The American Naturalist Puns

So the naturalist is on discount this week and I was wondering(for those who have it), is it worth it for 15 gold bars.

Theoretically, how quickly would the Naturalist’s 4 Cows need to turn into the 2000 food for them to be a better deal than the other politicians?

I'm new to the naturalist role. And I was curious about how to level up the role fast. Also, tips on Legendary Animals. How do I encounter them? 1 more thing. I used the Sedative round to sedate an animal, but they just don't go down after 3 or 4 shots. I tried following them to see if the effect took a while to kick in. But, they just won't go down. Any tips?

So, I'm more of a logician than anything (actually the logician personality type, INTP) and have difficulties understanding or connecting with the gods. This was a big part in why am not Christian like my family raised me to be, though my biggest part in believing in the christian god is that I cannot believe nor worship a being that both has the ability to stop, yet doesn't, and actually created things such as cancer and viruses and harmful bacteria, and does so while supposedly "loving" us. And so, gods that are not all powerful, omniscient, nor inherently love us humans make much more sense to me, and I have always been drawn to paganism, though for a long time in a more anthropological type of way, or so I thought.

I am fairly new to the idea of actually worshipping the gods, yet have difficulties in starting a connection to them. I do not fully believe they are real and see them somewhat more as metaphors or personifications of aspects of humanity and nature, nor do I really believe in magic possibly beyond that of the gods. I cannot currently create an altar due to living at home still and lack of funds (though I hope to take up whittling/woodcarving and create figurines of them soon). How do I connect to them or the idea of them more?

(Btw, I feel more connected to the greek, norse, and celtic gods, specifically Artemis, Freyja, many of the premordial Greek gods such as Erebus, Nyx, and their children like Hypnos, slightly to Loki, Hephaestus, and Morrigan, and particularly to Cernunnos. Anything specific to these gods and goddesses would be helpful)

Yesterday I decided to take a stroll through the woods. I started near Clawson's Rest making my way Southwest towards Harriet's location North of Wallace Station just walking, taking in the sights and staying off all trails. It was a very relaxing/anxious experience. I watched a pack of wolves chasing random NPCs through my binoculars, and occassionally sedating and sampling opportune wildlife.

At one point I received a player bounty invite, but have learned that those aren't worth it unless you're just looking for some PVP fun so I carried on with my adventure meandering through Big Valley. Successfully sedated a Grizzly, and stumbled upon my first Harrietum Officinalis plant before making my way to Lake Owanjila in pursuit of beaver samples. I finally sedate one without it passing out too far into the lake for me to sample (I learned you can't lasso a sedated floating beaver). Moving along the edge of the lake the fog seems to thicken so I enter Eagle Eye where I see multiple shimmering beavers up a head. I take aim, and to my surprise the info legend says I'm aiming at the Legendary Zizi Beaver! My adrenaline starts pumping as I had no notification popup of a Legendary animal being close by, and not seeing the map icon with no HUD. I begin my pursuit when out of no where appears another player also hunting the Legendary Zizi. I didn't pay them much mind since they were not showing aggression towards me and continue my attemt to sedate when they unload and kill the beaver (Harriet would not approve). Being of no use to me dead as I was just looking to sample, I tipped my hat and moseyed on.

I've just recently entered the online arena, but understand the complaints about the daily grind as I have maxed all roles except Naturalist. This was a fun new approach which gave me even more appreciation of the vast landscape R* has given us. So if you see a crazy, shoeless, scraggly bearded blond walking through the woods along your travels, don't be alarmed and give a cordial wave. Happy Trails.

This is a very similar question to one I asked a few days ago (I think) but I've failed to completely wrap my head around it and I'm still a little bit confused about it only in a new context this time.

In Alexander Miller's "An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics", counter arguments to metaethical Naturalism are proposed. These arguments (namely, reformulations of the open-question argument) take the form of inferences to the best explanation.

Explanatory inferences are used in descriptive fields like science rather than prescriptive fields like normative ethics, for example (or at least, it seems that way).

So which is the typical 'naturalist' thesis:

1. The word 'good' is used to refer to natural properties in moral statements.

2. There are objective moral facts which correspond to natural facts about the world.

The former seems to be a purely descriptive claim about how we just use our language in ordinary circumstances. The latter seems to be a claim about how we ought to talk about morality if we are being rational since we can come to know these moral facts to be true.

Thanks for any help.

Character Basics

Full Name: Ownebbar

Race/Ethnic Group: Wellspring Gnome

Class/Occupation: Evoker Wizard

Character Nature: Pathfinder 2e character

Character Details

Gender: Male

Age: 17

Facial Features: No facial hair, sky blue eyes, oval face with a small pointy nose, blue hair (darker than the eyes)

Distinguishing Marks: His skin have a little green hue, more a resemblance than the actual color

Significant item: He have a tendencie to dress with clothes with as many pockets as possible, to carry out his tools, flasks and books. Also, he carries his staff of flames on his back.

Body Type: He's small, even for a gnome, standing about a little less than 1m tall. He's slim, making him very prone to be thrown away by enemies (or friends, en asked...)

