[SmirthsDAC]

>But it's no more or less "natural" than ever. "Natural" is probably not that useful a concept in general, it doesn't really mean anything in general, just like it doesn't mean anything on your food label.

The term "Natural" is very useful, it purposely separates phenomena as resulting from human activity/technology from those that are the result of long standing, generally slow moving evolutionary/geological changes. As humans can introduce change rapidly into our environment as a result our ability to design, it makes a lot of sense to have a word to quickly describe the general high level cause of such quick change.

[blaze33]

Remember when bacterias suddenly decided to artificially dump oxygen in the atmosphere on a global scale? Once toxic and artificial, now part of the natural air we breathe.

Anyway, Wittgenstein would probably dismiss the relevance of defining what's natural or artificial for the world is made of facts and not of things.

[SmirthsDAC]

True, but the Great Oxygenation Event took an extremely long time to effect most species though, and there are certainly exceptions, but that's just it, they're exceptions. Humans are pretty much guaranteed to introduce change (we are innovators/technologists to our core.)