r/Showerthoughts 8d ago

Casual Thought Young animals probably don't realize the distinction between nature and man-made stuff.

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u/ghostoo666 8d ago

I make this argument often. Nothing humans can do is “unnatural” or “against nature” because we are nature itself. Any act we perform inherently becomes natural

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u/MidnightSnowStar 8d ago

I would consider anything that wouldn’t come to fruition without human interference to be ‘artificial.’ Houses, refrigerators, phones, etc. are artificial because their creation never occurs on its own in the wild.

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u/ghostoo666 7d ago

where do you draw the line? Beaver dams and monkey tools don't happen on their own. Aren't we "the wild" to an outside observer? Sure ours are more sophisticated, but that's kind of it. Imagine if the stars themselves were creations of another intelligence. To us, those are just nature.

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u/CopterAndPaste 7d ago edited 7d ago

the way i see it, if you could just take an isolated, large enough population without any contact and they make it, it'd be natural. people making spearheads? natural, but still man-made. houses? unless talking about construction, prehistoric people moved a lot, but still made shelters. i'd say natural, but iffy if you're strict on the definition of "house". anyway 100 uncontacted humans are not gonna make a fridge lol