Share
Yanis-i-Numo
Yanis-i-Numo was a low second singularity TRHN social critic and parodist who first came to the attention of the wider modosophont population with the publication of The Yanis Field Guide to Hominoids in 5102 AT. Published directly for a subsingularity audience, the Field Guide was an extensive listing and description of not just the then extant human-derived baseline, nearbaseline, tweak, rianth, and su clades, but also of most Hominoid related provolves and their related tweaks and rianths. Though quickly pegged by many as an elaborate joke based on the numerous humorous and acerbic asides the anthropological survey was too useful overall to be dismissed. There were protests among several hominoid derived clades due to the inclusion of a care and feeding section in many of the entries. Since this was ostensibly a guide to hominoids in the field rather than in captivity Yanis acquiesced to such criticisms and deleted or reworked those sections with the third edition. After personally working on fifteen editions, Yanis apparently tired of the guide and signed over the publication rights and responsibilities of future editions to the Institute for Primate Provolution, which has published it ever since. However, these later editions of the Guide gradually came to be viewed as rather stodgy until Sun Wu-K'ung became directly involved in revitalizing it by reintroducing the sort of levity which had made the original famous.

The next work presented for a modosophont readership was Why Won't People Just Behave? (Pleiades Press, 5389), an epistolary novel consisting of the correspondence passing between a first singularity senior memetographer and er design and implementation team. Through a series of hypothetical situations as well as numerous actual historical case studies the mechanics of memetic engineering were explained in an elegant and enlightening (not to mention amusing) manner that was a vast improvement over most existing pop-sci guides and memetics textbooks. It was later discovered to be a lower toposophic reworking of a novel Yanis had produced for readers of the first singularity level in which the meme-team was described as being of the second singularity. Critics had long held that those of each toposophic level have much the same concerns regarding the issue of memetic manipulation that many modosophonts have and Just Behave was touted as a very strong confirmation of that view.

In addition to those works e is perhaps best known to modosophonts for the Yanis Conjecture and the Yanis Principle.

The Yanis Conjecture originated as the punch line to a joke which Yanis performed during a transapient anakalyptics conference held on Amaterasu, Solar Dominion in 6108 AT. According to transapient sources [1], it involved a virtuoso piece of pseudo-cliological anakalyptic analysis and projection to "prove" that the efforts of one of the characters in the setup would be considered completely worthwhile by at least one cultural grouping at some time in the entire past and future history of the Terragen Sphere - but only momentarily. Not only was the gist of the punch line considered funny but, according to those in a position to appreciate it, the pseudo-anakalyptic calculus was quite amusing in and of itself. Since then, the conjecture has come to be used as a general purpose put-down among transapients, primarily directed at those felt to be too full of themselves, those propounding some ill-considered Great Idea, or simply someone who thinks they are funny when they aren't.

The Yanis Principle [2] states that within any hierarchical noetic system, sophonts will tend to ascend/transcend to their level of incompetence. Many of the more melancholy social scientists and philosophers hold that this goes a long way towards explaining the state of Terragen affairs. It also underscores one of the primary topics found in a close examination Yanis' works, that of inter-toposophic relations and the often unacknowledged limitations of transapient capability [3]. Yanis had a desire to remind those of all S-levels that humility in dealing with those of a lower toposophic was essential to a just civilization. This has been seen as paradoxical to some of those who are only familiar with the Field Guide but a close reading of that book will reveal a level of fondness for the subject matter in spite of some rather biting commentary [4].

In 9283 AT Yanis and Tefe.kasalapannak, a low second singularity Communion affiliated empai and then a submissions editor for Zeitgeist, combined and reformulated themselves into Teef.annis.kallumiso. Just prior to er ceasing to be a distinct entity, Yanis published a list of what e claimed to be 21 Nihilartikels which e had been able to get inserted into the Encyclopaedia Galactica. This caused no small amount of consternation among editorial board since, as it turned out, up until that time they had only managed to uncover 9 of them.

Teef.annis.kallumiso's intellect is thought to be somewhere in the mid second singularity range. The majority of the multitude of components that make up er distributed corpus currently roams the Plains of Vin, level 8992, region 790, sector 4019.4, Kiyoshi B megastructure, MPA. Smaller groupings and individual units can be encountered in nearby sectors and levels but generally not more than a few light-seconds from the main herd.


[1] first brought to modosophont attention through the translation/interpretation by superbright godwatchers of an account of the meeting related by Pilar.hamanamerrapin for the "Cultural Observations and Letters for Those of Lower Vistas" section of Zeitgeist, issue 17, volume MMMCIX, version S:1.0

[2] Yanis-i-Numo "Abounding (Re)Considerations of Solarist and Keterist Aspirations" Theopticon, volume CCLII.

[3] m'Haroi 558-09-7θ, Yanis-i-Numo and the Art of Provocation (Scipio University Press, 9350)

[4] ibid.
 
Related Articles
 
Appears in Topics
Famous AIs and HyperturingsIntertoposophic Relations
 
Development Notes
Text by Terrafamilia
Initially published on 09 October 2006.

 
 
>