Color Scheme: I think that the three colors that define him are brown, green and blue

Gear: Traveling clothes, a bandolier with many pockets, a beltpouch with flasks and a book attached, backpack, and his flame staff on the back

Action/Pose: It would awesome to have him casting a Electric Arc or a Fireball with one hand, and holding a book on the another

Others

Alignment: Neutral Good

Personality Traits: Ownebbar tends to overthink and overtalk. He knows a lot about a lot, and sometimes this knowledge overwhelms him. Besides, he is a good and loyal friend and a very capable evoker, using the powers from nature to unleash destruction over his enemies

Ideals and Goals: Ownebbar want to become a master at the institute he work for, and bring even more knowledge to the institution

Backstory: Orphan at a very young age, Ownebbar was found by Arctus Arturius, a seneschal at the imperial center os studies, and was raised by him. He grew up with more books than people around him, and the long field trips that Arctus took over the years inspired Ownebbar to be an independent fellow, and a diligent scholar. Now he is with a group of friends, trying to dismantle an attempted coup to the empire, facing hordes of undeads and looking for godly arctifacts to stop the imminent war.

(This is our first homebrew. We're trying to add an interesting angle to the druid class as well as give the Circle of the Moon a more interesting power progression. We'd really appreciate feedback!)

Kosef the Naturalist Druid

Kosef is a Human Druid we created, flavoured as a naturalist. He's incredibly nerdy, and keeps a research journal with scientific notes of all the fauna and flora he has studied. This acts as his druidic focus. It also means that we can give the Circle of the Moon a bit more of a power curve. As he only has access to the animals he has researched thoroughly, it gives him motivation to explore the world and discover more creatures.

He grew up as part of a river merchant family who traded with an indigenous population in the Northern forest for herbs and medicinal items. Kosef always felt most free when playing with the children of the tribe and tried to access that freedom through his intellect. He grew up studying the nature around him with a fervour. His story arch is a keen desire to become one with nature, but his intellectual approach only seperates him further. As he grows he discovers that to become one with nature he first has to become one with his human nature; the emotional existence he has seperated himself from through his scientific mindset. Eventually this allows him to transform into humanoids as well as normal beasts, as he realises that they are all animals in a sense.

Mechanical Tweaks

• To give more of a power curve to Kosef, at level one we limited which animals he would have been able to study and so limit what he could transform into at level 2 (and only one CR1 creature, in this case brown bear)
• We decided that (at lower levels at least) he could only transform into the same animal once per day (slightly nerfing the ability for a 136 health buff at level 2 from transforming into a brown bear four times in one day, 2 + 2 more after short rest)
• For a minute after losing an animal form it takes a full action to transform again (rather than a bonus as Moon) Circle to give it a bit more consequence. As part of that transformation (if in combat) he does get a free disengage to prevent a full round of damage
• Depending on a creature's CR / complexity he gets a different DC medicine/nature (MED if dead, NAT if alive) check to study the animal in order to gain its form, or can complete the research as a roughly 3 hour scientific 'ritual' which would obviously be a short rest for other PCs but not

I'm not asking this flippantly. I am a naturalist, and lately I have seriously been contemplating this question.

I have always acknowledge that, if were truly religious--if I honestly believed the claims of the Bible or Q'uran--I would devote every second of my effort into maximizing the probability of getting into Heaven. The tradeoff is trivial. If you are a billionaire playboy, and you can increase your probability of getting into Heaven by 0.001% by trading your life for that of a hungry person in extreme poverty, the expected value of that tradeoff is infinitely positive. I would obsessively try to live by the religious text as faithfully as I possibly can, with an extremely meticulous obsession over its interpretation. I think that, given a true belief in the religious stakes, anything else is completely irrational.

Ok, so the naturalist's tradeoff is slightly different. Instead of Heaven vs Hell, it's virtual Heaven vs nothing. And Heaven may not be eternal, but rather, only lasting until whatever computer holds our mind can no longer be held together against the density of dark energy ripping everything apart (unless we find a way to bypass this in the 10^(100) years we have until then) or until we self-terminate out of boredom. And maybe it's further tainted by the terrifying possibility that a scan of your mind can get into the wrong hands and end up in a virtual Hell.

But the tradeoff still seems such that any naturalist that can contribute towards mind-upload research should basically be an obsessive fundamentalist religious person, whose entire life is devoted to the religion of mind-upload.

One objection I can anticipate to this is that, the digital mind would feel inadequate with what it is and want to incrementally change itself until, far in the future, it's basically somebody else. (What if, for example, you're living among super-intelligent AGIs, and you still have human level cognitive function?) Well, I acknowledge that I have a desire not to discontinuously change my conscious state rapidly enough that it's the conscious equivalent of dying and giving birth to somebody else, and this is merely a result of my evolutionary inclinations. But I'm okay with that. As long as I don't change rapidly enough that it feels like dying, I'm okay with being a virtual Ship of Theseus and, eventually, the thing that exists is basically a different person. I feel like that already happened anyway, to a more minor degree, when I changed from being

I'm studying some Naturalist thinkers and I'm struggling to get my head round it. I'll try and list what my thought proccess is and I'm hoping that someone who knows what they're talking about can tell me where I'm wrong/what I'm missing.

