We seem to be getting closer:

[agent00f]

Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say. And I totally agree. But there's one problem. This argument dovetails with, and supports, Hayabusa's "Great Filter" argument that you maligned above as being an ill-informed product of "pop sci fi." His was a different way of framing the argument. He framed it as: sentient species have a tendency to kill themselves off before they could find another sentient species, or be found by another sentient species. I would have added to his argument, "or die off from natural causes, such as the collision of celestial bodies, etc." Otherwise, it's basically the same argument you just made. If sentient species tend not to last terribly long, there must be reasons for this. Our own sun won't burn out for billions more years, but it seems unlikely we'll still be around when that happens. The reasons can only broadly be either extinction by natural cause or extinction by self-destruction. Pretty much what he argued except that he failed to mention natural causes.

So basically, you just derided his point, then supported it with your own argument. You would have been better off sticking with how interstellar travel is nigh impossible. Instead, you had to add another argument to show how smart you are, and in doing so, you unwittingly supported his point.

It's a rather distinct difference between why something doesn't happen because we're too stupid and because we're too smart. If this isn't self-evident, try to research and contrast the two highlighted terms which embody that distinction. You might also come to find it's the same one underlying this argument.

I didn't think my english was ambigiuous, in fact I know it wasn't. There could be many reasons and I merely explicitly mentioned two possibilites among many. Pretty much everyone got it, but some are developmentally incapable it seems. No matter, this thread isn't supposed to be about space and that subject has been discussed from Fermi's time on. I won't go into them because I shouldn't parrot somewhat smart people like Fermi and John von Neumann

Perhaps our expert should call the idiot Stephen Hawking and set him right about this. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...hip-to-alpha-centauri/?utm_term=.d5c96b4c137e

Well at least I'm hard to find in the real world so creepers are restricted to Minecraft.

As a simple example to help that process, smart people generate interesting ideas/arguments, and it's the role of dummies to parrot them like a cargo cult for intellect. The former are participants in the marketplace of ideas and the latter are not.

Smart people also know that $100million and free publicity is a pretty good deal for limited amount of work.

Did someone lose a sick puppy? It keeps following me around biting at my ankles.

Thanks for reinforcing why moonbeam's is an exercise in futility.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

It's a rather distinct difference between why something doesn't happen because we're too stupid and because we're too smart. If this isn't self-evident, try to research and contrast the two highlighted terms which embody that distinction. You might also come to find it's the same one underlying this argument.



As a simple example to help that process, smart people generate interesting ideas/arguments, and it's the role of dummies to parrot them like a cargo cult for intellect. Smart people also know that $100million and free publicity is a pretty good deal for limited amount of work.



Thanks for reinforcing why moonbeam's is an exercise in futility.

Well I'm interested in your fascination with others now. There's no parroting needed, just being up to date with common development. You mistake, again, what all of this was about and you have attacked a few more people out of your... I'm not sure, but whatever it is has interfered with your ability to understand plain conversation, but felt compelled, yes that's the word, obsessed so that you have to beat the dead horse over ordinary discussion. Not so sure what demons haunt you, but there's nothing any of us can do for you if you can't even enter into a discussion or friendly debate.

The bottom line is that we and the world don't care about you. You're as unimportant as any of us, no better than anyone else. You are a guy on an internet forum doing his best to show he has a chip on his shoulder. You could perhaps reform, but I don't know if you have any control over your actions. If you are able to see the way you communicate vs just about anyone else, attacking instead engaging, then you might realize that you might have a more satisfying life if you can deal with issues you display. Understand that many people have different areas of knowledge that surpass yours. You might know more than others so just accept it. You aren't better or worse for that matter, just different. Just kick back and enjoy the banter. Up to you.

 

[woolfe9998]

Well I'm interested in your fascination with others now. There's no parroting needed, just being up to date with common development. You mistake, again, what all of this was about and you have attacked a few more people out of your... I'm not sure, but whatever it is has interfered with your ability to understand plain conversation, but felt compelled, yes that's the word, obsessed so that you have to beat the dead horse over ordinary discussion. Not so sure what demons haunt you, but there's nothing any of us can do for you if you can't even enter into a discussion or friendly debate.

