [0] Plastics 'break down' into smaller plastics. I don't think that quite counts.

daoist_shaman 4y ago

I guess when I say “natural,” what I truly mean is “that which is not made by man.” Any substance which is found in the natural environment and mechanically altered does not count in my definition of man-made; this is essentially the same notion of natural that revolvingocelot points out. I think the crusade against “natural bias” is unfounded. Of course there are plenty of natural things that are not good for us—such as viruses— but the painful and uncomfortable truth about natural maladies like viruses is that they represent nature working as intended (protecting us from the ills of overpopulation, for example). The bottom line is that changing everything we dislike about nature can lead to our demise. She’s already thought a million steps ahead of whatever we hope to accomplish.

xvilka 4y ago
A lot of, probably even majority of viruses are a good thing - they add horizontal gene transfer to improve the evolution[1] and survival chances of species, sometimes even multiple ones at once, also making our own human virome[2]. [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220105111420.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220105111420.h... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_virome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_virome
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
alexvoda 4y ago
You are still anthropomorphousising nature. Nature does not intend to protect us from anything, much less from overpopulation. Nature does not intend anything as a whole. Each living creature simply intends to survive and multiply. Not changing anything about nature will also lead to our demise. Most non-human organisms (maybe all other than domesticated dogs and lifestock) are either ambivalent or opportunistically trying to kill us. Because we are made of carbon and therefore contain useful energy. Anthropomorphousising I believe is the greatest and most wide spread cognitive limitation of humanity.
- daoist_shaman 4y ago

magpi3 4y ago

You're just playing with semantics. If everything humans do is natural than everything is natural: computers, plastics, concrete, etc. The purpose of using the word natural is to distinguish from what is unnatural, and without grabbing a dictionary, for me that generally means something that does not "naturally" occur (i.e. without human intervention specifically) in the natural world. Chemical engineers create unnatural things, things that don't exist in the natural world.

drdaeman 4y ago
That's the whole point. Word "natural" is not good in any serious argument because it simply doesn't have well-recognized unambiguous semantics most people can agree on. Ask a bunch of folks if some things are natural and while they'll most likely agree on the basics (wild forest flower is most likely would be called "natural", while a mobile phone is most likely not) the opinions will start to diverge on less obvious stuff (e.g. penicillin). It's like a concept of "god" - everyone has their own idea what it might mean. (full disclosure: I'm ignostic). With such words it's best to either start with a definition, or pick some different, less ambiguous term.
- ludston 4y ago
  I disagree. It's easy to choose this as a position if you intend to argue disingenuously, and therefore you always ensure that your argument positions are logically sound, and complex and abstract enough so as to exclude most others from being able to argue back. On the other hand, if you are steel manning the other person's argument, instead of playing a complex word definition game that invalidates what they've said on account that they haven't explicitly defined for you all of the axioms of their position, (and if they did you can attack their argument with a different set of nit picking fallacies such as "too long didn't read"), you would probably find their argument compelling, or at the very least you would be forced to reveal the true reason you disagree with them. It's much easier to attack somebody else's argument for using the wrong language than it is to present your own position.

taylorius 4y ago

I would define "natural" as meaning something that has evolved on this planet, and through that process has reached a sustainable, though arbitrarily complex balance in the ecosystem.