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Enough is Enough: A Thinking Ape’s Critique of Trans-Simianism
The following was taken from a cave wall painting in southern Tunisia more than 300,000 years ago. Fossil evidence suggests that the author was of the species Homo erectus.
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Posted by brandechh on 12/18 at 04:24 PM
While I disagree with Klomp's conclusions, I can't help but find the fanciful ideas titillating. Imagine the possibilities - blades that could be longer than a forefinger, simians that could count their lifespans with two sets of hands and feet, even devices that could somehow move objects from one place to another without hurting knees and backs! Perhaps methods could be found that preserve language and transfer ideas from one location to another. The myriad concepts are beyond imagination - and yet they will not likely be reality. I don't see Klomp's ideas coming to fruition any more than I could see this "walking" fad lasting more than a few years. Still, Klomp would make a great legend-talker. I'd love to hear what stories he could conjure from the cave fires.
Posted by duckrabbit on 12/28 at 06:00 AM
Bravo!
I loved the section on writing: "Even if such a thing were possible, it is doubtful that many would wish to store their memories externally. This author, for one, would prefer it if his memories stayed in his head and not on some cold, lifeless bark."
This reminded me of a similar line of thought in Plato's Phaedrus dialogue. It's really touching : Plato was such an obviously gifted writer, but was really afraid of the consequences of the development of written culture. He worries that our memories will deteriorate and that we will lose accountability for our ideas...
(P.S. "fear and not fear" was THE BEST!)
Posted by cats on 12/31 at 06:47 PM
Hahaha, using the internet, a technology that didn't exist a decade ago, to attack the idea that technology is progressing faster than in ancient times.
I hope they invent a time machine so they can send people like you back to the 1800s, when you'd be happy. None of this awful technology to tax your ape brain.
Posted by nitrocorp on 04/18 at 04:35 PM
What an awesome metaphor. just as we can't understand the future technological gains that will be made they couldn't either. would it be bold to say that this essay is sarcastic and actually pro-singularity? i don't think so.
Well done.
Posted by Vx on 04/27 at 01:03 PM
GREAT! Author rocks! And yet a few words...
Grog, the Associate Professor of Helping To Kill An Animal After Professor Finds It:
"Yes, Mr Thog, and I must admit another trans-simianistic threat - the bloody desacration of Holy Water by swimming and attempts to settle on the Other Side! Imagine, they say apes will soon learn to swim as only fish can! What a blasphemy. It is obvious than swimming badly deformates our sceleton, unnaturally spoils our body and mind and those who swam are cursed for disturbing One Who Lives On The Other Side! And those crazy swimmers - imagine - try to eat fish!"
Thog: "FISH? What a hell! It is well known that eating cold-blooded creatures makes our blood cold and makes us half ape, half fish! Hasn't Mr Papa declared Seven New Taboos including fishing and eating fish! This is worse that eating other apes! Beat them all!"
Posted by Vx on 04/27 at 01:13 PM
Grog: "Just FYI. They call themselves "aquanauts". They should have learned it from another tribe's "rivernauts". One of those miserable Red barbarians jumped into The River, didn't sink and proclaimed himself "the first ape in the water". Then our crazy warriors told the Chief that we should also learn to swim to beat the bloody Reds. And it was our tribe's two apes who dared to swim to the Moon's Island and walked on its holy ground! What a shame..."
Posted by Eric Burns on 05/01 at 02:55 AM
Naturally, Professor Thog continues to extol the acts of killing animals by rock in hand instead of using the arrow. Thog, as all tenured professors seem to be going back into the mists of what the older people remember and tell me happened, wishes for nothing more than for before-now to replace now, and refuses to accept the very existence of 'soon.'
As with all things, truth can be found not in Thog's worship of what was and Klomp's wild fantasies of what he thinks will be, but in the practical study of what *is,* right now. Our flintknapping techniques make our clubs into axes, our rocks into knives. We use our knives to make our sticks pointed sticks. We use our pointed sticks and more flintknapping to make spears. This is not some bizarre "post-simian" evolution -- this is simply what *is.*
Could we make better spears, arrows, axes and knives? Perhaps, if we should come across harder rocks. We have done some interesting things with the red rocks from the valley-where-Tog-once-bit-that-Lynx-Man-you-should-have-seen-it-it-was-hysterical. But this is no 'evolution,' even if Klomp claims it would be. This is simply finding harder rocks. The harder rocks were there. We already know how to flintknap. Klomp mistakes engineering for philosophy.
But as mist-eyed as Klomp is, I would take it over Thog. Thog, who 'teaches' others to find animals and then kill them, but who hasn't himself found an animal and killed it since he was thirteen. Tenure, thy name is laziness. Of course Thog teaches the old ways. He does not have to use them. And yet, his students still come and ask for spears and bows. The women still learn to bang the rocks into each other to flake off the sharp bits, and the men learn it too when they do not have a woman to do it.