The bottom line is that we and the world don't care about you. You're as unimportant as any of us, no better than anyone else. You are a guy on an internet forum doing his best to show he has a chip on his shoulder. You could perhaps reform, but I don't know if you have any control over your actions. If you are able to see the way you communicate vs just about anyone else, attacking instead engaging, then you might realize that you might have a more satisfying life if you can deal with issues you display. Understand that many people have different areas of knowledge that surpass yours. You might know more than others so just accept it. You aren't better or worse for that matter, just different. Just kick back and enjoy the banter. Up to you.

Agreed, and I would add to this that there is no reason for derision to enter into a discussion of something so totally non-partisan as space travel. It's one thing to get rancorous and derisive over a divisive political topic, but it takes a special kind of psycho-pathology to get into a row over a topic which is really more a matter of human interest rather than a major controversy. It's why these science topics often come up over in Discussion Club, where we aren't supposed to be so confrontational. In that forum, we stick to topics like that because it's easy for them to remain constructive. Easy for most of us, that is...

 

[woolfe9998]

I didn't think my english was ambigiuous, in fact I know it wasn't. There could be many reasons and I merely explicitly mentioned two possibilites among many. Pretty much everyone got it, but some are developmentally incapable it seems. No matter, this thread isn't supposed to be about space and that subject has been discussed from Fermi's time on. I won't go into them because I shouldn't parrot somewhat smart people like Fermi and John von Neumann

Perhaps our expert should call the idiot Stephen Hawking and set him right about this. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...hip-to-alpha-centauri/?utm_term=.d5c96b4c137e

Well at least I'm hard to find in the real world so creepers are restricted to Minecraft.

I understood you perfectly well. I would only have added extinction by natural cause to your "great filter" concept because I think the two go together. Otherwise, it really isn't all that dissimilar to the "lottery" argument that Agent made later on. My reframing of the argument is this: due to the innate tendency of sentient species to self-destruct, coupled with the possibility of extinction through natural cause, it seems unlikely than any two sentient species would ever co-exist, making it unlikely that any two would ever meet. This just combines your way of framing it with his. It's still basically the same point.

 

[disappoint]

Last night I had, as dreams often are, a weird dream. I dreamt that Drumpf gave Agent00f a coloring book to keep him busy. Agent00f promptly fumbled around in his Hustler/Crayola (this was in the future and the two companies merged) crayon box and pulled out an AgentOrange colored crayon and colored in an orange. Then he grabbed for another crayon called FelineUrineYellow and drew streams upon streams over the orange.

In the background Drumpf seemed satisfied that he had kept the Democrats busy with a coloring book filled with hate so that the corruption of both parties may continue. Certain Democrats with...issues...are as happy as addicts in a big pharma warehouse if they are just given a coloring book with hateful themes and a box of crayons it seems.

 

[disappoint]

Well I'm interested in your fascination with others now. There's no parroting needed, just being up to date with common development. You mistake, again, what all of this was about and you have attacked a few more people out of your... I'm not sure, but whatever it is has interfered with your ability to understand plain conversation, but felt compelled, yes that's the word, obsessed so that you have to beat the dead horse over ordinary discussion. Not so sure what demons haunt you, but there's nothing any of us can do for you if you can't even enter into a discussion or friendly debate.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He's absolutely obsessed with coming off as the smartest poster here and the way he attempts to achieve that is by attacking people's intelligence to make himself seem superior by comparison. I wonder if he is capable of realizing that he actually achieves quite the opposite.

Narcissistic personality disorder is found more commonly in men. The cause is unknown but likely involves a combination of genetic and environmental factors.
Symptoms include an excessive need for admiration, disregard for others' feelings, an inability to handle any criticism, and a sense of entitlement.
The disorder needs to be diagnosed by a professional. Treatment involves talk therapy.

 

[Moonbeam]

Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say. And I totally agree. But there's one problem. This argument dovetails with, and supports, Hayabusa's "Great Filter" argument that you maligned above as being an ill-informed product of "pop sci fi." His was a different way of framing the argument. He framed it as: sentient species have a tendency to kill themselves off before they could find another sentient species, or be found by another sentient species. I would have added to his argument, "or die off from natural causes, such as the collision of celestial bodies, etc." Otherwise, it's basically the same argument you just made. If sentient species tend not to last terribly long, there must be reasons for this. Our own sun won't burn out for billions more years, but it seems unlikely we'll still be around when that happens. The reasons can only broadly be either extinction by natural cause or extinction by self-destruction. Pretty much what he argued except that he failed to mention natural causes.

