What's wrong with indicting nature? Male animals regularly rape female animals. We shouldn't hold animals morally culpable, as they aren't moral agents, but humans are moral agents. There is no human act in this world for which "this is commonplace in nature" is a moral defense.

Nature can be harsh and cruel indeed.

I think we agree the term “natural” should almost always be questioned and unpacked. It often serves as a rhetorical device instead of a nugget of wisdom.

Dismissing an idea solely for being “unnatural” is premature. Or vice versa.

At the same time, there is wisdom in being curious about weirdness that seems nonsensical. Some weird things have a backstory and even rationale that is non-obvious. Or maybe their benefit is subtle or hidden to those who only look narrowly. (Chesterton’s Fence)

Slight topic shift, but conceptually related: I hope the slash and burn “reformers” we’re seeing have the humility to recognize that institutional knowledge is diffused in ways they do not understand as outsiders. It doesn’t grow back quickly. Just because Chaos Monkey works at Netflix doesn’t mean it works for Congressionally-authorized government agencies. Rapid destruction can be far worse than measured reprioritization.

I get it though — as a programmer I sometimes prefer to throw out a previous code base and start a-fresh, and this can help with clearing out technical debt. Such a rewrite is risky though, as is well known. Besides, technical abstractions are often orthogonal to domain knowledge and expertise.