Michael Mitchell: Archive

Equivocation...

A "WiFi connection" and a "forest connection" -- whatever the fuck that means -- are not the same kind of connection, so how can one be judged as better or worse than the other?

Moreover, what's the difference between computers on the Internet and trees in a forest? Why are computers considered less natural than trees? Why are things considered less natural considered less valuable?

In order to create the computers, someone had to be in control of the physical materials used to create them, even if those materials were chemically altered by humans to achieve the desired result, at what point did they become "unnatural"? The answer is when they became valuable to humans and nothing else.

That's an equivocation, too, maybe the most evil and destructive idea in human history. To "nature lovers", "natural" means "untouched by humans". But they're humans?!

The people who created computers actually understand nature on a level far deeper than people who'd rather hug a tree than use it to make paper, but they're vilified for their virtues while "environmentalists" are virtually universally praised for creating shit like this quote pic with the very technology it's against.

That's the value of the forest. We can use it to make stuff. It has no value beyond what we can do with it to make our lives better. And that's the actual "connection" we feel when walking through one or just appraising the earth, the environment we live in, not what's actually there, what we're actually seeing, which is mostly worthless to humans in it's "natural" state, but all that is possible in such an unimaginably rich and benevolent universe.