So basically, you just derided his point, then supported it with your own argument. You would have been better off sticking with how interstellar travel is nigh impossible. Instead, you had to add another argument to show how smart you are, and in doing so, you unwittingly supported his point.

I am puzzled by why either of you have no trouble stating there is little reason to believe in the longevity of sentient species and can't see the obvious corollary, that there is little reason not to believe, either since we have only one sentient species for reference and we are not so far as we know, one of the last surviving members. Why would you not see this as total anthropomorphic projection. If we are to take agent's opnion of his own intellectual development and the progress delivered to humanity by those similarly gifted. we should last millions and millions of years. You remind me of folk who said we would die if we broke the sound barrier or that bumble bees can't fly. Have you ever thought about how good we are at predicting what the future will look like. We're usually off by millions of miles, and my fucking car doesn't fly. My money is on that neither of you know much of anything, that, while you may not know it, you're just like me.

 

[woolfe9998]

I am puzzled by why either of you have no trouble stating there is little reason to believe in the longevity of sentient species and can't see the obvious corollary, that there is little reason not to believe, either since we have only one sentient species for reference and we are not so far as we know, one of the last surviving members. Why would you not see this as total anthropomorphic projection. If we are to take agent's opnion of his own intellectual development and the progress delivered to humanity by those similarly gifted. we should last millions and millions of years. You remind me of folk who said we would die if we broke the sound barrier or that bumble bees can't fly. Have you ever thought about how good we are at predicting what the future will look like. We're usually off by millions of miles, and my fucking car doesn't fly. My money is on that neither of you know much of anything, that, while you may not know it, you're just like me.

You're right in one sense. From what we literally know, there is no evidence of any sentient species ever becoming extinct. Because we're the only sentient species we know, and we're still not extinct. Meaning there is no empirical precedent to make the assumption.

The assumption of future extinction is, rather, an extrapolation of what we know of human behavior throughout our history, what we understand about human psychology, and our knowledge of the destructive technologies we have created and may create in the future (i.e. anti-matter weaponry). Your analogies don't hold, because you're talking about predictions which are far more specific. Like when some futurist claims we'll have strong AI by 2031. What I'm talking about is over a vast time frame, it seems unlikely that given our nature, we won't eventually self-destruct in one way or another. If I said I believed we'd all die in a nuclear fire in the next 100 years, that would just be me talking out of my ass, because you're right about how difficult it is to predict the future with any specificity.

You're also leaving out my emphasis on the possibility of extinction by natural cause, like through asteroid collision, etc. I'm not pretending to be a great prognosticator here. I'm just going off probabilities over a long time frame. It just isn't rocket science that it's unlikely we'll still be here when our sun expends all its fuel and goes cold in 3 billions years. Beyond that very general prediction, I would decline to make a more specific projection.

 

[agent00f]

Well I'm interested in your fascination with others now. There's no parroting needed, just being up to date with common development. You mistake, again, what all of this was about and you have attacked a few more people out of your... I'm not sure, but whatever it is has interfered with your ability to understand plain conversation, but felt compelled, yes that's the word, obsessed so that you have to beat the dead horse over ordinary discussion. Not so sure what demons haunt you, but there's nothing any of us can do for you if you can't even enter into a discussion or friendly debate.

The bottom line is that we and the world don't care about you. You're as unimportant as any of us, no better than anyone else. You are a guy on an internet forum doing his best to show he has a chip on his shoulder. You could perhaps reform, but I don't know if you have any control over your actions. If you are able to see the way you communicate vs just about anyone else, attacking instead engaging, then you might realize that you might have a more satisfying life if you can deal with issues you display. Understand that many people have different areas of knowledge that surpass yours. You might know more than others so just accept it. You aren't better or worse for that matter, just different. Just kick back and enjoy the banter. Up to you.

Tis' matter of empirical record it was you who brought up the smartest sounding thing you've heard of out of the blue to prove something, and continue to write ironic diatribes over the matter.

Agreed, and I would add to this that there is no reason for derision to enter into a discussion of something so totally non-partisan as space travel. It's one thing to get rancorous and derisive over a divisive political topic, but it takes a special kind of psycho-pathology to get into a row over a topic which is really more a matter of human interest rather than a major controversy. It's why these science topics often come up over in Discussion Club, where we aren't supposed to be so confrontational. In that forum, we stick to topics like that because it's easy for them to remain constructive. Easy for most of us, that is...

