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mycomancy
Oct 16, 2016

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

There isn't really semi-intelligent animals that have been on earth significantly longer than people have been. dolphins and elephants are younger species than humans, dogs and pigs are younger than agriculture, and aren't from animals that have been around any longer than people. octopus and crows are amazing and some of the coolest and most clever things that exist, but die young and aren't really as smart as a dolphin or chimp, just alien and cool about how clever they are.

Like we are ahead of the other semi-intelligent animals, but not really much, like we beat them, but just so barely. many of them are younger than we are. It's not like we evolved intelligence while everything else tried and failed for a billion years or something, we beat everything else by like a week.

Put your dick on the screen or don't be seen, OOCC.

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Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord
is asking to see my dick a fortnite thing? why are you kids asking to see my dick?

Lightning Knight
Feb 24, 2012

Pray for Answer

mycomancy posted:

There's no concept of progress or advancement in evolution, there's just survival.

So what you're saying is that it's possibly likely that the conditions that spurred the development of human intelligence as we understood it may be simply extraordinarily rare by chance?

Please don't request dick pics from other users, I don't want to know what OOCC's dick looks like. :stonk:

mycomancy
Oct 16, 2016

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

is asking to see my dick a fortnite thing? why are you kids asking to see my dick?

I'm not seeing any pics...

mycomancy
Oct 16, 2016

Lightning Knight posted:

So what you're saying is that it's possibly likely that the conditions that spurred the development of human intelligence as we understood it may be simply extraordinarily rare by chance?

Please don't request dick pics from other users, I don't want to know what OOCC's dick looks like. :stonk:

That's exactly what I'm getting at. We think intelligence is where it's at because we're intelligent, but it likely was a one-of event that's incredibly rare which adapted a specific organism to a specific environment. That's how we see evolution work in nature.

Re: OOCC, he shits up every thread he gets into. He's a scourge in the Tech Nightmare thread that makes fishmech look smart, and when I brought up a serious philosophical question, is it ethical to raise an animal to sentience so that now it knows it'll die in the future, he started bitching about kids and comic books. So I'm gonna harass him for dick pics until he fucks off, as he doesn't add anything to the conversation, babbling about Boltzmann brains and other nonsense.

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

Lightning Knight posted:

So what you're saying is that it's possibly likely that the conditions that spurred the development of human intelligence as we understood it may be simply extraordinarily rare by chance?

But what indicates it's rare? in the last 15 million years we have gotten like 1 human intelligence, plus like 3 or 4 other related hominids that had near/equal/(superior?) human intelligence, plus like 10 other near near human intelligent mammals plus crows and octopuses, (and ant colonies or whatever other weirdo side thing you wanna count as quasi-intelligent), earth seems to be bursting with intelligent creatures with humans only being slightly ahead and only very recently.

Like were 100 animals supposed to get sentient at the exact same instant? a bunch of stuff getting towards the threshold and then one being like 10% ahead of everything else seems like the literal only way it could happen. If elephants were going to evolve fire in 2 million years that is basically simultaneous to us doing it in evolutionary terms.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Other than some weirdos like squid and crows that are doing their own thing most of the really smart animals are mammals and generally are modern versions that evolved pretty recently. Like bottlenose dolphins are ~5 million years old. We crossed the magic line where being a tiny bit smarter hits the singularity and we invent complex language and explode into being able to make cellphones like 100 generations later but that isn't really that far ahead in the grand scheme of things. It's not like everyone else has been failing and failing for ages. The other smart animals are only a little older (or younger!) than we are. We won the race, but just barely, lots and lots of mammals have been rapidly developing more neural complexity. We have only been around a short amount of time, with tons and tons of animals only slightly behind us. we are loving up elephants so there isn't going to be much elephant future left, but if they had another few million years, they probably aren't much dumber than we were a few million years ago.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

There isn't really semi-intelligent animals that have been on earth significantly longer than people have been. dolphins and elephants are younger species than humans, dogs and pigs are younger than agriculture, and aren't from animals that have been around any longer than people. octopus and crows are amazing and some of the coolest and most clever things that exist, but die young and aren't really as smart as a dolphin or chimp, just alien and cool about how clever they are.

Like we are ahead of the other semi-intelligent animals, but not really much, like we beat them, but just so barely. many of them are younger than we are. It's not like we evolved intelligence while everything else tried and failed for a billion years or something, we beat everything else by like a week.

