Asklemmy

42502 readers

1426 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

What’s the difference between natural and man made? (lemm.ee)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

57 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Just something I was talking about with the wife this evening. She says that our house is not natural and used the phrase “out in nature”. But lots of animals build nests. And are we not animals just doing the same?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I have two trains of thought on this. The first is naturally occuring vs man made. Stones are naturally occuring, bricks are not. While we as a species have always made shelter, there is something "unnatural" about modern homes with glass windows, running water, steel beams etc.

The second is natural vs synthetic. GMO'd food, hydrocarbons etc. I think the biggest difference to me regarding this is around how long we've been exposed to the substances. We've been exposed to certain foods and chemicals (from plants etc) for 100,000s of years and so our bodies handle them well. Our bodies haven't adapted to things like polymers, microplastics or high fructose corn syrup, which is why these "unnatural" chemicals are considered bad.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

I take issue with your second paragraph. It implies a order (natural=good) that just isnt there in the world, especially the exposure argument. Humans die pretty fast from cyanide and other plant based poison despite millenia of contact, but Teflon and metallic titanium (both comercially produced since roughly 80 years) are safe to impant. Also genetic modification started with doestication through selective breeding and crop selection - all comercially used species are modified in any number of ways.

Im a chemist and maybe had too many arguments with "nature good, chemicals bad" types, so please take my rant with some (very natural) salt.