1: Naturalism (as it related to meta ethics) is the view that moral evil and goodness are facts of the natural world, much like facts of science. I. e, not from one's point of view and doesn't change based on perspective. (to me this seems like an assertion that moral evil and goodness have some sort of metaphysical existence independent of human thought but this doesn't seem to line up with what any of the thinkers are arguing)

2: F.H. Bradley, Philipa Foot and J.L. Mackie are all Naturalist philosophers

Bradley: Morals can be deduced by considering the moral tradition of one's country, one's place in society and one's specific situation - and the logical conclusion that can be drawn from considering these factors defines what is moral in an absolute sense. My take on this is that it's Bradley's view that moral rules are absolutely right or wrong for one person in one situation but this doesn't necessarily apply to other people in other situations. My qualm with this is why the logical conclusion of considering all of the elements of a situation is inherently good/bad? While it could mean that a good system is devised that may well be the best for us to all agree on it still doesn't answer the question of why the conclusions are absolute "from the point of view of the universe" - surely it just means that this is a way that we can create a good moral system? Am I missing something or is this just something that Bradley doesn't consider that someone like Ayer or Moore already has a criticism of?

Foot: In many ways I have the same issue. She argued that immoral acts are a natural defect in the same way that an oak tree having shit roots that can't support it very well is a natural defect. While we could label that as defected, in and of itself how is it a defect? Surely it only becomes a defect once we start arguing that it's better for an oak tree to be sturdy than not - meaning that there's nothing inherent or absolute about it and it's a human value judgement that is made? Again, was this just overlooked by Foot or am I missing a trick here?

Mackie: I've actually started reading his book "Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong" and one of the first things he says is that morality isn't absolute. It's his argument that

Pertt, Vedalken Scout Rogue, a failed surgeon turned scholar who took up mercenary work as an excuse to travel and see the world to help write his own encyclopedia of the world. Pertt is a Vedalken scholar, a calm, organized and educated naturalist, turned gentleman adventurer, documenting the world as he observes it to help collect and collate knowledge for future generations.

The world is mostly traditional fantasy, low magic, and Pertt's home city of a city of a million people have but a single paladin who struggles to make even a dent into the desperate need. Pertt's family for generations are master surgeons, dedicating their considerable Vedalken focus and precision to the art of saving lives without the aid of magic.

Physical appearance / Gear:

Age: 35
Gender: Male
Body type: Extremely tall (7') and agile but noticeably emaciated(160-180lbs)
Facial features: A calm and curious expression, Pertt keeps himself distant but obsessively interested in learning more about the world. Throat gills.
Hair: No natural body hair as a species trait.
Eyes: Dark Blue eyes, horizontal slit, nictitating membrane turns eyes Sea Blue.
Skin: Blue flesh, hairless, smooth. No scales.
Scars/Tattoos: Minor scars from years as mercenary work, flawless surgeons hands.

Clothing: Very light and flexible leather armor, focused on ease of movement, covered by a loose and flowing white traveler's robe(Recently replaced with a green cloak of Elvenkind), with several extra pouches, containing sample vials, writers tools, adventuring gear and his notebook, overflowing with so many notes and diagrams that they cover even the leather covers.

Several normal smaller, thin bladed, finely maintained daggers, but his main weapons are a silver edged rapier and an archaic battle dagger.

Significant items: His leather bound notebook coated in so many scribbled drawings and his collected observations that he has been forced to start keeping records on both sides of the covers. A 2 gallon, clear glass drum of vinegar with a preserved demons head, as well as a few claws floating inside, all for further research.

Personality: Always calm and dispassionate, save when presented with a chance to learn something new. Pertt is almost cold in personality except for his defensive stance to his fellow adventurers, the people of his sprawling metropolis home city and the mercenaries he's worked with in the past.

Background: The second born child of a dedicated family of surgic

Thanks so much for your questions! I had a lot of fun answering them, but I’ve gotta run now dinner is calling and the crew here are like ravenous hyenas on a buffalo, so if I'm to get any I need to go ;-)

Hi my name is Tristan Dicks and I’m a professional field guide and a naturalist for WildEarth.tv where twice a day we host interactive and live shows about the African wilderness. Born and raised in the big city of Johannesburg, South Africa, a love of the bush was instilled in me early on. My grandparents were avid bush lovers and whenever the opportunity presented itself, they would whisk me away to the Kruger National Park with them on holiday. These trips inspired a love and interest for the natural world. Over the past ten years I have guided permanently in South Africa's Sabi Sand Game Reserve and Kenya's Maasai Mara, when not at work I spend my time wandering through the many wildlife destinations of the world fulfilling my passion for big cats, photography and experiencing the truly incredible moments nature gifts us.

You can watch Safari Live here: https://www.facebook.com/safarilive/

Proof: https://i.redd.it/e9t3d90lz1u21.jpg