4 ms·

"What nature intended" is nothing. Natural selection is a process, not an entity. It doesn't have "intentions", let alone such easily packaged and sold "intenti

"What nature intended" is nothing. Natural selection is a process, not an entity. It doesn't have "intentions", let alone such easily packaged and sold "intentions" like "humans should only eat meat". The whole premise is flawed and appeals to "nature" are a continual sham to sell people diet fads with at best no effect on health and at worse serious negative effects.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
Also humanity has been functionally removed from natural selection for hundreds of years. That's not to say we can't die of diseases or such things, but how many animals "hunt" or "forage" in a fucking Kroger, and pay for what they find with value credit slips? How many animals have access to firearms? How many other species have constructed vehicles that conquered land, sea, and sky, sometimes multiples of them even? We can't even comprehend the lifestyle, priorities and perspectives of a medieval peasant, let alone our ancestors who lived in caves and drew stick-animals. The whole appeal to "natural" is so ludicrous. Nothing we do is natural. Our food is either largely engineered or at the very least, bred selectively for maximum harvests. We can arbitrarily decide to travel thousands of miles from our "normal" habitat and be completely confident we will not only survive, but we do this for recreation. Hell, even the meat these weirdos are obsessing over is the result of millennia of selective breeding for the most meat per animal, and even some genetic engineering which is why factory-farmed chickens have tits so big they can't stand up correctly. "Natural." I challenge anyone to find something in their home that is actually 100% natural.
- jamil7 3y ago
  > The whole appeal to "natural" is so ludicrous. Not only ludicrous but also frequently used to prop up all kinds of biases.
- jondwillis 3y ago
  Only thing I can think of: seeds that I sprout, grow, let flower, fruit, and seed again. Some are cultivars, but some are native. Some of the process isn’t exactly natural, but it could be.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    You know, that's fair. Didn't think of that.
  - jfengel 3y ago
    There aren't many completely wild plant foods, especially the kind you grow from seed. They've nearly all been bred to improve taste and yield. Ones you gather from the wild are more likely to be feral commercial varieties, rather than the kind hunter-gatherers would have had available.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > humanity has been functionally removed from natural selection for hundreds of years. Evolution of humans is still happening. It's determined by how many of your children survive long enough to reproduce. If you don't have children, for whatever reason, your DNA is edited out of the future. The factors that drive this have certainly changed over the centuries, but they're always going to be in play (until people are able to customize DNA). See the movie "Idiocracy" for one take on this.
  - im3w1l 3y ago
    > until people are able to customize DNA Replacing MtDNA with that of a donor is already a thing. We are also screening embryos' genes for diseases. Neither of these are true arbitrary-write modications I guess, but we are getting there one step at a time.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Oh, I think we're going to get there. The interesting thing is I doubt humans will do well living on other bodies in the solar system without deliberate genetic modification. The modifications would be things like being able to tolerate different gravities, different gas pressure, different air composition, radiation hardening, maybe seeing different light wavelengths, tolerance for various poisonous chemicals, etc.
      - im3w1l 3y ago
        Repairing damaged genes, and putting already existing genes (especially human ones) in people I see us doing that fairly soon. But completely new genes for tolerating other planets. That seems very far off. Not in the next 100 years, I would think.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    If I'm honest, some overly-complicated molecule "living on" doesn't really do it for me. I'd rather go on living in my apartment. I'd rather achieve immortality by not dying.
nonethewiser 3y ago
My intro to biology prof kept hammering this point. It’s easy to lose sight of it. Often with natural selection people will presuppose that different traits must have purposes or necessary advantages.
- expazl 3y ago
  > Often with natural selection people will presuppose that different traits must have purposes or necessary advantages. This is very true and even experts with good communication skills fall pray of perpetuating this misconception. It's because of all the synergies that emerge in nature, it gets so tempting and to explain these as if they happened through intention. "This butterfly has a pattern that looks like the pattern of trees that grow in it's habitat so it will blend in and avoid prey" sounds so much more like a good argument than "The random mutations in the patterns of these butterflies over time that made them stand out more probably made them easier pray, so survivors would be those that were best at hiding so over time with that selective pressure we are now seeing butterflies that blend in well with the trees, even though they where never at any point able to look at a tree and go 'I want to look like that'".
oh_sigh 3y ago
Sure, but we need some way of talking about it. How would you say something like "Nature intended humans to live on land, not underwater"
- criddell 3y ago
  I'll never understand why people are so literal about things. Have they no room for even minor types of poetry in their lives?

