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I'm not sure what you're trying to say. There clearly exist areas that are more and those that are less impacted by human presence. When people talk about natu

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. There clearly exist areas that are more and those that are less impacted by human presence. When people talk about nature they often mean just the latter parts while perhaps considering engineered ecosystems part of "the environment" not necessarily part of "[pristine] nature". Having different words for these different things is useful. You can quibble about which words best fit them, but the distinction doesn't go away.

throwanem 7y ago
"Nature" isn't a word that's useful for expressing position along the continuum you describe, though. Instead it describes a sharp discontinuity that doesn't actually exist. The resulting mental model can't help but be inaccurate - and accidentally so, which means the simplification can't be controlled to avoid impairing the utility of the model. I'd categorize the resulting conceptual error alongside the one that leads people to believe in creationism because camera eyes like ours seem too complicated to have arisen by chance. They aren't, but that's a thought you need the right conceptual tools to build. Without them, you might never get there. Ultimately, what I'm saying is that "nature" is likewise the wrong tool with which to build thoughts about how humans interact with our environment.
- the8472 7y ago
  Where is the discontinuity implied? It seems like there is a continuum between entirely engineered environments and largely untouched ones. The latter is considered natural, hence "nature" as an expression of one part of the continuum. Of course there are other uses of the word, such as "nature finds a way" meaning that biological life will adapt to engineered environments too. But this the usual inadequacy of human language, the same word can have multiple, even conflicting meanings. Anyway, if you wish to convey some important concept better you should name it so it can be discussed instead of just pointing at other concepts and declaring them inadequate. This is what confuses me about this discussion, the lack of proposed improvements.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    How much modification equals not "nature" any more, though? It's like trying to define how many grains of sand make a heap. The difference is that nobody imagines a heap of sand is anything but a heap of sand. We're already talking in terms of a better concept, that of an explicitly understood continuum between totally unmodified environments and totally human-built ones. That is the improvement, because it accurately models reality in a way that an ill-defined concept of "nature" does not, and avoids lending itself to implicit confusions like that between "natural" and "desirable" discussed elsewhere in these comments. There are desirable aspects to built environments, and desirable aspects to unbuilt ones, and undesirable aspects of both as well. A maximally desirable human environment incorporates both, and I don't see how sloppy analysis of the sort encouraged by "nature" makes such an environment easier to attain.
    - the8472 7y ago
      Well, this is quite a tangent. I think this somewhat due to different understandings of the semantics of the word. I guess this communication issue does suggest using more specific terms would be helpful, but I want to point out that the interpretation of the word "nature" is not the only possible use. > avoids lending itself to implicit confusions like that between "natural" and "desirable" See, this "implicit confusion" doesn't seem compulsive to me. I see that there's a romanticized view of nature, sure. But there's that famous adage from Hobbes' Leviathan about man in a state of nature having a nasty, brutish and short life. And really, nature does a lot of undesirable things. > How much modification equals not "nature" any more, though? It's like trying to define how many grains of sand make a heap. The difference is that nobody imagines a heap of sand is anything but a heap of sand. Well, heapiness itself is a continuum. That's why we tack on qualifies such as "small heap", just like we tack "pristine" onto nature to mean something at a more extreme end of the spectrum. "tamed nature" indicates something more to the other end. Anyway, back to the original discussion. What I was trying to say is that humans cannot generally cohabitate with nature. We can't have billions of people live in a forest or on the steppes. At a global scale we can share the planet and have leave some areas largely untouched, but that's not living together. It's living apart and occasionally visiting.

throwanem 7y ago

"Nature" isn't a word that's useful for expressing position along the continuum you describe, though. Instead it describes a sharp discontinuity that doesn't actually exist. The resulting mental model can't help but be inaccurate - and accidentally so, which means the simplification can't be controlled to avoid impairing the utility of the model. I'd categorize the resulting conceptual error alongside the one that leads people to believe in creationism because camera eyes like ours seem too complicated to have arisen by chance. They aren't, but that's a thought you need the right conceptual tools to build. Without them, you might never get there. Ultimately, what I'm saying is that "nature" is likewise the wrong tool with which to build thoughts about how humans interact with our environment.

the8472 7y ago
Where is the discontinuity implied? It seems like there is a continuum between entirely engineered environments and largely untouched ones. The latter is considered natural, hence "nature" as an expression of one part of the continuum. Of course there are other uses of the word, such as "nature finds a way" meaning that biological life will adapt to engineered environments too. But this the usual inadequacy of human language, the same word can have multiple, even conflicting meanings. Anyway, if you wish to convey some important concept better you should name it so it can be discussed instead of just pointing at other concepts and declaring them inadequate. This is what confuses me about this discussion, the lack of proposed improvements.
- throwanem 7y ago
  How much modification equals not "nature" any more, though? It's like trying to define how many grains of sand make a heap. The difference is that nobody imagines a heap of sand is anything but a heap of sand. We're already talking in terms of a better concept, that of an explicitly understood continuum between totally unmodified environments and totally human-built ones. That is the improvement, because it accurately models reality in a way that an ill-defined concept of "nature" does not, and avoids lending itself to implicit confusions like that between "natural" and "desirable" discussed elsewhere in these comments. There are desirable aspects to built environments, and desirable aspects to unbuilt ones, and undesirable aspects of both as well. A maximally desirable human environment incorporates both, and I don't see how sloppy analysis of the sort encouraged by "nature" makes such an environment easier to attain.
  - the8472 7y ago
    Well, this is quite a tangent. I think this somewhat due to different understandings of the semantics of the word. I guess this communication issue does suggest using more specific terms would be helpful, but I want to point out that the interpretation of the word "nature" is not the only possible use. > avoids lending itself to implicit confusions like that between "natural" and "desirable" See, this "implicit confusion" doesn't seem compulsive to me. I see that there's a romanticized view of nature, sure. But there's that famous adage from Hobbes' Leviathan about man in a state of nature having a nasty, brutish and short life. And really, nature does a lot of undesirable things. > How much modification equals not "nature" any more, though? It's like trying to define how many grains of sand make a heap. The difference is that nobody imagines a heap of sand is anything but a heap of sand. Well, heapiness itself is a continuum. That's why we tack on qualifies such as "small heap", just like we tack "pristine" onto nature to mean something at a more extreme end of the spectrum. "tamed nature" indicates something more to the other end. Anyway, back to the original discussion. What I was trying to say is that humans cannot generally cohabitate with nature. We can't have billions of people live in a forest or on the steppes. At a global scale we can share the planet and have leave some areas largely untouched, but that's not living together. It's living apart and occasionally visiting.