Sample size problem: you're looking at the animals that are around today and going "yep, these are all as smart as anything has ever been, intelligence is a race to the top, pack it in boys".

There could easily have been smart, even basic tool using dinosaurs around for tens of millions of years. Why does Archaeopteryx have to be dumber than a crow, or a velociraptor dumber than a wolf? Octopi have been around since at least the Jurassic, and there's no real reason the early ones would have been less intelligent. The filter isn't intelligence, it's opposable thumbs that allows us to make things that could potentially wind up in the fossil record; raptors could have all averaged a 200 IQ for all we'll ever know.

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

mycomancy posted:

Re: OOCC, he shits up every thread he gets into. He's a scourge in the Tech Nightmare thread that makes fishmech look smart, and when I brought up a serious philosophical question, is it ethical to raise an animal to sentience so that now it knows it'll die in the future, he started bitching about kids and comic books.

If intelligent life makes it to the year 500 million AD we are definitely leaving the solar system and me saying that is as much a hard fact as your thing about inventing furries who die when the sun warms and calling living things "meat cages". being pessimistic about the future and hating living things is not more serious than being optimistic.

We went to the moon in the 1960s, making space habits is more difficult than that, but one of the catgirls you think are going to exist can certainly figure it out given a million years, let alone 500 million. Like that is the weirdest thing about your story, most people say we won't go to space because we are in the end times and jesus/the USSR/pollution/y2k/mayans/etc is coming to end things soon but the idea that intelligent life made in a civilization that can grant intelligence to things is going to live 500 million years but not ever figure out space travel is not remotely a 'hard fact"

mycomancy
Oct 16, 2016

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

If intelligent life makes it to the year 500 million AD we are definitely leaving the solar system and me saying that is as much a hard fact as your thing about inventing furries who die when the sun warms and calling living things "meat cages". being pessimistic about the future and hating living things is not more serious than being optimistic.

We went to the moon in the 1960s, making space habits is more difficult than that, but one of the catgirls you think are going to exist can certainly figure it out given a million years, let alone 500 million. Like that is the weirdest thing about your story, most people say we won't go to space because we are in the end times and jesus/the USSR/pollution/y2k/mayans/etc is coming to end things soon but the idea that intelligent life made in a civilization that can grant intelligence to things is going to live 500 million years but not ever figure out space travel is not remotely a 'hard fact"

Pics of dicks or hit the bricks, OOCC.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!
26 new posts in the Space/Alien/Futurism Woo Thread. :woop:

*checks*

:yikes:

Since it's sort of relevant to the topic re: existential risks to humanity, the philosopher Nick Bostrom has written some fascinating pieces speculating on a lot of the subjects pertinent to this thread. Most pertinent is ""Where Are They? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing".

You may also have heard of him as he is the author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, a book that was inspired greatly by some conversations he had with internet fedora guy and self-styled polymath Eliezer Yudkowski. :rolleyes: While I think that the particular risk that he talks about in Superintelligence is, frankly, a bit out there, I find myself quite strongly influenced by his framing of the question of risks to humanity and the planet as a problem that is worth serious thought. I think that Bostrom's framework is better used to align ourselves to thinking about questions of present political risk (of totalitarianism evolving from a big-data state empowered by modern technology), risks to present civilization from abrupt climate change, and the long-term risk of the inevitable rendering of the Earth inhabitable by the evolution of the sun.

If you want a brief intro to Bostrom's thinking, you can find it in his paper "Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards" he sets out a nice little table to help frame the concept of existential risk, and sets out several potential scenarios that might threaten the existence of humanity. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of these are what I would call ridiculous sci-fi scenarios, but the idea of an existential risk analysis matrix is, I think, a useful one.

DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Dec 2, 2018

Party Plane Jones
Jul 1, 2007

by Reene
Fun Shoe
The next person to send somebody or ask somebody for a picture of their dick in this thread or in general that gets reported to me is getting banned and permabanned in that order.

Keep it in your loving pants Neil deGrasse Tyson

Party Plane Jones fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Dec 2, 2018

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010

If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

Lightning Knight posted:

I mean admittedly, Mars is closer. What kind of control delay does a lander on Europa? I know it's like 20 seconds on Mars, right?

long

mars is 3+ light-minutes away

jupiter is 33+

(the moon is 1 and a bit light seconds, so it would be inconvenient but possible to play MMORPGs with a lunar buddy :v: )

Unoriginal Name
Aug 1, 2006

by sebmojo
What makes people think that humans are intelligent

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

Adar posted:

Sample size problem: you're looking at the animals that are around today and going "yep, these are all as smart as anything has ever been, intelligence is a race to the top, pack it in boys".

