[HN Gopher] Perfectly Ordinary Stones, Carried for 1,300 Years (...
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Perfectly Ordinary Stones, Carried for 1,300 Years (2014)
Author : ColinWright
Score : 81 points
Date : 2021-04-30 11:50 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ishimochi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ishimochi.com)
| Anther wrote:
| I rather enjoyed the way that website loaded on my iPhone.
| SamBam wrote:
| I'm guessing it scrolled up from the bottom - it did them same
| on my desktop.
|
| Yes, I liked it too. I normally dislike any kind of "messing
| with" my scroll, but here it seemed quite appropriate, if
| confusing at first.
| Lucent wrote:
| Trying to get the first ever CLS score over 1.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| This is an excellent project! I wish it success.
|
| I am taking one photo per season of one particular tree in my
| commune's forest.
|
| This woman has been taking self portraits once a year for 17
| years, with last year's photo in this year's:
| https://www.ignant.com/2019/01/21/the-mother-as-creator-a-ph...
|
| We need more long, slow art projects.
| [deleted]
| wgjordan wrote:
| Reminds me of the Stone of Scone, a perfectly ordinary stone
| carried for over 1,000 years and used in the coronation of
| English monarchs:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_of_Scone
| metalliqaz wrote:
| carried?
| [deleted]
| max-ibel wrote:
| And don't forget the Scone of Stone!
|
| https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Scone_of_Stone
| metalliqaz wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210430115236/https://ishimochi...
| LasangaCode wrote:
| The mayor and the monk didn't pass the stone on after 5 years :/
| mavhc wrote:
| Scroll down for the English translation, rather than read the
| autotranslated Japanese
| marmshallow wrote:
| Someone is gonna sell theirs on Ebay (or as it's known 1000 years
| from now, Eblork).
| blackboxlogic wrote:
| Which will last longer, the stones or the website. Between ssl
| certs expiring, embedded google map, hosting provider, dns,
| etc... I'd bet on the stones.
| EGreg wrote:
| LMAO! Anyone can claim to be carrying these ordinary stones, just
| like they can claim to be Anonymous, or that Bill Murray said no
| one will ever believe you. Also if someone loses the stones they
| can just pick up some new ones later...
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| Their names are listed on the website. It'd be hard to convince
| someone you've got the stone if your name isn't listed there
| EGreg wrote:
| Maybe they can do like NFT stones. Or a merkle tree of
| stones. Maybe each person has to bring 3 new people into the
| stones society haha
| glxxyz wrote:
| I like that they put all the table rows in for the next 1300
| years. Reminds me of someone numbering a music collection and
| starting optimistically with 0000001 (they usually gave up at
| about 000005).
| vivekv wrote:
| Have they started selling NFT on those stones yet?
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I'd hate to be the guy that loses one of these things.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I'd guess they are lost already. Or in a drawer. Once the
| initial excitement is gone, ...
| AppleCandy wrote:
| The author tries to convince that these stones are so ordinary,
| ostensibly to argue that they will not be stolen. However,
| watch what happens as these stones start to develop a
| provenance and get photographed and documented along the way.
|
| Reading this I had a flicker of desire to steal "Lily of the
| valley", and likewise this desire to take hold of such a rare
| coveted object will grow in the hearts of man over the
| centuries. What gives something value is not always its
| intrinsic worth, but also how it takes hold in the public
| consciousness. Just look at worthless NFTs.
|
| And so starts the secret brotherhood of stone-keepers who will
| fend off the evil advances of those who would break the sacred
| lineage. Or, liars will introduce new stones to inflate the
| supply and claim to be sacred stone-keepers. So let's put a
| blockchain around this thing and be done with it.
| tnzm wrote:
| How would you ensure correspondence between the stone and the
| NFT though?
| criddell wrote:
| Could you do something similar to how sports memorabilia is
| marked?
