And Carl Segan/Arthur C. Clarke were doing the shtick before him with their ants and gods talk.


Still, it is a great concept that we need to keep in mind to understand our place in the universe.

>> ^budzos:

Netrunner don't know if you read sci-fi but there is a great book co-authored by Arthur C Clarke about this concept. It's called The Light of Other Days and is all about wormholes. Highly recommend if you've any interest.

I've probably still read more sci-fi books than anything else. In fact, my reaction to reading that was "holy shit, there's an Arthur C. Clarke book I haven't read?"

But yeah, various forms of FTL communication show up all over the place in sci-fi, and the (somewhat obvious) common thread is that they all rely on something that us 21st century people don't know how to detect.

My other thought is that maybe we do know how to detect it, but all we see is noise because they're using encryption that's millions of years more advanced than ours. Vacuum energy fluctuations are my (and several sci-fi authors') favorite place to imagine this might be happening.

Netrunner don't know if you read sci-fi but there is a great book co-authored by Arthur C Clarke about this concept. It's called The Light of Other Days and is all about wormholes. Highly recommend if you've any interest.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^rottenseed:
Well we're playing with radio waves which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, I don't know what makes radio waves so special when it comes to transferring data. I mean aside from the fact that they're harmless to us (large wavelength, low frequency, low energy) there's nothing inherent about tuning into those frequencies. Imagine too, that radio waves travel at light speed. That's the fastest we know ANYTHING to travel. If were to pick up a transmission that was sent a thousand years ago, that solar system could be as good as gone by now.
well maybe not a 1000 years...unless it was their last cry for help.

Right, that's why I'm thinking radio isn't the ultimate communication medium. Maybe there's something else more exotic that doesn't get weaker at a geometric rate, and is less susceptible to noise, and who knows, maybe even breaks the speed of light.
Drake's equation sorta assumes that there's some basic level of communications technology that civilizations develop relatively early in their lifespan, and then use continuously for the remaining duration of their existence.
I think that's a bad assumption. I doubt we'll still be broadcasting radio waves in a thousand years, let alone a million.

>> ^Payback:

>> ^brycewi19:
>> ^dingens:
There's a short story by Arthur C. Clarke on that subject, called "Take a deep breath".

Now you're talking my language. Me and A-Clark (that's my little nickname for him) go way back. Like 5th-grade back. My hero.

Ummm... you ARE aware of why people think he moved to Sri Lanka, aren't you?

You son of a bitch. I had to look that up. I didn't need to know that!

>> ^brycewi19:

>> ^dingens:
There's a short story by Arthur C. Clarke on that subject, called "Take a deep breath".

Now you're talking my language. Me and A-Clark (that's my little nickname for him) go way back. Like 5th-grade back. My hero.


Ummm... you ARE aware of why people think he moved to Sri Lanka, aren't you?

>> ^dingens:

There's a short story by Arthur C. Clarke on that subject, called "Take a deep breath".


Now you're talking my language. Me and A-Clark (that's my little nickname for him) go way back. Like 5th-grade back. My hero.

There's a short story by Arthur C. Clarke on that subject, called "Take a deep breath".

>> ^spaceman:

Why I don't care:
1) You once believed in a god.
2) You are a guy.


@spaceman | The reason why the rest of us watch and listen to "just some guy; who believed in God":

The only reason you can type your sentence is from/due-to "other" men. Religion in all forms is from "other" men (unless you claim to hear voices or a physical divinity; but, please, not as an affront to you, make sure you're not psychotic or schizophrenic before telling us your interesting story as that is the case almost always; same with drug use; same with some other illnesses: narcolepsy, sleep walking, night terrors/sleep paralysis, and many other sleep related issues and all nervous system illnesses). Only a few things below talk more about what you said.
--------------------------
--------------------------
A little more to add to the conversation. Hopefully, this gets it all out as it will be fairly long, but the video is hard to reply to in a short manner. I hope this covers a large extent of what I wish to say about this very well done video witness/testimony.


One set of values you can research and witness to it's validity on your own, as he has done. Science also allows for this methodology, using the well known precept of "The Scientific Method".

A quick example is that many people of faith, even Evid3nc3, talks of feeling "x" with their "hearts" and knowing "x" with their "soul". In science there is nothing more than a simple, yet complicated, physical processes. It's all a creation and manifestation in your brain; if you think you "feel" something with your heart you're causing minor self-hysteria to the extent of creating a minor hallucination.

The "soul" is called the(primarily in psychology, neuroscience, and neurology; there are many other terms that try to mean "you"; typically, in grossly inaccurate ways, such as: ghosts, "psychic" remote viewing, many religions use of the magical-energy-divine soul, etc...) psyche which is typically (starting from the outer-functions and moving into core-functions) sensory systems, language center, feelings, memory, and then the key-piece the neo-cortex. So it must be understood that your brain does a lot of things still baffling (mostly the mechanics or mechanisms of function and chemistry), but the overall picture is fairly clear.