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

Also humanity has been functionally removed from natural selection for hundreds of years. That's not to say we can't die of diseases or such things, but how many animals "hunt" or "forage" in a fucking Kroger, and pay for what they find with value credit slips? How many animals have access to firearms? How many other species have constructed vehicles that conquered land, sea, and sky, sometimes multiples of them even? We can't even comprehend the lifestyle, priorities and perspectives of a medieval peasant, let alone our ancestors who lived in caves and drew stick-animals. The whole appeal to "natural" is so ludicrous. Nothing we do is natural. Our food is either largely engineered or at the very least, bred selectively for maximum harvests. We can arbitrarily decide to travel thousands of miles from our "normal" habitat and be completely confident we will not only survive, but we do this for recreation. Hell, even the meat these weirdos are obsessing over is the result of millennia of selective breeding for the most meat per animal, and even some genetic engineering which is why factory-farmed chickens have tits so big they can't stand up correctly. "Natural." I challenge anyone to find something in their home that is actually 100% natural.

jamil7 3y ago
> The whole appeal to "natural" is so ludicrous. Not only ludicrous but also frequently used to prop up all kinds of biases.
jondwillis 3y ago
Only thing I can think of: seeds that I sprout, grow, let flower, fruit, and seed again. Some are cultivars, but some are native. Some of the process isn’t exactly natural, but it could be.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  You know, that's fair. Didn't think of that.
- jfengel 3y ago
  There aren't many completely wild plant foods, especially the kind you grow from seed. They've nearly all been bred to improve taste and yield. Ones you gather from the wild are more likely to be feral commercial varieties, rather than the kind hunter-gatherers would have had available.
WalterBright 3y ago
> humanity has been functionally removed from natural selection for hundreds of years. Evolution of humans is still happening. It's determined by how many of your children survive long enough to reproduce. If you don't have children, for whatever reason, your DNA is edited out of the future. The factors that drive this have certainly changed over the centuries, but they're always going to be in play (until people are able to customize DNA). See the movie "Idiocracy" for one take on this.
- im3w1l 3y ago
  > until people are able to customize DNA Replacing MtDNA with that of a donor is already a thing. We are also screening embryos' genes for diseases. Neither of these are true arbitrary-write modications I guess, but we are getting there one step at a time.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Oh, I think we're going to get there. The interesting thing is I doubt humans will do well living on other bodies in the solar system without deliberate genetic modification. The modifications would be things like being able to tolerate different gravities, different gas pressure, different air composition, radiation hardening, maybe seeing different light wavelengths, tolerance for various poisonous chemicals, etc.
    - im3w1l 3y ago
      Repairing damaged genes, and putting already existing genes (especially human ones) in people I see us doing that fairly soon. But completely new genes for tolerating other planets. That seems very far off. Not in the next 100 years, I would think.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  If I'm honest, some overly-complicated molecule "living on" doesn't really do it for me. I'd rather go on living in my apartment. I'd rather achieve immortality by not dying.

nonethewiser 3y ago

My intro to biology prof kept hammering this point. It’s easy to lose sight of it. Often with natural selection people will presuppose that different traits must have purposes or necessary advantages.

expazl 3y ago
> Often with natural selection people will presuppose that different traits must have purposes or necessary advantages. This is very true and even experts with good communication skills fall pray of perpetuating this misconception. It's because of all the synergies that emerge in nature, it gets so tempting and to explain these as if they happened through intention. "This butterfly has a pattern that looks like the pattern of trees that grow in it's habitat so it will blend in and avoid prey" sounds so much more like a good argument than "The random mutations in the patterns of these butterflies over time that made them stand out more probably made them easier pray, so survivors would be those that were best at hiding so over time with that selective pressure we are now seeing butterflies that blend in well with the trees, even though they where never at any point able to look at a tree and go 'I want to look like that'".

oh_sigh 3y ago

Sure, but we need some way of talking about it. How would you say something like "Nature intended humans to live on land, not underwater"

criddell 3y ago
I'll never understand why people are so literal about things. Have they no room for even minor types of poetry in their lives?