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Comment by _k9eq | Hacker News Reader

I find the implication that aliens are rational and have no subrational concepts due to tradition and habit interesting, as it sort of implies that these kinds of outgrowths are not necessary and can just be done away with. The narrator starts from a position of not wanting to legitimize or historicize beyond reductive statements like "some ancient civilization did XYZ". I'll admit that I skimmed through the last part of the thread, so I might have missed something, but I don't see any mention of the decimal calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar, or why that failed. I get that this is supposed to be funny, but the indirect message of getting rid of whatever doesn't make conscious sense is simplistic, and spoils the fun for me. Humans are stupid, very funny.

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The thing that would've brought it around for me is a punchline where the alien says something like "wow, your system is so clean and simple compared to ours".

I do think there's a certain degree of humor when looking back at history. There are plenty of things to laugh at in hindsight. But the thing that rubs me wrong is the undertone that this is somehow a distinctly human trait or inherently a bad thing. That somehow only humanity is subject to the impact of evolution and gradual learning over time.

And to those complaining that we should just have fun with this, I get it. There's some funny stuff in there. But that shouldn't absolve the thread of criticism. It's fair to point out that it's a pretty reductionist take when combined with the implication that humans are uniquely stupid. It's an easy problem to solve with a very slight reframing. $0.02.

> But the thing that rubs me wrong is the undertone that this is somehow some distinctly human trait. That somehow only humanity is subject to the impact of evolution and gradual learning over time.

Well, to be fair, we really don't know that - we don't have another advanced civilization to compare us to.

But I fully agree, our system might have some legacy cruft, but it works surprisingly well. Joel Spolkys wise words on rewrites also apply to our calendar.

There's also a bunch of less subtle assumptions, like the obviousness of base 10. That comes from us having ten fingers, right? It's easy to imagine aliens having six fingers on each hand and then assuming that base 12 is the most obvious and logical base to use for everything.

There's no reason to suppose that an intelligent alien race would find it convenient to count things in base that matches the number of "fingers" they have, if they even have such a thing.

Whales aren't far from being intelligent enough to form a technical civilization, but their body plan makes it unlikely that they'd use their "fingers" (or fins) to count, or to communicate with other whales.

Even if you gave an alien two human hands and knew that their counting system's base was derived from physical features of their "hands" it's not obvious that they'd come up with either base-5 or base-10 if they where starting from first principles.

We have 3 joints that make up our fingers, but the "base 10" assumes we only use one of those. It's not obvious that even a close relative to humans wouldn't come up with base-20 or base-30 just from counting using their fingers.

If you straighten or bend your wrist to add an "extra" finger for counting you're now counting in base-6 on one hand, base-12 on both. Do the same with your elbow joint and you're base-7 and base-14, respectively.

Without fingers to manipulate ones environment, it would be incredibly difficult to develop any sort of technology.

Not even humans always chose the exact mechanism current day westerners are familiar with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger-counting

Yes, all granted, but I think the point is that without fingers tool use is hard, without tool use flying to other planets is hard, and we selected base 10 as the default despite its disadvantages, primarily because of our biology (unless there's some other advantage to base 10 I'm missing?).

To assume aliens wouldn't have fingers or do the same thing seems like the odd assumption. Whales are nowhere even close to creating technical civilization, that's really left field. Dolphins at least occasionally do use tools, I think, but without fingers they have to use their nose for everything and it really limits them.

I think the reason whole fingers was picked over joints or phalanges is because when humans started counting stuff the probability of someone having missing a whole finger or two was higher than now (The life of a hunter-gatherer, accidents happen). When you are missing a finger you can still use your "stumps" to count in base-10, but your ability to count using joints or phalanges is impaired.

Their calendar could be updated for interplanetary use.

At the end of the story they isolate us from them and prevent us from reaching the stars, I don't think the implication is that this is just due to the weird calendar system. I think its more than that, our inability to rid ourselves from our tradition and religious heritage has more profound implications. We don't look at things rationally and make decisions to improve ourselves. The aliens may have gone through similar steps in their evolution of their civilization so they probably know what it *means* if a post-interstellar species still uses a gods birthday to count time.

