[throwup238]

> Some animals evolved to be prey, and that is why they have an excessive number of offspring. Fowls are among those species. They lay eggs sometimes once a day so their numbers can increase incredibly rapidly. That is an adaptation to high predation. In the absence of that predation, they can overwhelm ecosystems.

Red junglefowl, the ancestors to domesticated chickens, only lay a few clutches annually for a total of less than 20 eggs per year. Modern chickens that lay hundreds of eggs a year are a product of selective breeding, not some natural adaptation.

[ndr]

One could argue that is natural adaptation. Modern chickens are likely going to be more successful at propagating their genes into the future.

[thfuran]

Only if by natural you mean "not supernatural".

[ndr]

I didn't mean that "artificial" is an artificial distinction. I meant that the evolutionary fittest chicken long-term might be the modern farmed chicken. It's a weird tradeoff their specie is managing to make.

[hombre_fatal]

You could justify any man-made breeding horror with that if it held any ethical weight, but it does not. Breeding a worse life into a sentient being isn't a victory for that being. Neither the being nor its genes should be propagated at all.

[Lutger]

I see the case for it, but what wouldn't be natural once you allow this? Gene editing? Why not?

A consequence is that 'natural' will lose all meaning. If everything is natural, then nothing is, really.

[Jcowell]

I fall under the idea that yes, everything is natural, we are not special no matter what secrets of the universe we uncover and wield . Even our robot descendants , if they ever come to be, are natural too. Just because we have the ability to acknowledge material selection does not mean we are except from it

[throwup238]

That's a gross misuse of language that makes words utterly meaningless. When people say "artificial selection" they don't mean a supernatural deity is doing it.

It's like going "haha gotcha! tomatoes are fruit, not vegetables!", completely missing the difference between the use of the word in a culinary versus botanical context. It's not insightful or useful in any way, it's just equivocation.

[Jcowell]

I just fall under the banner that everything we do is natural since we are natural, even if we were to desires nature it self. After all it was natural selection that brought us here.

[ben_w]

Only if you want to argue about what counts as "natural".