[HN Gopher] Homo sapiens declared extinct (1999)
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Homo sapiens declared extinct (1999)
Author : cubefox
Score : 187 points
Date : 2023-08-08 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bruces.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bruces.medium.com)
| srivmutk wrote:
| This was a fun read. Very pleasing to my soon-to-be-replaced-by-
| AI-gel brain
| kbutler wrote:
| "Man is an endangered species." -- opening line of Battlefield
| Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard (would not recommend author's other
| works)
| fmajid wrote:
| Homo Sapiens is indeed extinct, and has been replaced by Homo
| Sapiens Sapiens, i.e. us.
| huthuthike wrote:
| Setting aside the taxonomical debate about whether Homo sapiens
| sapiens is even a thing, if a subspecies exists, then the
| species exists. So Homo sapiens are definitely not extinct.
| feoren wrote:
| In that case, Mammals are also extinct, replaced by Cats, Dogs,
| Bears, Primates, etc. Actually, scratch that: cats (felidae)
| are also extinct, replaced by leopards, cheetahs, servals,
| house cats, etc. Actually, scratch that: house cats are also
| extinct, replaced by tabbies, Siamese cats, Maine Coons, etc.
|
| See the problem?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Time to revive the campaign to rename the species _Homo ignis_.
| Rationale:
|
| 1. The ability to start and control fire is a defining feature of
| the species, without which spread to polar and high-elevation
| climates would have been impossible. Fire was a fundamental
| defense against predators, allowed humans to eat foods previously
| unpalatable, and as a result it's impossible to imagine any group
| of humans living and surviving without fire.
|
| 2. Language is not a unique feature of the human species,
| relatively complex verbal communication has been found in whales
| and parrots at least. Other intelligence-based activity (tool
| use) are also found in crows, chimpanzees, etc. This undermines
| the rationale for 'sapiens' as intelligence is not unique to
| humans.
|
| 3. The steady destruction of the biosphere's oxygen-generating
| capability along with injection of vast amounts of carbon and
| nitrogen and pollutants into the air and water doesn't really
| seem that wise. _Homo ignis_ would at least acknowledge the
| potentially self-destructive nature of human behavior.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Ignis sounds like a schoolyard taunt. Ignorant + Dingus
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I think, therefore I am a Homo _Sapiens_.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I mean, "tool use" in other species pretty much tops out at
| "poking with a stick" so it's not really comparable.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Spiders make hunting nets, shelters and flying devices by
| squeezing their butts.
|
| Try that on for "tool use", human.
| feoren wrote:
| Crows will bend wire into an appropriate hook shape in order
| to pull a bucket out of a tube.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| [dead]
| fnovd wrote:
| When we define intelligence as having the ability to do the
| things that only humans do, it's no wonder that we can't see
| intelligence in other species.
|
| Most animals don't have digits they can use to manipulate
| things with the precision we do. That doesn't mean they
| aren't intelligent.
|
| There are dogs that have learned to ride public bus and metro
| systems. They know how to act to be accepted in these
| scenarios when other animals would not be. They have a sense
| of where they will be going and what the purpose of the
| vehicle is. They can use their noses to detect things that we
| cannot even with our fancy tools, and we even rely on them
| for their noses when our human tech fails.
|
| If intelligence is the domain of humanity then I'm not so
| interested in intelligence. I'm interested in whatever it is
| that allows sentient beings to understand, operate within,
| and adapt to their environments.
| dahwolf wrote:
| We vastly overestimate the intelligence of us and
| underestimate the intelligence of any other living
| creature.
|
| Or rather, humanity acts as a highly intelligent collective
| but individual humans are only moderately intelligent in
| comparison.
|
| As a thought experiment: put an average urban person on an
| uninhabited island. No tech. The person would have
| absolutely no idea how to recreate any of our technology.
| Nor would they know how to hunt, do agriculture, do mining,
| do anything.
|
| We have no idea how anything works and outsourced even
| basic survival skills. The magic of humanity is that
| actually smart people are able to store and communicate
| knowledge to build ever more advanced tech, which through
| sophisticated supply chains and management systems is
| widely distributed to all other people whom don't require
| to know how anything works.
| tasogare wrote:
| [dead]
| jalev wrote:
| You can also find the story on Nature[1] as well as a lot of
| other short fiction they publish[2], which includes stories from
| such authors like Clarke[3]
|
| [1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/45932
|
| [2] - https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=futures
|
| [3] - https://www.nature.com/articles/46906
| Supernaut wrote:
| [Sorry, this was supposed to be a response to the link to
| "They're Made out of Meat"...]
|
| This is great! I had somehow never encountered it before.
|
| It reminds me in tone of "D.R. and Quinch Have Fun On Earth", an
| anarchic and hilarious story written by Alan Moore in 1983 for
| the British comic 2000 AD. In that, the titular alien antiheroes
| time-travel across our planet (an uninteresting backwater) in
| order to set up an elaborate practical joke on their college
| dean. For the prank to reach its fruition, humanity has to make
| contact with galactic civilization.