There could easily have been smart, even basic tool using dinosaurs around for tens of millions of years. Why does Archaeopteryx have to be dumber than a crow, or a velociraptor dumber than a wolf? Octopi have been around since at least the Jurassic, and there's no real reason the early ones would have been less intelligent. The filter isn't intelligence, it's opposable thumbs that allows us to make things that could potentially wind up in the fossil record; raptors could have all averaged a 200 IQ for all we'll ever know.

Mammals have a bunch of brain complexity other animals don't have. It's totally possible animals in the past evolved then lost equivalent stuff repeatedly but there isn't any evidence for that, and if it's the case it makes intelligence seem to be even more trivially achievable if a bunch of things were evolving it totally independently instead of the modern day where we have all the quasi-intelligent animals be mostly not so distantly related in grand terms.

(octopuses are the neatest thing in the world and are clever as gently caress, crows too, but they aren't like chimps/dolphins/elephants. they are pretty simple but have such totally different brains they come up with stuff that is really fascinating, they went in a totally different direction than us and their basic skills are things that are advanced skills for our branch of evolution, so we kinda elevate them as smart in a way they aren't, but they are still really cool!!)

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Unoriginal Name posted:

What makes people think that humans are intelligent

What's your definition of "intelligence"?

Like, this seems like a facile dismissal of some peoples' points based on an intentional misunderstanding of the meaning of the word "intelligence" as used in the context of such discussions. If we want to belabor the point, we could call it "Big Activities", where we define "Big Activities" as "behaviors emerging from the aggregated combination of activities that humans do, based on our unique combination of abilities, those being: tool using culture, concepts of object permanence, self-awareness, longevity, eusociality/prosociality, capacity for language, and cultural transmission of memory". While many creatures display some of these traits, having all of them at once allowed us to coordinate our actions and interact socially on scales that are unique to humans, and leverage learning from the past and from many different cultures, that allowed us to become dominant across all biomes of the world in a way that no other sentient creature on earth has.

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth

mycomancy posted:


Re: OOCC, he shits up every thread he gets into. He's a scourge in the Tech Nightmare thread that makes fishmech look smart, and when I brought up a serious philosophical question, is it ethical to raise an animal to sentience so that now it knows it'll die in the future, he started bitching about kids and comic books. So I'm gonna harass him for dick pics until he fucks off, as he doesn't add anything to the conversation, babbling about Boltzmann brains and other nonsense.

You're not the erudite philosopher you think you are, guy.


e: And the answer is Yes. Yes it is 100% ethical, and honestly its probably a moral imperative to do so.

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

mycomancy posted:

That's exactly what I'm getting at. We think intelligence is where it's at because we're intelligent, but it likely was a one-of event that's incredibly rare which adapted a specific organism to a specific environment. That's how we see evolution work in nature.

The issue with this logic is that it doesn't properly take into the absurd number of dice rolling that is taking place on literally trillions of planets. It can be exceedingly unlikely and still occur millions of times.

squirrelzipper
Nov 2, 2011

Ytlaya posted:

The issue with this logic is that it doesn't properly take into the absurd number of dice rolling that is taking place on literally trillions of planets. It can be exceedingly unlikely and still occur millions of times.

Yeah this is a problem with the human mind grasping the scale of things. 1 in a billion chance events are going to happen all the time in our universe. Not necessarily in a time frame relevant to us but still...

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous

DrSunshine posted:

26 new posts in the Space/Alien/Futurism Woo Thread. :woop:

*checks*

:yikes:

Since it's sort of relevant to the topic re: existential risks to humanity, the philosopher Nick Bostrom has written some fascinating pieces speculating on a lot of the subjects pertinent to this thread. Most pertinent is ""Where Are They? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing".

You may also have heard of him as he is the author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, a book that was inspired greatly by some conversations he had with internet fedora guy and self-styled polymath Eliezer Yudkowski. :rolleyes: While I think that the particular risk that he talks about in Superintelligence is, frankly, a bit out there, I find myself quite strongly influenced by his framing of the question of risks to humanity and the planet as a problem that is worth serious thought. I think that Bostrom's framework is better used to align ourselves to thinking about questions of present political risk (of totalitarianism evolving from a big-data state empowered by modern technology), risks to present civilization from abrupt climate change, and the long-term risk of the inevitable rendering of the Earth inhabitable by the evolution of the sun.

