71–80 of 106 posts
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How about diamonds? We are able to make diamonds and yet people prefer naturally created ones for some reason.
Lab grown diamonds start with a diamond seed which comes from the earth (you can use a synthetic seed later on).
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> But surely you’d agree that “vat of chemicals” is not the only metric by which to evaluate a substance So you're positing a spiritual or etherial nature for strawberries? Such that pure materialism is inadequate to address? > , and that not all vats of chemicals are strawberries. Yeah, this is elementary logic really. All A are B does not imply that all B are A. > Everything is just a concoction of atoms. yes, exac…
> So you're positing a spiritual or etherial nature for strawberries? Such that pure materialism is inadequate to address? Not in the slightest. You seemed to be placing a high degree of weight on the shared property “vat of chemicals”, and I’m trying to understand why or in what way this informs us. > Yes, which is why this wasn't my point. I’m trying to understand what someone is supposed to take from the point you…
A different tack, then. What do you mean by "vat of chemicals called a strawberry?"
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There are several competing, and sometimes complementary perspectives on what 'nature' means. Some include humans and their activity within it, others do not. One thing you can ask yourself: if human activity and the impact it has on its environment is included in what you call 'natural', then what even does remain of the word 'unnatural'? What do people refer to, when they use that word? If you don't have any sensib…
I think if you are short-terming your existence by destroying everything around you, that could qualify as unnatural.
There's a layer to this, where natural also implies good and unnatural implies bad. For example, plastic is bad because it is unnatural, but arguing it is natural after all somehow makes it good (that is the rhetoric I believe). This depends on the notion of a 'natural order', whether that is some vague concept of 'the universe' or of God himself. Anything against that order is bad and unnatural. Humans are part of that order.
Of course, that is very pre-modern idea. I believe what comes close to a useful definition of natural would be something like 'emergent' or 'spontaneous', as opposed to deliberately designed. Its a quality you could also ascribe to, for example, cities or software systems. You don't need the human/nature split for it to be useful. It is not exactly capturing what people think of as natural, but then again we also do not believe in God anymore - by and large. At least not in the way we used to.
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When we have the ability to replicate strawberries at the atomic level, then I’d grant you this point. We presently do not, and the market is filled with products calling themselves one thing while in reality being in essence a vat full of chemicals.
How about diamonds? We are able to make diamonds and yet people prefer naturally created ones for some reason.
Going back to where this started, many people feel uncomfortable consuming products that contain chemicals added by humans/corporations.
Whether or not this concern is fully justified is a fair point to debate. If we could perfectly replicate the ideal strawberry down to the molecular level, said strawberry shouldn’t be a concern, even for people who go out of their way to avoid food additives.
People value diamonds for an entirely different reason. What they value is the narrative behind the diamond. Its (supposed) rareness, and the fact that natural forces produced something beautiful. There are also still echoes of hundreds/thousands of years of culture that placed a high value on them before science could replicate them.
But ultimately I think this is all orthogonal to the strawberry situation. The reasons someone does or does not want to eat a truly perfect strawberry replica will be very different from the reasons someone values a diamond.
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Maybe that's just the sidequest. The real quest is getting multi planetar.
What if the real quest is to collectively find ways to coexist without destroying the only planet we know to be fully capable of supporting human life richly? And this doesn’t have to be at odds with our space ambitions. But framed the way you framed this, it somewhat reminds me of the religious perspective that this world is just prep for what is to come. As a consequence, they see the harms we’re doing as inconsequ…
I never said, it is. Did I?
A side quest is an optional thing you do while you complete the main quest. Mentioning it as a side quest serves as a link to the supposed Carlin quote.
I always considered the main quest of life is to promote more life. Multi-planetary life is life more resistant to medium to large cosmical calamities.
An example specie over here would be Canadian goldenrod. It completely dominates other plants and creates monoculture.
> An example specie over here "Specie" means "of the same kind" and generally specifically coins, especially gold coins. It is not the singular of "species". Species is both singular and plural, like "sheep" or "deer" or "salmon". Where is "over here"?