Science would be similarly decisive as politics if pre-enlightenment arguments were controversial. Fortunately relatively few scientists are conservative.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He's absolutely obsessed with coming off as the smartest poster here and the way he attempts to achieve that is by attacking people's intelligence to make himself seem superior by comparison. I wonder if he is capable of realizing that he actually achieves quite the opposite.

Seems I'm hardly the one trying so much to sound smart; not really my fault it's so trivial to mock that pretentious intellect.

 

[agent00f]

Last night I had, as dreams often are, a weird dream. I dreamt that Drumpf gave Agent00f a coloring book to keep him busy. Agent00f promptly fumbled around in his Hustler/Crayola (this was in the future and the two companies merged) crayon box and pulled out an AgentOrange colored crayon and colored in an orange. Then he grabbed for another crayon called FelineUrineYellow and drew streams upon streams over the orange.

In the background Drumpf seemed satisfied that he had kept the Democrats busy with a coloring book filled with hate so that the corruption of both parties may continue. Certain Democrats with...issues...are as happy as addicts in a big pharma warehouse if they are just given a coloring book with hateful themes and a box of crayons it seems.

Holy shit, I wonder what Hayabusa and the other resident self-made psychiatrists thinks of this guy dreaming of me.

I am puzzled by why either of you have no trouble stating there is little reason to believe in the longevity of sentient species and can't see the obvious corollary, that there is little reason not to believe, either since we have only one sentient species for reference and we are not so far as we know, one of the last surviving members. Why would you not see this as total anthropomorphic projection. If we are to take agent's opnion of his own intellectual development and the progress delivered to humanity by those similarly gifted. we should last millions and millions of years. You remind me of folk who said we would die if we broke the sound barrier or that bumble bees can't fly. Have you ever thought about how good we are at predicting what the future will look like. We're usually off by millions of miles, and my fucking car doesn't fly. My money is on that neither of you know much of anything, that, while you may not know it, you're just like me.

We understand the natural world much better than previously, not just in relatively but absolute terms. It's also important to distinguish the spectrum between wishful thinking by ad-men vs serious scientific analysis. Flying cars for good physical reasons were never going to be practical, though far far far more so than interstellar travel. Also in that range are terraforming life on nearby planets, abiogenesis in any number of ways, etc, etc.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I am puzzled by why either of you have no trouble stating there is little reason to believe in the longevity of sentient species and can't see the obvious corollary, that there is little reason not to believe, either since we have only one sentient species for reference and we are not so far as we know, one of the last surviving members. Why would you not see this as total anthropomorphic projection. If we are to take agent's opnion of his own intellectual development and the progress delivered to humanity by those similarly gifted. we should last millions and millions of years. You remind me of folk who said we would die if we broke the sound barrier or that bumble bees can't fly. Have you ever thought about how good we are at predicting what the future will look like. We're usually off by millions of miles, and my fucking car doesn't fly. My money is on that neither of you know much of anything, that, while you may not know it, you're just like me.

I figure I know a lot when I can name the first thing I don't know about. BTW, I think a partial solution to our infrastructure may be flying cars.

Oh I should add I don't have one and this is speculative , in case someone who is unable to tell a somewhat joking suggestion for using proposed technology as a solution for next week.

Now where is that ACME Doomsday molecular genetic recombinate kit?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I understood you perfectly well. I would only have added extinction by natural cause to your "great filter" concept because I think the two go together. Otherwise, it really isn't all that dissimilar to the "lottery" argument that Agent made later on. My reframing of the argument is this: due to the innate tendency of sentient species to self-destruct, coupled with the possibility of extinction through natural cause, it seems unlikely than any two sentient species would ever co-exist, making it unlikely that any two would ever meet. This just combines your way of framing it with his. It's still basically the same point.

Heck with it.

The Great Filter argument by Fermi and others did not automatically state that we should see living beings but some sign of visitation or activity and isn't without problems.