If you want a brief intro to Bostrom's thinking, you can find it in his paper "Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards" he sets out a nice little table to help frame the concept of existential risk, and sets out several potential scenarios that might threaten the existence of humanity. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of these are what I would call ridiculous sci-fi scenarios, but the idea of an existential risk analysis matrix is, I think, a useful one.

By chance, I happened to read the paper about the concept of the Anthropic Shadow shortly after it was published, and it was rather interesting. Also, has this hilarious pic in it:

qkkl
Jul 1, 2013

by FactsAreUseless
I don't think it's so much intelligence that separates humans from, say, chimps, but rather education. Homo Sapiens 50,000 years ago would not have appeared to be much more advanced than chimps; they'd be living in caves and using simple tools to hunt. But what allowed humans to jump so far ahead of other animals is the invention of language, where older humans could teach younger humans things, and that allowed knowledge to build up so new humans didn't have to relearn everything from scratch and could spend their time learning new things about the world instead.

WAR CRIME GIGOLO
Oct 3, 2012

The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

qkkl posted:

I don't think it's so much intelligence that separates humans from, say, chimps, but rather education. Homo Sapiens 50,000 years ago would not have appeared to be much more advanced than chimps; they'd be living in caves and using simple tools to hunt. But what allowed humans to jump so far ahead of other animals is the invention of language, where older humans could teach younger humans things, and that allowed knowledge to build up so new humans didn't have to relearn everything from scratch and could spend their time learning new things about the world instead.

Dolphins have dialects and languages, self awareness is more then determiner. Chimps are purveyors of calculated cruelty

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

qkkl posted:

I don't think it's so much intelligence that separates humans from, say, chimps, but rather education. Homo Sapiens 50,000 years ago would not have appeared to be much more advanced than chimps; they'd be living in caves and using simple tools to hunt. But what allowed humans to jump so far ahead of other animals is the invention of language, where older humans could teach younger humans things, and that allowed knowledge to build up so new humans didn't have to relearn everything from scratch and could spend their time learning new things about the world instead.

Also physically fire worked as an external digestive tract and is a big reason homo erectus could start to evolve such a big brain that took so much energy to run. so dumb dumb animal just has to get smart enough to start making fires and then they can afford to evolve a bunch of luxury features. and then once you have that you have language and writing taking over for ultra rapid development. So we have tools a billion times better than a chimp, but once you pass a particular line the development goes vertical, first by very fast evolution to take advantage of the extremely increased energy intake then as you said, because of education and culture.

Kerning Chameleon
Apr 8, 2015

by Cyrano4747
This is kind of tangential, but I still think relevant to the whole Fermi Paradox point: Could Mars have ever been home to a present-day human equivalent of intelligent life?

This isn't me being facetious, we've literally only barely scratched the surface of Mars' secrets. How do we know for sure there wasn't once civilization there? It was forged of the same debris as the rest of the terrestrial planets, so obviously it could have the same ingredients needed for complex life to eventually form in its long history. Sure, we can say "oh, there are no obviously artificial artifacts or monuments, to say nothing of satellites." But, pop science though it may have been, stuff like The World Without People and Life After Us did a decent job of illustrating how even the seemingly most resilient human landmarks crumble to dust and get grown and eroded over on (geologically speaking) an extremely short timespan. Satellite orbits decay, and even plastic layer remnants would get buried far beneath what we've excavated so far on the red planet.

Could there have been an intelligent species on Mars that just couldn't cut the Great Filter mustard before their planetary time limit was up, then simply erased by the relentless march of time?

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Also physically fire worked as an external digestive tract and is a big reason homo erectus could start to evolve such a big brain that took so much energy to run. so dumb dumb animal just has to get smart enough to start making fires and then they can afford to evolve a bunch of luxury features. and then once you have that you have language and writing taking over for ultra rapid development. So we have tools a billion times better than a chimp, but once you pass a particular line the development goes vertical, first by very fast evolution to take advantage of the extremely increased energy intake then as you said, because of education and culture.

Fire likely is not it. Other species exploit fires just as early homnids would have and by all reckoning have been doing so since wild fires have been a thing. Just because they didnt make a camp fire doesnt mean they werent exploiting cooked food, though Im sure you could argue about the difference in nutrient value in something cooked over a fire rather then something being burned to death in a fire.

