This is an argument contrary to the plethora of Conspiracies swirling around our societal hurricane, instead proclaiming that this can be fixed with the correct motivations and gatekeepers, which have been kept at bay by the pursuit of profits.

So what about the Illuminati/Bilderberg Group, (4) extra-terrestrial alien interventions, lizard people, FEMA-Camp culling, Trump a complete puppet of Putin? Still seeking evidence. Perhaps our demise has been less coordinated beyond their love of money .

@RedSky

Crossing your fingers and waiting for the tooth fairy to fix everything is not a valid response to global crises. That is what passivity amounts to whether your eventual, hoped for remedy is shiny's simple-minded faith or failed economic models that got us into this mess in the first place, or unforeseeable scientific advances that may never come.

You've been using the most preposterously optimistic projections available, okay, let's assume they're correct and we level off at somewhere around nine to eleven billion. You want all of these people to live worthwhile, prosperous lives; well that's at least five times as many high energy consuming, 21st century humans as we've ever actually been able to support.

This coming at the end of an economic and technological bubble of readily available, dense energy supply for which we have no replacement; relative efficiency gains in spending that energy that can never be replicated (because efficiency doesn't go above 100%); casual environmental damage that cannot continue; and diminishing returns in every scientific field, where advancement is always becoming more difficult and more expensive.

This isn't a pessimistic view. Humanity has a bright future, all we have to do to secure it is stop creating more and more people out of nothing for no reason. Barring extra-terrestrial threats like meteorites, solar flares and relativistic missiles launched by hostile alien species; we have the knowledge we need to build a civilisation capable of enduring for millions of years, or burn out in a couple of hundred.

Hard one to vote on. I don't believe any of those and the first two aren't an answer (ie. how does a fridge work? magic. - that's not good enough to be an answer for me). Evolution is a fact - we've actually used natural selection to breed better hunting dogs etc for years. It was exploited during the slave trade too so we know natural selection works for humans too (at a terrible human cost, of course). Evolution doesn't say where life came from, only how life progressed.

An extra terrestrial source of life? Well we've been hit countless times by countless objects from space, it's not unreasonable. Or do you mean ONLY sentient beings visiting earth and causing life? Either way, we have definitely evolved.

I think the only way we'll ever get closer to answering a question like this is finding out just how abundant "life" is in the universe, or at least our local region of the galaxy. If it's abundant, then either it formed here or it was extra terrestrial. And if we reach that point i won't care which it was

A. Alien
B. Beatle Juice
C. Chucky
D. Dracula
E. ET (Extra Terrestrial)
F. Freddy Kruger
G. Godzilla
H. Incredible Hulk
I. Incubus (?)
J. Jason Voorhees
K. King Kong
L. Hannibal Lecter
M. The Mummy
N. Nosferatu
O. Octopus (??)
P. Pinhead
Q. Queen of the Damned
R. Razorback
S. Satan
T. Terminator
U. Uruk-hai
V. Darth Vader
W. Werewolf
X. Xenomorph (?)
Y. Yeti
Z. Zombies

*promote

Neat video, showing that animals are in fact very capable--across the board, not just apes and highly trained dogs & dolphins--capable of using tools. In this case it is to have fun. But, it appears to be self-taught without human prompting, which shows us very much that we DON'T yet fully understand their full capabilities. We are barely getting to a point were the human mind makes sense, psychologically and via neuroscience.


Once we understand the majority of ourselves we can gain better insights into the animal world, which of course is very different from one little black-feathered flying Crow to the large leathery skinned water-dwelling/land mammal, Hippopotamus! With understandings into their world via the same as ours: neuroscience and psychology; we can make further strides in truly expanding our horizons and moreover it may help prepare us for the day we really do run into an extra-terrestrial sentient life-form.

Check out the Kingon Marriage in the "up next" after the video. It's terrible. That's one of the goofiest trends in sci-fi, where they show an earth custom in a non-earth culture and just ad spacey elements. I'd like to think that extra-terrestrial culture would different beyond all imagination.

>> ^luxury_pie:

But nonetheless he IS drawing a very intimidating picture there. I for one never realized so clearly the "place" we as a human race have in the universe. Besides the fact that he uses outdated or non-accurate scientific references as it seems. Please keep in my mind that this man is a historian and as I see it he doesn't base his whole argument on the laws of thermodynamics rather then his own abstraction of complexity and development.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't many if not all of the facts he mentions about the first "steps" of the universe currently accepted facts/ assumptions of astrophysics, if one could say so?
His train of thought seems pretty straight to the point and his conclusion is absolutely true. We are indeed destroying the "goldi-locks-conditions" that led to our existence.


I agree. Yet I wish he would also point out that in the last ten years we've found extreme life in places you'd NEVER expect. This might throw the "goldi-locks-conditions" partially out the window. This year we found life not based on carbon, but phosphorous (this is by rote memory, it may have been sulfur) and even arsenic! We may actually have quite a bit of extra-terrestrial life in our own solar system. Just not sentient (or lacking ways to create incredible machinations of the mind), yet.

