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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   24162 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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There is no such thing as nature, and there's no naturalistic fallacy. Just as traffic is other people, nature is just other life. The things that are not nice are other organisms trying to do the same thing as trees and fish and humans: successfully reproduce. Everything else has been ruthlessly culled by those willing to do so. This is not nature, it is life and death. It is the world as it is, not as it ought to be.

I think things that help me are good, and things which hurt me are bad. I apply that backward through time via my ancestors, and forward through time via my descendants, because I owe the former my existence and owe the latter my efforts to secure the same for them. I'm not bemoaning a roof when it rains, or heat in the winter, or light in the darkness.

Saying that hindering reproduction is the same as helping reproduction is your misunderstanding, not mine.

Since you claim that nature is a very ill defined concept (which I agree with), then what was the point of your previous comment? Why even point to something being natural?

Saying that hindering reproduction is the same as helping reproduction is your misunderstanding, not mine.

I invite you to show me where I can be said to have made this "misunderstanding". An earlier comment of mine explicitly said I don't want puberty blockers, and if my future kids did, I'd do everything I could to stop them.

The point is that in all the world, I haven't found much firmer ground to stand on than "be fruitful and multiply." It seems every living thing in the world follows such a rule, and so I think it's probably a good rule, and one I should apply to myself. It's not because it's natural, it's because that's how and why I am, instead of am not. I happen to like me, so I consider this a good thing.

All well and good, can't fault that.

Yet I must note that you accuse me of some kind of misunderstanding, and have yet to clarify what possibly could have made you say that.

You accused me of a fallacy, one which I don't think is particularly relevant or useful. Then, this:

Nature is not very nice. The congenial environment you find yourself in is very strongly the property of artificial efforts to keep it that way.

Artificial efforts are good where they do good, and bad where they do bad. They are good when helping, and bad when hindering. There are plenty of both. This is not a fallacy.

You're playing word games and being intentionally obtuse.

You initially argued against puberty blockers by contrasting them with "normal, natural, and expected processes" like puberty, framing the intervention itself as the problem partly because it disrupts something "natural."

When I pointed out that "natural" doesn't automatically mean "good" (the naturalistic fallacy, using examples like disease), you then pivoted quite sharply to say "There is no such thing as nature." You were rather quick to contradict your own starting point.

Then you accused me of a specific "misunderstanding," claiming I said "hindering reproduction is the same as helping reproduction." I said no such thing. My point was about interventions against harmful natural processes (like disease) being generally considered good, challenging your implicit framing that interfering with any natural process is inherently suspect because it's natural:

The problem is not just that it's not reversible, it's that it's an intervention to disrupt normal maturation, and also not reversible.

See that first bit I've bolded for you? That's the problem.

I asked you twice, directly, to clarify where you think I made that specific error. Both times, you avoided answering the question. First, you restated your personal philosophy ("be fruitful and multiply"), and second, you vaguely talked about good vs. bad artificial efforts without actually substantiating the accusation I challenged.

The error is citing a fallacy where none exists. There is no naturalistic fallacy, nor is there a problem any more than there is with Hippocrates.

Is owing something to people who are dead and to people who will live when you're long dead a thing that helps you or a thing that hurts you, and why?

Without my forebears, I would not be. If I leave no posterity, then what was the point of me? I am the continuation of a long line, and while various branches have broken and terminated, I see that as bad and not good.

Not all of us can be Caesar, but Caesar has no heirs. The history of aristocracy has a depressing number of great men who left no descendants. I also think this is a bad thing.

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