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Deconstruct the stone and reform it as a series of gates
| which can be turned on and off by applying electricity. I
| will leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.
| trhway wrote:
| you can engrave the stone at specific depth inside (i.e.
| not on the surface) by using proton accelerator.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| How would you ensure the correspondence between anything
| and an NFT? You don't. That's why the parent called them
| worthless.
| smabie wrote:
| You can destroy the original meats pace version
| pierrebai wrote:
| Multiple secret societies, some protecting an obscure (but in
| reality, quite harmless and worthless) item, some protecting
| the first, some trying to infiltrate, some completely made
| up?
|
| Umberto Eco and Pynchon would be proud.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Prediction: they'll be lost.
|
| Why?
|
| Because things that do not have intrinsic value tend to get lost
| at a very high rate and things that do have intrinsic value tend
| to get stolen, and then are lost.
|
| If it happened to 99.99% of all the works of humanity from 1300
| years ago, including some very precious ones it will almost
| definitely end the same way for these none-precious stones.
|
| This is a study in provenance, especially because there isn't
| anything special about the stones other than being 'the ones',
| and I like the project as such but the cynic in me can't help but
| look around and fail to see even a single object from that long
| ago that didn't have a whole religious order dedicated to keeping
| it protected through centuries of upheaval and turmoil.
|
| That said, I wish the stone keepers the best of luck and I _do_
| hope that it will work, but the value for me is in thinking about
| the project and its consequences, not so much in the execution.
| bombcar wrote:
| It needs to be either entirely precious, entirely worthless
| (and buried), or exceptionally large. Nobody has stolen the
| pyramids yet.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The Pharaos had the right idea there. And they seem to have
| admirably succeeded in their goal. They picked their stones
| the right size!
| gus_massa wrote:
| Is this close enough?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Simbel#Relocation
| pierrebai wrote:
| Well, the smooth cover of the pyramids have been stolen and
| the pyramids have been used as source material for building
| in the past. So, not stolen in its entirety, but damaged.
|
| What I would think is that some, if not all, of the ordinary
| stones will indeed by lost, but then surreptitiously replaced
| by others (after all, they have no identifiable properties).
|
| 1300 years from now, there will be stones, but the not the
| original ones. I think it fits the purpose perfectly, just
| like purported official Christian relics.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Don't forget about the contents of the pyramids which have
| also been removed (mummies and such)
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> What I would think is that some, if not all, of the
| ordinary stones will indeed by lost, but then
| surreptitiously replaced by others (after all, they have no
| identifiable properties).
|
| While not ideal, even that may be OK to some extent --
| perhaps the valuable thing is the soul of what you are
| carrying. I think of it like a University or a specific
| house of worship. Yes, there are physical assets, but the
| real assets (the people) come, contribute, leave but the
| soul of the organization lasts for hundreds of years.
| fnord77 wrote:
| stick a bluetooth tracker on them!
| Exuma wrote:
| AirTag is our most innovative project yet!
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| > Among the people there are non-Japanese
|
| I find it quaint the idea that where will be a concept of
| "Japanese" and "non-Japanese" in 1300 years from now.
|
| If you assume the rate of progress is fixed (which it isn't, as
| we know, it accelerates), you can get some sense of how
| farfetched this idea is. 1300 years ago was the year 721 CE.
| There was no unified Japan then[1] (nor likely even a concept of
| "Japanese" identity as most imperial practices were modeled from
| China), nor was there a "Europe," a "Mexico," or a "South
| Africa." There certainly wasn't the notion of national identity
| in the modern sense, as such concepts would have been alien to
| village-dwellers living under feudal lords.
|
| After many cycles of political consolidation and fracturing, it
| is unlikely in 1300 years there will be a unified Japan; but,
| more likely, the entire pan-Asian sphere will have been unified
| (probably under China), if not under the purview of a world
| government. Sino-Japanese languages will probably mix
| Australasian language groups, borrowing heavily from English,
| creating a dialect that would sound as alien to us as Chaucer
| does now[2].
|
| In 1300 years, global warming will render a good portion of the
| planet uninhabitable without artificial climate controls, and new
| parts of the planet never before populated will experience a
| flourishing of new development. Major cities will develop in
| hitherto uninhabited land in Siberia, Canada and elsewhere,
| probably creating new power centers we can't even begin to
| contemplate. New nations will rise and challenge dominant
| superpowers for position. There will be at least one more major
| global war in the next millennium, which could result in a
| complete shift of power, or nuclear winter or annihilation of a
| good % of humanity.