What humans need to learn is that we will kill ourselves as WE need that, "goldi-locks-conditions", to live. Almost all current life except the kind I mentioned would be devastated by our actions. We WILL die, and be replaced for a good 4-5 billion years. If we get to one million I'd be surprised.

If you're talking grey-goo stuff though, then I'll give you that...as the most hilarious way to screw ourselves over... I'm just thinking of alien telescopes looking at our planet and wondering WTF is that!?!

/The last bit is my sarcastic bastard side showing through.

The last bit of information is awesome. We may actually detect extra-terrestrial life within my lifetime.

How far we've come in such a short time.

I would never ask "Is there a greater meaning to our existence", because the answer might be "No."

I might ask - "How can i achieve cold fusion?" or "How can i travel faster than the speed of light?" or "What is the catch-all works-for-all cure for true depression?"

Other ones like "How can i harness the energy from lightning?", "What does extra terrestrial life look like?", "Is there anything like us in the universe and do they have the same insecurities and fears as us?", "In full, what is the grand unification theory?", "Light behaves like a wave and a particle, what IS it?" (which is kinda what the kid said, amazing).

But if there's no answer, i'd hope to get a retry. But the cold fusion one would be one of the most tempting. Faster than light travel is probably the one i'd want to know the most, but without effectively limitless free energy the world will never reach the stage of harmony that we'd need to travel faster than light, get off our knees and really begin to walk as a species.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Maybe you saw Contact when you were 14, but there's nothing juvenile about the movie. It's full of big ideas and based on Sagan's best arguments for the existence of extra-terrestrial life. It's Science Fiction at it's best - inspiring, though-provoking, and able to move people to do more real science.

>> ^Tymbrwulf:

@dag I haven't seen Knowing(Nic Cage? srsly?) or Moon, but I'll agree wholeheartedly about Dark City. Contact was cool if you're 14, but to each his own.
I'd also add:
The Thirteenth Floor
Gattaca
They both ask questions about our reality/values and reflect on them in some interesting ways.
As for this movie? Looks like your average popcorn flick hero movie that Hollywood's been trying to cash in on since Superman 2.
Also, if you liked Contact, you might enjoy Stargate

Speilberg directed the film. It was his baby. He was only uncredited because of contractual limitations. From the Wikipedia entry...

A clause in his contract with Universal Studios prevented Spielberg from directing any other film while preparing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Time and Newsweek tagged the summer of 1982 "The Spielberg Summer" because E.T. and Poltergeist were released a week apart in June. As such a marketable name, some began to question Spielberg's role during production. Suggestions that Spielberg had greater directorial influence than the credits suggest were aided by comments made by the writer/producer:

"Tobe isn't... a take-charge sort of guy. If a question was asked and an answer wasn't immediately forthcoming, I'd jump in and say what we could do. Tobe would nod agreement, and that become the process of collaboration."

>> ^radx:
If this is too long for you to watch, do yourself a favor and at least jump straight to 1:14:00 and watch the end. His closing points are ... marvelous. As for the 1% issue: I hadn't thought about that, at all. Doesn't happen often.
promote


It's sad that such a great educator doesn't understand basic genetics. That 1% is totally misleading because only 76% of the human DNA could be aligned with ape DNA for a comparison. It is out of that 76% that was comparable that there was a 1% difference. The actual difference between us is enormous, and is way too complicated to quantify at our current level of understanding of genomics and proteomics.

Also, I don't see why he would be worried about the possibility of extra terrestrial life being orders of magnitude more intelligent than us. Humanity has just begun to unlock the secrets of our genes, and with the advance of computers and technology, it's easy to imagine that the humans of the 22nd century will be vastly superior to us. Of course, hopefully we won't destroy ourselves along the way, ruin our planet, or have our progress hindered by religious nutbags.

>> ^schmawy:
Oh man I'm going to have so much fun on the Sift when (okay, if) we make contact. I'll never tire of saying "I told you so". I swear, I'm going to be totally annoying about it.


I've been saying for years that I'm waiting for the day when the ships land, and they aliens come out to harvest the crop they seeded the planet with thousands of years ago.

Shouldn't this have the war on terror tag? Or rather, the war OF terror? I mean, why isn't THIS guy a terrorist? He's clearly using terror for certain ends...

You see, the extra terrestrial threat is the only one which can succeed in convincing the mass of humanity that it must sacrifice all rights and liberties for the greater good. This concept was referred to once upon a time as communism.

If the asteroid fails at it's mission, it will be extra terrestrial life forms.

Jackie Gleason claimed he saw dead aliens.

"According to Gleason's second wife, Beverly McKittrick, he told her that U.S. President Richard Nixon took him on a secret visit to Homestead Air Force Base. There, Gleason allegedly saw an alien spaceship and dead extra-terrestrials." (Source)