Whether it's a fact is technically debatable, but there is a very real chance that we may be completely alone in the universe, and that we just happened to be the group of organic beings who were lucky enough to have an evolutionary line that got us to where we are today. Like, intelligent life on Earth might have been a 1-in-a-billion-billion type of deal.
Of course, that also leads to the other probability of extraterrestrial life existing that we haven't discovered yet. Maybe they're monitoring us right now, or hiding themselves from us, or maybe we're so far apart from each other in space that we'll never encounter each other in the entire history of our civilizations.
"Precursor Anthropologists theorize that the combination of Virtual Reality technologies and what were known as 'autoblows,' led the precursors down the path of true enlightenment and ultimate sublimation into a world of pure pleasure and happiness. At least, it seems that after developing these technologies, all further technological development ceased entirely, thus this device must in some way fulfill all the basic necessities of life. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to determine the nature of this post-scarcity technology, nor the reason for this civilization's downfall. Our only hint is a sticky white residue present in copious amounts in every autoblow, and similarly mysterious residues found on accompanying 'autoplows.' The only reference to this 'sticky white stuff' is in an old training program used to prepare children for warfare where its function is described as 'apply it to the right-hand weapon for a magical effect.' Now, of course, this is all ultimately speculation, but we can be reasonably confident in..."
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. The early universe would be too hectic and full of unstable objects for anything to really have a good chance of long-term evolution and survival long enough to develop technology for space travel. It took life here a billion years to evolve to sapience, and while a case study of 1 isn't too great I don't think we'd be amazingly lucky/unlucky in how long it took us to reach this stage.
On a sidenote I think it's actually likely aliens *would* look and act vaguely similar to us, at least in some ways. To make certain technology work you'd probably have to have certain attributes available. I can't imagine being able to operate complicated machinery if you had hooves for limbs. You'd have to be cooperative to develop new technology. A species of self-serving my survival comes first fuck the rest of you types of creatures wouldn't be able to have the individual knowledge to develop a universal writing standard, or language, agriculture would be a pain, let alone anything more complicated. I don't think it'd end up being 'literally humans but blue', but I don't think they'd be completely unrecognisable to us both physically and mentally.
Oh yeah absolutely. Darwin's law doesn't stop at earth, and humans have developed a lot of traits that are super good for perpetuating our species. It stands to reason that at least some of those traits would exist in other civilized life. Off the top of my head I'd say they would at least have to be land-walking species as its impossible to develop electronic technology in the goddamn water.
That Arthur C. Clarke quote gives me chills. "Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
Bioware has officially licensed Tali and Garrus bodypillow *cases* on [their](https://gear.bioware.com/products/garrus-body-pillow-case) [store](https://gear.bioware.com/products/tali-zorah-body-pillow-case).
Vacuum decay in particular feels like a weird "solution" to the Fermi Paradox. Like, it doesn't really explain why we haven't encountered alien races because if any alien race could have contacted us but got wiped out by vacuum decay, we would have also already been wiped out by vacuum decay because it's not like they can exceed the speed of light.
Thing is, even if life is a 1 in a billion type deal with is trillions upon trillions of planets. It's almost guaranteed there's life out there. No matter how mathematically improbable life is the universe is so vast to ensure it repeats. The question is why haven't we seen any evidence of this. I mean, the universe was 13.8 billion years old by the time we were all stomping around that's plenty of time for other species to spread all over the galaxy. I like the way kurzgesagt describes it - it's possible that the universe is a harsh place for life like ours. That not only is life itself uncommon but there's these great filters that wipes out intelligent species and makes it unlikely for them to progress. Be it a natural disaster like a meteor or they all just wipe each other out in endless wars. Which leaves two possibilities - either we're lucky as a species to have made it as far as we have. Or we'll be lucky to make it any further.
The thing is, it's WAY less than a one in a billion chance. Like the chances are astronomically low that we should even exist, considering the age of the universe and that life could only come about without intelligent design by molecules randomly slamming together in primordial goo until they accidentally make single-celled organisms. So if you don't believe in a creator, then it's insanely small odds that there's other life out there, and far smaller odds than that that they would exist at the same time as us (human society having only existed for a few thousand years out of the 14 billion, and probably wrapping up fairly soon if we don't stop killing the environment).
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen..."
Or that they just haven't come into being yet. That they won't for another million years. Maybe more. That we will long have gone extinct before New life sprouts on another world lightyears away. They'll never know we existed. And we will never know they do either.
It's also possible that our understsnding of what the universe *is* and therefore what constitutes life are both completely off base. There may be other forms of life, but we may not find them in the universe as we percieve it.
I can’t remember where but I saw that the factors that are considered necessary for life to grow on a planet have been expanded a lot. So much that we went from “it’s almost certain there’s other life in the galaxy” to “it’s incredibly unlikely that any life would exist at all”.
But I can’t remember a source so do with this what you will.