We don't know at all the origins of human intellience, or even the point things cross over into humanlike, you see this with the constant arguing of homnid intelligence, particularly around Neanderthals. The entire animal intelligence versus human intelligence thing also had/has major issues with how its been done in the past which bleeds over into the hominid thing too.

As for space travel, I feel like its one those things you can't just go "We will never do it". Assuming human civilization does not collapse or enter a period of serious stagnation I dont think its a reasonable position to say "Even 300 years from now we will not have any new tools in our toolbox, or they will be insufficent".

Humans are horrible at making those kinds long term perdictions in regards to society and technology. We as a modern day society mock and laugh at predictions made by scientists, sociologists, and other professionals 40-50 years ago about how life might be today, yet we loving love to go "Yes by the year 21XX we will have X,Y,Z, and how dare you think that is unreasonable for me to argue".

Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Dec 2, 2018

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?

Ytlaya posted:

The issue with this logic is that it doesn't properly take into the absurd number of dice rolling that is taking place on literally trillions of planets. It can be exceedingly unlikely and still occur millions of times.

Sure, but mycomancy still has a point and it's a good one. We have exactly one data point when it comes to placing evolutionary value on intelligence like ours. Hell, we really only have a single data point when it comes to understanding how life might form and ultimately develop. Not only do we not know how common life is in the first place, but we also have no idea how common life like that on Earth might be. Life elsewhere might be common, but drastically more static. If life does evolve elsewhere, it might do through mechanisms that are much different than life on Earth.

There are so many unanswered questions that we don't actually have any idea just how stacked the odds are. It's possible that the particular conditions that led to human intelligence are so incredibly rare that even one single example of it forming in the entire universe was unlikely.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

typhus posted:

This is where I come down. Endosymbiosis is an *endlessly* fascinating idea, and speaks to the sheer unlikelihood of intelligent or complex life. In a game of nigh-endless dice rolls, endosymbiosis is hard mode. And near as we can tell, in the total history of life on earth, it’s happened exactly once.

a few pages back, but you're :wrong:

mitochondria, chloroplasts, and you can watch a second independent origin of chloroplast style stuff in action
also beans and poo poo have roots full of more primitive endosymbionts

qkkl posted:

I don't think it's so much intelligence that separates humans from, say, chimps, but rather education. Homo Sapiens 50,000 years ago would not have appeared to be much more advanced than chimps; they'd be living in caves and using simple tools to hunt. But what allowed humans to jump so far ahead of other animals is the invention of language, where older humans could teach younger humans things, and that allowed knowledge to build up so new humans didn't have to relearn everything from scratch and could spend their time learning new things about the world instead.

It's being able to write poo poo down so you don't have to remember it exactly forever and then pass it on to your kids who also have to remember it exactly forever etc, hth

Party Plane Jones posted:

The next person to send somebody or ask somebody for a picture of their dick in this thread or in general that gets reported to me is getting banned and permabanned in that order.

Keep it in your loving pants Neil deGrasse Tyson

oh my god, it's full of dicks

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

suck my woke dick posted:



It's being able to write poo poo down so you don't have to remember it exactly forever and then pass it on to your kids who also have to remember it exactly forever etc, hth


Please explain A. The hilarious length of time humans havent used written records. And B. The loving huge amount of human cultures today that dont use written languages.

Thanks.

Also if modern ethnographic examples of child rearing in hunter gather societies are anything to go by we dont actually explain poo poo to the kids until they get fairly old. They watch what the parents do and mimic them till they get it right.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Telsa Cola posted:

Please explain A. The hilarious length of time humans havent used written records. And B. The loving huge amount of human cultures today that dont use written languages.

Thanks.

well how many non writing cultures have built nuclear reactors and spaceships and sewer systems :smug:

the point is it matters how easily and accurately we are able to pass down information, and while people are slightly more effective at remembering information and passing it down (allowing us to build mud huts and tents and better pointy sticks without writing down procedures) our key advantage is that once we became barely able to write that basically solved the problem of forgetting poo poo and not being able to look up someone else's knowledge without personally having to visit every time you have a basic question

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

suck my woke dick posted:

well how many non writing cultures have built nuclear reactors and spaceships and sewer systems :smug:

the point is it matters how easily and accurately we are able to pass down information, and while people are slightly more effective at remembering information and passing it down (allowing us to build mud huts and tents and better pointy sticks without writing down procedures) our key advantage is that once we became barely able to write that basically solved the problem of forgetting poo poo and not being able to look up someone else's knowledge without personally having to visit every time you have a basic question

Oral histories are a scarily effective way of passing down information effectively and the Western academic world has been repeatedly dunked on by oral histories they have discounted because they aren't "accurate" or written records.

