I’ve used this argument before arguing with hippies about “integrating with nature”.
Any society that isn’t on track to developing the science and engineering necessary for interstellar tavel is a dead end.
It’s a tragic waste of human intelligence to keep making the same bamboo huts indefinetly.
So some noble savage can live their lives on repeat for hundreds or millenia, and that’s somehow better than inventing an arc that can save every form of life on this unique Planet?
What makes life on another planet more worthwhile than life here? Also humans didn’t take that long to evolve so there’s plenty of opportunity for a successor to us to reach the stars in a way that causes less suffering. For that matter, we could have simply taken a couple hundred extra years to get there and reduced human suffering by like a thousandfold with a more equitable society. Bloody stupid capitalist nonsense.
there’s plenty of opportunity for a successor to us to reach the stars
No, there isn’t. We’ve already used up all the easily accessible sources of fossil fuels, so whoever comes after us won’t have the energy sources necessary to have an industrial revolution and will be stuck at a pre-industrial tech level forever.
We’re having quite a bit of trouble making that transition even with the benefits of a couple centuries of fossil-fueled industry. I find the idea of jumping directly from horse-drawn wagons to wind turbines and solar panels rather implausible.
That’s right, if we kick the bucket, a new intelligent civilization would not have the resources to advance at our pace. They may figure out the atom, but they won’t have the resources to utilize their knowledge. Then there is the ever looming threat of a disaster, and these preindustrial civilizations will be wiped out with zero warning or preparation.
Also: what are the chances a species similar to us in intelligence will emerge again on this rock? I’m going to bet it’s pretty darn tiny.
Write for me 4000 words on how technological advancement is a linear progression that always follows the same path and needs the same exact external stimuli to occur.
4000 words? Oh please, that can be done in a hundredth of that: The laws of physics are constant, and more advanced technologies have energy requirements that must be met by preceding technologies. At the same time, each technology also has to offer enough tangible benefits to be worth pursuing on its own.
We’re not going to make it until the sun swallows the earth. If there’s anything related to us left at that point then it wouldn’t be recognisable to us.
As individuals, a lot of people are content to live a simple life of prosperity. They have a basic job, and a small family, and some basic luxuries - and they call it enough. Some people have a one-eyed focus on increasing their wealth throughout their lives; but not everyone is like that. People generally recognise that their lives are finite. Some try to aim for some kind of imaginary high-score in their life, and others just live a ‘normal’ life.
I’m now making an analogy. As a species, we can recognise that are time is finite; and we can choose to live that out in a stable simple prosperity, where we just look after our world (house) and get what we need for some basic luxuries, and be content. We could have a billion years of that. It’s a very long time. Or… we could aim for endless growth. We could consume as much as possible, and always aim for more. As we run out of resources and livable habitat on Earth, we must look to interstellar travel and spread to other planets. I don’t necessarily think that is a better choice.
When I was young, I use to think that humans needed to settle on other planets. But I don’t think that any more. Partially because I learnt about special relativity, and decided that unless we’re very very wrong about science so far, having connected colonies on other planets is not possible. But also because I realised that there is no intrinsic goal to spread human life as much as possible. There are other things of value. We don’t need that particular goal. I also use to think that personal immortality would be a good thing. I don’t really think that any more.
Until you find out unity with nature allows humans to transcend human form and ascend to a higher plane of existence. While technology fights a losing battle to compete with the universes slow entropy into darkness. Oops.
I literally had a dream that predicted the worst year of my life, 5 years in advance, by having a friendly dream character tell me I died and went to a dream afterlife.
The catch was that I am autistic and I acted and act much like I did when I was 10 years old, and that was reflected by me taking the form of the kid sidekick in the fictional world that I was trying to write a story about at the time. I was told I was adorable and intelligent-looking (I was not the smartest kid but I was well-read and paid attention to what was in my textbooks) and not particularly unlikeable, and all of that was because that dream afterlife was a place where your personality determined your appearance. Yet despite the fact that I did not look monstrous or untrustworthy and that people who died quickly realised that in the dream world people are exactly what they appear to be, I was warned people would discriminate against me anyway, and there was nothing I or my apparent dream friend could do; said dream friend told me they thought I at least deserved to know it would happen and to just try and enjoy eternity, since I would never wake up, but that it would be hard because people would hate me unfairly.
