Avocados are what is known as a "evolutionary anachronism", meaning that they basically should no longer exist. They evolved specifically to coexist with the megafauna in South America, particularly the Giant Sloths (although this view is apparently now controversial). No animals today are large enough to be able to swallow their seeds whole, and distribute them. The Giant Sloths went extinct right as humans settled into South America, most likely due to human influence, so the avocado should have gone extinct too, in a way. But of course the very humans that killed off the sloths ended up cultivating the avocados.
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Avocados are what is known as a "evolutionary anachronism", meaning that they basically should no longer exist. They evolved specifically to coexist with the megafauna in South America, particularly the Giant Sloths (although this view is apparently now controversial, or possibly a straight up myth). No animals today are large enough to be able to swallow their seeds whole, and distribute them. The Giant Sloths went extinct right as humans settled into South America, most likely due to human influence, so the avocado should have gone extinct too, in a way. But of course the very humans that killed off the sloths ended up cultivating the avocados.
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When you think about it we have genetically programmed dogs, by mean sof selective breeding, to love their own enslavement. Good thing they are too dumb to realize how existentially messed up that is, so it's fine.
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Business guy who is way too into Sun Tzu is one of the most obnoxious philosophy guys, just behind pickup artist is way too into Epictetus, and...well pretty much anyone is way too into Nietzsche.
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"Also, philosophically speaking, what is the difference between a city being burned down and not? When you think about it, not much..."
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As a rule of thumb, if the language of magic in a fantasy novel is based on Latin, they are just doing science. If the language based on the language spoken by the river, the sea, and the creatures which walked the Earth before the Sun and Moon first shone, then you might be on to something.
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Arthur C. Clarke famously said "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", but you can easily reverse it and say that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science and technology. This is particularly obvious in cases like Harry Potter were the rules are so formal and repeatable, and are even taught in school exactly like how we teach science. If magic actually exists, after all, you would just do normal science on it and there would be no reason to distinguish it from science. More sophisticated authors like J.R.R. Tolkien even recognized this, with elves like Galadriel saying she didn't even know what humans meant by the word "magic", since they merely thought of it as an extension of craftsmanship, i.e. technology. The humans called her a witch, but the Noldor elves are students of Aulë, the God of Craft, and what they were doing was more like knowledge in the normal sense.
There is good reason to think people thought this way too back when we believed in magic, Aristotle even wrote a book on magic (which was lost). It seems he thought magic was just another part of natural philosophy. After all if a magic potion works, it is really just medicine. Not only that but if you don't understand science fully, it's reasonable to think you are observing magic in day to day life, even in mundane events like lightning storms. It really wasn't until Christianity try to exorcise magic from the world, claiming it was part of Paganism, that we started to really distinguish it sharply from nature.
There is good reason to think people thought this way too back when we believed in magic, Aristotle even wrote a book on magic (which was lost). It seems he thought magic was just another part of natural philosophy. After all if a magic potion works, it is really just medicine. Not only that but if you don't understand science fully, it's reasonable to think you are observing magic in day to day life, even in mundane events like lightning storms. It really wasn't until Christianity try to exorcise magic from the world, claiming it was part of Paganism, that we started to really distinguish it sharply from nature.
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