Re: extropians-digest V2 #92

Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Fri, 4 Apr 1997 17:41:36 -0800 (PST)

>> The obvious conclusion is that all of them were ["natural"], as are we,
>> and as our cybernetic grandkids will be next century. We're not "playing
>> God", we're playing human, just as we always have.

> Does this mean that we ARE Nature or at least the child of Nature?
> If Nature (ALERT ! ALERT ! TRIGGER WORD AHEAD !) "created" humans
> would whatever humans did be "natural"? Would this render "unnatural
> acts" meaningless?

Yes, that's precisely my point. "Natural" is an irrational concept
that people use with various arbitrary meanings, such as "whatever
the state of the world would be if humans continued to live as they
did at some earlier time", or "whatever the world would be like if
humans didn't exist at all".

Since these are all counterfactual concepts, there is no rational
meaning to the word used that way.

-- 
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com>  <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC