![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Human Planet?
Mar. 23rd, 2011 05:09 amI have been watching Human Planet. I think the two main things I've learned from it are that humans are able to do a whole lot more than I'd ever risk, many of them laughing at us for worrying about it, and that humans have partnered up with so many species. Plant species for food and architecture (living bridges! hundreds of years old!), and animal species for... so many things! And not just domestication, not just milking horses or pet helpful monkeys or hunting hawks, but partnered with wild things, elephants looking for food and honey guides that lead humans to honey with special calls they only use to talk to us.
If humans go out into space, and only humans, we just won't be the same species any more. We'll have left all these other parts behind.
One of Niven's laws is The only universal message in science fiction: There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently.
The first thing that teaches us humans that is our interactions with animal minds down here. And if you think 'as well as you do' rules them out, I've seen monkeys trying to get into foods, and squirrels, and birds. Many plenty things keep outsmarting us, when they care to.
If humans go out into the universe away from all these other minds... hell, if humans like me in these urban places decide these weird 'pet' things are just a bad idea, or call them all pests and decide we can't afford them... I don't think we'll be the best candidates for first contact. If we've only ever talked to other kinds of human, only ever had to learn to see through human eyes, how are we qualified to understand the very new other minds out there? All these people just getting by in the wild places, seems like they only have these skills because it's the only way to eat, learning turtle life or how to steal from lions or how to track the fast thing until the poison gets it. But they can see with not just one human set of needs in mind, they can see all the good and bad worlds of these other species. Turn their minds around, have other thoughts. And work partners with them, remember to feed what helped them, leave out water now they have spare to say thanks for finding some out there in the desert. Partners because they have to be, not thinking of cooperation as some kind of civilised luxury. I think maybe that's better training for first contact and being human ambassadors than just school studying.
We got to bring all our sorts of minds along, to have the best chance facing the future.
... but for most of these individuals the BBC were filming I kept on thinking the BBC should just pay them plenty good fish, cans of food, bring something that wasn't a snake to eat. Who chooses to go out and live that way? Not the camera crew, they bring all their stuff with them. Humans want to get away from this tricky seasonal dangerous stuff, come live where we've got the flow smoothed over and we can do this 'safety' thing. How we keep these many sorts of minds when individuals are better off out of it?
Still, another theme of the series was people teaching their apprentices, and here we are sitting at home learning bits and glimpses of it all.
Do we need to live it out there to get the mind tricks? Can we learn from the stories?
... hence the science fiction, among other things. Mind training...
But I know full well my sofa life prepares me for bugger all, out there.
If humans go out into space, and only humans, we just won't be the same species any more. We'll have left all these other parts behind.
One of Niven's laws is The only universal message in science fiction: There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently.
The first thing that teaches us humans that is our interactions with animal minds down here. And if you think 'as well as you do' rules them out, I've seen monkeys trying to get into foods, and squirrels, and birds. Many plenty things keep outsmarting us, when they care to.
If humans go out into the universe away from all these other minds... hell, if humans like me in these urban places decide these weird 'pet' things are just a bad idea, or call them all pests and decide we can't afford them... I don't think we'll be the best candidates for first contact. If we've only ever talked to other kinds of human, only ever had to learn to see through human eyes, how are we qualified to understand the very new other minds out there? All these people just getting by in the wild places, seems like they only have these skills because it's the only way to eat, learning turtle life or how to steal from lions or how to track the fast thing until the poison gets it. But they can see with not just one human set of needs in mind, they can see all the good and bad worlds of these other species. Turn their minds around, have other thoughts. And work partners with them, remember to feed what helped them, leave out water now they have spare to say thanks for finding some out there in the desert. Partners because they have to be, not thinking of cooperation as some kind of civilised luxury. I think maybe that's better training for first contact and being human ambassadors than just school studying.
We got to bring all our sorts of minds along, to have the best chance facing the future.
... but for most of these individuals the BBC were filming I kept on thinking the BBC should just pay them plenty good fish, cans of food, bring something that wasn't a snake to eat. Who chooses to go out and live that way? Not the camera crew, they bring all their stuff with them. Humans want to get away from this tricky seasonal dangerous stuff, come live where we've got the flow smoothed over and we can do this 'safety' thing. How we keep these many sorts of minds when individuals are better off out of it?
Still, another theme of the series was people teaching their apprentices, and here we are sitting at home learning bits and glimpses of it all.
Do we need to live it out there to get the mind tricks? Can we learn from the stories?
... hence the science fiction, among other things. Mind training...
But I know full well my sofa life prepares me for bugger all, out there.