The vast, vast majority of people are forgotten within 100 years. Pretty much need to be in an extremely high position where records are kept, like presidents, or do something extraordinarily positive or negative.
I strongly doubt anyone reading this post will be remembered after the people they met or interacted with directly have died.
Or be a really shitty copper merchant
Yeah, weird random chance makes a huge difference. Otzi was probably well known, but only hyper-regionally. Lucy was basically just an unusually smart animal, and that was millions of years ago.
And just because you’re forgotten for a bit doesn’t mean you won’t come back into style.
Hmm. So if you want 15 minutes of fame a long time from now, what’s some weird easter egg you can leave?
Buttplug
Archeologists actually dig up a lot of sex toys, believe it or not. That won’t get you noticed.
A time capsule with something that nobody else will think to preserve might do it. Way too many preserve things the future is actually meh about. I wonder if a weird data footprint might be even better at this point. Like, if you filled out some official form thousands of times just for fun, and someone a long time from now is doing analysis and turns it into a meme.
What sort of forms about buttplugs do we have?
I actually have a geneology book （族谱） from my paternal lineage (everybody does this in China). Its just a bunch of names, and some history of the village summarized. I hate tradition and I’m already in the US right now, I dont give a shit about the stupid geneology book anymore, my ancesters will probably be so pisses to find out that I totally ignored all the hard efforts lol. (My village still has a copy, but I’m not adding more name to the stupid thing, a waste of time, its also misogynistic AF, if there’s a daugher, then the lineage doesn’t record their decendents. So dumb, as I guy, I hate this patriarchal bullshit)
Some aspects of that tradition are commendable, though. It would be neat to see this updated in a less male-centric fashion.
Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people.
Tradition is just narcissists convincing you to do things their way because change is ✨scary✨
Sure, but what if the dead people are right? Statistically, they will be some share of the time.
The catch is that that goes for all the various disagreeing traditions. Putting priority on your own is sus.
I think the opposite with happen with the same results. Everyone’s DNA will be on the books. It’ll be revealed that we’re all related somehow. You’ll be able to orient the database any way that you want to see how you’re related.
I’m still alive and I’m already forgotten. 👌
With the U.S. only being 250 years old, I can’t say anyone would remember presidents in 600 years. If the U.S. is gone there will likely be mention of 1 president that was in power when whatever came and took/changed it. During the planetary destruction revolution there was a plethora of wasteful greed. They called it an industrial revolution that ran rampant with greed and wastefulness.
History preserved the names of heads of state from countries that had a much shorter existence or impact. 600 years might seem a long time to Americans but it’s not that long for historical memory.
Sure, then everything in history would be “remembered” forever… Except no one would know or care. To me, that is not remembered.
I would say Jesus is forgotten completely at this point even though he is written/read everywhere
We record these kinds of things in archives as they go along. Hell, we have records of Egyptian and Roman leadership going back centuries.
That’s quite sad tbh, we’re all just tiny specks on the timeline of humans
It’s your’s to make of it what you will. It doesn’t have to be sad. It’s pretty incredible any of us are here in the first place with how many conditions had to be present for life to even be on earth. And then we evolved from single cell organisms into these complex beings that we are today. It’s pretty fucking nuts and fascinating.
Yeah, it is incredibly fascinating.
I am 100% in favor of being forgotten, because trying to stand out in the sea of billions of people is a ridiculous expectation.
While that’s true, we have much more extensive record keeping these days. I’ve been researching my family tree, and 100 years ago there were still a decent number of people who were mostly illiterate. Add to that documents like the census being handwritten in cursive on paper, and you get lots of errors being recorded, and the records themselves being damaged by age.
Unless something drastic happens, a lot of our records will still exist in the centuries to come. It will mostly be our official records, but they should still be there :)
Is a name in a list really being remembered though?
It’s not just names in lists though. Using my mother’s grandparents as examples, I know where they were born and grew up, I know who they lived with at multiple points in their lives, and I know a few of the places where they lived.
