Nature is SO much better than puny humans!

reply to post by Maslo

I find myself agreeing more and more with this perspective.

Nature is beautiful, but life pays a heavy price for it.

Dog eats dog is fun in a game, but it's not fun in RL.

Basically, this universe could be a intelligence creator that forces its experiments through the gauntlet. We start out simple. We're pushed forward by desires and new things. If we falter, we hurt or we die. Generations upon generations of this process of trial and error and pain and glory results in a pyramid of life kind of like what's on earth. If I was the creator of this universe, my goal might be to produce intelligent things. To farm it. But I'd have to be indifferent to the suffering in the universe. Maybe if I was a machine.

Without pain, I don't think this reality would have much persistence. So are we just slaves then? Without pain, our choices and their consequences don't have a bite. Without a bite, it loses reference. And without that this universe cannot query for intelligent creatures versus unintelligent creatures. This is because intelligence is predicated on making the right choices and surviving the gauntlet. If the wrong choices cannot hurt you then there's no reason to make the right ones. Thus, it produces random-like results.

Before anybody calls me a whiner, think about the holocaust. Think about the many many innocent people that died terrible deaths irregardless of their moralistic character. Think about children that're abused. Think about the thousands of accidents in the US every month where hard working people are killed. Think about a close friend that you care about dying of cancer and leaving his wife to be a lifelong widow.

All of that and more is part of the gauntlet. This nature program that farms intelligence.

reply to post by KenArten


Hello! I had to read a few times to get the whole of your concern, and I will try this as an answer.

Some animals, like the beaver, will take engineering decisions that will radically modify their environments without care for the species it affects. We find it natural.

The human action of modifying its own environment should also be seen as a natural act, despite its apparent complexity.

Relating to your point about crystals, I have no certainty, that only I can guarantee!

Maybe when we cut it, it dies, or is liberated from its own "eggshell", so to speak. We as humans prefer to think the latter, but in truth, if we don't recognize their being alive, we can't evaluate if we cause it harm in anyway.

I know that they use particles of some crystals to grow artificial ones... Maybe, when we cut it, it creates protobabies of crystal that, under the right conditions, would grow as other full crystals...

reply to post by jonnywhite


I have to leave, but interesting post! Will comment later!

Thanks everyone!

reply to post by NowanKenubi


Perhaps then all of the very worst of nature IS genetic eh? If we are to assume that all animals operate under the same motivations....if thats the case......humans are screwed.