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Are you serious? An ant hill or a beaver dam are mere reorganizations of known matter types, and could be analogized to humans building things like walls. Ston

Are you serious? An ant hill or a beaver dam are mere reorganizations of known matter types, and could be analogized to humans building things like walls. Stone, and even some types of mortar, participate in the great cosmic dance of Gaia [0], just like the works of the animals cited above. They decay, they are broken down by various processes over time, they are fashioned of things found in the environment. PFAS, by comparison, does not, cannot, and is not, respectively. It doesn't break down, and was never present in any ecosystem nor any part of the water cycle until a few decades ago -- an fraction of an eyeblink in the sort of evolutionary time it'll take for PFAS' presence to be integrated into the cosmic dance of Gaia, and until then it's just gonna cause cancer. I can agree that invoking the naturalistic fallacy isn't good argumentative practice, but some things are decidedly unnatural. Creating novel waterproofing chemicals that don't have naturally-occurring ways to break down and then dumping them into the water supply isn't something beavers, or ants, or birds, can do. Humans have transcended the natural world. I can tell because of all the new types of things we're adding to it. [0] should be read less as some pseudoreligious thing and more a handwave about the ancient, stable systems that repurpose atoms from moribund things into newer, more vital things: microbes, fungus, rot, uptake of substances by plants, etc

JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Not sure that's accurate. Animals aren't trying to create things that break down easily; they're not trying to do anything but survive. The argument is circular: if animals make it, it's part of Gaia else it's 'unnatural'. Animals didn't make plastics, so they're 'unnatural'. By definition I guess, not by any real difference between them and bone or termite mounds or dinosaur bones or geodes...you know, things that can last for millennia. Hell, even the Earth itself is made of crystals and granite and lead and arsenic and on and on. What's more natural than mother earth? I don't applaud plastics entering the environment carelessly. But not sure we have a handle on why it's bad, when we say its not natural.
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  >The argument is circular: if animals make it, it's part of Gaia else it's 'unnatural'. Animals didn't make plastics, so they're 'unnatural'. Er, this is your argument, not mine. Mine is: "if animals make it, and it is unmade (or remade, or recycled, or broken down [0]) by something else, then this is 'natural'." Plastics nor PFAS meet that standard. Those matter types stay static. The animals called 'humans' make plenty of other stuff that can't be adapted by microbes and fungus and rot that keep things from the natural world participating. >By definition I guess, not by any real difference between them and bone or termite mounds or dinosaur bones or geodes...you know, things that can last for millennia But this is the real pièce de stràwman: the objects under discussion have expanded from things that animals build, to natural features that don't chemically interact with the environment. Of course fucking bones and geodes aren't the same as nonbiodegradable plastics or PFAS -- not only are they contained physically by virtue of their properties, but they are also regularly destroyed by the various systems of Earth, like UV light or multicellular life, or the same geological processes that create them, respectively. Every example provided in the parent is, and has been, a part of the world for so long that they're not disruptive to other systems, or at least are physically contained. >I don't applaud plastics entering the environment carelessly Should they be introduced more thoughtfully? The point is that the system is unfamiliar with it. It can't be broken down and reused by something new. [0] Plastics 'break down' into smaller plastics. I don't think that quite counts.
  - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
    Granite breaks down about as fast as plastic. No, plastic is not very different from, well, almost the entirety of the planet earth. But for a thin skin of muck. Geodes and dissolved heavy metals and salts and on and on -all entirely 'natural' and been there forever - don't chemically interact, much. Natural poisons exist nearly everywhere. Nature is not some wonderful synchrony of cooperative organisms. Everything is doing its best to kill something else through poison, acid, lye, violence etc. That apricot pit wants to kill you with cyanide so it's pit can thrive in your decaying body. Heck, an imbalance in ordinary creatures (think invasive species) can do untold harm. Examples abound. It's not about kind, just concentration and rate. It's a complex system, and the dichotomy 'natural' doesn't contribute much to the discussion. That's my thinking anyway.
zajio1am 4y ago
> Creating novel waterproofing chemicals that don't have naturally-occurring ways to break down and then dumping them into the water supply isn't something beavers, or ants, or birds, can do. Genes encode proteins, proteins are chemicals, so evolution creates new proteins, and organisms often dump them to environment. The difference is that other organisms produce new chemicals through genetic evolution and not memetic evolution, like humans. Some of these chemicals are initially non-breakable, for example after lignin was introduced, it took millions of years to evolve organisms able to break it.
rsync 4y ago
I invite you to learn more about termites, their physical mounds and their rearing of young. Specifically, how a co-evolved gut parasite allows termites to do the things they do and requires a fecal transplant, at birth, for every new termite. In the continuum between beaver dams and human highways this kind of physical and biological organization should figure prominently… and I hope you find it interesting.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Not sure that's accurate. Animals aren't trying to create things that break down easily; they're not trying to do anything but survive. The argument is circular: if animals make it, it's part of Gaia else it's 'unnatural'. Animals didn't make plastics, so they're 'unnatural'. By definition I guess, not by any real difference between them and bone or termite mounds or dinosaur bones or geodes...you know, things that can last for millennia. Hell, even the Earth itself is made of crystals and granite and lead and arsenic and on and on. What's more natural than mother earth? I don't applaud plastics entering the environment carelessly. But not sure we have a handle on why it's bad, when we say its not natural.