I know where and when they got married, and some of the guests, and I know what children they had and when. As they were adults at the time, I know some of what my great grandfather was doing during the first World War and how he died.
I haven’t done a deep dive into their lives yet as I’ve been working backwards, but I’ve already got a decent idea about who they were and what they were like. I know a fair bit about his parents and family too, as I checked that side first.
The biggest issues are finding photos, and the cost and availability of records. There are not many photos due to them not being as pervasive at the time, and there are not many records because a lot of things either weren’t recorded or weren’t saved. Both of those can be solved with the technology we have now. Lots of people have their own information saved, separate to the official sources, and it’s easier to have multiple copies of everything, so they won’t get lost or destroyed as easily.
Hopefully this means that we’ll remember more of the past going forwards :)
Well, do you remember anyone from 1425 or even 1625?
Wikipedia does.
That’s pretty neat actually.
Tbf, they didn’t have mass surveillance back then.
If the data doesn’t get lost, someone could find an average human in a developed country born in the 21st century, and could know what their entire life is like.
“It’s my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sommbitch or another.”
No one needs to remember me except my kids. Maybe my grandkids.
Too late, thanks to big tech, your grandkids will know what type of porn you watch.
Yeah, and they’ll like it, whether they like it or not!
“JAYNE, the man they call Jayne.”
To be fair I don’t remember anyone from 600 years in the future.
I imagine some archivists might find the lost fragments of this server is some ruins and by some miracle, maybe extract this very thread.
We all will be living inside the weights of LLMs from this era.
Ok that’s actually an interesting use of AI. Train on only media from that time period. This is Daniel, from the year 1400. Tell me about the Catholic Church
This is basically how the persona AIs work. Some of them are focused on an individual, others are trained on a group of individuals.
I think I’m part of what makes it stupid tho :(
Yes. Or, they’ll get the thread with the awkward dog meme about a microwave. It’s beautiful to contemplate.
Hi to the future! 👋
ngl I don’t know if the earth will even be inhabitable in 600 years
Yeah true, to be remembered we need someone alive to remember us
Brave of you to assume that humanity will exist in 600 years.
Actually, we might be, but the better-off ones will be back at sticks and stones and huddling around wood fires and the like.
I will write a blog complaining about copper prices. If my sources are correct I will be remembered forever.
There’s a running phrase that gets’ mentioned a lot in the Peanuts comic strip: “500 years from now, who’ll know the difference?”
Just wanted to mention that. Peace ✌️
No, but AIs will be able to generate a statistically accurate simulacrum of a set of people like us.
I don’t think humanity is going to make it another 600 years tbh
I think humans might, but we won’t have fancy skyscrapers, we’ll be living in bunkers hiding from whatever disaster (war, plague, radiation, alien invasion) is on the surface.
An alien invasion couldn’t possibly make things worse.
I find it odd that natural disaster isn’t on your list considering it’s by far the most realistic scenario. Hell, it’s already happening.
I guess the word “natural” isn’t very accurate for a climate disaster, but still, it’s not on your list.
Technically, climate change by itself isn’t what will destroy civilization, its the aftermath, mainly, the crops wouldn’t be able to grow properly in a fucked up temperaure, weather, ecosystem…
Similar to “old age” in humans, nobody “dies of old age” in of itself, rather, its the complications that result from old age.
We sure are a dumb species. We’re able to construct all this stuff using the world around us but we can’t seems to figure out working together instead of constantly competing
They may not remember us by our names, but they’ll be able to see the effects of the choices we made.
No.
Because history remembers people or groups who have made astounding and monumental moments that change the course of history.
They aren’t going to remember a dude who spent most of their time jerking off and doing the average lifestyle.
And why 600 years?
Doesn’t even take that long. My parent passed away and left boxes of pictures from 50 to 75 years ago and no one recognizes. Why did they have these pictures and boxes of them? No notes. Nothing.
As they say in preservation, metadata is key.
Upload it to Google photos or Facebook bet their face recognition AI would know lol
Dude I’ll forget you ever existed when I leave this thread. Bye.
