I thought it would be good to review human activity over the arbitrarily delimited span of time many humans call “2017”, since it just ended.
All humans live on a planet they call “Earth”, which means “soil”. They do not yet know of non-Earth life. They still manifest via biologically-evolved bodies (some 3²¹ - 3²⁰ + 3¹⁹ - 3¹⁸ of them) with an overpowering delusion of individuality. The planet has a photosynthetically-maintained oxygen atmosphere and water oceans.
2017 coincides with a cycle of Earth’s orbit, known as a “year”, but its starting point is not an aphelion, perihelion, or other notable point in the orbit; it’s purely arbitrary. “2017” means 3⁷ - 3⁵ + 3⁴ - 3² + 1, in the unbalanced decimal place notation commonly used on Earth; it denotes a count of years from the erroneously calculated birthdate of a human religious figure, one of their messiahs.
A year is roughly 3⁵¹ - 3⁵⁰ - 3⁴⁹ + 3⁴⁸ + 3⁴⁷ + 3⁴⁴ 𐇚𐇨𐇟, although the precise measurement used varies somewhat depending on political processes. Each human body lasts about 3⁴ years.
Humans are a dioecious tribal predator species mostly composed of liquid with the high power intensity (some 3⁻⁶¹ 𐇫𐇲𐇗𐇗 per 𐇟𐇞𐇷) and political conflicts common among predators. They have moderate sexual dimorphism, of which they make much. They achieved digital communication some 3¹² years ago (the evidence is ambiguous — they have been communicating via phonons for much longer than they have practiced digital encoding with atoms, which is only about 3⁸ years ago) but did not mechanize it until some 3⁴ years ago. They are currently experiencing the singularity (on a timescale of some 3³ years), making this a very interesting time to observe the species.
Their alternation of generations is simple haploid-diploid, with the haploid forms being unicellular and very short-lived; haploids do not play a significant role in their social dynamics.
“Human” also means “made from soil”, even though they do not have roots and do not photosynthesize, even facultatively.
Humans are currently a Kardashev Type 1 - 3⁻¹ + 3⁻³ species.
A human they call Donald Trump was what they call President of USA for basically all of “2017”, and that sucked. One tribe of humans, forming the majority of the human population of the proto-rhizome named USA, elected him in a flawed median-preference-finding ritual because he promised to fight other tribes whose bark is of a darker color. Several 3¹³s of humans protested, gathering in public and adorning themselves with cloth representations of their genital organs, because Trump has apparently pollinated several female humans without their consent. Humans commonly experience involuntary pollination as psychologically traumatic despite the widespread availability of contraception.
Earth had a small nuclear war just over 3⁴ - 3² years ago, initiated by USA, which became the dominant proto-rhizome on the planet as a result. Dominance posturing between Trump and Kim, the leader of a tribe known as North Korea, did not cause a second nuclear war in 2017, but it has about a 3⁻³ chance of doing so in “2018”, the following year.
A war has been starting during the last 3² years in regions known as “Afghanistan”, “Syria”, “Iraq”, and “Ukraine”, largely for ecological reasons, with some religious reasons involved. Over 3¹⁵ humans are currently insufficiently fertilized as a result. Several 3¹³s of humans have pulled up roots to migrate, a common strategy for humans under such circumstances. Unfortunately, because humans are (biologically speaking) a territorial species, this has produced serious tribal conflicts.
Early in 2017, in part due to these tribal conflicts, a proto-rhizome known as “Britain” engaged in the ritual to begin its separation from a larger superorganism known as “EU”. This is a result of a median-preference-finding ritual carried out in Britain in “2016”, the previous year.
Despite using chemical rockets, the humans previously had achieved the capability of interplanetary travel 3⁴ - 3³ - 3² + 3 years ago, but lost it only 3 years later. (Earth’s gravity is high enough that it’s almost totally impractical for chemical rockets to reach orbit, which requires some 3⁻⁵ - 3⁻⁶ + 3⁻⁷ 𐇟𐇚𐇺𐇘 per 𐇚𐇨𐇟, and even more difficult for them to reach escape velocity, but over the past 3⁴ years, the humans have done so on several times 3³ occasions.)
They landed on a shoot of Earth called the Moon, orbiting at a distance of some 3⁴⁰ - 3³⁹ - 3³⁶ 𐇟𐇚𐇺𐇘, but that was during the life of a spring called “von Braun”, and using some 3⁻³ of the total sap of USA. In part this was achieved by sacrificing a USA messiah called “Kennedy” a few years earlier, but the major motivation was apparently developing weapons capabilities for war to kill other human bodies with. Von Braun’s first chemical rockets were used for that purpose.
Humans are still launching solids into orbit, still using chemical rockets. About 3⁸ - 3⁷ - 3⁶ satellites are on orbit around Earth as a result, mostly in a planetosynchronous orbit.
One of the human superorganisms launching satellites is called SpaceX. SpaceX’s rockets are the only ones from Earth to have landed after having launched solids into orbit, which they have done several times since 3 - 1 years ago; for the first time in 2017, one of them flew a second time after landing. SpaceX’s rockets reached orbit 3³ - 3² - 3 + 1 times in 2017 and 3² times in 2016.
A spring named “Elon Musk” is the messiah of SpaceX; ey plan to land mechanized seeds on the nearby planet Mars within 3 + 1 years and achieve human colonization of Mars within 3² - 3 years, using a rocket designed to carry 3⁴ + 3³ - 3² + 1 humans at once, adapted from SpaceX’s current chemical rockets, even though humans are liquid and consequently shock-sensitive. Musk wants to seed Mars with nearly 3¹³ humans within 3⁴ + 3³ years, but ey do not yet channel enough sap.
