Talk:Appeal to nature

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Never play the game

"This argument is fallacious if for no other reason than the many examples of homosexuality found in animals."

No, this argument is fallacious because it is appeal to nature. And I am not just quibbling: as someone who supports and appreciates freedom to identity and sexual preference I've always been wary of eager mentions of homosexuality cases in nature. I worry that some otherwise tolerant people are willing to be persuaded, solely by appeal to nature, to join the crowds in condemning preferences that are less accepted than homosexuality.

The point of the article is that a rational person should refuse to play the is-it-natural game even if they can win it. This should be made more clear in this sensitive case. —Arpose (talk) 16:12, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

That's fine to retract your views, @Arpose, but generally we don't like undoing edits on talk pages. Bongolian (talk) 23:08, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

GMO

''Genetically modified food is also attacked for being "unnatural," ignoring that the basic science behind genetic modification has been put to use in farming practices for millennia.

Most of the educated opposition to GMO was related and is related to the use of Round-UP and plants that require Round-Up, not hybridization processes. They were right, however, and Round-Up was declared a 2A carcinogen in 2015 with Monsanto subsequently sued in court over the carcinogenicity of it's product.

Round-UP has, obviously, not been used for 'millennia' and Monsanto knowingly lied to the FDA when using studies that they funded that showed it to be safe despite all other independent studies linking it to cancer in rats. Ajuran (talk) 17:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

The opposition to GMO is not educated. This is an easy rebuttal; the 2A characterization has no bearing on the actual risks of glyphosate but only its relationships; it is based on animal evidence, which is among the lowest forms of evidence in demonstrating cause-effect in humans. Working as a hairdresser is classified this way. Also, the content has not argued that round-up is used for millennia, but that the procedure of creating GMOs traces techniques to traditional selective breeding which has indeed been used for millenia.

Court evidence is not scientific evidence as the evidence for demonstrating plausibility is way lower than in science, and those "independent" rat studies are totally terrible. I assume one of those studies you had in mind was the infamous Seralini rat study that was fatally flawed (for instance, selecting a breed of rats that are already susceptible to developing cancer) and had conflicts of interest to boot too. Finally, saying that opposition to GMOs is mainly just concerns over Roundup is an inaccurate unsubstantiated premise; the opposition to GMO may have some concerns of the round-up agent, but it is also substantially made up of the "all-natural" folks; this is evident from the "GMO-free labeling" on countless "natural" and "organic" packages that raked in millions of dollars per year and it's the cornerstone of anti-gmo websites and memes. Hence why there's a section about it in this article. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 23:18, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

This is conflating direct gene editing with selective breeding which are two quite different things with different issues. (One leads to potential invasive species etc and the other tends to inbreeding) -Albannach (talk) 09:09, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Source 59

Source 59 no longer exists, and no useful archives exist on archive.org or archive.is. I would remove it, but source 60 is from the same website, and at a glance it still seems to exist, so an updated equivalent page might still exist, but I can't figure out what it would be. I thought I'd point it out in case somebody else can figure it out. Serene (talk) 01:18, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

I think those should be OK now. Bongolian (talk) 01:55, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Looks good; I changed the date for the 129 number to March 2021, per the link. Serene (talk) 02:47, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

The opposite of this?

What is the name of the opposite of this (if it can be called such), where someone says something is safe because it's lab tested? i.e. It hasn't undergone sufficient or comprehensive enough field testing? -Albannach (talk) 12:16, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Not every (or even most) logical fallacies will have an opposite.

Many "natural" things have been tested and found to be safe. Many other "natural" things are known to be highly toxic. I don't know if you are suggesting that there is some hard and fast line between "natural" and, well "not natural", but it's not so easy. Is lettuce natural? It almost certainly bears little resemblance to the original cultivar. But does that mean it is not natural?

Furthermore some things only need to be tested for safety in laboratories. I'm looking at a ruler in front of me at the moment which has a CE symbol. I guess that it has passed some basic European safety tests. Should it also need extensive "real world" testing?

So you might say vaccines and medicines. But these undergo both lab and real-world testing. So it might be better if you gave a specific example of what you are thinking of.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 15:21, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Problem is, the idea of natural and artificial is more controversial than we usually think. Artificial according to some authors is not something that was created by men, but something designed by men. In other words, language, for instance, is natural, not artificial, being born out of the human interaction but not by human design, according to this idea. GeeJayK (talk) 15:23, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Language falls into both camps in my view - one can see artificiality in the deliberate promotion of certain phrases like "new normal", "staycation" and "build back better", but recent words like "Karen", "Chad" or "Covidiot" seem to have taken off more organically. There are a lot of grey areas between these as well.-Albannach (talk)

The classic example of something which was inadequately tested is Thalidomide, where people learnt the hard way. There are probably some others I can think of. I don't think most drug companies want trouble, but that doesn't mean they've necessarily checked out all the angles. Psychiatric medicines seem to have complex side effects.

Another example might be car testing. A company may boast its emissions have been tested, but as we know some years ago, some companies have been faking them. Other safety aspects may also come out only in real life incidents.

The one advantage many natural things do have, I suppose, is that humans have been round them for thousands of years so they may be aware of some of the side effects already. In some cases they had to be, because people had been killed by them. I'm sure Indigenous Queenslanders are probably long aware of what box jellyfish can do to a person and don't need to be told.-Albannach (talk) 00:23, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Tell that to all people who have been using heavy metals (mercury, lead...) or asbestos for millenia, even in medicine applications (see TCM article) Nitrato de Chile (talk) 11:24, 30 December 2021 (UTC) Nitrato de Chile

lychee is bad?

Lychees are my favorite food. is it safe to eat lychee from Hawaii or south America? what about other places? Koafox (talk) 01:13, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Hmm... the Wikipedia article says this is because of low blood sugar, and affects malnourished people. I doubt you'll be affected, but I dunno. Chillpilled (talk) 01:24, 6 January 2024 (UTC)