News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Mythology of Dog Years. Parent comment

Re:The Mythology of Dog Years by JoeAltmaier on Thursday October 02, 2014 @10:31AM (#8400864)
Seems right; but I can't help thinking all we do that is not related to the physical is, by definition, imaginary. We THINK we're doing things, but its all fantasy stuff - art, math, philosophy. Imagine a different biology of intelligent beings - maybe an amoebic colony-mass of semi-intelligent cells that create a group brain. What would their philosophy look like? Would they have trade or commerce or families or anything we would recognize? I think No.

But they have 'left their substrate' too. Yet there's no common ground with us. That means, most of what we do 'beyond our biological goals' is in fact still rooted in our biology.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Mythology of Dog Years by bradleysmith on Thursday October 02, 2014 @05:50PM (#8403297)
Very interesting. I'm going to have to ponder on that one.

I agree that goals 'beyond our biology' are, quite basically, rooted IN THAT biology. We can never trust our perception to be anything other than a reflection of that biology, so I see your point.

>Would they have trade or commerce or families or anything we would recognize? using different language, maybe. They WOULD have resource transmission and interactions, methods of managing scarcity, and methods of categorizing and identifying individual nodes in their system.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Mythology of Dog Years by JoeAltmaier on Friday October 03, 2014 @12:17AM (#8404293)
Its a fun game to imagine 10 commandments for alien races. E.g. Thou Shalt Kill thy Father, Mother and CoProgenitors for a race that eats their ancestors to process their neurological tissue and preserve their knowledge and personalities.
[ Parent | on HN ]