I was just thinking about it as I was walking home from the station. What if a sentient alien race with the same level of technology as current humans, came into direct contact with the human race?
a) If humans had a war with aliens, would ll of humanity be able to unite as one entity to fight the aliens? Or would humanity still be divided over their own petty quarrels?
>To compensate, they mine essential minerals and other things from the ground. Using these pure minerals, they make a pure cocktail of sustenance which they take swigs from every so often. Sort of like a multivitamin for everything.
It's interesting to consider the effect of early technology on the course of evolution. Humans seem to have made one of our great leaps forward when we figured out how to cook food, meaning we could partially digest it outside of the body, so we could feed those growing brains.
If some alien found a way to feed on inorganic material (which would turn it from a consumer to a producer in its food web, incidentally) it might affect the course of their evolution if it happened early on; if it happened later it would alter their global environment since their cities would be fed with inorganic material and produce organic waste. This would presumably find its way into the environment and alter the energy budget of the local ecosystems, unless they found a way to recycle it.
Forgot to mention:
This is what we do here on earth when we produce nitrates from inorganic nitrogen via the Haber process, use them to fertilise plants, eat the plants and flush the shit into the environment.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutrophication
wait...is that Nitrogen Fixation? Because that's actually kind of an important process to all life on Earth as it is.
And.... >>33 seems unlikely to be hit upon early. It's probably also useless. If the lifeform is similar to us(which is the assumption that I hope we're making here), they'll need a source of energy that's sufficient for growing their brains, such as the meat that supplemented primate diets. Taking a few minerals that are only needed in trace amounts won't do that. Besides...animals become less annoying to harvest when you're able to make traps(for small, annoying animals), or get metal-tipped weapons(for larger animals).
Other differences in a society might be brought on by the organism itself. For instance, a society in which the female dies upon childbirth...or perhaps, an oviparous creature. Maybe they use external fertilization. What if they're highly fecund, due to extremely poor survival rates among young(possibly due to the scarcity of food)?
>or get metal-tipped weapons(for larger animals).
Minor quibble: early humans used flint-tipped weapons and wooden spike traps to hunt large game so metal's not necessary.
Also: NEEDS MOAR ZERG.
ORGANON OF THOUGHT
I thought this said "A pissing thought on the nature of human beings."
Still, means pretty much the same thing, doesn't it?
hey, i have a passing thought on humans...
everything is physics, aye? how things react is predictable and therefore has a set of rules it follows (even if we haven't found them yet)... So, wouldn't the hullabaloo that goes on in our heads be merely a matter of predictable physics interactions? where does that leave free will..?
Go back to the forefront of quantum physics, you bastard.
>>41
I don't know what you're trying to say there...
In quantum physics, determinism goes out the window. At the atomic and sub-atomic scale it's all probabilities.
E.g. the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
It's apparently some weird, weird stuff down there, that only a physicist understands.
If there was a nuclear war that decimated the world's population, what would the world be like after it? I've heard of nuclear winters and radiation sicknesses and such, but I don't really have a good picture of what would happen, and i'm suddenly curious. Can people explain/direct me to information please?
Lol
>>38 This is a really good idea since I don't believe insects necessarily count as biological weapons (unless they were spreading disease; if they're just eating, they're just being themselves). Also, why not just blame the sudden change in behavior on global warming or cell phone towers or something?
The main problem is that they'd only be good for attacking areas already prone to them and that's basically Africa at this point. I can't think of a good reason to invade it, but maybe someone can...
Technological problems include keeping some sort of horrible insect factory secret and also developing a means of planting lots of eggs just under the soil without being detected.
You gave me an idea
drop them from a bomb containing a nutritious protein based jelly filled with eggs
the jelly will spread above a field and because it does not weigh that much + acts like jelly acts it wont penetrate the ground that deep and keep the eggs alive
and locusts can live basically anywhere, its just that in Africa they have the food to grow to large populations (we have that already because we manufactured them) plus the locusts that live there are a species that is known to swarm faster.
basically, splice African and European locusts, and alter them so they wont go out of swarm mode, make billions of eggs, put eggs in jelly and shell the enemy farms with the jelly.
you guys remind me of Moses....
