40k years from now, a hominid excavates a computer and materializes a login page in the ether. "We think they used this for ritual sacrifice or to brush their teeth or both."

It appears to be a primitive game where the user tries to guess which of 9 images contains “traffic lights” or “motorcycles” (whatever they are).

An ancient ritual they believed would prove their humanity and worthiness of access to arcane engines of search.

40k years from now archaeologists explore a former landfill, find an adult toy and enter into endless academic debate about whether it was really a dildo

You might enjoy the book "The Weans" by Robert Nathans, <https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2664067-the-weans>

And Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay, published in 1979. I read it as a child and recall enjoying it.

Ahh the good old Nacirema

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema

A more accurate analogy is Charles and Henry Greene using tech to construct an intricate rig to fasten the joints in a delicate jewelry box to fit inside the Gamble House. Yes, they could make the rig by hand, but time is a precious resource to people with so much to build.

What Tao and other artists of his caliber are demonstrating is that the tech is capable of building the rig. And the machine makers are incrementally demonstrating that the machine can make not only the jewelry box rig, but rigs to build rig-making machines.

Love love love this. So much wisdom I wish I’d had 30 years ago.

Here’s the tl;dr in my opinion, with my own paraphrase:

> Approach [life] with curiosity and generosity, not transactional hustle.

Everything else essentially follows.

Also learn the Heimlich maneuver if you can. It’s easy to learn and you don’t need to be certified. Never thought I’d need it but I saved my brother’s life many years ago. An outlier for sure given about 6,000 people in the US die from choking each year, but still.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/21675-heiml...

Heimlich maneuver is good, but it must be done right, and customized for the person. Doing it wrong can cause injury that can kill a person.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9108913/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37695097/

Imagine what they’ll say 600,000 years from now.

“Humans began to acquire knowledge around the time of Dacro and the Second Wormhole Leap. The farther back we go…”

Agents probably won't refer to all members of Homo as humans, I would imagine.

Should have put a “C.” in the middle of the name. Would have been an instant buy.

Oh very very well done.

On a related note (la), if this floats your ice cream, you might be interested in Ben Houge's Food Opera sound/dining experiments (http://www.audiogustatory.com/).

My daily meditation: “Now when we fought you had the eye of the tiger, man—the edge—and now you’ve got to get it back, and the way to get it back is to go back to the beginning, you know what I mean?”

RIP Carl.

This comment was the best roller coaster I've ridden in a long time. Thank you for the great writing. I can't stop laughing.

This answer unlocked a principle in my thinking about a certain class of problems I’ve been struggling with in a different domain. Thank you!