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Comment by rhyme-boss | Hacker News Reader

Just my personal experience, but I would say this does not hold with regard to observing nature. Once I know the name of a new fly, fish, or flower, I care more about it, and I enjoy seeing it, and connecting that knowledge with other ecological knowledge.

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That's also true in other domains - the more I learn about a sport the more interesting it is to watch because there is more to see and understand.

I can see the opportunity though for analysis to overcome emotion. You want to respond instinctively to something, but learning to be an expert in something sometime requires nurturing a dispassionate, analytical response. I can completely see how learning about wine might take away some of the joy that you might experience trying something new, because you're just cataloguing it.

Semi-related: my wife has a friend who became a "serious" coffee person over the pandemic. He firmly warns everyone that it's the worst decision he's ever made - he's become too much of a snob and now can't drink any coffee apart from that made at home. He can't even get it from a high street vendor and enjoy it.

> Once I know the name of a new fly, fish, or flower,

Does knowing the name of something make you an expert? I am not sure, I think perhaps the definition of "expertise" at use in this paper is more precise and demands more. I am not familiar with this area of research, it appears to me that this paper draws on a well-understood meaning of "expertise", probably one that is established in one or several of the citations (or, perhaps, it is a contested definition even today).

That said - I think your intuition is a useful one - knowing something can enhance your enjoyment more than knowing nothing. I think this paper asks, can you know too much?

I feel the same way. Since the subject of this interest is alive, and endlessly diverse, the more I learn about nature, the more wonder I feel. Definitely not numb.

Maybe what needs to be a focus of this study is measuring "numbness" across different subjects of interest.

Nature? Bah! How do you market nature? People can just get it for free! Get with the program, we need to exploit hedonism-seeking for the widest possible range of consumers to keep our numbers up! Keep them lusting after the next big thing, keep them confused and incompetent for as long as possible so they keep buying new versions of it. From us.

You cannot market nature, but you CAN market everything around it: Tourism, clothing/footwear, camping gear, even technology (cameras, GPS etc). All of them to give you the "upper hand" over your peers - And of course, you can buy that from us!

> How do you market nature? People can just get it for free

If you're Booz Allen, you get the rights to run the reservation system for the US national parks and tack on fees for yourself.

I only read the abstract but it seems like the dislike comes with a recognition of the buzzwords and an understanding that a good product isn't the goal, my money is. With nature, it's not trying to impress me. It's not trying to take my money. So there's no loss of wonder when I learn something. I don't pull back the curtain to find a cynical exec trying to get me to pay for something. There is no curtain, there is no sales pitche, nature just is.

It's proved that kids that name their chicken, pig, lamb, rabbit, fish, dog or horse cannot accept them to be killed and cannot eat them. thus numbers on farm cattle.

No, farm cattle have numbers because that's the most efficient way to keep track of them. The farms might be large, and the cattle might change ownership at various stages. It just doesn't work to name them, just like naming computers in a datacenter doesn't scale past a certain point.

And as a counter-example, I know families in the rural midwest that name their livestock while raising them. The important bit is that they teach the children the difference between pets and livestock early on so it doesn't come as a shock to them that their dinner was grazing out on the back 40 just the other day. It's only shocking to those who aren't acquainted with the realities of agriculture life.

Once you let your kid name an animal, it is a pet.

I have a bit of experience with this since we have been running a chicken retirement community for the past four or five years as our chickens, now beloved pets of my teenage daughter are well into their senior years. We get eggs, but they are very expensive eggs given the feed cost/egg ratio is changing significantly as egg production wanes and feed prices are on a continuous trajectory upwards.

We do have limits - my daughter has accepted that I draw the line at vet visits. If a chicken is sick enough to need a vet, it will be allowed to die peacefully or be euthanized if there are severe injuries.

I grew up on a farm and we routinely named the cattle that stood out. I don't recall any one of us protesting when they were sent away. But I suppose cattle aren't very sociable compared to the animals that you listed.

At the end of the day, it's just the cycle of life, and we knew that from an early age.

For every 4H kid who cries, there are a dozen more who don't.

> thus numbers on farm cattle.

Try to imagine a farmer setting aside time to individually name a thousand pigs. Lol.

Anecdotally, I am sceptical that this is true (at least universally). My dad grew up with animals, and his family named and are plenty of them.

My neighbors named one of their cattle "Ribeye". I bet he was delicious

This is obvious nonsense to anyone who grew up in a rural area

Complete and total nonsense. I've eaten plenty of family pets that I've named, and so have many of my family members and relatives

I can see the truth in what you say; but I have also found that increased ecological literacy has sapped much of the joy I used to feel in nature, because it comes mixed with grief.

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