I woke up anyway. That’s not why I call BS. I recorded that dream in a text file and I keep backups of all my unique files.
I’ll finish editing this soon but my phone is at 2% battery…
I will say, though, I don’t really have any stakes in this argument especially when you consider my contribution to humanity will probably be dead end evolutionary branch responsible for creating higher order carbon based polymers.
5 years later, sure enough, everything I value became critic-repellant in the writing industry; “you have to grow up”, “dark and edgy is realistic and realistic is mandatory”, “escapism is evil”, “children are spoiled little shits”, etc.
I now am extremely certain the dream characters who talk to me are avatars of my unconscious. I know that sounds really weird and I have no proof, so believing me on that detail can be taken with a grain of salt. As for my sanity, if I was crazy, I’d be seeing or hearing my unconscious while awake, I swear this is just in dreams that this being talks to me and it gives advice like “don’t worry about the average fictional character, they’re just inanimate puppets, it’s the ones who are people’s favorite hats to wear that - like you - are important because some hats are helmets that keep the wearer alive” rather than “KiLl EvErYoNe It WiLl Be FuN!!!11!1!” so my best guess is my unconscious mind is trying to communicate with me on a level my conscious and subconscious mindstates can understand.
I damn well know there’s more to dreams than they appear, that’s WHY I call BS, because a year ago, a dream character that was the first character to appear in two different dreams of mine since ever, and I asked it “Is there really a dream afterlife?” and it said “No.”
I also asked it in another dream to be sure, even broadening from “dream afterlife” to “any afterlife at all”, this time using an old red landline telephone and voice contact. In a snooty french accent, it confirmed and warned me very strongly and angrily not to ask again. The only upside is it said it didn’t know for sure whether it is possible to create an afterlife using technology and/or biology.
I’m sorry but unless someone builds one, there is no afterlife or ascension to another plane. I literally have the info directly from the source.
I wish I was making this up or delusional or cynical. I want more than anything for souls to be immortal. I would have no problem living in my dreams forever, but I’m not the one who said it (or if my unconscious counts as being me, I’m not able to type a fediverse post using the part of my mind which is more aware of why there’s no afterlife).
If anyone can post scientific evidence disproving how I’ve come to interpret what I experienced, I’m content to let that have the final say rather than make any attempt to dispute it. For now, I know it sounds insane but this is literally a Cassandra Truth, so at least recognise that I don’t expect you to believe it’s the truth, only to recognize that if ascending to the astral plane could be done, I would be persuing doing so at this very moment.
I’m sorry, but I know what happened between me and my unconscious mind, and I’m not just relying on my memories but also my now-decade old dream logs. I asked it for the honest truth. It said the truth is what I feared, death is not (yet?) followed by anything but oblivion.
To be fair, if you’re not happy about that concept, neither am I because fuck the Atheists and screw the guy who wrote His Dark Materials. I’m just one poorly-recieved sci-fi writer, though, I never even got to go to university. I am not qualified or capable of building an afterlife, or determining whether souls are singular entities unto themselves or merely a process that our minds use as “the third rail of the subconscious train of thought”, or testing if continuity of self across time is real or illusionary.
Aside from that, I will say one thing; I have never ingested hallucinogens, at least not to my knowledge, and I don’t go to parties or have any IRL friends. So no, you don’t get to say I’m high when the only way I got OUT of the maddening despair I experienced in 2017 was because my dreams helped pull me out of a complete mental breakdown. Fight me, I don’t care if you think I’m telling the truth and I don’t need you to believe your unconscious mind is somehow independently acting on your behalf, but don’t fucking tell me I’m not sober when I’ve been completely sober of everything including tobacco and alcohol my entire life.
A thousand times this.
I’ve used this argument before arguing with hippies about “integrating with nature”.
Any society that isn’t on track to developing the science and engineering necessary for interstellar tavel is a dead end.
It’s a tragic waste of human intelligence to keep making the same bamboo huts indefinetly.
