4 ms·

Beware of the "appeal to nature" fallacy [1]. You are right that exercising and going outside have been experimentally demonstrated to improve mood, but there i

• zdragnar 4y ago
  > Is agriculture "unnatural"? Many species modify their environment intentionally, and some go so far as to engage in a form of farming / animal husbandry. Various ants farm fungi, some species herd aphids for their "honeydew" secretions, pocket gophers cultivate tree roots, etc. Humans are physical beings, and it is our nature to experience the world through our physical senses. The psychosomatic relationship between our brain and the rest of our nervous system is also well documented (i.e. effects of exercise, gut health and diet on mood, etc). The digital world is a semi-shared fantasy. The longer you spend there, the more the neglected parts of you will suffer for it.
• travisjungroth 4y ago
  I don't think you'd find the claims of train madness hilarious after being on BART. In general, I find the "someone made a similar claim in the past and they were wrong then so you're wrong now" argument not persuasive.
  • fleddr 4y ago
    In general I'm annoyed by references to history. Computing, internet, social media, smartphones...each of these jumps are unprecedented.
• jancsika 4y ago
  > In 200 years, what will people think of your comment? Probably the same think I currently think of the typical Baptist warning that letting a municipality go wet will lead to an uptick in sinful fornication and fisticuffs. (And dancing!) The reasoning is almost certainly off. But as far as consequences, they're not wrong. :) I'm more concerned about those who would hand wave problems that come from these specific pieces of social media technology in a growing number of studies of those specific social media services. Referring to train-induced insanity reveals OP's flawed reasoning, but it doesn't address at all what "the Phones" are probably doing to U.S. girls and young women.
• shrimpx 4y ago
  To say that sitting in front of a screen is just as natural as foraging for mushrooms is nonsense from the perspective of what your body is optimized to do, on an evolutionary timescale.
  • fleddr 4y ago
    The parent comment is pointless intellectualism. I'm really quite sure that people can grasp that when you put a fish on dry land, it's not made for that. And that similarly, we're not made for social isolation, living indoors, extreme overstimulation of the senses, non-stop negativity, lack of cognitive breaks, etc.
    • devenvdev 4y ago
      I agree that the parent comment kinda misses the point that social isolation is bad for you. But "we're not designed to process the information avalanche of the modern age" does make me squint. My intuition tells me that cavemen probably had worse quality of life (experience-wise) than modern humans. Information input risen drastically long time ago, what was it, three thousand years from "here, this is a knife, you cut here" to a full blown education system? I think our brain elasticity is good enough to handle much much more before it overloads (or whatever are the consequences of "unnatural" amount of information).
      • reflexco 4y ago
        "My intuition tells me that cavemen probably had worse quality of life (experience-wise) than modern humans." That's a very suggestive judgment. It's likely they felt incredibly more in line with their body, emotions and environment. They were probably experiencing states of "flow" for the majority of their active hours, and frequent genuine happiness and sadness. But then it's impossible to measure things like fulfillment and happiness from bone remnants and fragments of DNA, so we wouldn't know for sure.
    • bluefirebrand 4y ago
      Conflating working from home with social isolation is a pretty big reach though. Maybe people actually just have social lives outside of work, and probably that's healthier for them.
• kar5pt 4y ago
  Yeah. Virtually none of the suggestions OP is making are "natural" in any meaningful way. Even going for walks usually implies walking in a park, which is an invention of the past 100 years or so. It's also very Euro-centric. In many other cultures its considered strange to just walk around for no reason.
  • slothtrop 4y ago
    > In many other cultures its considered strange to just walk around for no reason Name a single one. Walking being natural, as is meant colloquially, is not contingent on whether the environment has been altered. It's contingent on being out-in-the-world.
    • kar5pt 4y ago
      I was referring to a book I read by a Brit who lived in Africa for 30 years. He wrote about an interaction where he moved to an African village and "went for a walk" through the village. The locals thought he was strange to walk for no reason and assumed he was looking for workers.
  • fleddr 4y ago
    Only on HN can one debate the purpose of legs.
    • kar5pt 4y ago
      1. I was referring to walking as recreation, not walking in general (not sure how people missed this) 2. Body parts don't have a "purpose" unless you believe in a creator-god.
• pharrington 4y ago
  The appeal to nature definitely doesn't hold up, but I'm pretty sure that the historical consensus in 200 years will be that early 21st century social media was psychologically predatory.