Second Alexandrian Tragedy.

[Kai]

Imagine the most incredible library, filled to the brim with books. Millions of them, the most amazing books ever written. Texts that would inspire billions, that may teach immortality and the cures to all diseases, that demonstrate arguments on the origins of things, forgotten or hidden ideas and knowledge. Few have been read, and fewer yet have been read in detail.

And every day a stack is wheelbarrowed out the back and unceremoniously burned.


I refuse to use an emotional appeal, because such things are overdone and seldom sway your sort. Nor will I use economic or medical arguments, because those are too shallow for my purpose. The Second Alexandrian Tragedy, the accelerated extinction of species and lineages, is a loss of information. The great library described above is but mere scraps in comparison to what once existed, the fossil record and extant species a few torn pages compared to the greater diversity lost to time. This archive is a key to our very own existence, and holds illuminated manuscripts to the chain of being stretching back to Progenitors. We have barely scraped the surface. And each extinction is another book burned, forever lost, never to be known or understood.


All we have is scraps, and fewer tomorrow.

[Luna]

Never thought of it quite that way, thank you, Kai.

[Jenne]

Wow.  That's a great analogy.  Gonna borrow that, if I may?

[Kai]

Wow.  That's a great analogy.  Gonna borrow that, if I may?

Sure, with attribution. "Second Alexandrian Tragedy" (the term) is not mine though, it originates from a paper by FPD Cotterill (1997). He used it to refer to the global lapse in care of natural history collections, but it works for this metaphor just fine as well. Guess I should have put that somewhere...

[Jenne]

yeah, I won't be copying and pasting, just sharing the idea behind it

[Kai]

For reference, these are the two papers that inspired me to write this down.

The second Alexandrian tragedy, and the fundamental relationship between biological collections and scientific knowledge

A pervasive denigration of Natural History misconstrues how biodiversity inventories and taxonomy underpin scientific knowledge.

Both are pretty good reads, IMO.

[BadBeast]

That's a really intriguing analogy, especially because it offers a frame of reference that is immediately accessible to someone like myself, with limited understanding of the scientific methodology that normally underpins theoretical studies on this subject.
Without detracting from the science involved, it stimulates my imagination to explore avenues that perhaps I wouldn't have considered, and that can never be a bad thing. (Can it?)
The sacking of the Alexandrian Library may have set the renaissance back by maybe 500 years, we'll never know for sure, or what was lost there, but we also don't know that we haven't recovered much of the data since, either.

If you look at all life on this planet as a Library, or data storage system, using DNA as the data storage medium, then every species might be considered as an integral program,  part of the evolutionary equivalent of a kind of Windows Operating System. Self upgrading, when necessary, in order to keep the relevant data accessible to the Whole Planetary Macrocosm.
From what (I understand) we understand of our own DNA, coded within  it, is a backup copy of amphibian, reptilian, and earlier mammalian models, going back for . . . . . probably centuries! So in every subsequent generation, the data backs itself up,  creating some kind of restore point within us. Then it lets us run around playing W.o.W or The Sims, with the higher end software, or whatever it takes to motivate us into keeping the meat moving along, while it ticks away in the background,   creating a runtime environment, conducive to it's propagation.

And it's doing this with every species!  So the software package called "Humanity", exists in it's own virtual gameworld, with certain 'moderator priviliges' according to it's place in the Macro, and access to the information regarding the rest of this  'Uber Windows XP', is on a 'need to know' sort of basis. So we've just gotta be what we've gotta be, and trust in the programming capabilities of whatever cosmic equivalent of Bill Gates coded the whole operating system. 

Maybe. I don't know, I'm just running with an interesting looking bone you threw down an hour or so aqo, and from a totally unscientific point of view. It may not yield any profound new insight to anything relevant to the big picture, but to the smaller picture in my own OS it's certainly chewing up some RAM. I'm going to reboot now though, in case I crash, and lose the lot. *Save document to P.D*  *Create shortcut on desktop post in relevant thread* *Exit program*   

[Jenne]

For reference, these are the two papers that inspired me to write this down.

The second Alexandrian tragedy, and the fundamental relationship between biological collections and scientific knowledge

A pervasive denigration of Natural History misconstrues how biodiversity inventories and taxonomy underpin scientific knowledge.

Both are pretty good reads, IMO.

Awesome, thank you!

And BB, that's exactly what I was thinking.

[Worm Rider]

I've never really understood why this problem needed an analogy.

