[_nxwj]

The difference I'm trying to discuss is when humans started molding the world to our desires in the forms of agriculture, raising animals as resources, and interfering with ecological cycles. You are right, living in the natural world today would be impossible for most people, requiring generations of local knowledge spread across the community. I should have clarified my meaning of complexity as that which is purely human-made.

[II2II]

Yet that human complexity was often created to help us deal with natural complexity.

Nature is indifferent. One year may produce an overabundance that the hunter/gatherer may take advantage of, yet the next year may be opposite and people will die from famine. So we learned how to preserve food as best we could. Yet that would result in a growth of population, an over population based on the resources available, so we learned how to grow our own food and manage livestock in order to avoid famine. That encourages the development of settlements. With denser populations disease is able to thrive, and, with trade, it is able to spread. So we learned how to manage waste. Each new development brings new pitfalls since we are meddling with the balance of nature. Or perhaps it is better to say that things are being balanced in new ways, so we must learn how to adapt to that. (We are, after all, a part of nature.)

Sometimes we adapt to those changes in balance in ignorant and extraordinarily damaging ways. I am not denying that. On the other hand, not trying would have hindered the development of intelligence -- or, perhaps, resulted in our extinction.

[bitwize]

Maybe natural complexity is not supposed to be something we deal with, just something we live with. Adapt ourselves to, move in harmony with, rather than trying to adapt nature to our whims. The trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us; maybe our duty here is just to shut up and listen.

[Terr_]

> Maybe natural complexity is not supposed to be something we deal with, just something we live with.

Your ancestors did that, and invented unknowable gods and spirits to explain/blame everything on, so that people can give up trying to understand or manage the unmanageable.

[XorNot]

Although it's worth noting theres evidence the earliest civilizations like the Sumerians did this at least in part as a "fill in the blanks" exercise. The gods were their dark matter - a stand in for the problem that they were trying to predict the rains, rather then invent a suitably large father/mother to take responsibility away from them.

[Terr_]

Agreed, it wasn't necessarily from a place of laziness. I'm just frustrated with this narrative of "Our Ancestors Were One With Nature", since:

1. It is imaginary nostalgia for a golden-age that didn't exist.

2. It is its own covert form of human hubris/egotism, suggesting we had something uniquely different from what all other species struggle with. Closely related to the inverted-snobbery of claiming only humans do $EVIL_THING.

[cityofdelusion]

Every species molds the world to their desires -- we are just much better at it. Competition and being killed by another species is the only thing that keeps things in check, and even then, you get parts of nature that end up being shaped and dominated by one species (beavers, ants, some fungi/bacteria). The world used to be a molten blob, to eventually an ocean full of mostly one species, to now, and eventually, a dead husk.

[pibaker]

> humans started molding the world to our desires in the forms of agriculture, raising animals as resources, and interfering with ecological cycles

What makes human unique in this respect compared to any other species that modify their environment? Is a patch of lichen not interfering with ecological cycles when it breaks down the rocks it lives on into soil?

[KurSix]

Maybe the key difference is that natural complexity asks for adaptation, while human-made complexity often asks for submission

[Terr_]

You mean like this?

A: If you eat this plant before boiling it, it kills you. By boiling it first, I've submitted to natural complexity.

B: If you touch this wire without turning off the power, it kills you. By turning it off first, I've adapted to artificial complexity.

You're just picking between two near-synonyms based on how one sounds scarier.

[balamatom]

Ding ding ding we have a winner. Salivate!

[card_zero]

Is The Thinking Game, which sounds like a pile of poop, pivotal to your worries, or did you just mention it in passing?

[_nxwj]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d95J8yzvjbQ

[_wire_]

Yes the world has always been utterly mysterious.

What's cuckoo today is the world is made, and it's not just mysterious it's crazy.

The european intellect is looking like a disease, an aberration, like a maladaptation that's chasing itself seeking a correction, except the rectification is just a recursive continuation of the disease.

And there are very good reasons to anticipate that humanity may be exterminated by this pathology.

Painful to find that your capacity to recognize the malaise is the cause of the malaise.