4 ms·

Weapons are intentional, and ecosystems don’t do “intentional” on their own; you could even call this lack of agency a defining quality of a natural ecosystem.

by SllX 3y ago

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
Genomes also don't do intention on their own, and yet venomous pointy things like spines and teeth and claws evolved. Do you think we're unjustified in calling them weapons?
- SllX 3y ago
  When they’re in use as weapons by the thing that possesses spines, teeth and claws: yes. I use my teeth to chew my food, my cats use their claws to manipulate their environment and grab things, but if we turned them against you, then they’re also weapons. The venomous pointy things et al. are emergent properties of a multi-stream evolutionary chain that makes every extant species on the planet pretty much a badass, even pandas, and we’re all pretty dependent on whatever properties we currently have allowing us to continue to exist, else it’ll be down to pure luck of the mutate. The ecosystems all those species thrive or at least survive in though? Those don’t do intention. Ecosystems are a collection of species and are about as harmonious as a poison jar over time, but the jar itself has no intentions, it’s just a jar.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    We can nit-pick over the word weapon if you like, but whatever you want to call it, it really smells like the kind of thing that repeats like a fractal. Cells use organelles to maintain homeostasis in the presence of threatening stimuli, and organs use cells, and organisms use organs... I see no reason to assume that ecosystems don't use organisms in the same way.
    - SllX 3y ago
      Yes, because these are emergent phenomenon. Ecosystems are by definition too complex to have anything cognizable as intent. New diseases are an emergent phenomenon because the new species of bacteria or viruses we either find or which evolve around us interact with us in new ways, and those are all emergent phenomenon. If something is emergent, that is by definition not with intent. My intent and your intent and everybody else’s intent creates both strong and weak interactions which percolate through society, recognizable through other phenomena which we measure such as economy, births, deaths, elections or whatever sum up into a society which is recognizable as a describable body but which is emergent and without an intent of its own but rather multiple sometimes overlapping and sometimes clashing intents. Ecosystems are like that: full of creatures with intentions of their own, but without any sort of intent. It cannot use anything without a body (a tree, a bee, a fox, a bacterial culture, a virus) taking action, therefore it cannot weaponize anything. Or put another way, you can go into the Jungle, and you might die, and some lazy mofo might say you died from the Jungle but what actually killed you would be a crocodile, a jaguar, some kind of infection from an identifiable bacteria or virus even if left unidentified, maybe your inability to metabolize due to protein starvation, or something else, but the Jungle itself will not be the thing that killed you.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
        First: > Ecosystems are a collection of species and are about as harmonious as a poison jar over time, but the jar itself has no intentions, it’s just a jar. Then: > Ecosystems are by definition too complex to have anything cognizable as intent. Which is it, are they too complex, or too simple? I do think that "cognizable" is the right word though. It's not about complexity. Whether a phenomenon is emergent, or the result of intention, depends on how we're thinking about it. It's a rhetorical choice, stylistic, not a matter of fact. It has to do with how you're telling the story, with whether its a character or the environment that does the thing. I can see that you have different preferences over how to style conversations about ecosystems, and that's fine, but do you think there will ever be evidence that sorts this out for us, or are we just fighting over words?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

Weapons are intentional, and ecosystems don’t do “intentional” on their own; you could even call this lack of agency a defining quality of a natural ecosystem.

by SllX 3y ago

Weapons are intentional, and ecosystems don’t do “intentional” on their own; you could even call this lack of agency a defining quality of a natural ecosystem.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

Genomes also don't do intention on their own, and yet venomous pointy things like spines and teeth and claws evolved. Do you think we're unjustified in calling them weapons?

SllX 3y ago
When they’re in use as weapons by the thing that possesses spines, teeth and claws: yes. I use my teeth to chew my food, my cats use their claws to manipulate their environment and grab things, but if we turned them against you, then they’re also weapons. The venomous pointy things et al. are emergent properties of a multi-stream evolutionary chain that makes every extant species on the planet pretty much a badass, even pandas, and we’re all pretty dependent on whatever properties we currently have allowing us to continue to exist, else it’ll be down to pure luck of the mutate. The ecosystems all those species thrive or at least survive in though? Those don’t do intention. Ecosystems are a collection of species and are about as harmonious as a poison jar over time, but the jar itself has no intentions, it’s just a jar.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  We can nit-pick over the word weapon if you like, but whatever you want to call it, it really smells like the kind of thing that repeats like a fractal. Cells use organelles to maintain homeostasis in the presence of threatening stimuli, and organs use cells, and organisms use organs... I see no reason to assume that ecosystems don't use organisms in the same way.
  - SllX 3y ago
    Yes, because these are emergent phenomenon. Ecosystems are by definition too complex to have anything cognizable as intent. New diseases are an emergent phenomenon because the new species of bacteria or viruses we either find or which evolve around us interact with us in new ways, and those are all emergent phenomenon. If something is emergent, that is by definition not with intent. My intent and your intent and everybody else’s intent creates both strong and weak interactions which percolate through society, recognizable through other phenomena which we measure such as economy, births, deaths, elections or whatever sum up into a society which is recognizable as a describable body but which is emergent and without an intent of its own but rather multiple sometimes overlapping and sometimes clashing intents. Ecosystems are like that: full of creatures with intentions of their own, but without any sort of intent. It cannot use anything without a body (a tree, a bee, a fox, a bacterial culture, a virus) taking action, therefore it cannot weaponize anything. Or put another way, you can go into the Jungle, and you might die, and some lazy mofo might say you died from the Jungle but what actually killed you would be a crocodile, a jaguar, some kind of infection from an identifiable bacteria or virus even if left unidentified, maybe your inability to metabolize due to protein starvation, or something else, but the Jungle itself will not be the thing that killed you.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      First: > Ecosystems are a collection of species and are about as harmonious as a poison jar over time, but the jar itself has no intentions, it’s just a jar. Then: > Ecosystems are by definition too complex to have anything cognizable as intent. Which is it, are they too complex, or too simple? I do think that "cognizable" is the right word though. It's not about complexity. Whether a phenomenon is emergent, or the result of intention, depends on how we're thinking about it. It's a rhetorical choice, stylistic, not a matter of fact. It has to do with how you're telling the story, with whether its a character or the environment that does the thing. I can see that you have different preferences over how to style conversations about ecosystems, and that's fine, but do you think there will ever be evidence that sorts this out for us, or are we just fighting over words?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]