Imagine the only planet in the known universe with living organisms, and you are one of them. You share the same structure and function, the same basic cellular processes, the same family history with every living thing on the planet. You are not metaphorically related. You are literally, factually, actually related, sharing the same genes. Everything you love about the world, everything good that has ever happened to you, has happened on this planet. You are currently fucking it all up. You are permanently killing whole branches of your living family, and they can never be returned. You are destroying the only home you've ever had. Not metaphorically. This isn't a fancy analogy. Here, look:
you have the same forelimbs. Books getting lost out of a library is a joke compared to this.

[BadBeast]

Awesome, thank you!

And BB, that's exactly what I was thinking.

We must have both re-booted from the same restore point. After that virus thing. That was going round. Or was that just me?

[Kai]

I've never really understood why this problem needed an analogy.

Imagine the only planet in the known universe with living organisms, and you are one of them. You share the same structure and function, the same basic cellular processes, the same family history with every living thing on the planet. You are not metaphorically related. You are literally, factually, actually related, sharing the same genes. Everything you love about the world, everything good that has ever happened to you, has happened on this planet. You are currently fucking it all up. You are permanently killing whole branches of your living family, and they can never be returned. You are destroying the only home you've ever had. Not metaphorically. This isn't a fancy analogy. Here, look:
you have the same forelimbs. Books getting lost out of a library is a joke compared to this.

That's the appeal to emotion. Frankly, knowing the amount of extinction that has occured without any human intervention (especially the Great Dying), the emotional appeal doesn't work for me. I know very well that if biodiversity got pounded down to the level it was at the end of the Permian, it would take possibly 4 million years but humans would be gone and ecosystems would thrive again. We can fuck things up for ourselves, but the planet? The planet will go on. Life will go on. So, no, it doesn't work for me all that well. And my thought is, it doesn't work well for most people on here.

You post a picture of animal forelimbs exhibiting the homology (go look it up) of bones in vertebrates. Of course, of COURSE you chose megafauna. But what about protozoan conservation? No no, the appeal to emotion always uses megafauna like mammals and birds, barely a drop in the diversity bucket compared to insects or nematodes or oceanic plankton. Which shows you just how shallow it is. It's always the most aesthetically pleasing, charismatic and familiar species that people bring up. Fuck that shit. Not that vertebrates aren't cool, they just are in a no more privileged position than any other taxon, and yet are always chosen for this because they appeal to peoples emotions of FUZZY CUTE AND SHINY.

[Kai]

That's a really intriguing analogy, especially because it offers a frame of reference that is immediately accessible to someone like myself, with limited understanding of the scientific methodology that normally underpins theoretical studies on this subject.
Without detracting from the science involved, it stimulates my imagination to explore avenues that perhaps I wouldn't have considered, and that can never be a bad thing. (Can it?)
The sacking of the Alexandrian Library may have set the renaissance back by maybe 500 years, we'll never know for sure, or what was lost there, but we also don't know that we haven't recovered much of the data since, either.

If you look at all life on this planet as a Library, or data storage system, using DNA as the data storage medium, then every species might be considered as an integral program,  part of the evolutionary equivalent of a kind of Windows Operating System. Self upgrading, when necessary, in order to keep the relevant data accessible to the Whole Planetary Macrocosm.
From what (I understand) we understand of our own DNA, coded within  it, is a backup copy of amphibian, reptilian, and earlier mammalian models, going back for . . . . . probably centuries! So in every subsequent generation, the data backs itself up,  creating some kind of restore point within us. Then it lets us run around playing W.o.W or The Sims, with the higher end software, or whatever it takes to motivate us into keeping the meat moving along, while it ticks away in the background,   creating a runtime environment, conducive to it's propagation.

And it's doing this with every species!  So the software package called "Humanity", exists in it's own virtual gameworld, with certain 'moderator priviliges' according to it's place in the Macro, and access to the information regarding the rest of this  'Uber Windows XP', is on a 'need to know' sort of basis. So we've just gotta be what we've gotta be, and trust in the programming capabilities of whatever cosmic equivalent of Bill Gates coded the whole operating system. 

Maybe. I don't know, I'm just running with an interesting looking bone you threw down an hour or so aqo, and from a totally unscientific point of view. It may not yield any profound new insight to anything relevant to the big picture, but to the smaller picture in my own OS it's certainly chewing up some RAM. I'm going to reboot now though, in case I crash, and lose the lot. *Save document to P.D*  *Create shortcut on desktop post in relevant thread* *Exit program*   

That's interesting, though I wasn't using it that way. The book/library metaphor wasn't about what species are but rather what stories they tell, the depth of information. I could have as well said that every species is a magic well, that the more you draw in learning from species the more there is to learn, the more questions raised. Plus, the book/library metaphor fit well with the Library of Alexandria nod. Not particularly fond of the computer metaphor, to be honest, because it seems to indicate some sort of intelligence to natural selection, where the process is more of those who don't survive to reproduce disappear, and those who do, continue. Natural selection is stupid.

