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By default, nature is an aggressive and competitive environment. It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find p

By default, nature is an aggressive and competitive environment. It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find predatory animals cute (and even made children's toys in their image)

adolph 6y ago
What is nature different from the environment? Is nature not the environment? Is it truly aggressive and competitive or does it seek balance and evolution, or maybe it is and does not seek? Does applying those adjectives personify and build emotion into nature where none exists?
- LASR 6y ago
  I'd like to wager that the "environment" is any set of conditions that favors some attributes in the actors within it. So, it can be hierarchically defined and potentially spans any number of sub-environments. Time is a universal concept that spans across all environments. Over time, actors with attributes will flourish in the environments where those attributes are favored. So example: Political environment (in a democracy) Politicians with higher popularity will flourish. Academic environment: Students with higher grades will flourish. The universal environment: Whatever is most able to survive will flourish.
kbenson 6y ago
> It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find predatory animals cute I don't think that's entirely accurate. Dogs were domesticated well over 10k years ago, possibly close to 30k years ago. I see no reason to think that people didn't find puppies cute then as well since the reasons why we think of baby animals cute seems to be related to the same pattern recognition that causes us to recognize those attributes in human infants and think they are cute. The version of animals we find "cute" are all represented with infantile portions. There is something to be said for removal of danger as a prerequisite though (I doubt most people would have been receptive to the teddy bear in the 1920's if problems with bears were still frequent).

adolph 6y ago

What is nature different from the environment? Is nature not the environment? Is it truly aggressive and competitive or does it seek balance and evolution, or maybe it is and does not seek? Does applying those adjectives personify and build emotion into nature where none exists?

LASR 6y ago
I'd like to wager that the "environment" is any set of conditions that favors some attributes in the actors within it. So, it can be hierarchically defined and potentially spans any number of sub-environments. Time is a universal concept that spans across all environments. Over time, actors with attributes will flourish in the environments where those attributes are favored. So example: Political environment (in a democracy) Politicians with higher popularity will flourish. Academic environment: Students with higher grades will flourish. The universal environment: Whatever is most able to survive will flourish.

kbenson 6y ago

> It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find predatory animals cute I don't think that's entirely accurate. Dogs were domesticated well over 10k years ago, possibly close to 30k years ago. I see no reason to think that people didn't find puppies cute then as well since the reasons why we think of baby animals cute seems to be related to the same pattern recognition that causes us to recognize those attributes in human infants and think they are cute. The version of animals we find "cute" are all represented with infantile portions. There is something to be said for removal of danger as a prerequisite though (I doubt most people would have been receptive to the teddy bear in the 1920's if problems with bears were still frequent).