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Comment by chasd00 | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t everything naturally occurring? It all originates from earth, where else would it come from?

Such a definition of “naturally occurring” is useless, and thus pointless to entertain.

Besides, it doesn’t “all” originate from Earth. If you want to be really uselessly pedantic, nothing on Earth originated on Earth.

What percentage came from the sun and what percentage came from without the sun?

Very little comes from the sun.

The sun and all the planets and other bodies in the solar system all formed from the same cloud of material. Very little of the matter on Earth is from the sun, and very little of the matter in the sun is from the sun, even.

Some elements don’t occur naturally and need to be formed artificially / by force by smashing together atoms that would never smash together in nature (in some cases because those atoms in turn also don’t exist in nature).

I suspect chasd00 is making a pedantic point that the atoms are smashing together in nature. Because nature is just everything that happens.

Although pedantic, it does challenge what we really mean when we say "natural". Just like what we mean when we say "chemicals". Everything is chemicals.

> Everything is chemicals.

No, not everything. Atoms, subatomic particles, light, electromagnetism, etc. are not chemicals. There are many things we experience in everyday life that are not chemicals.

> Everything is chemicals.

Free electrons and neutrons aren't chemicals. Free protons are Hydrogen ions though.

With the exception of protons, isolated subatomic particle in general aren't chemicals.

Nicely up-pedanted. Ultimately I meant that saying stuff like "I don't want food with chemicals in it" is sloppy, because food itself is made of chemicals.

As a presumptive juror I was once asked how I felt about "chemical evidence". I responded by arguing that pretty much all evidence is chemical evidence. I challenged the room to contradict me (which they could've, but nobody did).

I ended up on the jury, so apparently this performance successfully masked my pro-defense bias.

"Chemical evidence" turned out to mean measurements of pupil dilation as evidence of an inability to drive safely.

“In nature” means “it would not happen if humans weren’t around”. So no, nature isn’t “everything that happens”. Calcium and californium atoms smashing together to form oganesson would never happen “in nature” without humans using a particle accelerator to drive the process.

I strongly suspect some supernova or black hole jet somewhere has formed oganesson without human intervention. "In nature" usually gets restricted to "on Earth" implicitly, partly for this reason.

Is wheat natural? Aren't humans themselves part of nature?

Since we're being pedantic:

Light isn't chemicals. Sound isn't chemicals, it's the vibration of chemicals. The billions of neutrinos passing through you right now aren't chemicals. Etc. All the matter we interact with in everyday life is chemicals, but lots of things aren't chemicals.

They did specify "molecule". Certainly not every pharmaceutical occurs naturally, and other materials such as Teflon don't either.

We're part of nature and so everything we do is occurring there. Is the real distinction things that wouldn't exist without human intervention? So, like Teflon and plumcots wouldn't be natural but water and plutonium are.

Things that aren't naturally occurring would be supernatural, no?

That's the original meaning of "artificial", something that occurs through art or skill. Humans have always distinguished themselves from the rest of nature, it's part of that. It's not a useless distinction, but it breaks down when 'natural' is considered healthy or otherwise good, and 'artificial' unhealthy or otherwise bad, when that's a non-sequitur.

Now we're arguing semantics. "Naturally occuring" in English means not synthetically produced / found naturally in the environment outside of human influences.

This makes since, but I do like the idea presented before you, that humans are natural, and our evolution is natural, therefor the things that we make are natural too. But then where do you draw the line? If an alien drops a new element on earth, would this then be not ‘natural’? Or is it impossible for anything to not be natural?

Except the definition of natural is a human made concept which means "anything non-human made/consequence" ;)

"The unnatural, that too is natural." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Solar power isn’t naturally occurring, originates from outside of earth.

It is naturally occurring though.

But does it come from earth?

But earth doesn’t come from earth. It comes from interstellar gasses formed from stellar nuclear fusion and afterwards emitted when the stars turn into supernovae.

Then earth isn’t naturally occurring I’m sorry

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