> Oxygen levels run at roughly half of what our lungs expect. Carbon dioxide is present at concentrations enormously higher than in the outside atmosphere. The air is laced with hydrogen sulfide, the compound responsible for the smell of rotten eggs, and with methane and ammonia.
So it was not truly sealed. A truly sealed cave would have had no oxygen, it would have all been consumed in reactions with methane.
Yes, but an alternative would be that if an organism is perfectly fit for its static environment (that hasn't changed in 5 million years) then there is no benefit to evolving novel features.
More likely a dynamic environment is most important for intelligence.
Just because the cave is sealed now, does not mean it has been sealed for millions of years. Even for geology, 5.5M years is a long time. I don't understand how they can claim it never had connections to the outside, just because it doesn't have connections now.
Speleology aside, just a few days ago in one of HN discussions I was told LLM-produced content is already indistinguishable from human-made. But I'm sure I would have pretty good chances to correctly guess even the exact brand which helped to write this sloppy text. And it's the same with many stories I read.
The wikipedia article says "While animals have lived in the cave for 5.5 million years, not all of them arrived simultaneously. One of the most recent animals recorded is the cave's only species of snail, Heleobia dobrogica, which has inhabited the cave for slightly more than 2 million years."
This already happened in the past: they found a cave totally sealed since so long that spiders still had eyes, but non-functioning ones (for they were totally in the dark for generations and generations, eyes didn't make sense anymore).
Just as the holy books predicted. Oops, sorry, just as Darwin predicted.
For some reason, I feel sad. I was always fascinated when finding an article about newly found discoveries on Earth, and the comments from Hacker News were usually helpful and adding more to the stories.
Now, we talk about whether such discovery was written by LLM.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 4.2 ms ] threadSo it was not truly sealed. A truly sealed cave would have had no oxygen, it would have all been consumed in reactions with methane.
Maybe sun and space are importance factors for intelligence.
More likely a dynamic environment is most important for intelligence.
Oh, so that's why my neighbour, Vasile, drills day and night. He hopes to discover a new life form. /s
like the summarization tools based on those models except it's the opposite, it was fluffed up into a long article
Just as the holy books predicted. Oops, sorry, just as Darwin predicted.
so probably a cheap openai model
Now, we talk about whether such discovery was written by LLM.
Does it really matter?