You're very right, you got me there. what i mean is biological nature. as opposed to mechanical/technological nature. the "superiority" of technology over biology is purely speculative. Even if we do invent AI.
I don't like to make a distinction.
"Biological nature" is made of same star dust that anything else is made of. The only difference is in it's superior sophistication for survival - something it has had millions of years to develop. Even that is rapidly changing, as we better our understanding and advance our technology.
Second off, our machines are not a biological product, but the product of an interaction between a highly capable biological body and inanimate materials.
You are also made of inanimate materials, just like your computer. What makes you "living" is the particular complex arrangement of inanimate stuff you are made of, which allows numerous functions like reproduction, regeneration, higher cognition, etc. All that stuff can be recreated in a being we might call "synthetic", but in reality the only fundamental difference between us and that being is our history.
In a sense, machinery is emulating biology, simulating life
Machines at this point don't 'emulate' anything. We haven't yet made one with complex enough cognition. We are, however, learning from our own structure and applying it to our technology - so naturally we strive to replicate our functions in our creations. Solar panels and glare-less TV screens are attributed to moth eye structure, for example. Eventually, what we make will surpass anything which was produced by natural selection before our arrival.
I can never again truly appreciate toribash, as i once had, after having my ass handed to me in a street fight. Sure, toribash is still fun and good recreational activity, but it can never compare to really getting the actual experience.
Maybe the problem here lies in your assumption that toribash was supposed to train you for actual combat. I for one have never seen toribash as anything other than recreational activity.
In the mechanized, technology driven society of today: parents are less and less concerned for their children's education and environment, less concerned for the comprehensions of their children, more and more reliant on the potentially propaganda based public education, compared to the alternatives.
What alternatives? Home schooling?
Average mom and pops aren't qualified to teach AP biology, chemistry, or algebra. Or English. Or Spanish. Or much of anything else that requires a trained professional. Nowadays we have things like google (ooops....technology!) which helps a lot, but you still can't substitute for an actual person who knows their stuff.
False comforts, nothing more, and the entire progression of civilization is BASED IN that false comfort.
What's a "false comfort"? Comfort is comfort.
Perhaps "harmful comfort"? Still, i don't agree.
And the only real justification one could present for mechanical reliance is galactic colonization, which would be an unnecessary solution to man made problems which can ALREADY be solved by returning to natural biological function without heavy promotion of machines.
You watched too much Avatar.
You wouldn't be alive right now without technology. Do you have the slightest idea of what it takes to cure diseases, distribute water, and maintain a lifespan of 70+ years that we now enjoy?
We now have the technology to live in nature without damaging it and still keep our comforts and conveniences.
We are getting there, slowly.
Are we really more free, just because we can manipulate physics to create greater and grander machines, when most of us are not even free to use them?
And are we really more free without that ability?
Is a gazeel in Africa more free than us? And why?
Last edited by Odlov; May 26, 2010 at 05:28 PM.