[daoist_shaman]

I guess when I say “natural,” what I truly mean is “that which is not made by man.” Any substance which is found in the natural environment and mechanically altered does not count in my definition of man-made; this is essentially the same notion of natural that revolvingocelot points out.

I think the crusade against “natural bias” is unfounded. Of course there are plenty of natural things that are not good for us—such as viruses— but the painful and uncomfortable truth about natural maladies like viruses is that they represent nature working as intended (protecting us from the ills of overpopulation, for example).

The bottom line is that changing everything we dislike about nature can lead to our demise. She’s already thought a million steps ahead of whatever we hope to accomplish.

[alexvoda]

You are still anthropomorphousising nature. Nature does not intend to protect us from anything, much less from overpopulation. Nature does not intend anything as a whole. Each living creature simply intends to survive and multiply. Not changing anything about nature will also lead to our demise. Most non-human organisms (maybe all other than domesticated dogs and lifestock) are either ambivalent or opportunistically trying to kill us. Because we are made of carbon and therefore contain useful energy.

Anthropomorphousising I believe is the greatest and most wide spread cognitive limitation of humanity.

[daoist_shaman]

Absolutely. Anthropomorphizing is just a metaphorical way to simplify the highly complex system that is formally known as natural selection. It also alludes to the notion of Earth as one big organism, popularly known as the Gaia hypothesis.

I don’t think there’s any harm in this. Ships that humans build are also addressed as feminine. It’s just a thing that we do.

[alexvoda]

I would argue there is great cognitive harm in anthropomorphizing. And it very much does not simplify anything, quite the opposite.

I do believe the notion of metaorganisms is useful. A human can be considered an emerging metaorganism formed from millions of cells of various origin including human, bacteria, viruses, giruses, parasites, etc. We are also possibly part of larger metaorganisms, probably in the form of cities. And the entire planet can be considered a metaorganism. Terraforming another planet can be interpreted as a planet having offspring.

Arguing for the existence of metaorganisms is not the same as arguing that the mataorganism is aware and influences its own internal processes affecting its lower level member organisms. You (your conscious self) do not tell your kidney what to do.

Natural selection is very much not self aware and it is not trying to achieve an end goal, much less so a goal with regards to humanity. Nature has not "thought" neither ahead nor behind nor to the side of us.

From Wikipedia:

"The Gaia hypothesis proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet."

Do not confuse the Gaia hypothesis with a Gaia god. By anthropomorphizing that is what you do. Gaia does not answer your prayers, nor hear them, nor care for them.

I consider, anthropomorphizing to be the root mechanism at the formation of all religions. Humans were exposed to uncontrollable phenomena. In their attempt to influence them they anthropomorphizied the phenomena. As a result they could attemp to bargain with it, plead with it, threaten it, beg it, blame it, thank it, etc. . We have just repurposed the neural pathways used to communicate with other humans in order to communicate with the environment. Probably for the same reason a nerural net will missrecognise a leopard print sofa as a leopard. The unknown, unpredictability, is more terrifying than anything else, and definitely more terrifying than being wrong. Anthropomorphizing is also one of the things that will stand in our way towards developing AI. We will continue to redefine intelligence in order to maintain human exceptionality.

I believe anthropomorphizing is fundamentally wrong.

[xvilka]

A lot of, probably even majority of viruses are a good thing - they add horizontal gene transfer to improve the evolution[1] and survival chances of species, sometimes even multiple ones at once, also making our own human virome[2].

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220105111420.h...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_virome