Fascinating, but still, how do we spread this without being noticed? Random overflights of our international carriers? True they'd be backwards and wouldn't be able to accurately time our flights, but 22 flights from
(and largest city) Ashgabat, Turkmenistan to Los Angeles with a total of 17 passengers would be slightly suspect...
Also, what do we have to say about the sudden and random appearance of the Desert Locust on the Asian steppes? I'd just blame (???)China, and our subsequent invasion (from... Afghanistan??) as a reactionary step to ensure (?)world peace.
>>51 I don't know what happened there. Forgive me.
I confuse
>decimated
rage
Probably just like in Fist Of The North Star.
Just a question.
Tricky topic. The most concise answer, assuming you want something more specific than "gives us pleasure," is probably "we don't really know yet."
Here's some reading:
http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/0452288525
http://www.amazon.com/Musicophilia-Tales-Music-Oliver-Sacks/dp/1400040817
The latter is less of an attempt to answer your questions and more a gallery of strange neurological conditions related to music (if you've read Sacks before, you know what to expect) but is pretty interesting. And I haven't actually read the former, so I thought I should throw in one book that I have read.
The brain has built-in reward systems for pattern matching because it is a valuable survival skill. If we never evolved a manner in which to recognize the sound of an animal or a rhythm such as an Earthquake, the wind, the ocean, etc. etc. we probably wouldn't have survived.
Music is especially pleasing because instruments are tuned to be in harmony with each other, making the pattern very obvious.
music is loved.
Why do people lose it? What makes them sane players in our world of affairs and the next day and looney toons the next? I'm sure we've all seen the raving bum on the street. How'd he get to be that way? Why did the Virginia Tech killer shoot up his classmates? It can't just be stress because millions of people face stress without going crazy.
yeah drugs
> Why do people lose it?
> sane players in our world of affairs and the next day and looney toons the next?
Well it's not like people wake up one morning and just decide to go nuts. If they ever 'snap' it's because of the failure of those close to them to act on warning signs, inadequate recognition and treatment of mental health issues, and/or months or years of internalized anger.
> Why did the Virginia Tech killer shoot up his classmates?
As far as murder goes, human life has always been in far more danger from the perfectly sane.
> raving bum on the street. How'd he get to be that way?
Alcoholism, drug abuse, traumatic childhood, post-traumatic stress, psychosis, rabies.
people og insane for various reasons. Usualy, there is a genetic pre-disposition, combined with cirucumstances in their life, such as excessive drug use, emotional traumas, etc.
drugs mostly
JISAKU JIEN is a psycho.
>>Why did the Virginia Tech killer shoot up his classmates?
For the lulz.
From the Medline encyclopedia:
Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality, usually including false ideas about what is taking place or who one is (delusions) and seeing or hearing things that aren't there (hallucinations).
There are many possible causes:
* Alcohol and certain drugs
* Brain tumors
* Dementia (including Alzheimer's)
* Epilepsy
* Manic depression (bipolar disorder)
* Psychotic depression
* Schizophrenia
* Stroke>11 "psychotic depression"
But how did the person develop it?
If I were to try and expalin it, I'd say there's a load of crap hanging mid-air over each "looney", and the scent of it- feeling the pressure nearby- is what drives them nuts.
Correct. But you are a long way from knowing how much more it is than animalistic fear.
http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/AdoptedText/ta07/ERES1580.htm
> 1. The aim of this report is not to question or to fight a belief – the right to freedom of belief does not permit that. The aim is to warn against certain tendencies to pass off a belief as science. It is necessary to separate belief from science. It is not a matter of antagonism. Science and belief must be able to coexist. It is not a matter of opposing belief and science, but it is necessary to prevent belief from opposing science.
Stopped reading there.
There is NO evidence of evolution. It is a belief. Objective science doesn't support evolution no matter how many frauds and hoaxes are fabricated to support evolution. The truth always trickles out.
Life doesn't just happen. That alone totally defies the Laws of Science.
The Judeo Christian G-D, made it happen. G-d is the Author of all science. It is no coincidence that leading evolutionists are atheists. THAT is by design. These atheistic evolutionists do not find G-d acceptable in their premises. Their premise is that there is NO G-D.