We aren't making any collective rational decisions yet, we build elaborate structures around tradition that more or less managed to reduce our collective human suffering at least in the northern hemisphere. It took us hundreds of years to rid ourselves from slavery and it will probably take us hundreds more to figure out that murdering billions of animals is bad for example. We might never figure out how to prevent poverty, inequality, racism, imperialism, colonialism and war. We probably make earth uninhabitable way before then anyhow.

I can see why aliens want to isolate and not want to talk to us. Not because of the calendar system we use, but because of what it represents.

> The aliens may have gone through similar steps in their evolution of their civilization so they probably know what it means if a post-interstellar species still uses a gods birthday to count time.

Or they might feel that using merely having gods is an obvious sign that we are unsuitable to be included in galactic community.

https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

[flagged]

> It is funny. You should try laughing at how dumb we are. It's fun.

But are we dumb or is this just a reductionist take at something that actually has some reason behind it?

Things simply stop being funny if you feel like important background is missing, no snobbery needed.

People that are too dumb to understand satire while pointing out why it's satire are indeed dumb, and should laugh at their own stupidity. But people on HN care more about being smart than self-aware, which is why this site is full of the funniest comments. He may as well be arguing about why eating babies is a bad idea after reading A Modest Proposal.

> Do you also hate every story ever told?

I don't get why this should apply to every story.

> It is funny. You should try laughing at how dumb we are. It's fun.

Individual humans are stupid, probably most of the time, I don't disagree. But what this reminds me of is when people imagine stone age people as "ooga booga"-idiots, instead of human beings that might have not had access to the same technology and intellectual concepts that we can rightfully feel superior about. And as the narrator is implicitly taking sides with the alien, he too is looking down at us backward humans.

I don't know if you have ever met people who hate humanity and try to disassociate themselves the rest. They refer to us as "Humanoids" as if automata that they as superior being have the right to use and manipulate. It is a vibe similiar to this that I picked up, that I object to.

> subrational concepts

More like vestigial organs that our society isn't capable enough to excise.

I don’t think it’s a question of whether or not society is capable. If we had to, we’d find a way to switch calendaring systems.

It’s more about pragmatism and priority. The world is filled with big problems that require global collaboration.

Collaboration on such a scale is hard. That we don’t spend time revamping a working system while other systems crumble and burn is arguably a good thing. It means we’re still at least aware of what matters.

There is nothing vestigial about time tracking. You can argue that the names of things are no longer useful, but at that point it’s time to throw out much of our language.

Yeah, often people leap to "aliens" being some higher intelligence than us who will judge our poor sub-optimal decisions. Though to me it seems more likely that any life we encounter is more likely to be less intelligent, if intelligent at all.

It's worse. "Aliens have the same taste in things as me". With the implications being something like "Aliens are super intelligent" and "I am super intelligent".

IAmVerySmart vibes

Aliens with the ability to visit earth will be much more intelligent than humans.

Except that being farther along the tech tree doesn't imply greater intelligence any more than possessing a car implies greater intelligence than an ancient Roman.

The alien that made the space ship will be smarter, the alien that arrives in the space ship might be less smart than us.

If Aliens find us, it seems reasonable they would be smarter/more advanced.

But would you say the same about humanity if we stumbled across an alien culture and were somehow able to communicate with them?

Unless we find some microbes in our little solar system, I highly doubt this. Any civilization able to get to earth is likely to be at least an order of magnitude more intelligent than us.

I'm also not a fan of the "alien-who-is-really-the-writer has an objectively superior and judgmental perspective" genre, even when it's trying to be funny. Some movies: K-PAX was one, Powder, another.

It's just a rhetorical mechanism to deliver critique in a format that is entertaining and not too dry.

It's invariably too "on the nose" for my tastes

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