We are like a speck of dust in this universe

[semaphore]

What a big load of meaningless pseudo-intellectual fail philosophising.

---------- Post added 2013-02-21 at 05:01 AM ----------

here's hoping the singularity comes soon.

Kinda wishful thinking really.

[Kalyyn]

Contribute something or stop sucking up resources. Humanity doesn't need quitters.

Our ancestors had nothing when they first stepped foot on this world. We were just bald apes with no natural advantages. We were just a tiny tribe somewhere in the jungle, being preyed upon by physically superior animals. Animals who were faster, stronger, and had more natural weapons. But we said fuck that noise, and started working together to fight back. Soon we were hunting the very beasts we once feared.

From that one little patch of jungle in Africa, we expanded. We ventured in to new lands, and with each step encountered new foes. We even encountered other humanoids, some of which were smarter or stronger than us. But through our ability to work together, we wiped every last one of them from the face of the planet. And this place used to be swarming with intelligent apes. We murdered every one. And not just apes. Saber Tooth Tiger? That was us. Mammoths? That was the largest land animal any human has ever seen, and we decided that they tasted good. And we hunted those monsters with wooden spears.

We went from being scared little monkeys in a little patch of Africa to having undisputed dominance on every corner of the globe. And then that wasn't enough, so we went and checked out the moon, too. The fact that we can now destroy this entire rock at will means that we have truly become the gods of Earth. And you think that this is where we're finally going to stop? You should know that we get bored too easily for that. We're always looking for the next best place to be, and if it's on another rock 20 light years away, then that's where we're fucking going.

This is our universe, and god help anything foolish enough to stand in our way.

[Littleraven]

thats a very pessimistic way to look at things. sure we are a speck in what we believe to be infinte space but i do think that someday we will leave earth and even our solar system. it wont be anytime soon but i think it will happen

[Wafffles]

We will never be able to explore the universe we will never get the technology to explore out of our solar system.
We would destroy ourselves before we have the technology to get out of our solar system. Even if we do it would probably take us 100 years to get out and who lives for 100 years?

just think of it like this.
We are like an ant colony in one country.
Do you think the ants in brazil are going to ever meet the ants in asia?
Do you think they even know each other exists?

We would destroy ourselves before we have the technology to get out

For centuries it wasn't just assumed, it was definitively known that we would never, could never, have never and won't ever be able to leave the planet. Now we have humans living in orbit, foot prints on the moon, and robots on Mars.

If I told the ancient Greeks that humans would indeed one day visit extra-terrestrial object, they would have asked how is that possible. They would imagine some sort of 'bird', likely made of wood with some steel, flying to the moon. If I told them no, we would do it with a metal alloy body powered by advanced thermo-chemical rockets, they would have stared at me blankly.

If I were to tell you we manage to accomplish intergalactic space travel in the year 5783 with, oh who even knows, say a super-nitrographene forcefield body with a quark-antiquark plasma engine (in fact, something far more advanced obviously) manipulating space-time into wormholes, you would stare at me blankly.

Oh, and you may be right that we'll end up exterminating ourselves first, but you can't assume we'll just pull the trigger as soon as we have a big enough gun. We've managed to contain the nuclear apocalypse everyone was so certain was coming after Heroshima for the better part of a century, knock on wood.

[zorkuus]

This sounds like the musings of someone who's had a thought on this topic for the very first time.

Do you think the ants in brazil are going to ever meet the ants in asia?

Yes, they're called shipping crates.

[Vreivai]

I think I'm going to make a stone engraving of this post and bury it, just so everyone in the future knows how goddamn stupid you are when it comes to predicting the future.

[Garnier Fructis]

I think I'm going to make a stone engraving of this post and bury it, just so everyone in the future knows how goddamn stupid you are when it comes to predicting the future.

What if we go through a catastrophic global nuclear war, and the few remaining humans find your stone and it ends up being the last surviving text?

[Eskmo]

All I've got to say is, PALE BLUE DOT!

[RoKPaNda]

Who cares? Just live your life and be happy. Yeah we're all pretty irrelevant, that's fine, nothing you can do about it, just live. I accepted a long time ago that while I want to know everything about everything there are things that I will never know that I can never learn in my lifetime, things I'll never see, and I'm alright with that. If by some chance I do get to see those things, well, bonus.

[Hiricine]

Its actually pretty easy to travel outside the universe, we basically just need a way to freeze ourselves and thaw us out. Point a ship in a direction, freeze the crew, fly towards the target, momentum carries you there over the next 40,000 years.

[Sayl]

Wait what?

Really?

Source please, because this sounds too good to be true.

Looks like another victim of blogger sensationalism.

