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For me, the mystique and beauty of forests lie in that they grow and thrive without intervention. They are a beautiful, unintentional, complex anarchy. They are

For me, the mystique and beauty of forests lie in that they grow and thrive without intervention. They are a beautiful, unintentional, complex anarchy. They are the product of millions of years of millions of species going extinct, an incomprehensible sum of events, an unconscious wandering to its current state. Human inventions and ecosystems are boring in comparison. Every choice was to serve a human desire, and 99% are boring logical reasons. Why does the toaster have a handle? To pop the bread out. Why does the server have a status light? It was a feature request. Why does the computer recognize faces? Because there was a business case for it. Nature's causal "why" is "because that's the way things worked out", and that's magic. There's a beauty in asking "why are bluejays blue" and not being able to know. Computers operate semi-autonomously, sure, but so do stand mixers and water-treatment facilities. These are still just human machines built for human uses. Until we have computers that reproduce and thrive alongside us rather than act in our servitude, they haven't even scratched the surface of the magic of an earthworm.

notduncansmith 7y ago
I think this is a matter of perspective. Nature is stochastic - everything in nature happens for a sensible reason, though we may not ever know it in our lifetime. There’s as much (or as little, if you prefer) mystery in the toaster as the bluejay. Why are there different colored toasters? Why do so many have chrome? Why do humans like chrome and other shiny things? Why do humans make toast at all, when the bread has already been cooked once? Conversely, some boring questions about nature: why does the sun appear to rise and fall? Why is grass green? Every effect has cause, and if you trace it far back enough, you get to “it just worked out that way” no matter where you start, and asking past that is getting into cosmology and religion, aka the realm of pure speculation.

notduncansmith 7y ago

I think this is a matter of perspective. Nature is stochastic - everything in nature happens for a sensible reason, though we may not ever know it in our lifetime. There’s as much (or as little, if you prefer) mystery in the toaster as the bluejay. Why are there different colored toasters? Why do so many have chrome? Why do humans like chrome and other shiny things? Why do humans make toast at all, when the bread has already been cooked once? Conversely, some boring questions about nature: why does the sun appear to rise and fall? Why is grass green? Every effect has cause, and if you trace it far back enough, you get to “it just worked out that way” no matter where you start, and asking past that is getting into cosmology and religion, aka the realm of pure speculation.