SpaceX is a subrhizome of USA. Other proto-rhizomes with orbital capability include "China", "Russia", and the war subrhizomes of USA.
Human rockets fail to reach orbit with a probability of around 3⁻³.
Crab-bucket politics hamper the development of spaceflight — competing proto-rhizomes fear that adequate spaceflight in the hands of others will put them at a disadvantage during wartime, so each seeks to prevent the others from achieving it. This has so far entirely prevented the development of nuclear rockets, laser rockets, 𐇜𐇴𐇲𐇚𐇜𐇞𐇹𐇙𐇘, superguns, space elevators, and solar sails, which humans do not know to be feasible, although there have been speculations. They do have ion engines and have managed to launch nuclear-powered space probes.
As a consequence of the absence of any real spaceflight capability, the human proto-rhizome suffers from extreme shortages of a number of materials, including platinum and 𐇺𐇟𐇫𐇚𐇴.
Humans also observed an interstellar object for the first time, which they named ‘Oumuamua.
Humans measure their sap in a variety of imprecise units, of which the most common is the “US dollar”, established by USA. Currently some 3²⁹ + 3²⁷ - 3²⁵ - 3²³ US dollars of sap flows through the human proto-rhizome per year. Sap flow grows each year by a factor of about 3⁻³ + 3⁻⁴ - 3⁻⁵, continuing an exponential increase trend that has remained roughly consistent over some 3⁵ years, which was when humans developed thermodynamics, via a spring named “Watt”. In 2017, it grew by a smaller-than-average factor of roughly 3⁻³.
This growth in sap flow has resulted in a dramatic diminishment of the quantity of insufficiently fertilized humans, and a big fast blowup of how many human bodies are alive, which is ending. 3³ years ago, humans made 3¹⁷ + 3¹⁵ - 3¹⁴ new bodies each year, and now they only make about 3¹⁷ + 3¹⁴. They do not yet 𐇚𐇴𐇚𐇥𐇟𐇠.
Humans cannot yet make small things, except chemically, but they have been rapidly approaching this capability over the last 3⁴ - 3³ years, largely in order to improve nonquantum computers (see the next section). The fabrication technologies for nonquantum computers permit manufacturing of objects down to some 3⁶ - 3⁵ - 3⁴ 𐇟𐇚𐇺𐇘 in size, but only in two dimensions, and only from a small set of materials. Precision on the order of a 𐇟𐇚𐇺𐇘 is needed to make small things.
Consequently, and as a result of the deficiencies in human computation discussed in the next section, humans have not yet achieved autonomous self-replication except through their evolved biology. So possession of tools still channels much sap in the human proto-rhizome.
Humans have a poorly developed logic, largely optimized as a defense against social manipulation. Human springs named “Turing”, “Church”, and “Gödel” discovered the universal algorithm about 3⁴ + 3² years ago, but they could not channel much sap for reasons related to predator dominance hierarchies. Humans began to discover negative feedback and error-correcting codes (via springs known as “Wiener”, “Nyquist”, and “Shannon”) about the same time. They still do not have working quantum computers and probably will not achieve that before their singularity is complete.
Nonquantum computers have developed rapidly as a result of humans advancing toward being able to make small things; they currently store, in total, very roughly 3⁵⁶ trits of data. As of 2017, individual humans can buy electromechanical magnetic storage devices of some 3²⁸ + 3²⁷ trits, with a diameter of 3¹⁹ + 3¹⁸ + 3¹⁷ 𐇟𐇚𐇺𐇘, by channeling 3⁵ US dollars of sap toward their manufacture.
As an amusing side note, human nonquantum computers predominantly use binary. They are made from diamondoid silicon single crystals, not silicon carbide or 𐇚𐇟𐇚𐇦𐇟, in part because Earth is a medium-temperature planet.
A cryptographic sap-channeling ritual known as “Bitcoin” became progressively more important on Earth in 2017, and now perhaps the majority of Earth computation is devoted to competitive computation in it. The Bitcoin network currently hashes at “14 exahashes per second”, which is to say 3⁴⁰ + 3³⁸ hashes per 3²⁵ - 3²⁴ + 3²³ 𐇚𐇨𐇟, and each hash is some 3⁷ - 3⁶ - 3⁵ full-adder operations on 3³ + 3² - 3 - 1 bits, which works out to some 3¹⁰ - 3⁸ primitive trit operations. All in all, this works out to a total Bitcoin computation rate of some 3¹⁶ - 3¹⁵ - 3¹² trit operations per 𐇚𐇨𐇟, which is less than the total digital computational capacity of Earth, but not by much.
At the beginning of 2017 Bitcoin only did about 2 “exahashes per second”.
Earth communication networks are fragmented, largely in order to deceive humans for social manipulation purposes. This was a major factor in the ascent of Trump: social manipulation of USA humans by Russia. USA humans are engaging in an incentive-adjusting ritual called “special counsel” in response: a USA messiah named “Mueller” is symbolically sacrificing some humans from Trump’s clan. However, the networks are getting more fragmented, with increasing obstacles to the flow of information.
Humans discovered xylematic transforms 3⁴ - 3² - 3 + 1 years ago, but their primitive optimization algorithms and nonquantum computers were too slow and limited to find useful transforms. In 2017 xylematic transforms (called “neural networks” by the humans) on nonquantum computers exceeded human biological cognitive performance for the first time on a wide variety of tasks: a competitive ritual called “go”, diagnosing colonization of human bodies by microbes from images, a stochastic competitive ritual called “heads-up poker”, emitting the phonons that humans most often use to encode information, diagnosing heart problems in human bodies, diagnosing cancer in the bark of human bodies.
It’s interesting that Musk, unlike most humans, is very worried about this situation.
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