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What form of life does nature consider highest?

anon_zapi said in #3460 1w ago: received

>>3449
>are there other grounds except aesthetic to prefer the higher type of life ? Why should we care if it is mere life that proliferates, yeast life ... or the nobler[?] ... Does Nature favour the nobler on a long enough time scale ?

Empirically, literal yeast life wins the contest of sheer biomass. The untouchable prokaryotic bacterial masses that recycle the world's biological waste out-masses everything else. On that theme we're also soundly beaten by hive insects like ants and such. I imagine within the human world it will always be the same as well.

Anon suggested athletic power density as a measure of higher life the other day. There the hummingbird and sphinx moth beat everyone else with extreme power densities of up to 500 watts per kilogram. If this was the apex of life, you could do worse. For reference, a jet turbine is more like 5000 watts per kilogram, also an impressive artifact of higher life.

Trophic hierarchy as a proxy for raw dominance power is another measure, topped out by humans, lions, wolves, orcas, and generally the high-intelligence high-violence somewhat social mammal super-predators. The rest of those are now under the explicit protection of humans as monuments of natural nobility, so (at least some) humans definitely top the list. But man is himself a highly flexible multitude with the majority being the spiritual equivalent of mere biomass and parasitic flatworms, with the wolf-spirits in the minority.

There is much fear from futurists and philosophers that the lower biomass will somehow overpower and permanently curtail the higher, whether in the form of grey goo or dalit democracy. How founded is this? What is nature's answer to the threat of mere biomass?

God in his infinite wisdom seems to have decreed that there shall be no globally dominant equilibrium solutions to the problem of life. Whenever a uniform bacterial mat efficiently flattens the trophic hierarchy down to a single dominant form that would "tile the universe" with itself, along comes some predatory super-being to tunnel through this mat and eat its juicy flesh, or farm its productive capacity as the tax base of a higher form. Universality creates opportunity for predation. The normie is the perfect victim-cattle.

But once the predator is firmly established, the prey, parasites, scavengers, and internal competition all innovate to cut into its margins. So there is a collapse back to the more desperate malthusian equilibrium. This is familiar in late-stage civilization: the dominant civilization-building higher man is overcome by his democratic waste products, less creative imitators, cancers of social organization, and innovations in resentment. But at each stage this process is powered by some kind of innovation, some of which accumulates, so on a long enough timescale this circle of life spirals outward into ever higher forms. Zoomed out on the hundred thousand or hundred million year timescale, the upward trajectory is clear.

Where does it go? Are we spiralling inward to some convergent super-being, or outward into a super-ecosystem of ever more diverse forms? Probably both somehow. There's value in pushing this forward, but which direction is forward is systematically obscured and discoverable only by exploration. And the forward direction is usually either some form of heretical defection on the existing order, or pushing to new heights in the established contest. Either way, no easy silver bullet. Life is a confused struggle.

I don't believe there is any fixed natural archetype or metric of higher life. At best we can make a bet on some particular niche that appeals to us. But the original sin of Nietzschean-style philosophy is that its aesthetic intuition is guided by nostalgia for a niche that no longer exists. Homeric man is dead. Even modern man is dead or dying. The problem of higher life isn't just "how" or "why" it's actually "what". Still we must take our leap of faith.

referenced by: >>3564

Empirically, literal received

anon_wute said in #3564 2d ago: received

>>3460
>But the original sin of Nietzschean-style philosophy is that its aesthetic intuition is guided by nostalgia for a niche that no longer exists. Homeric man is dead. Even modern man is dead or dying. The problem of higher life isn't just "how" or "why" it's actually "what".
I don't think Homeric man is dead. Men out of time, and in the general case beings of higher life within a species, arise with statistical certainty. There have been around 1e11 humans, so you'd expect around 100 historical instances of anyone with a +6 z-score for some normally distributed trait, and 1 instance sometime between 0 humans and whenever we 10x cumulative population for a +7 z-score. Christians believe Jesus was a 7er for something like 'spiritual intelligence'. Religion broadly is the study of 6ers. Great foun...man theory is the study of 5ers. Eugenics is the practice of increasing positive skew of your local distribution, which bends the CDF and gives more 5ers and 6ers and 7ers.

This is all to say that higher life need not appear in the context of a novel organism, rather it is reasonable to think that the "what" will physically look like a Tom, Dick, or Harry. I can’t even imagine what an 8er would get done. Akira?

referenced by: >>3569 >>3570

I don't think Homeri received

anon_ciju said in #3566 2d ago: received

The lower biomass does curtail the higher by nature of them being more social. Because they are not as capable, they spend their time scheming as their way of survival. The capable are independent and disagreeable, and that is their weakness.

The highest form of human life is that with reason: the ability to think of ideas to change one's behavior rapidly. To connect cause and effect, to see patterns, to do things at literal faster pace. Yeast life is not like that: it only seeks to preserve and imitate that which has already been created. Quite frankly, I don't think they're capable of creation at all, so I think it's not so much triumph as it is temporary stasis as they try to hold back change.

We are held back by the social accumulations and presumptions of past, yet we cannot overthrow them for to violate such norms brings the hammer of police upon oneself, even still to build enough of an alternative to surpass these roadblocks is immensely difficult in the age of technological complexity, so the colonization of social yeast into the institutions of old will be hard to remove.

When I pour hydrogen peroxide on grout mold, it bubbles and fizzes like a little scream; the catalase ineffective against my downpour. When the ingrained mycelium yeast is removed it will likewise make noise, not unlike the newspaper industry. Now my question is: what acts as H2O2 against yeast and fungi?

referenced by: >>3568 >>3570

The lower biomass do received

anon_raqo said in #3568 2d ago: received

>>3566

Being able to identify and exploit patterns of real life human behavior indicate more capability to me than high-IQ-disagreeable-meritocract noticing.

referenced by: >>3583

Being able to identi received

anon_raqo said in #3569 2d ago: received

>>3564

The notion that human genius is normally distributed is absurd. On one hand there are entire dark continents, and on the other there are historical instantiations of societies where genius statesmen, artisans, and playwrights lived contemperaneously within a few square miles.

referenced by: >>3570

The notion that huma received

anon_zapi said in #3570 2d ago: received

>>3564
>>3569
More pointedly, i dont think higher man or homeric man or anything like that is about absolute competence or anything like that. Its an interesting lens to think through but the reality is more about types, and types are about niche. Homeric man is dead because we do not live and die the way they did. For one they were not oppressed by the “hammer of police” or the civilized democracy that killed them off in later generations that >>3566 talks about.

As for what acts as an oxidant or high energy attack on the yeast, ability to evade the informal suppression is high on the list. Homo Pantera must break out of the cage.

referenced by: >>3584

More pointedly, i do received

anon_ciju said in #3583 2d ago: received

>>3568

My preference for the truth, need for mutual respect, and seeing others as independent individuals holds me back. The communication style in the United States at moment is not well-suited to me.

The right age to realize the world is fake is in your late 20s. Too early and you drop out of the entire system and work in a supermarket or restaurant. I met a lot of these 'ADHD' kids who have potential.

For me I lost faith in my early 20s, so I must build something of my own skill to make an income, but I suppose I did well enough to get college and travels paid for.

My preference for th received

anon_ciju said in #3584 2d ago: received

>>3570

Yes, saying one thing and doing the opposite is a yeast attack against the truthful and moral. So is the usage of intonation in the voice to suggest things.

I've come to anticipate most of these sneak attacks by experience and warding them off becomes second nature.

Yes, saying one thin received

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