Frazz by Jef Mallett for June 24, 2020

That experiment did fail. It was called the Soviet Union.

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Ants, maybe. Bees, though, are pretty clearly just the cells of the hive.

We’re just the same when a demagogue catches our imagination and we go cognitively dissonant!

Original hypothesis: Sabertooth tiger chow.

We are a virus. Willing to kill the host to keep survive. The space program is us trying to figure out how to infect a new host

I wouldn’t have expected Frazz to start going into Genesis.

Yeah. We sooooooo don’t fit the original hypothesis.

Now she’s really thinking again. Was worried for a bit.

An experiment never fails. The outcome of an experiment is just what it has to be, based on all the variables involved. The failure is not learning from the experiment. And we have been running this experiment over and over and consistently failing to learn from it for some 7,000,000 years. Still haven’t figured out how to be in a sustainable relationship with the rest of the natural world.

An experiment never fails. The results are just what they have to be, based on the variables involved. The failure relating to an experiment is not learning from it, not figuring out why it gave the results it did. And we’ve been running the same experiment for some 7,000,000 years, getting the same results and failing to learn. We’ve never figured out how to live as part of a sustainable ecosystem. We are the only species that hunts its prey to extinction. We are the only species that depletes and fouls its environment. And we’ve never truly grasped the concept of unintended consequences.

“There are two possible outcomes: If the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery.” —Enrico Fermi

I don’t see the need to anthropomorphize the universe. it just is, no experiment no planning just is.

I’m pretty sure I read an Arthur C. Clarke story that involved human group consciousness about 50 years ago but don’t remember the details. So, of course I asked Asimov’s AC (The Last Question from the collection Nine Tomorrows) to help me out.

This extensive list is what I got…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_mind_(science_fiction)#Books

They’re a hive of neuter workers who raise breeders. The queen isn’t in charge, she’s a pet.

In his Pulitzer-winning “Goedel, Escher, Bach,” Douglas Hofstadter wrote of an ant colony as a single organism he called Aunt Hillary. Great great book!

Humans ARE that way, they don’t know it any more than individual ants do. But Ant Hillary knows.

Jef Mallett’s Blog Posts.

Frazz15 hrs · That will be my go-to defense for the time being: I didn’t fail, I just didn’t fit the original hypothesis.