Ask HN: Why are you proud of your species? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are you proud of your species?

8 pointsbdr13 comments

On another thread, weavejester recently wrote, "Not only are we never satisfied, we're also very quick to criticize our society and species." I want to ask about the positive side. What have we as a species done that you're proud of?

A few I can think of are going to the moon, reading our own DNA, and the classification of all finite simple groups.

I favor this kind of hard progress over (1) artistic works, because it's more collaborative, and over (2) justice/quality-of-life improvements, because it's hard to credit those to human intent vs technology and emergent processes. Feel free to disagree!

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All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment...

I'm proud that we can debate without physical confrontation; higher-reasoning I guess. Think about it, if all debates where a physical confrontation it wouldn't be the best ideas that would win, but just those who are stronger would win.

Ok... So that's out there a bit. More on the lines of what you're asking, I'm proud that we realise it when we're getting out of hand and actually try to do something to alleviate the issue; philosophies of how to do that asside.

I think that we should try to eliminate the distinction between artistic works and technological/scientific works. They should both go hand in hand. The word technology comes from the Greek word techne which roughly translates to art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techne

I find pur ability to achieve and improve the most amazing.

I could single out a list of things ot be hugely proud of as a species: but that belittles (not deliberately) all of the other achievments (especially the ones in the past we have forgotten or ignore).

The capacity of humanity always amazes me (and, conversely, it saddens me to see so many people waste it).

Creation of the printing press, invention of irrigation, nearly every physics discovery.

Boiling water to make tea (East); brewing and fermentation of wheat to make beer (West); the realization that human health begins with clean water. In more recent times: the LifeStraw.

unified field theory*

general relativity

big bang

the theory of mind

the discovery of evolution

Einstein

Rosalind Franklin

Darwin

Galileo

Michelangelo

Newton

Alan Turing

Da Vinci

Ghandi

MLK

The list is endless... And who knows, maybe one of you will be on a list like this at some point in the future...

* getting closer...

We have laughter, fire, art, lovemaking and the best tools around.

Humanity has survived long enough to produce me. Yeehaw.

The library of Alexandria was perhaps the noblest human achievement ever, compounding the greatest of our knowledge, historical, scientific, etc. into one location.

I wonder if, relatively speaking, Alexandria was more or less comprehensive than the British Library or the Library of Congress.

During the time that the works were collected for the library of Alexandria fewer people could read and write than can today, which made it difficult for people to write books. Today, with blogs and other works available over the internet, we have the capability to create a vast database of everything from the noblest to the most unrefined or unsophisticated works of human achievement. Anybody with access to the internet can publish their opinions online for others to agree or disagree with them in order to find the truth about things. Plus dentistry has come a long way, we deal with toothaches much better nowadays than our ancestors could ;)

People have no idea for the time what a huge undertaking that was. It was like our space program.

I blogged about how information density is outstripping our ability to adapt a few days ago. (shameless plug: http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/02/who-was-i-aga... )

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