|
| And they think some stones are going to survive.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nara_period
| [2]https://mypoeticside.com/poets/geoffrey-chaucer-poems
| ansible wrote:
| > _In 1300 years, global warming will render a good portion of
| the planet uninhabitable without artificial climate
| controls..._
|
| The way things are going, that is looking like less than 100
| years. The increasing pollution and degradation of the
| biosphere, rising sea levels and more will drastically change
| civilization.
|
| And even if those things don't take us out, the robot uprising
| / Singularity / whatever is highly likely to completely destroy
| civilization, and in the best-case scenario, replace it with
| something better.
| d_silin wrote:
| Under exponential model assumptions, in 1300 years humanity
| will spread into neighbouring star systems, with Earth most
| likely to be depopulated and left as a nature preserve.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > a "Europe"
|
| Closest was probably the concept of Christendom, the part of
| the world unified by the Christian religion. Remember both the
| Catholic/Orthodox and Catholic/Protestant splits were well in
| the future.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| > And they think some stones are going to survive.
|
| Perhaps the point is to foster long-term thinking, a bit like
| the ideas of "The Long Now" foundation
|
| https://longnow.org/
| jacquesm wrote:
| Oh, the stones will survive. It's just that nobody will care
| about those particular stones.
|
| And your observation about the long term effects of our actions
| (which themselves are accelerating in frequency and impact) on
| climate, the world in general and human structures and concepts
| is spot on, it is a special kind of delusional that declaring a
| couple of stones special will have a long term effect on those
| particular stones. At the same time, it _did_ lead to some
| interesting insights so in a way the value has already been
| delivered, even if the stones are lost tomorrow.
| majormajor wrote:
| > If you assume the rate of progress is fixed (which it isn't,
| as we know, it accelerates), you can get some sense of how
| farfetched this idea is. 1300 years ago was the year 721 CE.
| There was no unified Japan then[1] (nor likely even a concept
| of "Japanese" identity as most imperial practices were modeled
| from China), nor was there a "Europe," a "Mexico," or a "South
| Africa." There certainly wasn't the notion of national identity
| in the modern sense, as such concepts would have been alien to
| village-dwellers living under feudal lords.
|
| The rate of progress can decrease, and even go negative!
|
| Consider the concepts of empire and identity from 700 years
| before your year 721 CE that were entirely replaced by smaller,
| less-advanced ones.
|
| Though I would also be surprised if anything like Japan, China,
| the US, or Europe as we know them today are recognizable in
| 1300 years, whether because of advance or collapse (or both!).
|
| But some traditions I expect to survive. They'd just be
| identified as part of whatever the new resulting cultures are
| that inherited them.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > In 1300 years, global warming will render a good portion of
| the planet uninhabitable without artificial climate controls
|
| The idea of predicting the effects of global warming 1000 years
| in the future is really absurd. You are understating your point
| here, at our current rate of consumption, our fossil fuels will
| last for 200 years at (a highly inflated) maximum. Global
| warming as we know it is meaningless after that time period.
| Odds are there will be some crisis about too much _consumption_
| of atmospheric CO2 before that.
| qsort wrote:
| I mean, it's fun to speculate, but anyone who claims to have
| any idea of what's going to happen literally more than a
| thousand years from now is just full of crap.
|
| Even predicting 20 years ahead is almost impossible. 1300 is
| just fiction.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| Well, yeah, otherwise I would be a Dogecoin millionaire by
| now :)
| qsort wrote:
| Yeah sure (didn't mean to say that was you, re-reading the
| comment I'm noticing the wording was unfortunate), just
| wanted to point out how far removed such a span of time is
| from our usual horizon.
| [deleted]
| twic wrote:
| They should try to get the organists at St. Burchardi to look
| after one of them.
| irrational wrote:
| Looks like the Mayor and the Buddhist Monk are already messing
| things up, judging by the chart at the bottom.
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