man is part of nature

Man is not supernatural or outside of nature

Man is a natural being — szardosszemagad

Absolutely. But it is hard to remember that stuffed into a small chair at 30,000 feet, eating the 10 lousy peanut pieces wrapped in plastic generously provided by Delta.

Yep, man has evolved so that it claims it has become that what it loves most - a computer, and then spends all of its time its time sitting and playing with its true love while complaining of backaches. Then it takes toxic drugs (truly unique in nature) to kill the pain so that it can continue to sit and play with the computer. I believe man is experimenting with maximizing stupidity. Pretty successful so far.

This must be the first time that stone tools and circumcision has been used in the same sentence, and referencing the history of technology. If I were to get circumcized, I would definitely prefer stainless steel and anesthesia.

But you are right. Stone age tool making was a well-developed technology. I read the other day in the New York Times that Neanderthals had learned how to extract a pitch-glue from birch bark. They used it to fasten points to shafts.

Technology appears to be a grotesque manipulation of the natural world, like a cancer that should not exist.

But this also seems to rest on the dichotomy between the world <------------> and us. "The natural world" is not an artifact but a plenum without agents, whereas "us" is filled with agency, purpose, reason. But we are part of the world, we are not separate from it, at least not in any scientific sense (but perhaps in an existential/metaphysical sense). Could there be a science of technology? Could it be that technology is actually one of the many ways the universe ends up organizing itself? Could what we see as artificial, technological, actually be simply a natural expression of the logic of the world?

In a way, the question comes down to: what differentiates the natural from the artificial? — darthbarracuda

You mentioned Heidegger who had this idea of ready-at-hand. This may be a useful way of thinking of human relationship to technology. Arguably, the reason why our branch or hominins evolved the way it did around 2.5 million years ago, is a ratcheting effect of two forces- tool-making, and complex social networks. Focusing on the tool-making part first, our species' attitude towards nature has always been one where we find opportunities to transform raw materials into tools. Other animals do this, but we seemed to be at home with tool-making. The process of tool-making was less of a struggle, more frequent, and required more complex steps than other animals. There is evidence that the complex procedures for tool-making and broca's region of the brain (primarily involved in language processing) is tied together. Thus, even language could have been ratcheted up by tool-use. Combined with the need for social learning in complex societies language became more useful, itself being a tool of sorts to get other things done more quickly. Social learning had huge benefits, creating a variety of cultural ways to solve problems. And so a niche was created based on social and cultural learning. Again, presumably tool-use drove this niche, and in turn was subsumed itself in a larger phenomena of cultural learning in which technology was a large facet, but not the only one. Language and concepts, driven by tool-use also created the complex system of social, and self-reflective species we are currently. Species with only intermediary skills at the cusp of this tool-making niche that was starting to develop must have died out rather quickly while ones that were able to function most effectively with this new adaptation, survived more efficiently. Thus, the relatively short span to the modern man from first species (like Homo habilis).

Language and concepts, transforming raw materials to useful items to survive (and entertain), is pretty much part of our species. It is natural in that it was our hominin niche. Exaptations from tool-use, led to cultural learning which then became so useful, it was probably adapted for in the ability to use languages more readily and form concepts and syntax more easily. Terrence Deacon's idea that perhaps rituals became the basis for language can be part of the equation. Beyond this example, I would have to start a new thread on the more particulars of language evolution and the many theories that abound with this phenomena.

You say, in the context of your concerns about technology in the modern era (at the end of your op), "In a way the question comes down to, "What differentiates the natural from the artificial ?"

I think you will definatly find Martin Heideggar's, (relatively) short and accessible 1954 essay, "The Question Concerning Technology", helpful in answering this question.

Regards,

John

Of course we are not replaceable. "You are all replaceable" is management talk for restless workers who might be thinking about organizing a union. We are all individually unique in not just one or two ways, but many ways.

Someone else can perform the boring tasks I do at work. That doesn't make me replaceable. Or you, either. — Bitter Crank

I agree, more or less. But I was proposing what feels "unnatural" about modern life. It's not the stuff we've built but all of the strangers out there. Imagine a post-apocalyptic tribe of 30 living in the ruins of downtown New York. Everyone knows everyone in their uniqueness. Would the ruins be so disturbing and unnatural?

I have problems with calling beaver dams and birds nests 'technology'. Neither birds nor beavers wield their behavior deliberately or consciously. Beavers, for instance, bring branches and mud to locations where there is the sound of running water. That's how they keep their dams ingot repair. Put a speaker on a perfectly fine beaver dam, play the sound of running water, and the speaker will get patched.

A bird that uses grass to make it's nest can not switch to mud, and visa versa. Bees must make 6 sided cells in their honey combs -- it can't be 3 or 4.