I've actually being doing some pretty deep thinking really and I've come up with the idea that God is the universe itself in its entirety. that would mean the the universe itself would be a consciuos being which isn't that unbelievable. Everything is a part of him and reflects infinty in the form of complexity. we all as humans and animals reflect a higher form of complexity. Evolution is the process of chemicals advancing in complexity. consciuosness is one of its highest states which makes us similar to god because we contain a higher reflection of infinity possibly making us able to retain our conscioness in some unknown demension?
This reminds of sayings like "god is in everything" thing....
First i would like to state that i am as big of an atheist as it gets, i even lead an organized structure in my city that tries to get people out of an obsessive habit in religion to a more manageable way of life in society... With or (preferred) without god.
Second, your point towards 59 invalidates itself
If the universe can be pointless (my personal belief) then it can also be that god was created by a pointless entity and we ourselves have been created with a reason by the pointlessly created god.
Basically it all boils down to this:
-God does not exist, because if he doesn't and we devoted our lives to him then we would have had pointless lives...
-God exists, because if we did not believe in him and we came to die and go to hell (or whatever belief system you want to discuss) we would be pretty much fucked, but then again god would prove he is a deceptive asshole who clearly does not deserve his leadership role for various reasons, but mainly for not showing up on the job for 2000 years straight... (besides for some sms text messages now and then by an anonymous number to his secretary personnel)
>>65
You just remind me of "If god is great why he need angels?" questions...hm......
If god can create anything he wants (omnipotence) can he create a rock that he cannot lift? a tool that he cannot use? a chair he cannot sit in?
whatever your answer is, it will always mean that god if he exists, is not omnipotent
I was wondering why people seem to think God actually is supposed to do things? that would be unfair interference into our freedom of choice.
Why can't God have just created everything, and allows us to play the games that we play.
Can s(he) not just be an observer, or adviser?
also, as an addendum to what i just said, the idea that there is an eternal punishment after death is also rather childish. what would be the point of sending you to your room for eternity for disobeying rules you never heard of?
as others have mentioned, some god who allowed that to happen wouldn't be possible with all the other descriptions of power and benevolence. So, obviously, either the stories or the descriptions are false. Would you truly believe: that there is a pointless struggle between good and an evil created by good that is somehow in doubt over the victor, or such stories are fanciful when considering the nature of an all powerful, all knowing, all present, benevolent entity?
I've actually taken some theology courses regretably and as it turns out from the lectures is that the whole judgement thing is your own doing you judge your self after being presented with the perfection that is God.
Also there is no evil just the absence of good just like darkness is the absence of light.
Science does not deny God.And you should really read Darwin,
EVOLUTION IS REAL.If you have a philosophical problem because we share the same origin of an ant,thats your business,but don't stop progress.
was it a cat I saw?
was it a rat I saw?
Our senses receive a HUGE amount of information from the environment……and filters out the majority of it. Estimates vary, but depending on the source, our senses receive 200-400 THOSAND bits a second of information, and we end up with about 2000 that is actually used by the brain.
Here is a quick little experiment that you can try to see some of this “lost” information. Go in a room with dim lighting, the light source MUST be behind you or at least to the side. An overcast day with the shades half drawn works great. The walls should be a light shade, white works best for most people, but other shades will do.
Now get comfy, and hold your arms up at arms length and point both index fingers at each other. Bring them together until they touch. Now slowly move them apart while looking at the space between them. Well shit, you can see a whitish colored string of electro-magnetic energy still connecting them as they move apart. Now move one up and the other down. See the energy move? If you can’t see it, stop trying so hard and just let it happen. People that try too hard have problems with this. People that do it with an open mind and no worries or expectations about the outcome can generally see it quite clearly. Now hold all your fingers out. See the energy field surrounding them. DAMN THAT WAS EASY. I’ll tell you how to see a bit more of the stuff that is normally filtered later. Post your results if you are not worried about people thinking you are crazy.
He can't possibly be the son of the sun!
>>1
Sounds like an optical phenomenon. You might be unfocusing your eyes when you "just relax and let it happen" which could help. There's a demonstration in school physics that does something similar...
> When i was a kid, i saw various patterns, even eleborate little pictures repeated over and over again all across my vision. Seen most frequently at night, behind my eyelids when my eyes were closed, but also when they are open.
Like >>3 said, welcome to the human visual system.