But, the brain is not a floating energy source, nor is it an absolute definition at any given point or time. Depending on how and where you look at the brain the very concept of you is different. It more akin to superposition of an electron or a kaleidoscope; the definition of you is not concrete until measured and even then you are already not what was measured.

Even from what little we do know, belief plays a central role in how our neo-cortex makes decisions and operates (even with memory and other functions, which is why we do make many mistakes as it's due to how our brain physically commits to anything it must or will do; it's perhaps the single best reason to show why, "To err is human; to forgive, divine."; you don't understand the human condition if you cannot forgive...). Could this translate into a bigger picture; our connected neurons telling us to accept faith and belief, sometimes, because that is what it does at the small scale?

*Offtopic Look up articles, books, and videos (look at TED for Marvin Minsky, Jeff Hawkins, Craig Venter, Jonathan Haidt and others --some of which are here on the sift-- related topics on there like the Mind, AI, facial-pattern-contextual-semantics-divergent-cat vs. dog software based Recognition, and then other media pertaining to 'Artificial Intelligence') or if you want to know strictly about how the brain works and makes it's decisions, look for a type of setup called a "hierarchical structure"; also known as a pyramid or pyramid scheme. One cell makes a decision based off of the accumulations of "guesses" the other millions of cells connected to it made; these cells are fundamentally the foundation for that setup, but the neurons are more flexible than that as each can be a parent and also part of the "foundation" structure, making the brain a fantastic structure. With time this becomes accurate (this occurs in less than a few milliseconds), although our vision, for an example, is horrifically distorted and wrong, if you could look at one "frame" based on a few cells. Only a small fraction of the frame would be correct; literally it would be as though your senses got one pixel correct in a 1080p image. Yet, repeat this millions of times with different data sets each round (and this is done as said above, fast) you get an accurate picture; or at the least 20/20-to about one-arc minute (the resolution for the human eye, on average).

One set you can't test, we call that belief or faith. "What is the reasoning for taking the leap of faith?", this is what you have to defend at this point. If faith is your only defense, I will (like many others will) assume you haven't looked into your own faith enough yet or you even refuse to look out of fear of being wrong. If you do not understand the topic you must be willing to ask for help as he did or you'll be a slave to your willful decision of ignorance, to the extent that you feel compelled to defend them, but you never convince anyone except yourself--and for yourself it is only because of the rote-righteous indignation.

If it's true it should withstand all scrutiny. Unless truth isn't your ultimate goal. Then, for us and many others there is no reason to follow your faith. Usually, this type of merit and defense are directly related to age due to learning this all when you're a child and devoid of an intense ability to decipher, attribute values, connect, and draw in a belief (if with some facts and proof you could call it a hypothesis).

It's all from men... I'm wagering you're dismissing this flippantly due to religion; if not what exactly is your point, as I truly would like to know why and where this claim of non-relativistic knowledge comes from, without a woman or man?

Also, if it has to do with his belief in being mistaken for believing in God that's a moot point as we have all erred in life. I know of no person that has reliably been able to "claim divinity", other than Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, etc... But, we also know now that mental illness and other factors can account for any manic or psychotic leanings. We also know magicians (or magister, proper) have been around A LONG TIME.

Plus, as Arthur C. Clarke put it, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.". Which then one must ask another question, "Can divinity itself ever be established as being magic only?". This is then rounded up by a statement from Larry Niven (sometimes called Niven's Law(s)), "Any sufficiently rigorously defined magic is indistinguishable from technology.". These collide and distinctly form a conclusion about divinity and any of it's powers (descriptive magic or divinity and it's "how to use it" manual are indefensibly getting closer in each step to being more akin to physics; plus the Christian God hates magic, which begs the question, "Why do you need a God, if we can exact the same effects?"):

Divinity can only hope to use advanced knowledge and technology in a collusion to bring about one standpoint alone: "divinity" if described by God in any kind of ruleset (some of it is in the bible, already) stands on a rigorously tested and time shown: shaky ground.

Men would be gods whether God existed or not.

(P.S.: only the beginning and some bits here and there are for you, @spaceman. The rest is for our vestibule.)

Again I must add that this is a great find @dystopianfuturetoday.
You're doing yourself a great disservice not watching it (or all of it as the case may be).

I recommend you all forget about the Kubrick / Spielberg melodrama and go read the source material. Brian Aldiss eventually wrote three short stories about David. In fact, in a foreword titled "attempting to please" he talks about Kubrick, Spielberg, AI, etc. It's quite interesting. Here, let me type out a bit of it:

"So why was 'Supertoys' not filmed? [...] My belief is that he [Kubrick] was basically mistaken. Obsessed with the big blockbuster SF movies of the time, he was determined to take my sorrowing domestic scene out into the galaxy. After all, he had wrought similarly to great success with [Arthur C.] Clarke's story.

But 'The Sentinel' looks outward to begin with. It speaks of a mystery elsewhere, whereas 'Supertoys' speaks of a mystery within. David suffers because he does not know he is a machine. Here is the real drama; as Mary Shelley said of her Frankenstein, it 'speaks to the mysterious fears of our nature'.

