Mysterious writing of Easter Island is unlike any known writing system
Good morning everyone. I'm your dude mixed strange and this is CSN episode fifty seven news bite. AI may destroy humankind in just two years, experts say. The notoriously pessimistic AI researcher Hella's heir YadA Kowski, is back with a new prediction about the future of mankind. As I stumbled through another name. If you put me to a wall, he told The Guardian in a fascinating new interview, and forced me to put probabilities on things. I have a sense that our current remaining timeline looks more like five years than fifty years. Could be two years, could be ten. That guy's just full of frightening thoughts. Man. If you're wondering what remaining timeline means in this context, the Guardian's Tom Lamont interpret it is the machine rot end of all things, a terminator like apocalypse, or a matrix lscape. The difficulty is people do not realize. The founder of Machine Intelligence Research Institute in California, he told the newspaper, we have a shred of a chance that humanity survives. The entire Guardian piece is worth a read. Lamont spoke to many prominent figures in the space ranging from Brian Merchant to Mally crab Apple. Malli crab Apple interesting, with the through line being skepticism about the idea that just because a new tech comes along, we need to adopt it, even if it's not good for people. These days, the focus of much of that critique is AI. Why critics contend should we treat the tech as an inevitable even if it seems poised to eliminate and destabilize large numbers of jobs, or, in Yudkowski's case, if the tech likely presents exexstential threat. His remarks were the most provocative in the piece, which probably isn't surprising given his history. Hey, excuse me, A watchers may remember last year, for instance, when he called for bombing data centers to halt the rise of AI. He's rethought that particular claim, he told The Guardian, but only slightly. He stands behind the idea of bombing data centers, he said, but no longer thinks that nuclear weapons should be used to target them. I would pick more careful phrasing now, he told the newspaper. Well, every day there is uh something frightening about AI coming out. I cannot get it. I've said this before, I cannot get away from these articles. They are literally everywhere. I'm kind of on board with this, this fellow, though, let's let's kind of let's put a stop to this for a little bit. I don't think it needs to be implemented, you know, outside of closed systems at this point. I really I'm not a computer guy, but I'm a little fearful of AI. I mean with and certainly with I think good reason, right, so we used to need to slow this down, and it could be a great thing for humanity at it. You know, it's going to take a lot of jobs. That's that's no doubt. So let's move on. So in this next article that it's uh, A lot of people have been writing about this in the news cycles for the last couple of weeks, so I'm going to drop it on you here. Mysterious writing of Easter Island is unlike any known writing system. Easter Island is a fascinating place, no doubt. Easter Island, located off the coast of Chile, act attracts the attention of researchers from all over the world with its unique culture and mysterious head shaped monuments. Recently, scientists discovered another amazing phenomenon on this island, the mysterious wrong or Ongo writing, which may represent an unusual writing system unique to the island. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports. Researchers studying the language have or excuse me, the writing have noted that it is unlike any other known form of writing. This suggests that it was invented by local people and was not influenced by a fording foreign writing system. In addition, a radiocarbon dating of several ancient objects showed that the earliest carvings predate the arrival of Europeans on the island. This supports the idea that the script was to developed by local people independently of outside influences. However, the history of the writing is shrouded in mystery. In eighteen sixty four, outside observers first noticed engravings with the writing, but all these signs were destroyed or sent abroad. To date, only twenty seven examples of writing are known, and none of them are located on Easter Island itself. Researchers trying to decipher the script describe it as long texts written using graphic characters called glyphs. The shapes of these signs represent various classes of images, including human poses and body parts, animals, plants, tools, celestial bodies, and more. Scientists note that the graphic glyphs of the script have no analogs among known scripts, but are similar to the motifs of ancient rock art found on the island. This observation supports the idea that the writing may have developed independently, similar to the inventions of writing in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica. However, there are some mysteries associated with the writing system. The only two tablets were made from trees felled in the first half of the nineteenth century, when contact with Europeans had already been established. To further study, the researchers radio carbon dated four more tablets that were removed from the island by missionaries in eighteen sixty nine and are now kept in Rome, Italy go figure. The results showed that three of these tablets were made from wood felled in the nineteenth century, and the fourth was made several hundred years earlier, between fourteen ninety three and fifteen oh nine. Thus, the tablet appeared two hundred years before the arrival of foreigners on the island. This supports the idea that the script may have been developed in complete isolation. However, it is interesting to note that the sign was made from a tree that does not grow on Easter Island, but is the national tree of South Africa. Scientists suggest that this tree could have been thrown onto the island from a sunken European ship. Makes sense. It is impossible to say exactly how long the piece of woods spent at sea before it was used to create the tablet. It's very interesting, and there's so from what I'm gathering there that these these tablets are made of wood, and we know that they did a lot of their work in stone on the island, and they really don't speak to that. I don't see any references to the riding on stone or even stone tablets, you know. So, I mean, we're all baffled as to how they carved all these things as far as the stone work. I am so maybe it's just the lost technology and they weren't able to put it on tablets or cut tablets and do this the script on tablets. I don't know. We're talking two different maybe it's two different groups of people, separate groups. One didn't necessarily lead to the other. I have no idea, but super interesting. All right, enough of my uneducated speculation on this subject. Thank you for joining me today. I know your time is precious and I appreciate it. Five star, rate and review. Wherever you get your podcasts, subscribe, Tell a friend. That helps a ton, and please remember that we have a new podcast where all if you were looking for any of the news with m the geopolitical, slightly conspiracy theory driven news segment that we were doing, we have moved it. It's its own podcast now. You can grab it at Fringe News, wherever you get your podcasts. It's out there on all the major podcast catchers, so be sure to check that out. We're going to be dedicating a lot of time to that podcast because I think it's time to get some, you know, another podcast with a lot of valuable information. I think we're gleaning some big events happening in twenty twenty four globally, not just the United States where we are. We're going to look at everything, you know. We're going to all the global movements of deletes, the power brokers, you know, all those guys we love to hate. But again, I appreciate you. I have been mixed, strange, and I am out of here. Guys,