I remember seeing that as a kid too, and I can still force that sort of patterns (usually checkerboard-ish) to appear by squeezing my eyes shut tight or using my hands to push lightly on the eyeballs. In that case, I believe the patterns are because the light receptors / neurons in the eye / whatever also respond to pressure and start firing randomly; and the brain is trying to make sense of the nonsense coming in.
4-ch need a /paranormal/ board so we can get this shit out of /science/
>>16
Maybe I should ask Squeeks for that...
>>16
To get this shit out of /science/ you should get better shit into /science/. There's nothing particularly more worthy of discussion posted here.
>I remember seeing that as a kid too, and I can still force that sort of patterns (usually checkerboard-ish) to appear by squeezing my eyes shut tight or using my hands to push lightly on the eyeballs. In that case, I believe the patterns are because the light receptors / neurons in the eye / whatever also respond to pressure and start firing randomly; and the brain is trying to make sense of the nonsense coming in.
Hey, I remember seeing that when I shut my eyes too. Have you any idea why we only saw it so easily when we were kids? Perhaps some sort of gradual change in the shape of the eye socket or something.
people's senses get number and number as you get older + the child's mind has more imagination because it isn't "trained" yet (imagination is replaced by knowledge of how things can be expected)
I've been staring at the sun since I was five, and all I got was terrible migraines and math powers.
In my Physics class, I came to understand that there is a possibility that physics will not follow the rules it was assumed to follow.
Examples would be if you let go of a pen and instead of falling to the ground, it falls up, or sideways. Or, if you press object x against object y, there is a possibility that object x will pass completely though object y.
Is it possible to change the likely hood of thees types of events from occuring?
Only the King of Probability gets to do that.
Expectations break down in extreme conditions. It's never likely to have liquid helium, but create the conditions for it, and it will flow up the sides and then out of its container in apparent defiance of gravity.
Creating the conditions under which you get something weird like liquid helium is something that one can comprehend (it has been done, we know it can be done, and it has been observed behaving in this manner). The behavior is also entirely explicable...
It's easy to say that a pen dropped will fall up or sideways in extreme conditions. Localized tornado, some sort of crazy electromagnetic field, or any number of highly unlikely circumstances will cause this to happen. Gravity is a relatively weak force and easy to overcome. If you drop a pen every second of your life, there may be one instance in which it will fall up or sideways. Do it for millennia, and your chances of observing this increase.
Objects passing through one another are even less likely because solid objects are held together with the electromagnetic force, which is relatively strong. The cop out answer here is that if you take two objects and press them against each other, the odds of them passing through one another in one instance approaches one (1.0) with the passage of time. Basically, if you do this for eternity, it will happen and for good reason, too. As the universe nears its end, the matter within it begins to fade as do the forces that hold it together. Eventually, you should reach a point at which object A will pass smoothly through object B, simply due to this breakdown. Granted, this may be a point in time at which is it is impossible to control any mechanism forcing these two objects together. This point should also come at a time when there is so little energy left in the universe that it is incapable of supporting life of any kind, so it won't be observable. Rest assured, though, at this point, matter will likely be passing through matter all over the cold and lonely universe.
You can usually change the likelihood of an object X passing indiscriminately through object Y by not attempting that in the first. See Mega64 "How Spore ruined my life" for a rundown on playing God.
The sci-fi answers include:
Better answers:
The pen is kind of garbage, like I said, because all you really need to fit that rule is a really strong breeze. I'd just go hang out in the Bahamas and wait for the next hurricane if you want to see a pen dropped fall sideways.
hey why not just make the objects vibrate at different frequencies theoretically you can have two solid objects occupying the same space in this matter so it would stand to reason that they would be able to pass through each other as well
>As the universe nears its end, the matter within it begins to fade as do the forces that hold it together.
wat
>See Mega64 "How Spore ruined my life" for a rundown on playing God.
wat
>the problem then arises that you'd have to adjust probability quite a lot in order for two solid objects to pass through one another
wat
>hey why not just make the objects vibrate at different frequencies theoretically you can have two solid objects occupying the same space in this matter so it would stand to reason that they would be able to pass through each other as well
barely remembered science from tv is SCIENCE
>>the problem then arises that you'd have to adjust probability quite a lot in order for two solid objects to pass through one another
>wat
The rest of it reads:
>Probability isn't a force in the universe, so good luck with that.