If Thog is concerned with his inner Simian nature, let him pour water over his fire, throw his spear and bow out, stop making students bring him part of their kill as 'tuition,' and see how long he lasts killing animals with unknapped stone. Frankly, I doubt it would be overly long before a bear eats him. A *bear,* who we have long since made our meals rather than the other way around.
In the end, by focusing on the *now* instead of the *then* or the *soon,* we shall persevere. Let us not become Beavers, spending all our time stacking ridiculous wood and blocking the water. Nothing productive ever came from planning.
--Hork,
Professor of Banging Rocks into other Rocks To Make Sharp Rocks
The University of the Woods at the Caves By The Woods
Posted by Matthew A Portillo on 05/03 at 04:11 PM
Nice! I've bookmarked it http://www.propeller.com/submit/checkstory :D
Posted by Carlos M Tomblin on 05/17 at 03:04 PM
Thanks for the info. BTW I've marked it
Posted by brandon carbaugh on 08/13 at 03:20 AM
You know I must say I was with Klomp's theories until he began to talk of domesticating animals. He theorizes that by training and selectively breeding wolves, they may become more intelligent than they are now. *More* intelligent wolves! Surely they would rise up and destroy our way of life; it is impossible for ape and wolf to coexist peacefully, and anyone who says otherwise is an evil spirit and must, as you know, be sacrificed to Oh-my-god-that-mountain-is-on-fire Mountain.
Posted by brandon carbaugh on 08/13 at 05:36 PM
Thought you might like to know I emailed this to Kurzweil himself (whose address I found on the singularity website). Surprisingly, he responded the very same day:
"That's funny, thank you for sharing. It IS a very good argument."
Posted by darth_schmoo on 04/30 at 03:30 AM
I'd love to see a graph of Morg's law. How fast *did* things get sharper over time? Have we reached the end of Morg's law, now that we can make things 1 atom thick?
Posted by A. Karttunen on 07/13 at 11:35 AM
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daedalus;_or,_Science_and_the_Future
by J.B.S. Haldane:
"The chemical or physical inventor is always a Prometheus. There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god. But if every physical and chemical invention is a blasphemy, every biological invention is a perversion. There is hardly one which, on first being brought to the notice of an observer from any nation which had not previously heard of their existence, would not appear to him as indecent and unnatural.
Consider so simple and time-honored a process as the milking of a cow. The milk which should have been an intimate and almost sacramental bond between mother and child is elicited by the deft fingers of a milk-maid, and drunk, cooked, or even allowed to rot into cheese. We have only to imagine ourselves as drinking any of its other secretions, in order to realise the radical indecency of our relation to the cow."
Posted by Ben Bradley on 09/21 at 06:12 PM
Meanwhile, other hard-working simians. having never heard the arguments of these high-fallutin' professors, were creating the beginnings of modern commerce:
"Palaentologists recently deciphered the following, painted on a cave wall on the slopes of Kilimanjaro."
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/98/Mar/makeclubs.html
Also, modern physics shows how Morg's Law continues to subatomic levels of sharpness simply by using one's branes.
Posted by Robin on 10/08 at 02:46 PM
First off, if Thog and Klomp were indeed of the suggested species, then they would not be Simians, they would be HOMOs -- not that there's anything wrong with that.
Secondly, the approximate dating of these supposed Homo Erectus cave paintings show this entire charade is obviously nothing more than a devious Neanderthal forgery, clearly intended to sap the vital bodily essence of those of us supporting the Organization of Modern Humans. How long must we wait before some of our naysayers finally realize that the only good Neanderthal is a dead Neanderthal. Let us only hope that they awaken to the Neanderthal Conspiracy before it is too late!
Posted by Nero on 12/07 at 07:29 PM
It looks like some readers don't get the obvious metaphor. I'll spell it out: there will always be people afraid of progress.
Posted by veronica on 12/08 at 03:13 AM
Close, Nero, but not quite. There will always be people afraid of /certain types/ of progress.
Posted by Apes-ma on 12/23 at 01:43 PM
Thog is correct. Taken to it's extreme, this sort of "technological growth" could lead to crazy things like studying how simians work biologically and then trying to piece together parts of various simians to produce a sort of super-simian monster. Image if by accident you included an abnormal brain in such a monster what could occur! I shudder to think.
I beg you please follow the strickt traditional interpretations of all things otherwise, we could tilt the delicate balance of nature and start some sort of chain-reaction which would go out of control and destroy the entire universe.
Posted by Nemo Starem on 03/04 at 06:52 AM
As hilarious and even ingenious as it may be, I don't think it qualifies as an argument. To begin with, Erectus didn't paint on caves, write, had academic arguments, kept records of the past or such things. I know the author probably knows it.
Secondly, what is technology without morals, ethics, and a way to direct it for the greater good? A lot of new tech is created for warfare alone I.E. killing and dominance of other humans. In Africa, many still live in the neolithic and not by choice. In many countries the living span is below 30 years. So we may ask ourselves, what is tech good for without a cause and a plan to use it to improve the actual living of mankind? (and not "global industrial efficiency" as of current history).
