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points

by lordkrandel3 hours ago |

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by bradrn3 hours ago|

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Or, as Terry Pratchett so eloquently put it in The Fifth Elephant:

> “Not natural, in my view, sah. Not in favor of unnatural things.”

> Vetinari looked perplexed. “You mean, you eat your meat raw and sleep in a tree?”

by amanaplanacanal2 hours ago|

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I think there can be a middle ground here. Yes the appeal to nature fallacy is a thing. However, it's not obviously wrong to say that humans evolved in a specific environment, and to question whether moving them to a completely different environment is going to make their life worse.

We evolved living in smaller cooperative groups, and spending most of our time in nature. The farther we move away from that the more we might want to question whether any individual change is actually going to make our life better. Likely some tradeoffs are absolutely worth it and some probably not.

by ok_dad59 minutes ago|

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The opposite end of that spectrum is everyone here who thinks we should just ignore nature and where we came from since we’ve conquered it, or something. I’m not sure what you all are arguing here. We’re still a part of nature, we’ll discover that quickly if society collapses.

by stabbles3 hours ago|

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I think this is fair criticism. It's hard to read this blog cause its premise is based on an "appeal to nature" fallacy.

by jjulius2 hours ago|

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It's flawed criticism because it's rooted in an all-or-nothing perspective.

by samrus1 hours ago|

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I think paul graham is biased to always tell people to make startups, but what hes saying resonates to me in that it is a spectrum. You dont have to. Ake a startup, but you can work for a company of 20 people and feel thats its alot more liberating and feel a much stronger sense of purpose. He even concedes that near the end

by jjulius3 hours ago|

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There's a lot more nuance to the "natural" conversation than the assumption that we should go back to stone tools and all die before we hit 25. I've not really seen someone with that general belief, and I'm one of them myself, argue for such an all-or-nothing approach.

It's about balance.

by nine_k1 hours ago|

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"Natural" is something that happens "by itself", for free, without your having to exert an effort to produce it. If it happens to be something beneficial, it should be incorporated and used to your advantage.

by wavemode3 hours ago|

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> We are "naturally" meant to die at 21

Not really? Historical life expectancies were low because it was so common to die in infancy and childhood (thus dragging down the "average").

For people who made it to 20, it was common to live past 60.

by ACCount372 hours ago|

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Yeah, you were just meant to "naturally" have 7 children, of which 2-4 die before they get a name. But the ones who live? They might make it past 60.

by amanaplanacanal2 hours ago|

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Yeah people get that one wrong all the time. They don't realize what a bad argument it is.

I'm guessing they are ignorant of historical facts and are just repeating what they heard from somebody else.

by Filligree2 hours ago|

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People do get that wrong. But the corrected version is “you were supposed to die as a baby”, and…

That doesn’t sound any better.

by jjulius1 hours ago|

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>That doesn't sound any better.

It doesn't, because "it was so common to", as OP stated, is not the same thing as "you were supposed to". There's no reason it should be corrected, it's accurate.

by skrebbel2 hours ago|

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I wish i could upvote you seven times