WTF is "cold iron", and why's it so special?

[Divine2021]

Cold iron typically was thought to be able to damage the fae—you saw this in works by Poul Anderson who was a direct influence on Gygex.

 

[Inukai]

Ah. But the words "natural" and "unnatural" are trying to describe the universe around us. And the universe is under no obligation to make sense. At best, we must change our view to match reality, not insist reality matches our views.

It has been made abundantly clear that what "made sense" to humans a thousand years ago was very often just wrong. Today, it "makes sense" to a lot of people to discriminate between fellow humans based on color of skin, nation of origin, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. That's how well "makes sense to me" works as a route to understanding.

We make progress in understanding not by choosing what makes sense, but instead based on what we can demonstrate with reasoning and experiment. So, greater reasoning than that would be called for.

I feel like you have just reduced everything down to my opinion is wrong because it doesn't match yours, which is also something humanS have done for some time to dismiss other people's beliefs. Your belief that everything is natural is no more right or valid than my belief that some man-made creations are unnatural.
I'm also going to ignore what seems like an oblique accusation that my belief is somehow rooted in some form of bigotry.
But thank you for calling me unreasonable. I'm going to step out of this conversation now before I say something bannable.

 

[Maxperson]

Because... history doesn't exist?

The word "unnatural" dates back to the early 15th century - early to pre-Renaissance, a time in which mankind had much less understanding of the physical word than it does now. Use of the term to mean "artificial" is attested from 1746. Its meaning of "not in accord with accepted moral standards" meanwhile goes back to the 1520s.

So, the word is more associated with the moral state of being than the physical state of being. Since we are stil concerned with morals, the word still exists.

Words evolve. There is unnatural in the sense of the supernatural vs. natural, which is probably from 1500's, and then there's unnatural in the sense of artificial, which has no association that I can see with the supernatural and the 1500's.

Edit: I think it's more accurate to say that because we are still concerned with morals, that particular definition still exists.

Termite mounds. Beaver dams. Bird nests. These things exist because a living thing forced them to happen. But, they are required for the "natural" existence of the animals that build them. How, then can those things be unnatural?

Check this out - humans digestion has evolved to take advantage of cooked foods, such that cooked foods are now the "natural" diet of humans.

Arguing about what counts as natural vs unnatural first requires us to understand why we want to make the distinction. If you rest on the "definition" of the word first, there will always be edge cases to cause argument, because, ironically, the natural word is not clean cut into natural and unnatural things.

Termite mounds, nests, and hills, etc. are not natural, despite being created by animals. They are built.

As for why we want the distinction, I'd say it's for the same reason that we have ground and sky. Hot and cold. Light and dark. Mammals and fish. Reptiles and birds. We like to categorize things so that we can more easily communicate about and study them.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Oh it's our annual gator-powered necromancy to argue that everything is natural or whatever.

See you all sometime in the Summer of 2024 when totally new user Yetanothergator starts it up again out of the blue and insists yet again that Maxperson has conceded some sort of point.

 

[Umbran]

I feel like you have just reduced everything down to my opinion is wrong because it doesn't match yours

But I haven't said it is wrong. I have said the support behind it doesn't look very solid.

Termite mounds, nests, and hills, etc. are not natural, despite being created by animals. They are built.

The number of things that are built in the natural world, with varying degrees of "will," is far more interesting than a simple statement of, "this is natural, that is unnatural."

As for why we want the distinction, I'd say it's for the same reason that we have ground and sky. Hot and cold. Light and dark. Mammals and fish. Reptiles and birds. We like to categorize things so that we can more easily communicate about and study them.

At the top of a mountain, do we not find the distinction between ground and sky starts to break down? Mammals and fish are not a dichotomy. Neither are reptiles and birds. There are bacteria and fungi and plants and fish and reptiles and mammals and birds and so on. They form a branching tree of history as well as classification, and the system of classification winds up with things like "mammal-like reptiles" when things don't cleanly fit.

Hot and cold, light and dark, those are merely ends of bands of continuous, rather than discrete, measures. If you want to talk about a spectrum of naturalness, rather than a dipole, you might have something interesting. But "I declare that X is fully natural, and Y is completely unnatural," seems a like an arbitrary, simplistic approach that does not allow nuance to exist in reality. Is that the way to bet?

Understanding isn't usually about deciding what you categories are, and placing things in them. It is an act of discovering what things are alike, and by how much, and why. The classifications we use are a shorthand, that work because they are defined by observation, rather than definition.

 

[Mannahnin]

Termite mounds, nests, and hills, etc. are not natural, despite being created by animals. They are built.

Yeah, I can't get behind this. Where do you draw a line? Honeycombs aren't natural because bees construct them? These things are all in and of nature.

 

[Inukai]

But I haven't said it is wrong. I have said the support behind it doesn't look very solid.

I wasn't aware I needed to produce a thesis; I was stating an opinion on what I feel is natural or unnatural. Yeah, the words "natural" and "unnatural" are words being used (by me and others) to describe how I view the universe. Just like any other descriptive word or should we debate every descriptor the English language has?
You then leaned into "makes sense to me" as a phrase used to justify horrible things that humanity has done/ does. Things I do not ascribe to or mention. You seem to be coming in from the angle that "unnatural" can only be conveyed in a moral sense when the context I was using was "unnatural" as artificial, which is a valid definition. At the same time you implied that I would use "makes sense to me" as an excuse to justify vile behavior. Thanks for that.
You then ended that I needed "greater reasoning", with the implication that the reasoning in your opinion is superior. Again, thanks for reducing what I thought was a difference of opinion where we could have come to an understanding of each other's thoughts, or at least "agree to disagree", to my opinion is unreasoned and can therefore be dismissed.

 

[Umbran]

I wasn't aware I needed to produce a thesis; I was stating an opinion on what I feel is natural or unnatural.

Sure. But, this is a discussion board. If you state an opinion, folks might, you know, discuss it.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, I can't get behind this. Where do you draw a line? Honeycombs aren't natural because bees construct them? These things are all in and of nature.

I personally draw the line at things like honeycombs and ant tunnels. However, what @Umbran mentioned above is interesting. I don't think natural and unnatural are both on a spectrum, though. Natural is well, the natural state of things. Unnatural, though, could be seen as being a spectrum. On the one end near natural would be things like honeycombs and ant hills which are deliberately constructed, and on the other end would be things like Dyson spheres.

 

[Mannahnin]

I personally draw the line at things like honeycombs and ant tunnels. However, what @Umbran mentioned above is interesting. I don't think natural and unnatural are both on a spectrum, though. Natural is well, the natural state of things. Unnatural, though, could be seen as being a spectrum. On the one end near natural would be things like honeycombs and ant hills which are deliberately constructed, and on the other end would be things like Dyson spheres.

Does a stick used as a tool by an ape become unnatural as soon as the ape breaks off or twists a piece to make it function better as a tool?