I don't want to diminish in any way animal lives. Beavers, birds, bees, and beetles all perform wonderfully at their live-maintaining tasks. Neither do I want to diminish our animal lives. Most animals are part of natural systems. Wetland biology depends on beavers, and pollination depends on insects like bees. Humans don't seem to belong to natural systems. That's one of the problems we grapple with. (We can certainly fit harmoniously in natural systems, but it generally means living a much different kind of life than we normally aspire to.) — Bitter Crank

Of course you have a point. Humans are revolutionary compared to animals, as well as massively self-conscious. They think about their thinking, which includes thinking about this thinking about their thinking and so on. They can even grasp their absurdity and futility, in a certain sense, though this grasping is arguably just more adaptation. As apo might say, the perception of futility might nevertheless help us unclog the heat death.

But what if we are visited by aliens who stand to us as we stand to beavers? The sound they play by the water for us will entice our great thinkers and poets to rhapsodize. But they'll use the simplicity of this "sound" for them as an argument for a qualitative break between our technological status. (Just a playful thought experiment...)

Nonetheless, I can't help feel that while I am replaceable, the world will go on, my thinking is just enough left of centre to make a contribution somewhere, somehow. I think most people in this forum and maybe everywhere probably feel a bit that way too. — MikeL

I think you've put your finger on a great issue. Those whose ego-ideals involve creativity are perhaps the proudest of us. Of course I include myself. The fantasy is to have said something both significant and original, or to have produced a non-conceptual musical work, perhaps, with a potent, unique "flavor" of feeling. This fantasy is threatened by the millions of strangers, some of them maybe the true "Einsteins" instead of us. The horror is that one might be a second-rate imitation, a superfluous poor-man's version of the thinker, poet, composer, scientists. At least the mediocre scientist can be a useful foot-soldier, but the mediocre creative type is ( at worst) noise obscuring signal.

After families, friends, colleagues it closes out pretty fast. At the higher global levels of society we are really just numbers unless we do something to distinguish ourselves, but even then we are still very much just a commodity. — MikeL

Exactly. I think that's the heart of alienation. Having only commodity value for the vast majority of other human beings. We exist for them as skills/credentials with a fluctuating if not radically uncertain market value. So capitalism is stressful. But the flip side the privacy that comes with this alienation. In a small town, folks are in your business. In the city you are just a passing face, perhaps worth scanning on the subway between stops, if even that.

— darthbarracuda

The bottom line is that we are not living within our means.

New technologies often are the result of the need to cope with problems created by previous technologies.

More significantly, as Richard H. Robbins organizes, outlines, and conveys so effectively in Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, the culture/system that has dominated the globe for the past 500 years, capitalism, requires perpetual economic growth. For the system to work, more and more things have to be commodified.

I would argue that when Silicon Valley designs and makes a new printer, a new gadget, a new operating system, etc. it is because something--anything--new has to be made to get consumers to consume, earn returns for investors, and the many other things that keep the system functioning. Hence, Steve Jobs said "It isn't the consumers' job to know what they want".

Whether it's McDonald's french fries, the latest printers, or a lot of things in between, how often do people in the affluent Global North really like, need or want the products that they consume? A lot of it collects dust and barely gets used, ends up in landfills, etc.

The problem is not "technology". The problem is stuff. See Annie Leonard's "The Story of Stuff".

We have things being made and consumed for the sake of being made and consumed so that more "value" can be calculated by economists and added to GDP. We have a system that now dominates the entire globe and requires perpetual economic growth and is completely incompatible with sustainability or any other living within our means. You should not be surprised by the meaningless, random stuff that such a system produces.

People say tech has a downside. Sure. But I like tv and high speed internet and automobiles and a huge variety of products on the store shelves enabled by the computer networks that run global commerce. I for one do not want to live in a wood shack reading by candlelight and dying at 30.

How about medical technology? How much of that are people willing to give up?

For the system to work — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Capitalism also has a process called "creative destruction". Audio tape (reel to reel or cassette) augmented the vinyl record, and did nothing to the turntable. the compact disk, on the other hand, was introduced to destroy the installed base of 33 rpm records and turntables both. Why do that? Because the market in vinyl recordings and turntables was matured and was saturated. New recordings could be turned out, but huge sales figures and high profits would not be forthcoming.

In one fell swoop, the recording industry switched from one kind of gear to another, and opened up the whole market to new sales of old product, as well as new product. (Everybody except a few aficionados that stuck with vinyl.) Sales bounded forward, along with profitability.

Windows replaced DOS. The MP3 player replaced cassettes and CD players. New iPhones no longer have a convenient plug for headphones. Newer phones use pads instead of plugs to recharge the batteries. There are many instances of a new product line rendering the old product line dead.

Creative destruction accounts for a major chunk of both change and more junk. Then there is style obsolescence, which auto manufacturers have used for a long time. New cars are as styled as fashion runways, and people want to be 'in style'.