I mentioned John von Neumann, and the reason for that can be found in a short article on wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft

We aren't there yet but it is not difficult to imagine that in some near future date we could make such a device. Some algorithm for an autonomous AI lands the craft on a suitable rocky body and "prints" copies of itself and other machines to explore where it has landed and other machines to travel and explore the different worlds it encounters. Then much like a virus, machines leave the system and continue on. By some means, either return trips home or advanced communication such as a powerful laser, the parent race learns about the stars and planets around them.

All of that to demonstrate that the problem of age long travel of biological entities in space isn't nearly the barrier some might suggest. To head off objections from some people, yes there are holes which can be picked in this regarding us not seeing these probes if they exist, but technically? We have rudimentary machine intelligences and 3D printers. Of course in achieving the technical competency needed we may also have some angry molecular geneticist who gets pissed off by an internet forum and using the science of the day wipe out the species. Our Great Filter

 

[disappoint]

Seems I'm hardly the one trying so much to sound smart; not really my fault it's so trivial to mock that pretentious intellect.

Talking about yourself again? Why are we not surprised?

 

[kage69]

'Good read' confirmed, sending that one off to a few people.



"Take Nixon in the deepest days of his Watergate paranoia, subtract 50 IQ points, add Twitter, and you have Trump today."

— Bruce Bartlett (@BruceBartlett) March 4, 2017

 

[Moonbeam]

Heck with it.

The Great Filter argument by Fermi and others did not automatically state that we should see living beings but some sign of visitation or activity and isn't without problems.

I mentioned John von Neumann, and the reason for that can be found in a short article on wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft

We aren't there yet but it is not difficult to imagine that in some near future date we could make such a device. Some algorithm for an autonomous AI lands the craft on a suitable rocky body and "prints" copies of itself and other machines to explore where it has landed and other machines to travel and explore the different worlds it encounters. Then much like a virus, machines leave the system and continue on. By some means, either return trips home or advanced communication such as a powerful laser, the parent race learns about the stars and planets around them.

All of that to demonstrate that the problem of age long travel of biological entities in space isn't nearly the barrier some might suggest. To head off objections from some people, yes there are holes which can be picked in this regarding us not seeing these probes if they exist, but technically? We have rudimentary machine intelligences and 3D printers. Of course in achieving the technical competency needed we may also have some angry molecular geneticist who gets pissed off by an internet forum and using the science of the day wipe out the species. Our Great Filter

Jeepers, maybe our greatest problem surviving to travel to the stars then, is that we don't have enough psychiatrists who understand what happens in the human psyche to make molecular geneticists mad and want to wipe out the species. Maybe in our headlong rush into technical dreamland, we should instead concentrate on saving all sentient beings so that those who have especially bad cases of self haste don't do us all in. If only everybody were aware that all hate is self hate, and focused on that problem, we might uncover a self so full of love it might wish for humanity to be around for a long long time. But then who wouldn't trade the future of billions of beautiful children to avoid the pain such inner awareness would at first bring. It was bad enough the first time, eh, to want to dredge all that shit up. What's the future of the human race stacked up against the beautiful creative armor we built to save ourselves from the naked defenseless exposure we were born in. But there is little that can be said to machines what wish to sleep.

 

[Moonbeam]

woolfe: You're right in one sense. From what we literally know, there is no evidence of any sentient species ever becoming extinct. Because we're the only sentient species we know, and we're still not extinct. Meaning there is no empirical precedent to make the assumption.

M: But you just won't stop there because you believe you know things. You are going to go on now and try to shoehorn the universe into your acquired assumptions:

w: The assumption of future extinction is, rather, an extrapolation of what we know of human behavior throughout our history, what we understand about human psychology, and our knowledge of the destructive technologies we have created and may create in the future (i.e. anti-matter weaponry).

Jesus, woolfe, not what we know of human behavior, what you know, what you assume everybody knows. Let me just be blunt, you know all kinds of shit about people as you see them, people who are sick from the disease of self hate, You know nothing at all about how people can be, what their real potential is, that we created God in our Real Image. All you know are the conscious states of which you are currently aware. You can't even re-experience what it was like to have a nightmare as a child, the altered state produced by the state of fear, although you remember you didn't like it. But if it were to creep up on you suddenly in some deep state of relaxation, you would know it instantly and fight like crazy to get back to your place of normalcy. Become God and then tell me about the real nature of man. But then perhaps some feeling of inferiority blocks access to that state of consciousness, eh? But it couldn't be, right because if so then your current state is something of a mess and we wouldn't want to face that now would we.

w: Your analogies don't hold, because you're talking about predictions which are far more specific. Like when some futurist claims we'll have strong AI by 2031. What I'm talking about is over a vast time frame, it seems unlikely that given our nature, we won't eventually self-destruct in one way or another. If I said I believed we'd all die in a nuclear fire in the next 100 years, that would just be me talking out of my ass, because you're right about how difficult it is to predict the future with any specificity.

