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lordkrandel | on: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)
If I hear the argument of "naturality" and "natural design" I explode. We are "naturally" meant to die at 21, after getting whatever illness, never to move with massive transport, not even speak. 'cause all we naturally are is monkeys, right? AaaaaRGHHHH This argument makes me nuts
bradrn | parent | next
Or, as Terry Pratchett so eloquently put it in The Fifth Elephant:

> “Not natural, in my view, sah. Not in favor of unnatural things.”

> Vetinari looked perplexed. “You mean, you eat your meat raw and sleep in a tree?”

amanaplanacanal | parent | next
I think there can be a middle ground here. Yes the appeal to nature fallacy is a thing. However, it's not obviously wrong to say that humans evolved in a specific environment, and to question whether moving them to a completely different environment is going to make their life worse.

We evolved living in smaller cooperative groups, and spending most of our time in nature. The farther we move away from that the more we might want to question whether any individual change is actually going to make our life better. Likely some tradeoffs are absolutely worth it and some probably not.

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stabbles | parent | next
I think this is fair criticism. It's hard to read this blog cause its premise is based on an "appeal to nature" fallacy.
jjulius | root | parent
It's flawed criticism because it's rooted in an all-or-nothing perspective.
samrus | root | parent
I think paul graham is biased to always tell people to make startups, but what hes saying resonates to me in that it is a spectrum. You dont have to. Ake a startup, but you can work for a company of 20 people and feel thats its alot more liberating and feel a much stronger sense of purpose. He even concedes that near the end
jjulius | parent | next
There's a lot more nuance to the "natural" conversation than the assumption that we should go back to stone tools and all die before we hit 25. I've not really seen someone with that general belief, and I'm one of them myself, argue for such an all-or-nothing approach.

It's about balance.

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wavemode | parent | next
> We are "naturally" meant to die at 21

Not really? Historical life expectancies were low because it was so common to die in infancy and childhood (thus dragging down the "average").

For people who made it to 20, it was common to live past 60.

ACCount37 | root | parent | next
Yeah, you were just meant to "naturally" have 7 children, of which 2-4 die before they get a name. But the ones who live? They might make it past 60.
amanaplanacanal | root | parent
Yeah people get that one wrong all the time. They don't realize what a bad argument it is.

I'm guessing they are ignorant of historical facts and are just repeating what they heard from somebody else.

Filligree | root | parent
People do get that wrong. But the corrected version is “you were supposed to die as a baby”, and…

That doesn’t sound any better.

jjulius | root | parent
>That doesn't sound any better.

It doesn't, because "it was so common to", as OP stated, is not the same thing as "you were supposed to". There's no reason it should be corrected, it's accurate.

skrebbel | parent
I wish i could upvote you seven times