|
| "The next step", explains Quinch, jumping forward to the 1950s,
| "was to give these feebs the idea of getting into space. We'd
| stop a car or something and then D.R. would walk up and down with
| the water-cooler on his head and talk about the interstellar
| brotherhood."
|
| "By the time we got back to our own era, 3017 by the chimps'
| reckoning, they were out in space and had encountered their first
| real, actual people. It was embarrassing. They went on holovision
| and looked all awestruck and recited D.R.'s Interstellar
| Brotherhood speech. Nobody knew where to look."
|
| I won't spoil the ending.
| chr1 wrote:
| Hopefully in 2380 uncontacted people will still live in North
| Sentinel Island. and some other places.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I don't know whether to consider it fortunate, or unfortunate,
| that humans are likely to go extinct in the old fashioned way,
| rather than this way, and most likely quite a bit before 2380.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| I would take the opposite end of this bargain in a heartbeat.
| $20 for humans in 2380 :^)
| Jenz wrote:
| Would your current 20$ still be a meaningful value in 2380?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha, entertaining, but I think the one thing that really happens
| in a society that advanced is that they will highly value things
| of the past. So even if Mozart and Bach are widely considered
| inferior to that form, the elite will consider it meaningful to
| listen to their works and consider it a form of erudition to only
| be acquainted with them. Past a meaningfully advanced amount of
| non-scarcity, the only thing that you can't change is time: so
| that becomes valuable.
|
| The finest super-ceramic will be considered culturally inferior
| to an old bowl.
| ta2112 wrote:
| The joke was that Mozart was considered inferior, while Bach
| was still worth drawing on for inspiration. Perhaps less funny
| explained, but also amusingly musically accurate.
| canadianfella wrote:
| Can you explain why that is "amusingly musically accurate"? I
| don't understand.
| ta2112 wrote:
| I'll do my best.
|
| Mozart was one of the top Classical period (1750-1830)
| composers, and is certainly the most famous. He was a
| genius, he was prolific, he was famous during his day, and
| among classical composers he is often considered the best.
| To this day he is a household name, and his operas,
| symphonies, and chamber music are commonly performed.
|
| Bach died (1750) before Mozart was born (1756). He composed
| in Baroque (1600-1750) counterpoint. He produced an inhuman
| amount of music, as in he had to be writing constantly.
| While he lived he was not famous, but he was known in
| smaller musical circles. After his death, his music was
| mostly forgotten, and baroque counterpoint in general was
| outdated and not often used in the classical style. It
| wasn't until the 19th century that he was rediscovered,
| having his works re-published and performed. His music is
| subtle and complex, maybe I can describe it as a
| crystalline mathematical profoundness.
|
| Among many Bach is considered the GOAT. I could believe
| that a super-intelligent former human AI musician would
| find his music interesting. Whereas Mozart was merely the
| greatest Classical composer. But of course, Sterling is
| also lobbing a grenade into an infinite flame war about
| which music is better. So that's a fun way to rile up the
| Mozart stans.
| Jenz wrote:
| I've never seen any convincing argument that Bach is
| somehow, as frequently claimed, the epitome of baroque
| music. It seems to be a largely romantic sentiment, that
| arose moreso to Mendelssohn's circumstances than to
| anything unique in Bach's music-- Mendelssohn simply did
| not have the access to many other high baroque composers'
| music to draw from. Aside from how surprisingly late he
| is, there are many comparable figures to Bach.
|
| I am tired and will content myself with simply mentioning
| some early baroque composers that, for anyone curious,
| sadly do not get the spotlight they deserve: Ascanio
| Mayone (c.1565-1627), Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643),
| Tarquinio Merula (1595-1665), Johann Jacob Froberger
| (1616-1667), Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi (1624-1687),
| Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (c.1644-1704).
| forgetfulness wrote:
| You're assuming that the civilization that succeeds us will
| take shape in a way that we'd consider progress from the values
| we hold today, like respect the accomplishments of the people
| that came before us.
|
| That's very much not a given and societies have gone back and
| forth in that.
| chefandy wrote:
| Considering what many humans say about the creations chucked
| into the ML blender, their lack of regard for the (often
| living) creators, and the high regard they hold for people
| asking the ML (nicely) to make derivative amalgams of those
| creations, I can't imagine those values will persist if these
| perspectives migrate out of the tech world.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| It wasn't even done for the sake of art, it was for the
| sake of ML and the careers of the researchers and engineers
| working on them.
|
| It's less understandable than people dismantling centuries-
| old monuments built by ancient kingdoms and republics that
| they could no longer relate to, like the Parthenon or the
| Pyramids, for masonry, this art and these artists formed
| the basis for the culture they were immersed in.
|
| The biggest shifts propelled by us millenials with the aid
| of technology have been... getting billions of people
| addicted to social media engagement, and making robots do
| creative work rather than humans. Hopefully, history will
| judge us harshly.
| [deleted]
| xg15 wrote:
| AIs should look again, they clearly missed that one habitat of
| Amish people in Midwest, Ex-North America.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| (1999)? Needs a (2380) tag! :^)
| croes wrote:
| Not a tag, part of the article title
| stuff4ben wrote:
| This seems a derivative of Iain M. Banks "Culture" books which I
| love. Banks was taken too soon, so wish we could have had more
| from his mind.
