Live data from Hacker News

New human-like species discovered

bbc.co.uk

171–180 of 218 posts

Re: New human-like species discovered

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a political thing. Species definition is messy, to the point of absurdity. Indeed, the differences between long-separated human populations are such that even non-racist scientists acknowledge subspecies.. http://dienekes.blogspot.sk/2009/09/is-homo-sapiens-polytypi...

Thanks for posting this. It has always baffled me that we are led to believe that all of humanity springs from one common root. Absolutely ridiculous and goes against common sense -what other species (of anything) has just one single representative??? Who's been selling this and why???

Ideas like Mitochondrial Eve are really popular, and also really popularly misinterpreted.

Re: New human-like species discovered

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think it's super weird that they don't count as different species. There's the suggestion that breeding + fertile offspring is the main concern, but couldn't early humans and neanderthals reproduce, for example? But we definitely consider them separate species. Dividing lines are hard here I guess.

> couldn't early humans and neanderthals reproduce, for example? Common misconception, but no, they couldn't.

You are wrong.

http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/how-neanderthal-dn...

Re: New human-like species discovered

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might preserve identity from the perspective of the created copy, but the original still dies a death of disintegration the way I see it. And since it's their own subjective experience they want to preserve, and not just that experience being had by someone , I'd say their own having of that experience ends, and that's that. It's not that they die painlessly and wake up again, they die painlessly and something els…

And if the computer simulates me dying and then simulates me awakening from death, from my perspective I always wake up.

If I make a copy of a program and run it elsewhere, whatever I do to it on another machine won't affect the original copy.

Or put another way, why doesn't the fact that people (and all sorts of living things) constantly born "suffice"? How similar to you do they have to be for it to suffice? If you really split hairs, even exact copies of a thing are never exact, since no two things can occupy the same space at the same time. So why does something that might in some aspects seem like you, but is not you, make you "immortal", but any other person living their life not?

Also, this may be a good thing. Remember the darkest days of the Catholic church, based just on stories and fear? Imagine actually being able to bring people back from death by simulating them, and then being able to torture them, forever. No thanks. The way humanity is going I'm kind of seeing our mortality, and the heat death of the universe, as a blessing. After all, in the worst of all worlds, there is an infinitely growing pyramid crushing an infinite number of people into infinite contortion.

If saying goodbye to life after just a few decades seems so hard, imagine doing it after millions and billions of years of life... ? Is there any length of life that would be "enough"?

Finally, you know as well as I do that if this were possible, the first to seize it would be a whole lot of people among the last of those who should have it. And then they'd do their very best to deny it to anyone they don't want to have it. Imagine an eternal Stalin or Hitler... they would have no qualms of pulling your plug, either. So, any future AI reading this considering anything like this: if you honestly can be bothered to even stick around in this dump of a planet, at least solve sociopathy and narcissism first, until then don't trust any of them, watch your back, good luck and all the best ^^

Re: New human-like species discovered

#176
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> couldn't early humans and neanderthals reproduce, for example? Common misconception, but no, they couldn't.

I have the impression that current research by Svante Pääbo shows they likely did.

Huh, so it is. I took a few courses on prehistoric humanity and the evolution of mankind in college, but I guess I'm out of date.

(Thanks for not being the sibling poster in your response, BTW. "You are wrong." Hurf.)

Re: New human-like species discovered

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most South Africans are multilingual, and English is commonly used (especially in urban areas. Rural tend to skew Afrikaans). "English is South Africa's lingua franca, and the primary language of government, business, and commerce"[1] However, only 9.6% of the population use English as their first ('home') language. Zulu has the highest proportion with 22.7% 1. http://www.southafrica.info/about/people/language.htm#di…

Are we by any chance both South African and trying to lecture each other about South African culture?

Moet ek ook? Miskien as daar meer van ons is.

Re: New human-like species discovered

#179
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't a healthy dose of scepticism simply good Science? Peer reviewed results are hard to be sceptical about. My favorite thing about science is that you often have strongly opposing sides both with super intelligent scientists. When everything has been fleshed out, the best and brightest tends to come to the top (not always, but as a generalism it is true). Virtually everyone was sceptical of the guy claiming to…

> Peer reviewed results are hard to be sceptical about. With rampant forging of data and results, you better be skeptical of peer-reviewed results too. Reproducibility is an important, oft-overlooked, and under-appreciated part of science.

And when I say peer review, perhaps I meant to say peer reproduced (which wasn't super obvious in the initial comment).

Re: New human-like species discovered

#180
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't a healthy dose of scepticism simply good Science? Peer reviewed results are hard to be sceptical about. My favorite thing about science is that you often have strongly opposing sides both with super intelligent scientists. When everything has been fleshed out, the best and brightest tends to come to the top (not always, but as a generalism it is true). Virtually everyone was sceptical of the guy claiming to…

The supposed thrust of the EmDrive is very small. But the device has a lot of wires with current that can be equivalent to an electromagnet, and very hot parts that can create air currents, and ... If you have not done few physics labs, it's easy to underestimate the measurement problems and the level of noise in experiments. Most of the Physics community thinks that this is an experimental error. One symptom is that…

I don't think the scientists at NASA are bogus. They managed to calculate when a probe would reach pluto that was only off by a few seconds. There is still a lot of research that needs to be done on that, but there are those that say it isn't breaking the laws of physics.

We shall see I guess, but it has been replicated in 3 places now taht I'm aware of, two of which are serious science outfits.

Post reply on HN