[futureshock]

I think that’s incorrect. octopi have camouflage because of natural selection.

Incentives are things that humans create, intentionally or unintentionally. There are the selection pressure of the human cultural world but they are the opposite of natural. They are the things we can choose to change. By calling them out, we implicitly question if we should be changing them.

It can end up being a bit pseudo-intellectual on HN (say it ain’t so!), but there is a real rhetorical context in which it makes sense to talk about incentives.