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| This has several thematic connections with and allusions to
| Sterling's novel Schismatrix (1985), which predates the Culture
| novels.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| Had no idea. Thanks for the info, gotta go check this out
| now!
| spraveenitpro wrote:
| [dead]
| mjfisher wrote:
| Seems a good time to link to the well-loved short sci-fi story
| "They're Made out of Meat" by Terry Bisson:
|
| https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...
| mellosouls wrote:
| Radio version (my favourite of the various forms):
|
| https://www.wnyc.org/story/168264-theyre-made-out-of-meat/
| srivmutk wrote:
| Always loved existential futuristic short stories.
| echelon wrote:
| I haven't read or thought of this in a long time. It's a really
| good short story. Thank you for sharing!
|
| Some of my other short story favorites:
|
| - The Egg, http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
|
| - MMAcevedo, https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
|
| - The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,
| https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf
|
| - Last Contact,
| https://zestfullyblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/last-contact-by-s...
| networked wrote:
| Since "Lena" ("MMAcevedo") and "They're Made Out of Meat"
| from this subthread are on my "fiction recommendations" list,
| let me share the list: https://dbohdan.com/fiction-recs.
|
| I highly recommend "Basilisk collection" by Blackle Mori
| (https://suricrasia.online/unfiction/basilisk/), a
| fascinating short story written as a fictional Wikipedia
| page, like "Lena". It is about a partial hash inversion
| anomaly. Really! I would call its genre "hard computer
| science fiction". It was a delight to stumble upon after I
| followed a link to https://suricrasia.online/iceberg/.
| ghaff wrote:
| I did an 80 short stories by 80 different authors post a
| while back. I've been meaning to get it up to 100.
|
| https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/10/80-authors-80-science-.
| ..
| blooalien wrote:
| Wow. _Loved_ the story you 're responding about. Read it a
| few times since first hearing about it a long while back.
| Kinda surprised tho that _your_ list hasn 't got one single
| thing I'd read before. Thank you for the excellent list.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| The Egg is by Andy Weir who also wrote the Martian,
| Artemis, and Project Hail Mary. I recommend the first and
| third of these, Artemis is just okay in my opinion.
| LukeShu wrote:
| He also wrote the (now finished) webcomic _Casey and
| Andy_. I don 't think I've ever shown it to an engineer
| who didn't instantly love it.
| dTal wrote:
| Nitpick: the title of the qntm story is "Lena", not
| "MMAcevedo" - the latter is the title of the fictional
| Wikipedia article that is the framing device :)
| mjfisher wrote:
| Nice, thank you! I've read The Egg before, but working my way
| through the others now as I have the opportunity.
|
| Have you come across The Last Question? Another favourite:
|
| https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| [dead]
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| This inspires me to post Eight O'clock in the Morning
|
| https://pvto.weebly.com/uploads/9/1/5/0/91508780/eight_o%E2%.
| ..
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Also one of my favorites: " _The Things_ ", the story of John
| Carpenters "The Thing", from the perspective of the
| superorganism itself: The Thing
|
| https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
| cnasc wrote:
| This is such a magnificent read. The Thing is one of my
| favorites (in all forms, though Carpenter's version is my #1)
| and this only elevated the experience
| franky47 wrote:
| In a short film form:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ
| ry4nolson wrote:
| Is that Ben Bailey?
| tiffanyg wrote:
| At the risk of furthering the "me too, like some brain-dead
| AOLer"...
|
| ... it's a favorite to "me too".
|
| Just incredibly funny, I love the tone of incredulity... so ...
| relatable. Can't wait until we have to cope with some kind of
| "dark matter tendril 'metaspecies'" ...
|
| "What do you mean they're made out of undetectable non-
| particles that don't exist in 'standard model'^2?"
|
| "I mean, our new overlords can detect and interact with us, but
| we cannot detect or interact with them directly. And, they
| don't like being called 'they', sir..."
|
| Haha, the future is bright my friends, let me tell you! _(And
| this isn 't close to when "the sun" runs out of its fuel...
| speaking of bright...)_
| burnished wrote:
| Are you familiar with Schlock Mercenary? It is a web comic
| (that has concluded) which features dark matter entities in a
| later story arc. There isn't much in the way of direct
| character interaction except through warfare because there is
| a tech that baryonic matter civilizations find very
| convenient that makes space uninhabitable for the dark matter
| creatures, and conversely those creatures can cause stars to
| blow up. Very interesting stuff, starts out much smaller
| scale than all that though.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| See also: Transmetropolitan
| eggy wrote:
| I only made it through the first three trade paperbacks. I
| loved it, but wound up going overseas and lost touch. Thanks
| for the ping; I'll have to pick it up again.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| I read all of them, and I imagine I'll read them all again
| some time.
| franky47 wrote:
| Reports of our extinction have been greatly exaggerated.
| [deleted]
| mpsprd wrote:
| I love these kind of short sci-fi stories.
|
| In the same vein, it makes me remember the "love deaths robots"
| episode (V1E2) where robot tourists take a sightseeing tour in
| the human apocalypse.
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