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The problem with this worldview is that it dramatically underestimates the harm of "natural" products compared to "artificial" products. You see, if it's fermented grape juice, it's "natural", and so it's a complex flavor profile. But if you actually list out what's in it, it's a lot of toxic chemicals banned as food additives, and synthetic wine is illegal as a result. And you can't omit the egregiously toxic stuff…
Your assumptions about beverage law are dead wrong. "Synthetic wine", whatever you mean by that, is not "illegal". And beverage makers actually have much more freedom than ordinary food makers in their choices of ingredients.
There was an article several years back about one of these groups trying to get regulatory approval to sell their product, and the stumbling block was the use of things that weren't approved additives. (I want to say it was tannins, since that's the most overtly problematic chemical in wine, but it has been several years since I've seen the article, so I could be mixing it up for one of the other carcinogens involved).
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> So you're positing a spiritual or etherial nature for strawberries? Such that pure materialism is inadequate to address? Not in the slightest. You seemed to be placing a high degree of weight on the shared property “vat of chemicals”, and I’m trying to understand why or in what way this informs us. > Yes, which is why this wasn't my point. I’m trying to understand what someone is supposed to take from the point you…
I think we mostly agree but somehow you seem to still be missing my point. A different tack, then. What do you mean by "vat of chemicals called a strawberry?"
> It reminds me of people who won't eat certain foods because it contains "too many chemicals".
Maybe I misread this, but I took this to refer to the current food industry and how it processes/produces foods. The market is filled with products labeled "strawberry" that are not really strawberries or even close to the makeup of strawberries.
> What do you mean by "vat of chemicals called a strawberry?"
The breakfast food aisles at most (American at least) grocery stores summarize what I'm getting at. Many of the "strawberry" products are highly processed and highly artificial.
My point was that the ship of Theseus analogy seems misapplied, since we're not talking about a situation where the food choices we have are between the real thing and some molecularly perfect replica.
And secondarily, to call strawberries just a "vat of chemicals" in this specific context seems like a misnomer when considering that the reason people "avoid food with too many chemicals" is quite unrelated to the fact that everything is made up of the same stuff of the universe and more to do with questioning whether or not the human-made processed option is safe in the long run.
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I think it is a useful distinction for non-religious reasons. First is that humans change the environment more than anything else, by a large margin. As they say, “the dose makes the poison”. All species modify the environment they live in, but none are reshaping the oceans, every landmass, the air, the climate etc. like humans. Humans created multiple elements that never existed on earth. Second, humans are consciou…
Life has fundamentally changed the environment multiple times. The reason you live in an oxygenated environment is due to the waste produced by life.
How long did it take to spew enough carbon into the atmosphere to create acid rain? How long did it take to clear cut most of the wester European forests?
No one thinks the earth was perfectly harmonious before man, but in the last 200k years (0.0004% of the earth's age), we have DEFINITELY left a mark that no other life form before had. In the last 200 years, we've probably done more harm than all other life forms before as well (but that I'm less confident about).
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What if the real quest is to collectively find ways to coexist without destroying the only planet we know to be fully capable of supporting human life richly? And this doesn’t have to be at odds with our space ambitions. But framed the way you framed this, it somewhat reminds me of the religious perspective that this world is just prep for what is to come. As a consequence, they see the harms we’re doing as inconsequ…
> And this doesn’t have to be at odds with our space ambitions. I never said, it is. Did I? A side quest is an optional thing you do while you complete the main quest. Mentioning it as a side quest serves as a link to the supposed Carlin quote. I always considered the main quest of life is to promote more life. Multi-planetary life is life more resistant to medium to large cosmical calamities.
> The real quest is getting multi planetar.
Which when viewed as the "real" quest, has potentially problematic downstream effects. My point was that there are many people who see who see the world as something to escape and live lives prioritizing things that harm our long term ability to survive here in the pursuit of that escape.
I appreciate the clarification that this is not what you meant. It wasn't clear that the "real quest" had any connection to the side quest since they seem unrelated.
> Multi-planetary life is life more resistant to medium to large cosmical calamities.
I don't disagree. But I strongly believe that stabilizing the home base is a higher priority in the near term i.e. at a time when the planet is in a precarious place, spending enormous amounts of resources trying to colonize mars is a questionable priority when we have more immediate problems that would benefit from such lofty ambitions.