There is an argument that writing allows better logistical and supply record keeping which allows better population centers to develop which in turn blah blah blah, but theres also a ton of areas with high population density and complexity but no writing so yeah.

Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Dec 2, 2018

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Telsa Cola posted:

Oral histories are a scarily effective way of passing down information effectively and the Western academic world has been repeatedly dunked on by oral histories they have discounted because they aren't "accurate" or written records.

a chain of events that gets added to slowly, is presumably considered foundational knowledge by its users and is probably one of the main long-term-stable pieces of information not directly relating to daily activities available is impressive but its capacity is limited

it would be, uh, challenging to fit all of germ theory, engineering, philosophy, history of not just your own group but hundreds of other societies, and vector calculus in that

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

suck my woke dick posted:

a chain of events that gets added to slowly, is presumably considered foundational knowledge by its users and is probably one of the main long-term-stable pieces of information not directly relating to daily activities available is impressive but its capacity is limited

it would be, uh, challenging to fit all of germ theory, engineering, philosophy, history of not just your own group but hundreds of other societies, and vector calculus in that

Not really? I mean if you wanted to structure it the way we do it and understands it in the West, yeah it would loving suck but many cultures fit in "this why you get sick, this how the world works, this is the story of us and also these people but mostly us, " into their oral histories. Complex maths and proofs would be hard/impossible though yes, but arguably not really important for most of human development and is only super god drat recent.

Basically, Humans got plenty complex without written language, and it's not really needed for them to be succesful populations or whatever.

Hell we have recorded instances of civilizations loosing their written language, but they still maintain fairly high levels of complexity.

Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Dec 2, 2018

EasternBronze
Jul 19, 2011

I registered for the Selective Service! I'm also racist as fuck!
:downsbravo:
Don't forget to ignore me!

Telsa Cola posted:

Not really? I mean if you wanted to structure it the way we do it and understands it in the West, yeah it would loving suck but many cultures fit in "this why you get sick, this how the world works, this is the story of us and also these people but mostly us, " into their oral histories. Complex maths and proofs would be hard/impossible though yes, but arguably not really important for most of human development and is only super god drat recent.

Basically, Humans got plenty complex without written language, and it's not really needed for them to be succesful populations or whatever.

Where are those nations today? Why do they not have satellites orbiting the Earth or computers capable of posting on SomethingAwful?

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

EasternBronze posted:

Where are those nations today? Why do they not have satellites orbiting the Earth or computers capable of posting on SomethingAwful?

Why do they need them? Why is your concept of advancement hinged upon a certain level of technological achievement or material wealth?

Follow up, are the countries in the world today with no satellites or computers with internet or whatever between animals and members of first world nations because they never developed them?

Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Dec 2, 2018

EasternBronze
Jul 19, 2011

I registered for the Selective Service! I'm also racist as fuck!
:downsbravo:
Don't forget to ignore me!

Telsa Cola posted:

Why do they need them?

Doing these things are far more complex than hand-waving germ theory and medicine as *THE SPIRITS HAVE CURSED OUR TRIBE* or whatever kind of absurd relativism you seem to be insisting on here.

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

EasternBronze posted:

Doing these things are far more complex than hand-waving germ theory and medicine as *THE SPIRITS HAVE CURSED OUR TRIBE* or whatever kind of absurd relativism you seem to be insisting on here.

And yet many nations in our world havent accomplished the achievements you listed.

And just because something is complex and advanced doesnt mean its needed.

EasternBronze
Jul 19, 2011

I registered for the Selective Service! I'm also racist as fuck!
:downsbravo:
Don't forget to ignore me!

Telsa Cola posted:

And yet many nations in our world havent accomplished the achivemnts you listed.

My history of oral tradition tells me that they have.

Why are you in the space thread claiming that knowledge or exploration of space is unneeded? Seems kind of a pointless exercise.

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

EasternBronze posted:

My history of oral tradition tells me that they have.

Ah, you are just being a dick. I see.

