 If your sheet music has a really bad misprint or a note, is it marked with a sharp? Is that a natural disaster? Okay, first things first. Giant enormous thank yous to viewers Courtney and Don. Courtney sent me this amazing little 3D printed Death Star toy, which is really, really awesome. And Don, who is currently overseas, sent me this Afghani military hat, which is very stylish. No, it's very stylish. In Thunk Episode 1, I gave a crash course on logical argumentation. One thing that I didn't cover explicitly were logical fallacies, because there are a ton of them, and I was still sort of attached to keeping my videos under four minutes. I don't know if I still feel that way. Logical fallacies are important to know, because there are holes in our mental defenses that other people can use to convince us that things make sense when they really don't. But fallacies aren't just about convincing others. Sometimes they're so subtle and widespread in a culture that they can really color how you and I think and in so doing can really screw us up. The appeal to nature fallacy is one of those things where, once you know about it, you start seeing it everywhere. It's really simple too. The word unnatural has one definition that means artificial or not occurring in nature, and one definition that means evil or perverse. The word natural also has multiple definitions, one of which is found in nature, and the other one is instinctively right. The appeal to nature fallacy just sort of whistles nonchalantly and substitutes one definition for the other, trying to commit to that something is right or wrong because it is or isn't found in nature. Firstly, just because something's artificial doesn't make it bad. Computers aren't bad. Toilet paper isn't bad. Antibiotics and space exploration and laws and literature and YouTube aren't bad, and they're all really unnatural. Secondly, and this is the one that bugs me the most, just because something is found in nature or isn't innate urge in humans doesn't make it good or justify it. Nature is full of things that we really don't like a lot. Disease is natural. Death is natural. Skin cancer and poisonous mushrooms are natural. Also, animals kill and maim and rape and torture each other without good reason. A lot of people seem to think that animals are sort of pure and free from malice, but bear in mind that every low-cat that you see on the internet will play with a wounded mouse for hours on end before finally putting it out of its misery. And those are just animals that we keep as pets. Some primates like chimpanzees will raid neighboring groups of chimps just to murder their children. Also, there's some evidence that female ducks have evolved specialized to Natalia to prevent them from being raped because duck rape is absurdly common. So it's pretty obvious after some thought that supposedly natural things aren't necessarily better than supposedly unnatural things. That doesn't stop a lot of really terrible arguments being made based on those grounds. I'm going to point out three types. One of these arguments goes like this. Well, of course humans do terrible things to each other. It's how evolution programmed us. It's the natural order of things. This is used a lot to explain things like bullying and rape, because apparently they're natural urges and so we shouldn't get worked up about them. This isn't just an appeal to nature fallacy claiming that because hurting each other is natural, it's okay. It's also factually inaccurate. A lot of animals don't do these things to each other and there is no evidence to show that humans have an innate urge to do any of them. Like if you leave a baby in the woods, it has precisely one instinct. It will cry loudly until something comes to eat it. Also, even if we did have other natural instincts, they're not the primary drives of our behavior. We manage to potty train ourselves at a pretty young age and that's as far from the call of nature as you can get. Another argument based on the appeal to nature is something that you find in a lot of advertising. The next time you go to a supermarket or a pharmacy or even your bathroom, check to see how the products are marketed. You'll notice that they usually only have one of two marketing techniques on the box. Either they're miracles of science and technology or you guessed it, they're all natural. It's really pretty amazing how many bathroom products have leaves on the bottle unclaimed to be all natural. I mean, they might be, but it's not going to get your hair any cleaner. Finally, and this is the really annoying one, people will use the appeal to nature to push ethics and behavior. You should have your baby without any drugs or an epidural. It's more natural. Bonobos are some of our closest evolutionary relatives and they're not monogamous, so humans shouldn't be monogamous either. Gay people just shouldn't get married, it's unnatural. Now, there's nothing wrong with nature. Nature is great. I love trees and national parks and ferrets and environmentalism. But just because something comes from nature doesn't make it good or right or better than things that don't. Remember, natural disasters are still disasters. Have you had any experiences with the appeal to nature? Do you have something that's labeled natural in your shower? Do you have any suggestions for future show topics? Leave comments, let me know what you think. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to blah blah subscribe, blah share, and I'll see you next week.