[BadBeast]

I've never really understood why this problem needed an analogy.

Imagine the only planet in the known universe with living organisms, and you are one of them. You share the same structure and function, the same basic cellular processes, the same family history with every living thing on the planet. You are not metaphorically related. You are literally, factually, actually related, sharing the same genes. Everything you love about the world, everything good that has ever happened to you, has happened on this planet. You are currently fucking it all up. You are permanently killing whole branches of your living family, and they can never be returned. You are destroying the only home you've ever had. Not metaphorically. This isn't a fancy analogy. Here, look:
you have the same forelimbs. Books getting lost out of a library is a joke compared to this.

Way too emotionally dramatic. And when you say "You" in this post, is that everyone? Or everyone except you? Or are you "fucking it all up" too? I'm not "permanently killing whole branches of my living family" either.
And as for "Not needing an analogy" it certainly needs something. And those forelimbs might have similarities, but they are not the same. They are different models, with different functions, form different species. Species that share DNA sequences, sure, but the deviations in the coding are permutations of ongoing equations, that may or may not be viable to the sum total. You speak as if you have broken the fourth wall, and you haven't. If you had, you'd have evolved into a fuck knows what, and currently be in a different runtime environment to us, and quite plainly, you're not.

As much as we might strive to find all the answers, it's only part of our particular 'program'. There will be questions we don't even have an inkling of yet, otherwise there would be no evolution. And even the grasp of evolution that we have got, is incomplete, and largely intuitive guesswork. We can't even trace our own evolution much past say, 20,000 years with much accuracy. So how can you presume to say analogy isn't the way to push the boat out a little farther?

When there is no definite map of logical progression in a particular direction, then analogy is as good a tool as any for entertaining new hypothesis. You may however,  have found a better tool,  so instead of pointing at the flaws you imagine speculative analogy has,, show us your bit of the map, the bit where you broke the 4th wall perhaps?

Rather than the (I thought, at any rate) excellent "Books getting lost out of the library" analogy that you think is such a joke, try smaller. Try "Pages getting lost out of your books". You've read the books, and you think you've got the whole story, but the last page is missing. (and a few less important ones from about two thirds of the way through) Rather than admit that there's a possibility of you not having all the data, you prefer to try and extrapolate an ending, using what you think is the complete book.

This is OK, but remember we're using a smaller analogy here. The book has a sequel. Indeed, it's part of a multi volume set of Encyclopedias. All directly relating to the Human part of the program. And these books are part of a Library, the size of which we cannot even begin to imagine. Yet. Until we've read the last page of your book. Then the sequel.

 So let's say chimpanzees, were the previous volume. They can't begin to read your book, until they've figured out the Bonobo / Chimp schism, perhaps. We know it's the Congo River, but we can't tell them that because we're in a different book /program to them. Our interaction with them, our closest relatives, is horribly flawed. Because we assumed their book was the preceding volume, when it's  really just contiguous series, and specific to them. Just as we share their DNA,  they share ours. In the same time frame too. For all we know, we could be the superfluous part of the mammalian program, and they could just as easily be the more viable equation. The necessary genes, that carry the relevant code, are just as likely to be peculiar to them. Or to Orangs. Or Gibbons. But you'd see that as a step backwards, or devolution, and it wouldn't be. Because we don't have all the facts, and we never will.

I may have actually put the 'anal' in 'analogy' by now, but it's the only way I have to work this shit out. I'm not looking for a final answer, just reading the next page. Or writing it. It depends whether I'm working with a 'read only'  data stream or not. And I'm not privy to that until the sub-routine shuts down. And nor are you.

[Kai]

Badbeast, you are delving waaaay deep into this. 

[BadBeast]

Badbeast, you are delving waaaay deep into this.  

Yeah, I know, but it's fun. And a bit "Planet of the Apesy"  
But I agree that natural selection is stupid. If natural selection was the primary dynamic, then why do we carry around so much 'inert' DNA? Might as well call it "Natural De-selection". Or "Survival of the fattest". Or say that life in the Sea evolves around  "survival of the buoyant".