We had a couple of threads on this relatively recently (like the cringe-worthy "NASA working on Warp Drives - FTL Speeds looking possible"). Long story short, a NASA engineer is curious to see if effects similar to Alcubierre's hypothesized warp bubble (link) could be observed or reproduced in the lab on a small scale using laser interferometery. He's trying to devise a simple and cheap way to test if his idea is remotely correct. But the press and bloggers got wind of that, can't begin to understand what he's actually doing, and substituted ridiculous headlines alongside pictures of the Enterprise cruising at warp speed. Now we have people running around on forums thinking NASA is on the verge of some epic advanced propulsion system. It's a bit infuriating to be honest.

[Vhoosh]

We will never be able to explore the universe we will never get the technology to explore out of our solar system.
We would destroy ourselves before we have the technology to get out of our solar system. Even if we do it would probably take us 100 years to get out and who lives for 100 years?

just think of it like this.
We are like an ant colony in one country.
Do you think the ants in brazil are going to ever meet the ants in asia?
Do you think they even know each other exists?

We would destroy ourselves before we have the technology to get out

That's all well and good except humanity's first interstellar ship has already left or is soon to leave the solar system. It's unmanned of course and relatively slow in a cosmic sense, but it's out there. By the way if you're in such a pessimistic mood try drinking the bad away.

[Sayl]

Speak for yourself, here's hoping the singularity comes soon. Our lifetimes might be a lot longer than expected!
Go transhumanist!

If only we could harness the power of unbridled optimism, we'd already be there.

[melodramocracy]

One of the better analogies of humanity I'd read is that we're quite a lot like highly intelligent fish in a pond. We continue to learn our own surroundings quite well, but everything beyond the water's boundary is speculation.

[Deleted]

If only we could harness the power of unbridled optimism, we'd already be there.

Haha, the power of my optimism alone would be enough to do it

Now, seriously speaking, i have a truly optimistic outlook on the future of our species. I have great expectations on ourselves.
Reading mankind's history is enough to give me that optimism. It's true there are failings we keep repeating, but overall we are getting better and better. We are more powerful, wiser and more benevolent than in our past. We're better people than our forefathers (probably because when you have to struggle for your survival every day, you can't afford to be excessively generous or benevolent... a mean existence has a high probability to make one mean, which why i hate when people who have it all going for themselves decide to stick to being mean-spirited... but i'm rambling now lol).

[Arganaut]

What did Neil Armstrong say "that's one small step for man, one giant leap for man kind". Rome wasn't built in a day. Dream the dream. Humanity is awesome. The limiting factor is imagination.

[McTurbo]

one of the blinders that every generation puts on is that they think they are the pinnacle of civilization. when in truth. we are but another step in the ladder leading to our future.

Advances we are just touching,
Genetic Enhancements.
Rejuv for aging.
Molecular Engineering (the rules change a lot when you get down to the atomic layer)
Nano tech.
Bio Engineering (tissue/organ therapies or regens)
Fusion Energy

Things we have yet to touch.
Creation at the molecular level (creating elements)
Artificial Gravities (gravetics)
Force Field Technologies.. science says its possible
Creating an Avatar of your mind (transferring your conscious or something similar to a machine virtual world - hello immortality)
Defeating aging/slowing/reversing
Dark Matter
zero point energy
artificial intelligences..

there are so much we havnt discovered that its nieve to think that we will never go beyond our solor system... fusion power alone would give us near enough unlimited power to attain a 1g constant acceleration/deceleration process that would enable our solar system to be completely explored and put its resources to use. (1 g acceleration means 4 hours to get to the moon instead of 3 days.. 9 days to get to mars instead of 8 months and so on.. these times are something to look at like the old sailing ships.. their was profits to be made even with the month's long journeys those ships took)

our future is bright and i think that while some think we have learned everything important their is to learn.. i truly believe we have just scratched the surface. to give you a point of view.. think of trying to describe the internet in detail not just vague talk.. to a person from 1901 .. they simply dont have the concepts to understand you let alone the words that were not invented yet... what will 2150 think of 2000?

[Dezerte]

What if we go through a catastrophic global nuclear war, and the few remaining humans find your stone and it ends up being the last surviving text?

A new religion is born.

[Deleted]

Even if we do it would probably take us 100 years to get out and who lives for 100 years?

You are so short-sighted.

Humanity is still a little baby. We have a long way ahead of us.

[Banawani]

We will never be able to explore the universe we will never get the technology to explore out of our solar system.
We would destroy ourselves before we have the technology to get out of our solar system. Even if we do it would probably take us 100 years to get out and who lives for 100 years?

just think of it like this.
We are like an ant colony in one country.
Do you think the ants in brazil are going to ever meet the ants in asia?
Do you think they even know each other exists?

We would destroy ourselves before we have the technology to get out

Actually it is possible for the ants from brazil to meet ants in asia, I'm sure it's happened before.

You think the people in Mesopotamia ever even thought there was other living people?