So some noble savage can live their lives on repeat for hundreds or millenia, and that’s somehow better than inventing an arc that can save every form of life on this unique Planet?
Bloody stupid hippy nonsense.
What makes life on another planet more worthwhile than life here? Also humans didn’t take that long to evolve so there’s plenty of opportunity for a successor to us to reach the stars in a way that causes less suffering. For that matter, we could have simply taken a couple hundred extra years to get there and reduced human suffering by like a thousandfold with a more equitable society. Bloody stupid capitalist nonsense.
No, there isn’t. We’ve already used up all the easily accessible sources of fossil fuels, so whoever comes after us won’t have the energy sources necessary to have an industrial revolution and will be stuck at a pre-industrial tech level forever.
Great! So they’ll skip the fossil energy era and jump directly to renewables? We paved the path for them to avoiding another climate change.
We’re having quite a bit of trouble making that transition even with the benefits of a couple centuries of fossil-fueled industry. I find the idea of jumping directly from horse-drawn wagons to wind turbines and solar panels rather implausible.
That’s right, if we kick the bucket, a new intelligent civilization would not have the resources to advance at our pace. They may figure out the atom, but they won’t have the resources to utilize their knowledge. Then there is the ever looming threat of a disaster, and these preindustrial civilizations will be wiped out with zero warning or preparation.
Also: what are the chances a species similar to us in intelligence will emerge again on this rock? I’m going to bet it’s pretty darn tiny.
You guys make some giant assumptions…
Feel free to name one or two examples and show how and why they’re incorrect.
Write for me 4000 words on how technological advancement is a linear progression that always follows the same path and needs the same exact external stimuli to occur.
4000 words? Oh please, that can be done in a hundredth of that: The laws of physics are constant, and more advanced technologies have energy requirements that must be met by preceding technologies. At the same time, each technology also has to offer enough tangible benefits to be worth pursuing on its own.
Sorry, that is not what I asked for. The fact you won’t do it means you’re wrong.
What makes them ‘savage’?
We’re not going to make it until the sun swallows the earth. If there’s anything related to us left at that point then it wouldn’t be recognisable to us.
But if they’re coming directly from us, what’s the difference
Amen, all those movies where “All tech stops working, people learn to do things for themselves! Utopia acheived!” are garbage
As individuals, a lot of people are content to live a simple life of prosperity. They have a basic job, and a small family, and some basic luxuries - and they call it enough. Some people have a one-eyed focus on increasing their wealth throughout their lives; but not everyone is like that. People generally recognise that their lives are finite. Some try to aim for some kind of imaginary high-score in their life, and others just live a ‘normal’ life.
I’m now making an analogy. As a species, we can recognise that are time is finite; and we can choose to live that out in a stable simple prosperity, where we just look after our world (house) and get what we need for some basic luxuries, and be content. We could have a billion years of that. It’s a very long time. Or… we could aim for endless growth. We could consume as much as possible, and always aim for more. As we run out of resources and livable habitat on Earth, we must look to interstellar travel and spread to other planets. I don’t necessarily think that is a better choice.
When I was young, I use to think that humans needed to settle on other planets. But I don’t think that any more. Partially because I learnt about special relativity, and decided that unless we’re very very wrong about science so far, having connected colonies on other planets is not possible. But also because I realised that there is no intrinsic goal to spread human life as much as possible. There are other things of value. We don’t need that particular goal. I also use to think that personal immortality would be a good thing. I don’t really think that any more.
Until you find out unity with nature allows humans to transcend human form and ascend to a higher plane of existence. While technology fights a losing battle to compete with the universes slow entropy into darkness. Oops.
I’ll take one of whatever this guy ordered
I call bullshit. You know why?
I literally had a dream that predicted the worst year of my life, 5 years in advance, by having a friendly dream character tell me I died and went to a dream afterlife.
The catch was that I am autistic and I acted and act much like I did when I was 10 years old, and that was reflected by me taking the form of the kid sidekick in the fictional world that I was trying to write a story about at the time. I was told I was adorable and intelligent-looking (I was not the smartest kid but I was well-read and paid attention to what was in my textbooks) and not particularly unlikeable, and all of that was because that dream afterlife was a place where your personality determined your appearance. Yet despite the fact that I did not look monstrous or untrustworthy and that people who died quickly realised that in the dream world people are exactly what they appear to be, I was warned people would discriminate against me anyway, and there was nothing I or my apparent dream friend could do; said dream friend told me they thought I at least deserved to know it would happen and to just try and enjoy eternity, since I would never wake up, but that it would be hard because people would hate me unfairly.
