Ted Chiang's 'Catching Crumbs from the Table': When Humans Become Metascientists
Catching Crumbs from the Table (2000)
In a 2000 Nature futures piece, science fiction author Ted Chiang imagines a future where metahuman scientists have advanced so far that humans are relegated to studying the crumbs of their discoveries. This short story explores the role of human science in a world dominated by superior intelligence.
In the face of metahuman science, humans have become metascientists.
- chr15m
> Hermeneutics is a legitimate method of scientific inquiry.
Whatever the non-fiction equivalent of this is, maybe that's what smart, curious humans will do in the future.
Human mathematicians will explore the findings of AI research to try to understand and explain it to other human mathematicians, in the same way biologists today try to explore and understand living organisms to explain them to other human biologists.
- dang
Related. Others?
Catching crumbs from the table by Ted Chiang (2000) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47559422 - March 2026 (1 comment)
Catching crumbs from the table (2000) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13257199 - Dec 2016 (5 comments)
- chrisjj
Free of charge here https://www.scribd.com/document/893921964/CHIANG-Catching-Cr...