A possible film could be made of 'Supertoys' showing David facing his real nature. It comes as a shock to realise he is a machine. He malfunctions. Perhaps his father takes him to a factory where a thousand identical androids step off the line. Does he autodestruct? The audience should be subjected to a tense and alarming drama of claustrophobia, to be left with the final questions, 'Does it matter that David is a machine? Should it matter? And to what extent are we all machines?'

Behind such metaphysical puzzles remains the simple story - the story that attracted Stanley Kubrick - of a boy who was never able to please his mother. A story of love rejected."

The concept of life outside of earth ought to be part of everyone's reality. I don't know about alien spacecraft actually visiting us and shooting beams of light into missile silos. If aliens were studying us it'd probably be accomplised by something like remote viewing through a wormhole or some such. In other words completely undetectable. What I am almost certain about is that alien life must exist. To me, looking out at the universe and believing we're the only life that exists is like one speck of sand believing it's special and magical among all the other specks of sand in existence. The numbers are against the presence of life here being unique. Most likely, life is commonplace. And I believe that intelligence is simply the logical result of self-organizing biology... intelligence leads to greater energy capture which is the immediate purpose of biological self-organization. In most cases you probably only get one intelligent species on a life-bearing planet at a time, but there are more planets out there than stars. Which is to say, a lot of cases.

Back to the wormhole thing. There's a theory that, at some point in the future, humans will develop remote viewing technology. That is, the use of wormholes to peer through time and space, giving an undetectable *live view* of events from the past. Not exactly visiting the past, more like snaking a SWAT team camera through time via wormholes. Now, according to the rules of big numbers, given the existence of remote viewing technology in the future, and future extending for millions and billions of years... every single moment of every single person's life is probably being directly observed by someone in the future. Of course, more important moments are being watched by billions or trillions of people from the future. But on average, every moment is watched at least once. Think about that shit.

Arthur C Clarke wrote a book around this concept called The Light of Other Days. Needless to say, the ultimate, ultimate extents of the technology in the book are pretty mindblowing.

Has anyone here ever looked at the science channel, or are we just applying criteria selectively?

Once the following videos are removed, since they are merely about science and of interest to people interested in science, we can then reasonable remove the present video about science publishing.

http://science.videosift.com/video/Probably-Hitchens-best-speech-It-does-not-follow
http://science.videosift.com/video/Ned-Flanders-Naturally-Selected-Fish
http://science.videosift.com/video/How-long-does-it-take-for-the-earth-to-go-around-the-sun
http://science.videosift.com/video/Arthur-C-Clarke-predicting-the-future-in-1964
http://science.videosift.com/video/Relativity-is-a-Liberal-Plot

Additionally, if the below videos are supposed to represent rigorous scientific experiments, they seem to very clearly fail the above proposed criteria.
http://science.videosift.com/video/We-Live-in-Public-Trailer
http://science.videosift.com/video/The-anti-Semitic-truth-about-evolution
http://science.videosift.com/video/NEVER-Microwave-an-airbag
http://science.videosift.com/video/Seth-Priebatsch-Building-the-game-layer-on-top-of-the-world

He was "spot on" on a great many things. Even 2001, if resources allowed, could have been a possibility (the vehicles).

I think the biggest problems with many sci-fi writers is that they overreach or have little knowledge of the logistics and production side. Arthur C. Clarke did have the foresight to take a lot of these issues into his writings and more so, his talks. People like him often help issue these devices into reality just by their influence on future engineers/scientists.

>> ^Chaucer:
Neither one of them answered the damned question. They did a nice job skirting around it.


What is there for them to skirt around? People don't have to be told that murder is wrong to know that it's wrong. Even *IF* they need to be taught that, religious indoctrination certainly 100% shouldn't be required as part of that process. Belief in a deity has nothing to do with morality.

I think she truly feels that the commandments are explicitly responsible for keeping people on the straight and narrow and that religion has therefore, done its job; that without religion people like Fry and Hitchens would eventually regress into wild bands of killer rapist thieves. Hitchens and Fry would contest that, and Hitchens did so by saying the morality she's speaking of is innate, that it's not given to us by religion, but the other way around. Kind of like Arthur C Clarke's famous quote:

“The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be
the hijacking of morality by religion.”

It's no wonder that people like Fry and Hitchens get so enraged and walk out of rooms occupied by people like this lady. Her kind have had their say for far too long.

I did indeed. I tried to respond to that whole "is this magic" argument that was going on, and I couldn't very well call David Blaine "technology"

And to me holding your breath for 17 minutes means you're in league with some dark forces for certain.

In reply to this comment by mentality:
>> ^gwiz665:
Any sufficiently advanced feat is indistinguishable from magic.


I hope you're misquoting Arthur C. Clarke deliberately for the lulz, and not actually trying to be serious =P

>> ^gwiz665:
Any sufficiently advanced feat is indistinguishable from magic.


I hope you're misquoting Arthur C. Clarke deliberately for the lulz, and not actually trying to be serious =P