M: You have this completely upside down. My analogies and predictions are completely and totally unspecific, they are so much so they don't even exist. I know nothing and that is the point. You make assumptions and I do not. You simply can't remove yourself from what you believe you know. It is the ground from which you see the world. I do not know the future, I understand all the arguments you make and how they appeal to common sense. What I do not buy is that what is common sense today will stay that way. I was told that the more you know the more you know what you don't know. You close a book that I leave open.

w: You're also leaving out my emphasis on the possibility of extinction by natural cause, like through asteroid collision, etc. I'm not pretending to be a great prognosticator here. I'm just going off probabilities over a long time frame. It just isn't rocket science that it's unlikely we'll still be here when our sun expends all its fuel and goes cold in 3 billions years. Beyond that very general prediction, I would decline to make a more specific projection.

M: This is obvious and elementary. We are here. We do not know for how long. We do not know if there are others here, how long they may or not have been here, whether they have any interest in interstellar travel or not. We are speaking of infinitesimals, yes in a universe apparently of infinite opportunities. According to Hay's link, some of us are already turning their sights to going to the stars. There are the naysayers and the dreamers. Lot's of folk got crushed for being dreamers in childhood. Hope it didn't happen to you. You have a fine mind.

 

[disappoint]

Unfortunately politics has become completely disfunctional. "They aren't as bad" isn't a glowing critique. I hope we can clean house. Cluster B? Seems like some of our leaders are subject to that as well as the locals here.

If we don't stop backing corruption we're going to have more in store in the future. We outnumber the corrupt Cluster B types (we are the 99% after all) but we are not organized, and they are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm4mh52GWCY

 

[agent00f]

Talking about yourself again? Why are we not surprised?

No, I'm talking about the blustering conservative not even smart enough to parrot pop sci.

woolfe: You're right in one sense. From what we literally know, there is no evidence of any sentient species ever becoming extinct. Because we're the only sentient species we know, and we're still not extinct. Meaning there is no empirical precedent to make the assumption.

M: But you just won't stop there because you believe you know things. You are going to go on now and try to shoehorn the universe into your acquired assumptions:

w: The assumption of future extinction is, rather, an extrapolation of what we know of human behavior throughout our history, what we understand about human psychology, and our knowledge of the destructive technologies we have created and may create in the future (i.e. anti-matter weaponry).

Jesus, woolfe, not what we know of human behavior, what you know, what you assume everybody knows. Let me just be blunt, you know all kinds of shit about people as you see them, people who are sick from the disease of self hate, You know nothing at all about how people can be, what their real potential is, that we created God in our Real Image. All you know are the conscious states of which you are currently aware. You can't even re-experience what it was like to have a nightmare as a child, the altered state produced by the state of fear, although you remember you didn't like it. But if it were to creep up on you suddenly in some deep state of relaxation, you would know it instantly and fight like crazy to get back to your place of normalcy. Become God and then tell me about the real nature of man. But then perhaps some feeling of inferiority blocks access to that state of consciousness, eh? But it couldn't be, right because if so then your current state is something of a mess and we wouldn't want to face that now would we.

w: Your analogies don't hold, because you're talking about predictions which are far more specific. Like when some futurist claims we'll have strong AI by 2031. What I'm talking about is over a vast time frame, it seems unlikely that given our nature, we won't eventually self-destruct in one way or another. If I said I believed we'd all die in a nuclear fire in the next 100 years, that would just be me talking out of my ass, because you're right about how difficult it is to predict the future with any specificity.

