AdeleneDawner comments on Mundane Magic - Less Wrong
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Does this genre have a name, or other googleable traits?
The only example that comes to my mind is the short story "Sshhh..." by David Brin. And that's not really the same thing, since the entire point of the story is that it's ambiguous whether humans really do have anything special about them.
The Humans are Special trope here gives a lot of examples of this. Reputedly, it was a premise that John Campbell, editor of Amazing Stories, was very fond of, accounting for its prevalence.
The concept is popular on 4chan's /tg/ board where they're called "humanity" stories or "humanity, fuck yeah" stories. Here's one archive of such threads:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=humanity
Most of these have me going "argh, physics/game theory/evolution doesn't work that way!", but there's a few good ones in there. I liked this one and this one in particular, though the former has a fair bit of evolution fail in it.
Agreed, they can definitely get a bit absurd. This one is one of my favourites:
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/13-TheBalticWarCD/TheBalticWarCD/The%20World%20Turned%20Upside%20Down/0743498747__24.htm
The short story "The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove is also a good one if you can find it.
I like the "Humans are insane" series of threads.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Humans