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Isn't the point of being smart human beings is that we do things better than what occurs in nature?



That assumes that rain falling on leaves serves no purpose.


Nature isn't perfect and has disadvantages compared to us.

We don't have to invent ex post facto explanations for why something is the case in nature or why there is some un-intuitive reason as for why the natural way is better.


> Nature isn't perfect and has disadvantages compared to us.

That's assuming that we are somehow outside of nature.

> We don't have to invent ex post facto explanations for why something is the case in nature or why there is some un-intuitive reason as for why the natural way is better.

We don't have to , no , but we do , because that's how we learn.

Nobody was claiming the "natural" way was better, just that it might serve a purpose.


> That's assuming that we are somehow outside of nature

No it isn’t. You know what they meant, you are just one-upping them on a technicality in a way that doesn’t advance the discussion at all.


> No it isn’t.

Yes, it is.

> You know what they meant.

I have clearly stated what i think they meant.

They specifically said "disadvantages compared to us." that heavily implies ( if not outright declares ) an us vs them.

It seems you have a different interpretation, I'd be interested to hear what that is if you don't mind ?

> you are just one-upping them on a technicality in a way that doesn’t advance the discussion at all.

If you don't see how what i said was related to the discussion then we probably aren't going to agree on what constitutes a technicality.


> I have clearly stated what i think they meant.

Hey and you were wrong. You are pretty bad at understanding what other people are saying.

> how what i said was related to the discussion

It wasn't related because the other person was correct in that you misunderstood my statement.


> Hey and you were wrong. You are pretty bad at understanding what other people are saying.

Or you are bad at conveying an explicit meaning.

> It wasn't related because the other person was correct in that you misunderstood my statement.

I've outlined why i thought what i did, if that was a misunderstanding of your intention I'm willing to accept that, doesn't mean what you said was clear.


> at conveying an explicit meaning.

The other person understood me just fine, and also noticed how obvious my statement was, and how you avoided it.

> doesn't mean what you said was clear.

Oh it absolutely does. The other person understood it perfectly.


> The other person understood me just fine, and also noticed how obvious my statement was, and how you avoided it.

Of a sample size of two that's a 50% failure rate.

You stated an us vs them, i pointed out that drawing an us vs them assumes that us and them are different.

That you apparently meant something different is odd to me, but you do you.

> Oh it absolutely does. The other person understood it perfectly.

Again, 50% failure rate.

If you wish to conclude that a 50% failure rate makes something obvious in favour of one side, feel free.


> Of a sample size

Well, actually it's extremely obvious there you aren't actually attempting to understand my argument.

The other person noticed it as well.

Notice, how instead of going on about this, you could have instead gone back to my message and actually tried to figure out what my argument was.

But you didn't.

Because you aren't interested in understanding what my argument was.

> that a 50% failure rate

Oh you still aren't getting it.

It's not a 50% failure rate. It is a 0% failure rate. Instead it is that someone else noticed they you werent even trying.

Of course you aren't going to admit that.

But if someone else backs me up, thats really good evidence.

I am fully confident that the success rate is 100% and actually you could understand the argument if you stopped doing what we both know you are doing right now.


I've clearly stated what my interpretation was, with an explanation of how i got there.

A single line explaining how "people vs nature" doesn't imply that people and nature are different things would have cleared this up easily but instead we get multiple instances of you saying "it's so obvious I'm not going to explain it"

However, you have full confidence that everything is cleared up, so i guess it must be.

I'll see myself out.


Saying something like rain serves a purpose is backwards. Plants have evolved to survive in conditions that include rain, rain has not been deployed to serve a purpose for plants. There may be other conditions that are easier for plants to thrive in.


I was referring to the leaves in this case but i agree with what you are saying.


Nor are we perfect and we've been wrong about much in nature more often than we've been right over the past many millennia. The previous poster didn't imply either case regardless. The post simply pointed out an assumption being made.

Frankly, I prefer the way that thinks of 'ex post facto' explanations for nature. At least that keeps us hypothesizing and not sitting there tooting our own horns.


> Nature isn't perfect and has disadvantages compared to us.

Wow we have completely different world views. I think nature is perfect and it's us who have gone too far away from it to notice and hence we are far from perfection as well. Ideally we should not be comparing us to nature since we are part of it. But somewhere deep down we know we are not aligned with it so we end up comparing it to humans which seems pretty grandiose on our end.


How can nature be perfect when it is constantly changing? We alter our environment out of necessity, we would only be able to survive in a very small number of climates on Earth if we did nothing to change our surroundings. Lucky you if you happen to be somewhere with year round fruit to pluck from the vine and temperate climate in the winters but that leaves the other 8 billion people to die of starvation and exposure.


I'm sincerely fascinated by your perspective. I haven't heard this viewpoint before.

Why do you think nature is perfect? I.e. what is your "gold standard" against which you measure?

Something that immediately comes to mind for me is all the death and suffering that is abundant through nature. If the only thing that matters is propagation of life, then nature does seem pretty good at it, but as a being that operates some layers above the selfish gene, it seems far from perfect.


> Something that immediately comes to mind for me is all the death and suffering that is abundant through nature

What if this is the best it can do with all the things that can go wrong or are going wrong. Perfection does not mean things will never go wrong. They can and they will. I can give you example of process that is near perfection: photosynthesis. Nature can store energy and then utilize it without creating adverse effect on other life. This is just one example but there are many processes like this.


If modern farming protocols are to water at the soil, I would be strongly willing to bet that is the best way to water, at least for our particular situation of growing the crops we grow on the farms we grow them on.

Much has gone into studying how to best grow these crops, both at universities and research centers and on the field at farms themselves.


That assumes that we are better at doing things than nature is. I dont know if im sold on that.


We can also do stupid stuff much faster and efficiently and at greater scale than nature, too.




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