Posted by Samuel Skinner on 05/17 at 05:17 PM
" had academic arguments"
Arguing about wheter or not you should spend time learning new methods of x would count as academic argument. After all, if we focus on making type a tools, we can get more fish, but they aren't as good for hunting so if we switch back it will take longer.
I'm not sure if they are smart enough to do that though.
"Secondly, what is technology without morals, ethics, and a way to direct it for the greater good?"
Raw hardware.
" A lot of new tech is created for warfare alone I.E. killing and dominance of other humans."
Most is for civilian use though. Military drives tech development in some fields because of the constant need to be better than your opponent, while for civilians, have last years operating system won't result in your gruesome death.
"Africa, many still live in the neolithic and not by choice. "
I'm almost positive that except for hunter gatherers, they don't use stone tools in Africa anymore.
"In many countries the living span is below 30 years."
No country has a life expectancy less than 30, only one has a life expectancy less than 40 and only 17 are below 50.
"So we may ask ourselves, what is tech good for without a cause and a plan to use it to improve the actual living of mankind? "
Given that current technoloy is enough to allow use to reach 80 years average in some places, it isn't technology that is the problem, but organization. It isn't even wealth- you can get a life expectancy of 74 with just $1,000 per capita (Vietnam). Did I mention world per capita income is $10,000
Posted by Rick Shettino on 05/19 at 12:38 AM
You could say the technology of visual representation of words is a remote brain-to-brain interface.
Posted by Nemo Starem on 05/26 at 01:23 AM
"I'm almost positive that except for hunter gatherers, they don't use stone tools in Africa anymore."
It's not that that defines it; it is illiteracy and level of life.
"Most is for civilian use though. Military drives tech development in some fields because of the constant need to be better than your opponent, while for civilians, have last years operating system won't result in your gruesome death."
But it is unnecesary. Many resources that could be put for better use are used instead to create weapons of destruction; that set countries where they are used backward socially and economically. It is counterproducent to produce bombs, which then destroy buildings, cities and lives when that could be used to research and develop medicine, or even food, architecture, engineering, etc.
In other news, most weapons are not ever used. Which means that in pther words you are building them for nothing. More over, no country is going to invade western europe or USA; their armies are set to secure economic interests abroad, not to protect their sovereignity.
"No country has a life expectancy less than 30, only one has a life expectancy less than 40 and only 17 are below 50."
Well, reliable sources (known example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy) do show that at least one country is near 30 average life expectancy. Ans this life expectancy do not cover infantile mortality that has a mountrous rate at those countries.
"Given that current technoloy is enough to allow use to reach 80 years average in some places, it isn't technology that is the problem, but organization. It isn't even wealth- you can get a life expectancy of 74 with just $1,000 per capita (Vietnam). Did I mention world per capita income is $10,000"
Yes, but wealth in the current system is not invested in áreas to further development, I.E., it is not directed to improve the level of life of the population, but instead it is run by corporations whose only aim is profit; improving the quality of life of some sector is not a goal, but a secondary effect. There is no much capital willing to invest on the poor areas by the companies because simply there is not a lot of capital to extract. Development is thus slow or null, and population keeps growing so the conditions do not improve.
That proves that technology won't do all things by itself, it merely provides a medium; a tool, indeed powerful, but the purpose for which it is used must be somehow focalized and directed, and that is a different issue.
Posted by Joel on 12/02 at 02:29 AM
I had this picture saved on my hard drive and was reminded of it but when I dug it up I found out it was from the same site.
http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/
Posted by Dirk on 12/05 at 01:45 AM
"As hilarious and even ingenious as it may be, I don't think it qualifies as an argument"
Google argument. Or in a nutshell it makes an argument via a thought experiment involving human ancestors facing a kind of singularity involving their evolution into us. It is an argument to refute common critiques of the singularity idea by applying them to this previous "singularity". It is an effective argument. The appropriateness of the analogies used will likely be proved or disproved this century.
"Yes, but wealth in the current system is not invested ... That proves that technology won't do all things by itself, it merely provides a medium; a tool, indeed powerful, but the purpose for which it is used must be somehow focalized and directed, and that is a different issue. "
Missing the point. Tech does not need to be focused nor ubiquitous nor planned nor "optimized". It does not even have to be really useful. It only needs to evolve over time. The whole point of all this is the singularity and trans-humanism. If the singularity happens then technology will in fact "do all things by itself" as it becomes self-sustaining at the point that beyond human AI is created and there is enough room for improvement left for a singularity event.
Posted by Davide on 03/04 at 01:23 PM
I'm translating this in italian, I'm sure the transhumanist community here will enjoy it as well (sadly english isn't all that well known in Italy).
It sounds like something Terry Pratchett would write if he was a transhumanist :D
Excellent job.
Also, I love your drawings.
Posted by crawlkill on 03/23 at 08:25 PM
this is indeed Pratchetterial material. and is so amazingly amazing I think I'd like to steal it.
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