Tag Archives: Humanity

Douglas Adams’ “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

In Douglas Adams’ book (volume one in the trilogy of four) we learn, among other things:

  • Towels are particularly useful for interstellar travelers on a shoestring.
  • It’s not clear whether humans conduct experiments on mice or vice versa.
  • The answer to Life, Universe, and Everything is “forty-two” as Deep Thought found after an extended period (seven and a half million years) of number crunching.
  • But what is the question? To find out, an even more powerful computer was built: The Earth. “Deep Thought designed the Earth, we built it and you lived on it.”
  • Unfortunately, the Vogons destroyed the planet just five minutes before the program was completed. The badly timed intervention was communicated as follows: “This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.” And after some moments: “There’s no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.”
  • Another artificial planet may be under construction. It might feature fjords as in Norway (on the original Earth), but this time in Africa.

See here or here for quotes from the book(s).

Human Intelligence and Helpless Infants

The Economist reports about research by Steven Piantadosi and Celeste Kidd from the University of Rochester who tried to explain why humans tend to be intelligent. Their answer: Because human babies are extraordinarily helpless when compared with other animals.

… human infants take a year to learn even to walk, and need constant supervision for many years afterwards [indeed]. That helplessness is thought to be one consequence of intelligence—or, at least, of brain size. In order to keep their heads small enough to make live birth possible, human children must be born at an earlier stage of development than other animals. …

… helpless babies require intelligent parents to look after them. But to get big-brained parents you must start with big-headed—and therefore helpless—babies. The result is a feedback loop, in which the pressure for clever parents requires ever-more incompetent infants, requiring ever-brighter parents to ensure they survive childhood.

Globally Famous Biographies

The Pantheon project at the MIT Media Lab provides a database of humanity’s who is who. The geographic distribution of world renown philosophers: Pantheon map. And of scientists: Pantheon map. Country of birth vs. cultural domain: Pantheon matrix.

The top ten people: Aristotle, Plato, Jesus Christ, Socrates, Alexander the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, Confucius, Julius Caesar, Homer, Pythagoras.