M: You have this completely upside down. My analogies and predictions are completely and totally unspecific, they are so much so they don't even exist. I know nothing and that is the point. You make assumptions and I do not. You simply can't remove yourself from what you believe you know. It is the ground from which you see the world. I do not know the future, I understand all the arguments you make and how they appeal to common sense. What I do not buy is that what is common sense today will stay that way. I was told that the more you know the more you know what you don't know. You close a book that I leave open.

w: You're also leaving out my emphasis on the possibility of extinction by natural cause, like through asteroid collision, etc. I'm not pretending to be a great prognosticator here. I'm just going off probabilities over a long time frame. It just isn't rocket science that it's unlikely we'll still be here when our sun expends all its fuel and goes cold in 3 billions years. Beyond that very general prediction, I would decline to make a more specific projection.

M: This is obvious and elementary. We are here. We do not know for how long. We do not know if there are others here, how long they may or not have been here, whether they have any interest in interstellar travel or not. We are speaking of infinitesimals, yes in a universe apparently of infinite opportunities. According to Hay's link, some of us are already turning their sights to going to the stars. There are the naysayers and the dreamers. Lot's of folk got crushed for being dreamers in childhood. Hope it didn't happen to you. You have a fine mind.

Would you also say that disappoint is also a fine dreamer or is that line only drawn for folks who can wow you with flying cars? It's too ironic that for all you speak of divine humility to accept the world, this hackney reactionary blathering ego is what manifests beneath it all. The only reality is that there's actually someone here who works/mixes with the visionaries, and it's none of the folks butthurt that pretending to didn't work out. Such circumstances are probably what motivated those who argue that the species is too stupid to survive for long.

 

[Moonbeam]

No, I'm talking about the blustering conservative not even smart enough to parrot pop sci.



Would you also say that disappoint is also a fine dreamer or is that line only drawn for folks who can wow you with flying cars? It's too ironic that for all you speak of divine humility to accept the world, this hackney reactionary blathering ego is what manifests beneath it all. The only reality is that there's actually someone here who works/mixes with the visionaries, and it's none of the folks butthurt that pretending to didn't work out. Such circumstances are probably what motivated those who argue that the species is too stupid to survive for long.

If English isn't your native tongue perhaps you should simplify your sentences. This sounds like somebody trying to impress beyond their reach and in the process winging up speaking gibberish. No offense intended because if it's not your native language you do very well in it, but here, it sounds more like intended for effect than to say much of anything.

From what I can gather, I don't have a line that divides people into dreamers or not; its more of a spectrum thing. I had a flying car toy as a small boy that I flew everywhere. I think I got that pretty much out of my system. Speaking of mixing with the exulted I was once addressed by the Queen.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

If English isn't your native tongue perhaps you should simplify your sentences. This sounds like somebody trying to impress beyond their reach and in the process winging up speaking gibberish. No offense intended because if it's not your native language you do very well in it, but here, it sounds more like intended for effect than to say much of anything.

From what I can gather, I don't have a line that divides people into dreamers or not; its more of a spectrum thing. I had a flying car toy as a small boy that I flew everywhere. I think I got that pretty much out of my system. Speaking of mixing with the exulted I was once addressed by the Queen.

I think it's impressive that we have people who can speak to the level of education they don't know with apparent authority, know what they have done without any knowledge of them whatsoever, and divine intent likewise. Then there is the imperative of pointing this out, the saving of his world, the New Crusader Rabbit. Edit- Here is our friend in his first incarnation

BTW, I didn't know you were addressed by the Queen, but I have heard them in concert.

 

[jmagg]

High IQ and common sense aren't mutually exclusive. Fortunately I've been blessed with both.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

High IQ and common sense aren't mutually exclusive. Fortunately I've been blessed with both.

Liar liar pants on fire! You haven't been vetted by The One Who Knows All!

I'm not that poor sod but I did have a magic 8 ball as a kid.

 

[jmagg]

True. I've been with her since 75, shes beginning to get on my nerves.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

True. I've been with her since 75, shes beginning to get on my nerves.

Heh, but we love em though. Should I dare mention she has multiple degrees in biology including a doctorate from a prestigious academic institution in molecular genetics?

No that can't be!

Moonbeam and I go way back and sometimes he makes a thread and I come in and say something which I find pretty cool. It's not like space travel is really that complex in terms of this specific context of "where is everyone". As I said initially there could be many reasons and I outlined a spectrum. Again pretty basic stuff that people in a technical forum might find cool and know about already or be completely disinterested. Proof that the internet can rage about anything. Heavens I should mention my BBQ technique preferences.

 

[jmagg]

http://lunaf.com/lunar-calendar/

Resistance is futile.