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fair call, if you're body-primary you'll see the environment as broken and in need of fixing. but if you see the current environment as the source of truth or w

fair call, if you're body-primary you'll see the environment as broken and in need of fixing. but if you see the current environment as the source of truth or what you'll need to adapt to survive long term, then yeah you'll need to fix your body. this reminds me of the men in black scene [1] where Will Smith moves the table. you get to decide what kind of person you are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dijVbM9DpxU&ab_channel=Creepoid1234 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dijVbM9DpxU&ab_channel=Creep...

TeMPOraL 4y ago
I tend to see it as a dance - humans have unique ability to transform the environment to better suit their needs, but sometimes it's still easier to just adapt the body[0]. Both these things are unique to humans anyway[1] - all other life on Earth is "environment-primary", i.e. environment is the source of truth and living things adapt to thrive, except they adapt by breeding imperfectly and dying unevenly. Thus, arguably, neither is more or less "natural" than the other - we're the only ones to have the option to fix things - be it our bodies, our environment, or both. -- [0] - Related concept: "society is fixed, biology is mutable". The flip side of the well-known (if annoyingly overused) adage, "you can't fix social problems with technology" is that if your problem is a social one, you've already lost. Social problems are unsolvable by direct approach; literally anything else is easier than getting people to coordinate at scale, when it means enduring a short-term personal loss for a long-term distributed gain. If you have that kind of problem, pray there's a way to medicate, industrialize, capitalize, code, or CRISPR your way out of it. [1] - Unique at the scale we're talking about. There's a huge gap between us and the next animals best skilled at adapting themselves or the environment.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

I tend to see it as a dance - humans have unique ability to transform the environment to better suit their needs, but sometimes it's still easier to just adapt the body[0]. Both these things are unique to humans anyway[1] - all other life on Earth is "environment-primary", i.e. environment is the source of truth and living things adapt to thrive, except they adapt by breeding imperfectly and dying unevenly. Thus, arguably, neither is more or less "natural" than the other - we're the only ones to have the option to fix things - be it our bodies, our environment, or both. -- [0] - Related concept: "society is fixed, biology is mutable". The flip side of the well-known (if annoyingly overused) adage, "you can't fix social problems with technology" is that if your problem is a social one, you've already lost. Social problems are unsolvable by direct approach; literally anything else is easier than getting people to coordinate at scale, when it means enduring a short-term personal loss for a long-term distributed gain. If you have that kind of problem, pray there's a way to medicate, industrialize, capitalize, code, or CRISPR your way out of it. [1] - Unique at the scale we're talking about. There's a huge gap between us and the next animals best skilled at adapting themselves or the environment.