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China Now Uses 80% Artificial Sand. Here's Why That's A Bigger Deal Than It Sounds
(www.zmescience.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2026
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Crushing gravel and other mining waste into sand isn't quite "artificial" sand...
Like how there's no such thing as an artificial diamond, just a man made one.
The sand is sand, it's just mand made.
There isn't sand. Humans did a thing. There's sand.
There isn't a diamond. Humans did a thing. There's a diamond.
Those are the literal definitions of "artificial".
Now compare my examples to:
Do you see the difference now?
Could you possibly get magine a word where the two examples I gave were intentionally similar and I wasn't giving every possible permeation?
You didn't understand what I said, which is fine, fucking normal even...
But instead of asking questions, you stated the obvious.
We could have had a deep philosophical, physical, even material science conversation about this. Or rather I'd have elaborated and youd have played the part of a rubber duck.
But instead you just said whatever the fuck popped into your head in the moment
Except you fell for the same trap hundreds of thousands of philosophers before you had. Talking right past people because you refuse to understand what they meant by the words they chose to use.
“Artificial” describes the process something underwent to become what it is. It doesn’t mean that it’s materially different than its natural counterpart.
So what’s ironic is that the deeply philosophical conversation you referenced; that conversation could have happened, but instead you chose to hop on your high horse and argue nonsense about material differences while the argument was really about procedural differences.
Had you rose your point, reasonably and fairly so, as a congruent but also slightly off-topic one, it might have been entertained more meaningfully.
Again...
You could have asked and learned something
The hubris on you is phenomenal. I don’t mind having not “learned something” in this case. Be nicer. You ought learn something from this experience, not me.
Look at the likes given to each post
artificial adjective ar·ti·fi·cial ˌär-tə-ˈfi-shᵊl 1 a : made, produced, or done by humans especially to seem like something natural : man-made an artificial reef artificial sweetener an artificial limb artificial diamonds