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Comment by atleastoptimal | Hacker News Reader

350,000 years of just chilling, picking berries, you die in identical technological and cultural environment as when you were born. Now we got to be around when God is made in a data center

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Nature's finest achievement. A hyper-efficient "mind" built on a pyre of fossil fuels and rare minerals so it can help us burn the rest faster. Surely the Neanderthals stand envious that millions will be able to confide their unemployment woes to ChatGPT after GPS-navigating to the Dollar General in the nearest bleak strip mall in search of affordable goods.

Poetic

Correction: 350,000 years being riddled with parasites, fending off wild animal attacks, and avoiding being eaten alive by cannibals when your tribe runs out of food.

Parasites are my main go-to when I meet someone complaining about the modern world. In the history of multicellular organisms on earth, only (some) humans—and only in the last ~100 years—have had the luxury of not being completely infested with parasites.

Even now we have more parasites than we probably know or care to admit.

This was / is likely a factor in the "kernel of truth" with the whole "deworming tablets cure covid-19" thing, the chances of survival of people in certain areas infected with the virus increased if they were administered deworming medication because they also had a parasitic infection.

Yes my friend took ivermectin recently because he grew up in he Virgin Islands and realized he had likely been harboring parasites his whole adult life. I don’t know if it is placebo but his eating habits changed significantly after his dose

And just like that we just learned that parasites may have been good for us [1]

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8162934/

The fact that low-grade parasite-infections dampen autoimmune diseases isn't that big of a win. Presumably our immune system is as aggressive as it is in part due to the parasite-load our ancestors were exposed to.

We solved the parasite problem and at the same time changed the ecology we were accustomed to. The irony of dynamic systems.

You forgot the enlightened ~200 years when we tried to kill God, to finally be in control of our destiny.

Then some idiots decided it's time to create an artificial one in their image. Enjoy your golden idol, pray it doesn't decide to turn you into biofuel.

What some otherwise intelligent people will convince themselves is God, anyway.

To our pets we're gods - in some ways it's just a matter of perspective

I don't think my stubborn ass dog thinks of me as a god lol, but I understand your analogy

To paraphrase an Arabic saying: “dogs believe man is god and follow his word, but cats are aware of the one true god and so stand unmoved”

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