revolvingocelot 4y ago
>The argument is circular: if animals make it, it's part of Gaia else it's 'unnatural'. Animals didn't make plastics, so they're 'unnatural'. Er, this is your argument, not mine. Mine is: "if animals make it, and it is unmade (or remade, or recycled, or broken down [0]) by something else, then this is 'natural'." Plastics nor PFAS meet that standard. Those matter types stay static. The animals called 'humans' make plenty of other stuff that can't be adapted by microbes and fungus and rot that keep things from the natural world participating. >By definition I guess, not by any real difference between them and bone or termite mounds or dinosaur bones or geodes...you know, things that can last for millennia But this is the real pièce de stràwman: the objects under discussion have expanded from things that animals build, to natural features that don't chemically interact with the environment. Of course fucking bones and geodes aren't the same as nonbiodegradable plastics or PFAS -- not only are they contained physically by virtue of their properties, but they are also regularly destroyed by the various systems of Earth, like UV light or multicellular life, or the same geological processes that create them, respectively. Every example provided in the parent is, and has been, a part of the world for so long that they're not disruptive to other systems, or at least are physically contained. >I don't applaud plastics entering the environment carelessly Should they be introduced more thoughtfully? The point is that the system is unfamiliar with it. It can't be broken down and reused by something new. [0] Plastics 'break down' into smaller plastics. I don't think that quite counts.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Granite breaks down about as fast as plastic. No, plastic is not very different from, well, almost the entirety of the planet earth. But for a thin skin of muck. Geodes and dissolved heavy metals and salts and on and on -all entirely 'natural' and been there forever - don't chemically interact, much. Natural poisons exist nearly everywhere. Nature is not some wonderful synchrony of cooperative organisms. Everything is doing its best to kill something else through poison, acid, lye, violence etc. That apricot pit wants to kill you with cyanide so it's pit can thrive in your decaying body. Heck, an imbalance in ordinary creatures (think invasive species) can do untold harm. Examples abound. It's not about kind, just concentration and rate. It's a complex system, and the dichotomy 'natural' doesn't contribute much to the discussion. That's my thinking anyway.

zajio1am 4y ago

> Creating novel waterproofing chemicals that don't have naturally-occurring ways to break down and then dumping them into the water supply isn't something beavers, or ants, or birds, can do. Genes encode proteins, proteins are chemicals, so evolution creates new proteins, and organisms often dump them to environment. The difference is that other organisms produce new chemicals through genetic evolution and not memetic evolution, like humans. Some of these chemicals are initially non-breakable, for example after lignin was introduced, it took millions of years to evolve organisms able to break it.

rsync 4y ago

I invite you to learn more about termites, their physical mounds and their rearing of young. Specifically, how a co-evolved gut parasite allows termites to do the things they do and requires a fecal transplant, at birth, for every new termite. In the continuum between beaver dams and human highways this kind of physical and biological organization should figure prominently… and I hope you find it interesting.