It's a valid statement, besides, I said it was a sci-fi answer. The rest of what I said is possibly valid because the rules will start to break down as the universe approaches heat death. Granted, no one knows how it will go down, but I'm betting that there may be some billionth of a second right before the last protons vaporize that should two of them happen to be near enough one another, the forces within them will be so faint that they'll pass right through each other (that's my theory, and if you want to test it, I'll see you at the end of the universe!). If these two bits happen to be part of the two objects you started to bash together billions and billions of years ago, I guess it still counts.
>>10
I think I've already stated where I'm coming from.
On that note: there's no chance you'll prove me wrong!
What do you believe is the coolest invention of the decade
simple enough, Ill post mine after i get some replies
robot sex
definitely robot sex
Google told me it has something to do with cooling, probably computer cooling but i am not sure.
Mine would be the digital camera, for various reasons (some i am unable to talk about on the Internet, a girl IS involved ;) )
>a girl IS involved ;) )
Ho~ho~ho~ ^^
I invented a sandwich with peanut butter and catsup and pickles and baloney. It's pretty cool.
>>9
Make me hungry in this early morning =.=
It's probably something really obscure. Most of the cool stuff was invented in the 19th century.
They made Ununoctium this century. It has no practical value whatsoever, but it's the first synthetic noble gas ever created!
porn
nope robot sex
the ipod probably, cus i bet you the president has one and steve jobs uses it to steal the secret codes to the bombs
Petroleum, from the Latin "rock oil", is the key element for the greatest technological evolution and expansion humanity has ever experienced. From airplanes and cars to the very clothes we wear and the food we digest, petroleum is all around us. It is our addiction, our savior, our own poison.
I believe that the end of the Petroleum Era is going to be a very hard moment in our specie's history. We live in a fully technological world, with society totally immersed into its immediate benefits. Take away the thing that runs our world, and we perish. Unless we do something.
That 4-ch doesn't have a Peak Oil thread doesn't surprise me, but that in our own conscience we can't foresee the consequences of the end of this black gold is alarming, in my point of view. Our food industry, for example, runs totally on petroleum: to run the motors of the tractors and trucks, to protect the crops from pests, to preserve them for later consumption, etc. Once oil is too expensive and out, what will push those engines? We will then face a food crisis so big that it will cause millions of deaths in just months. Humanity could be endangered.
Luckily, renewable energy is coming by. Welcome solar, wind, tide, geothermic, hydroelectric, hidrogen and biomass energy. Cheers. But plans for implementing this new technology should have been made at least a decade ago. Sadly, we haven't found a powerful enough alternative energy source that could feed the entire energy demand which petroleum seems to suffice so easily, still. Some governments haven't started funding for this new field of research in order to keep up with the decline of oil.
Because if I panic, everything will get better, right? So I'd better flip out every time I encounter some sensationalist apocalypse story regardless of whatever the evidence says.
The evidence (few, but its there) is against you, and so is logic
>>12
So you're saying it's logical to panic over evert sensationalist apocalypse story.
Okay.
OP, are you sincere in your belief that the rise of industrialism has been more important to civilization than, say, the advent of agriculture?
Please list the plurality of inventions brought about by nomadic tribes in the last millenium or so.
>>14
I'm not going to bother reading the thread to see what you kids are arguing about, but in the last millenium or so nomads have represented an infinitesimally small percentage of the human race. They could be a thousand times more inventive than settled cultures and it would still be difficult to satisfy your request.
are you new here? to this... "Internet" thing?
lol
The more important disaster to look forward to is the moon escaping earth's gravitational field to the point that it no longer controls our seasons. At that point, the only practical lifestyle will be herding reindeer. Then there's the sun expanding and swallowing the earth... and then the heat death of the universe.
The death of Earth is a pretty tiny thing in the large scale. Planets and suns are dying all the time.
Welcome Death...welcome...you are my God now...
So how long do you think it will be before such technoloogy is widely availble to the public?
10 years? Maybe 25?
yes!!! A thread that I am waiting for!
everything you know is wrong
why do you want more than 64 bits? is addressing 16 exabytes of RAM at once insufficient for your needs?
MOAR IS BETTER!!!
Those are not numbers that just increase. They actually mean something, and if you don't know what, asking that question is meaningless.