I woke up anyway. That’s not why I call BS. I recorded that dream in a text file and I keep backups of all my unique files.
I’ll finish editing this soon but my phone is at 2% battery…
Please do.
I will say, though, I don’t really have any stakes in this argument especially when you consider my contribution to humanity will probably be dead end evolutionary branch responsible for creating higher order carbon based polymers.
5 years later, sure enough, everything I value became critic-repellant in the writing industry; “you have to grow up”, “dark and edgy is realistic and realistic is mandatory”, “escapism is evil”, “children are spoiled little shits”, etc.
I now am extremely certain the dream characters who talk to me are avatars of my unconscious. I know that sounds really weird and I have no proof, so believing me on that detail can be taken with a grain of salt. As for my sanity, if I was crazy, I’d be seeing or hearing my unconscious while awake, I swear this is just in dreams that this being talks to me and it gives advice like “don’t worry about the average fictional character, they’re just inanimate puppets, it’s the ones who are people’s favorite hats to wear that - like you - are important because some hats are helmets that keep the wearer alive” rather than “KiLl EvErYoNe It WiLl Be FuN!!!11!1!” so my best guess is my unconscious mind is trying to communicate with me on a level my conscious and subconscious mindstates can understand.
I damn well know there’s more to dreams than they appear, that’s WHY I call BS, because a year ago, a dream character that was the first character to appear in two different dreams of mine since ever, and I asked it “Is there really a dream afterlife?” and it said “No.”
I also asked it in another dream to be sure, even broadening from “dream afterlife” to “any afterlife at all”, this time using an old red landline telephone and voice contact. In a snooty french accent, it confirmed and warned me very strongly and angrily not to ask again. The only upside is it said it didn’t know for sure whether it is possible to create an afterlife using technology and/or biology.
I’m sorry but unless someone builds one, there is no afterlife or ascension to another plane. I literally have the info directly from the source.
I think Harry DuBois just traveled to our reality to write this post after taking a large amount of “Magnesium”
I wish I was making this up or delusional or cynical. I want more than anything for souls to be immortal. I would have no problem living in my dreams forever, but I’m not the one who said it (or if my unconscious counts as being me, I’m not able to type a fediverse post using the part of my mind which is more aware of why there’s no afterlife).
If anyone can post scientific evidence disproving how I’ve come to interpret what I experienced, I’m content to let that have the final say rather than make any attempt to dispute it. For now, I know it sounds insane but this is literally a Cassandra Truth, so at least recognise that I don’t expect you to believe it’s the truth, only to recognize that if ascending to the astral plane could be done, I would be persuing doing so at this very moment.
I’m sorry, but I know what happened between me and my unconscious mind, and I’m not just relying on my memories but also my now-decade old dream logs. I asked it for the honest truth. It said the truth is what I feared, death is not (yet?) followed by anything but oblivion.
To be fair, if you’re not happy about that concept, neither am I because fuck the Atheists and screw the guy who wrote His Dark Materials. I’m just one poorly-recieved sci-fi writer, though, I never even got to go to university. I am not qualified or capable of building an afterlife, or determining whether souls are singular entities unto themselves or merely a process that our minds use as “the third rail of the subconscious train of thought”, or testing if continuity of self across time is real or illusionary.
Aside from that, I will say one thing; I have never ingested hallucinogens, at least not to my knowledge, and I don’t go to parties or have any IRL friends. So no, you don’t get to say I’m high when the only way I got OUT of the maddening despair I experienced in 2017 was because my dreams helped pull me out of a complete mental breakdown. Fight me, I don’t care if you think I’m telling the truth and I don’t need you to believe your unconscious mind is somehow independently acting on your behalf, but don’t fucking tell me I’m not sober when I’ve been completely sober of everything including tobacco and alcohol my entire life.
Lieutenant…