I never said it was uneeded in our society, but its hilarious for people to argue that a society that is doing just fine being hunter gatherers or whatever is really missing out on human advancement because they dont have vector calculus, satellites or internet acess. Im sure they could understand it, they just have no use for it and wont want it.

If you cant grasp that certain human societies are not going to give a gently caress about certain things that your own society values, I don't even begin to see how you hope to even barely understand an alien culture.

Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Dec 2, 2018

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Telsa Cola posted:

Not really? I mean if you wanted to structure it the way we do it and understands it in the West, yeah it would loving suck but many cultures fit in "this why you get sick, this how the world works, this is the story of us and also these people but mostly us, " into their oral histories. Complex maths and proofs would be hard/impossible though yes, but arguably not really important for most of human development and is only super god drat recent.

Basically, Humans got plenty complex without written language, and it's not really needed for them to be succesful populations or whatever.

Hell we have recorded instances of civilizations loosing their written language, but they still maintain fairly high levels of complexity.

What do you mean by complexity? The ability to develop poo poo like effective medication, (((globalisation))), maths, and comparative history which tells us how societies can succeed or fail (frequently ignored by politicians, but still) etc. requires systematic investigation and long lists of boring data that has to be taken into account but is extremely useless to remember unless you're a specialist in the field looking for counterintuitive but accurate results.

I can fully believe "you get sick, and a common reason is that tiny organisms try to take you over from the inside, and taking X herb often helps your body kill them off, but especially as you get older it's also possible that parts of your body grow out of control and harm the rest" can fit in an orally-transmitted document (and at a slight stretch I can believe that glass making is possible and at another much more substantial stretch that someone could bang together a really primitive optical microscope that kinda sorta resolves a cell through trial and error), but it's impractical to go on from there to develop molecular genetics and electron microscopes to investigate receptors on bacteria and cancer cells and understand how to target the precise mechanisms.

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Dec 2, 2018

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Telsa Cola posted:

Why do they need them? Why is your concept of advancement hinged upon a certain level of technological achievement or material wealth?
Because we're talking about what allows a lifeform to go to space. Other forms of advancement may be valid, but regardless of how happy a lifeform that is content to forever live in a bunch of pre-modern villages or mid-size towns* is, it's only relevant to the discussion insofar as it is included in the possibility of intelligent life not bothering to ever go to space.

*hopefully without frequent droughts, famines, and epidemics

quote:

Follow up, are the countries in the world today with no satellites or computers with internet or whatever between animals and members of first world nations because they never developed them?

No they just need to stop being poor :agesilaus:, for example through non-poo poo international development policy. While the number of societies not interested at all in having internet access or satellites might be nonzero, it is very small (especially as a proportion of world population) and most countries that don't have this poo poo lack it because they're currently unable to spend enough money to participate.

In general, I think of "has good standard of living for the masses while still being able to spend substantial time doing things totally unrelated to day-to-day practical needs" and "builds public works" as evidence of societal advancement, so it's not necessarily "go to space or else :commissar:" as much as "if being a subsistence farmer is a matter of survival rather than a matter of wanting to go back to your roots which you could stop doing whenever you want, then your society is not advanced"

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Dec 2, 2018

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Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

suck my woke dick posted:

What do you mean by complexity? The ability to develop poo poo like effective medication, (((globalisation))), maths, and comparative history which tells us how societies can succeed or fail (frequently ignored by politicians, but still) etc. requires systematic investigation and long lists of boring data that has to be taken into account but is extremely useless to remember unless you're a specialist in the field looking for counterintuitive but accurate results.

I can fully believe "you get sick, and a common reason is that tiny organisms try to take you over from the inside, and taking X herb often helps your body kill them off, but especially as you get older it's also possible that parts of your body grow out of control and harm the rest" can fit in an orally-transmitted document (and at a slight stretch I can believe that glass making is possible and at another much more substantial stretch that someone could bang together a really primitive optical microscope that kinda sorta resolves a cell through trial and error), but it's impractical to go on from there to develop molecular genetics and electron microscopes to investigate receptors on bacteria and cancer cells and understand how to target the precise mechanisms.

Complexity and advancment are interchangable though advancment is a loaded term so I try to use complexity or complex when discussing something with many parts,levels, etc.

Totally agree there are things oral histories can not do, but at the level of electronic microscoped and suchI feel like you are at a level of complexity where (what I thought) our main argument of the introduction writing raising us above animals is a moot point. My argument was that writing can't be the thing that really brings us above that level because we already were above that level before writing was invented.

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