There will be some aspects of creative destruction which will be beneficial. Book technology was perfected a long time ago, and I love books. Maybe the digital reader is creative destruction of the printed book, but I find the digital readers much easier to read (bigger print size, more contrast). I wish it had come along 60 years ago.

I for one do not want to live in a wood shack reading by candlelight and dying at 30. — fishfry

Is it the wood shack, reading by candlelight (you could read in the daytime, ya know), or dying at 30 that you find unsatisfactory? By the way, 30 was the average age of longevity in bad times. Child and maternal mortality kept the average so low. If you made it through childhood diseases and graduated to your own shack in good health and plenty of candles, you might well live to be 50.

Is it the wood shack, reading by candlelight (you could read in the daytime, ya know), or dying at 30 that you find unsatisfactory? — Bitter Crank

I like flat screen tv's and the Internet and modern medicine and products in stores. I can't imagine functioning a hundred years ago.

Emile Bin's Hamadryad

***

Hans Rudi Giger's art amplifies disgust and terror of technology as a projected onto the natural world. Might as well be a riff on the theme in Bin's Hamadryad.

There doesn't seem to be a strict cut-off being what is natural and what is artificial. — darthbarracuda

The simple difference would be that the artificial doesn't have the means to make itself.

Nature makes itself whether that be at the level of rivers carving out their channels or bodies turning food into flesh. The artificial only happens as the result of someone having the idea and the desire to manufacture the material form.

The simple difference would be that the artificial doesn't have the means to make itself.

Nature makes itself whether that be at the level of rivers carving out their channels or bodies turning food into flesh. The artificial only happens as the result of someone having the idea and the desire to manufacture the material form. — apokrisis

Right, like I implied earlier, the artificial is that which does not have an identity or telos itself but rather exists for a purpose that has been applied by the manufacturer. Take away the manufacturer and the user and you're left with a material object, bottom-up reductionism with no natural purpose.

The simple difference would be that the artificial doesn't have the means to make itself.

Nature makes itself whether that be at the level of rivers carving out their channels or bodies turning food into flesh. The artificial only happens as the result of someone having the idea and the desire to manufacture the material form. — apokrisis

Hi Apokrisis. It's always good to read your posts. Just a couple of questions for you. What do you mean by "means" in the above statement "it doesn't have the means to make itself"? A robot assembly factory is able to slap together pieces to make another robot. Do you mean resources?

Also you personify Nature in your second statement. Just going back to your previous discussion, what is your position on panpsychism v semiotic machine behaviour?

Lastly you say the AI only happens as a result of someone having the idea and desire. Could AI also be a generator of ideas or desires?

Also you personify Nature i — MikeL

Because I don't have a problem crediting nature with purpose, even if it is not much of a purpose in being the general tendency to entropify.

So ordinary language gives us two choices - either to chose mentalistic or physicalist terminology. Dualism is baked into our linguistic culture. Biology would offer more accurate jargon, but that might go down so well.

What do you mean by "means" in the above statement "it doesn't have the means to make itself"? A robot assembly factory is able to slap together pieces to make another robot. Do you mean resources? — MikeL

Someone would have to have built the factory, supplied it with power, stepped in to fix the software glitch that halted production, etc. And then the factory is building robots, not building factories.

So natural things are autopoietic or self-making. They develop rather than get built.

Could AI also be a generator of ideas or desires? — MikeL

Ask Siri.

Haven't you seen the Matrix movies, Apokrisis? I could build a system of robots that could make the factories, fix the glitches that halted production, and even provide the power (but you won't want to know where from). When people do it, they are meddling in the artificial world of robots.

I've read you before talking about the purpose of nature to entropify in other posts. I'm a bit vague on your meaning. If entropy is the purpose, why bother with the speed hump of life?

I'm not concerned about your wording of nature, I was just curious.

Life exists to accelerate entropification. It creates dissipative pathways to cool the universe faster.

Of course it's contribution in cosmological terms is infinitesimal. But green forest does a better job than bare rock at turning hot sun rays into cooler infrared radiation. The energy goes back into space at a much lower spectral temperature that would otherwise have been the case.

As to the Matrix, it's a film. Does simulated rain make you really wet? Would a simulated factory make real robots?

As to the Matrix, it's a film. Does simulated rain make you really wet? Would a simulated factory make real robots? — apokrisis

No, but the program that tells the machine gun to shoot anyone who steps over the fence sure shoots real bullets.

It creates dissipative pathways to cool the universe faster. — apokrisis

So life is a manifold. To what end - the cooling of the universe faster I mean?

I read the other day in the New York Times that Neanderthals had learned how to extract a pitch-glue from birch bark. They used it to fasten points to shafts. — Bitter Crank

Maybe we should let the NYT writers fill the empty spaces on this forum, and we all just shut up. :-)

In a way, the question comes down to: what differentiates the natural from the artificial? — darthbarracuda

You, as I certainly don't see what you are describing. In the respects of what is natural, I see no difference between my computer screen and the tree outside.