8 ms·
Homo sapiens declared extinct (1999)
- isoprophlex 3y ago(1999)? Needs a (2380) tag! :^)
- croes 3y agoNot a tag, part of the article title
- renewiltord 3y agoHaha, 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 3y agoThe 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 3y agoCan you explain why that is “amusingly musically accurate”? I don’t understand.
- ta2112 3y agoI'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 After his death, his music was mostly forgotten, and baroque counterpoint in general was outdated and not often used in the classical style.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 3y agoI'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 3y agoYou'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 3y agoConsidering 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 3y agoIt 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 3y ago[deleted]
- alanbernstein 3y agoSee also: Transmetropolitan
- eggy 3y agoI 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 3y agoI read all of them, and I imagine I'll read them all again some time.
- mpsprd 3y agoI 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.
- stuff4ben 3y agoThis 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 3y agoThis has several thematic connections with and allusions to Sterling’s novel Schismatrix (1985), which predates the Culture novels.
- stuff4ben 3y agoHad no idea. Thanks for the info, gotta go check this out now!
- blorbmajor27 3y agoIf you want to go further back, the ‘featherless bipeds’ quip is a reference to Diogenes of Sinope making fun of Plato by walking into the academy with a plucked chicken shouting “Behold Plato’s man!” All literature is a conversation between books, and all philosophy is a footnote to plato.
- NoGravitas 3y agoI 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 3y agoI would take the opposite end of this bargain in a heartbeat. $20 for humans in 2380 :^)
- Jenz 3y agoWould your current 20$ still be a meaningful value in 2380?
- spraveenitpro 3y ago[dead]
- mjfisher 3y agoSeems 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/thinkingMeat.html https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...
- franky47 3y agoIn a short film form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ
- echelon 3y agoI 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 http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html - MMAcevedo, https://qntm.org/mmacevedo https://qntm.org/mmacevedo - The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf - Last Contact, https://zestfullyblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/last-contact-by-stephen-baxter-part-1.html https://zestfullyblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/last-contact-by-s...
- blooalien 3y agoWow. 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.
- fmajid 3y agoHomo Sapiens is indeed extinct, and has been replaced by Homo Sapiens Sapiens, i.e. us.
- feoren 3y agoIn 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?
- huthuthike 3y agoSetting 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.
- photochemsyn 3y agoTime 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.
- SoftTalker 3y agoI mean, "tool use" in other species pretty much tops out at "poking with a stick" so it's not really comparable.
- feoren 3y agoCrows will bend wire into an appropriate hook shape in order to pull a bucket out of a tube.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago[dead]
- fnovd 3y agoWhen 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.
- franky47 3y agoReports of our extinction have been greatly exaggerated.
- chr1 3y agoHopefully in 2380 uncontacted people will still live in North Sentinel Island. and some other places.
- kbutler 3y ago"Man is an endangered species." -- opening line of Battlefield Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard (would not recommend author's other works)
- srivmutk 3y agoThis was a fun read. Very pleasing to my soon-to-be-replaced-by-AI-gel brain
- jalev 3y agoYou 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 https://www.nature.com/articles/45932 [2] - https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=futures https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=futures [3] - https://www.nature.com/articles/46906 https://www.nature.com/articles/46906
- cubefox 3y agoThanks, I didn't know they had these regular short stories!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xg15 3y agoAIs should look again, they clearly missed that one habitat of Amish people in Midwest, Ex-North America.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Supernaut 3y ago[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.