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Yanis-i-Numo |
Yanis-i-Numo was a low second singularity THRN 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.
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 a.t.. 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 Terragens 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 a.t. 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.
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[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