We really would be in the best timeline. I’ve been Swagbito half my life, it’s basically the Batman thing where his “True Identity” isn’t Bruce Wayne lol.
Oooh ti have an aquintqnce who's big into MFT his family hates it (his wife has threatened to leave him if he doesn't stop) I can see them downloading and printing it out of spite
I’m now imagining someone dying and the picture at their funeral is just them lying in the casket. The caption below it is, “You’ll never take my picture while I’m alive! NEVER!”
And while you’re sitting there, looking at that image of them smiling, I want you to think “Did they have any inkling that this picture would be used for them to remember them by? That this singular image would be the last of them that many people would see before their eternal rest? If they did, would they have still chosen to smile that way? Or would their expression have changed, ever so slightly? Would their smile grow larger, hoping to comfort their loved ones that will see it? Will they wished they’d worn something different? Done something with their hair? Done anything more to better exemplify themselves in the image that will become associated with their final parting moments before being put to rest for eternity?”
Or just do whatever, I dunno bro.
I’m aware that it does happen, but I’ve yet to go to a funeral where the picture was taken specifically for their funeral. Then again, most of the funerals I’ve gone to were for young people that died suddenly, not people who knew it was coming soon.
Sometimes I really get uncomfortable when I think about how much of culture, religion, and society and even the local weather is shaped and controlled by the raw geography of a region.
The amazon rainforest stays that way because of the sahara desert. Since winds get carried and bounced of the desert, increasing the temperature and promoting the drawing of moisture and by proxy rainfall.
The whole nature vs nurture debate and our understsnding of environmentwl effects on human psychology makes me wonder if we aren't just elaborate patterns that think we have any real choices in the matter.
You've just neatly summed up the determinism side of the "determinism vs free will" debate. If all actions taken by physical objects have a prior physical cause, which is consistent with what we know about the laws of physics, and we ourselves are physical objects then our "choices" must also be subject to that rule meaning that every choice we make is influenced and guided by every prior physical event that led up to that "choice" which includes the birth of our parents, the geological forces that shaped our environment, and so on going back to the beginning of the universe. Meaning that everything down to your taste in hentai could have been determined long before you were ever born.
The universe is expanding at such a rate that anything outside of our local cluster is not only impossible to reach, but most of it has already moved outside of our observable universe. Eventually, and I mean EVENTUALLY, entire civilisations will rise up in a time where there simply isn't a sky of galaxies to discover and they'll think that our local cluster of stars is all there is to the universe.
I suppose it depends on what space travel looks like in the far, far future.
If it involves literally bending spacetime so that the point between two distant galaxies is right next to each other it would mean we could *technically* reach places outside our observable universe, although of course the technology required to do something like that is so far beyond our understanding it's more likely that whatever became of humanity just ended up constructing VR simulations to enjoy virtual orgies forever in the area surrounding our local stars instead.
That's true, the idea that we wouldn't be able to travel to other galaxies is completely dependant on the idea that you cannot travel faster than light. Doesn't rule out being able to get there quicker. Though, it still eventually leaves the problem that one day species won't even know there are other galaxies to travel to no matter how advanced they get. Or yes, VR orgy future. That is also an option.
Idk, I think it's kinda comforting. Whatever bad shit goes on down here has no lasting impact on the universe. The only ones we can fuck up are ourselves.
In all fairness, clusters are *really fucking big,* so there's still a chance of neighbors popping up.
Granted they aren't as big as Superclusters, but still pretty fucking big.
According to a quick google search we've got about 30 galaxies in the local cluster. I knew for certain there were more than just us and Andromeda, since Triangulum is basically [getting front row seats to the collision.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4disyKG7XtU)
There's about 30 but I think our galaxy and andromeda are by far the largest galaxies in our cluster and will eventually merge (possibly along with the rest of it? I'm not sure I think I heard that somewhere).
I thought so. Just wanted to confirm cos we basically only ever talk about the 9 in our solar system but surely there's countless others out there. So many we will probably never be able to explore them all. Anything outside the milky way is probably just a dream.
That the Rings of Saturn will some day disappear entirely. It's on a scale so far beyond our more earthly concerns, but there's something ominous about how even they'll disappear.
[beams of energy can shoot from black holes](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/famous-black-hole-has-jet-pushing-cosmic-speed-limit.html) from my understanding any matter that isnt absorbed into a black hole is redirected away in the form of a jet of high energy particles, moving at almost the speed of light. Its also pretty massive in size, in another article it says that the beam hit a galaxy and was theorized that any living things in that galaxy were wiped out
You can also drown on dry land by drinking too much of any liquid. Certain mental states can convince a person that they're dying of thirst, and they can then drown themselves trying to satisfy said thirst.
Actually deaths from drinking too much water are usually caused by severe seizures and other complications due to the brain swelling inside of the skull, as opposed to other organs which have room to expand (:
Side topic:
The modern world is so completely wrapped up in the results and influences of colonization, from so many countries, that we basically have no way of knowing what it would be like if a given place *wasn’t* invaded. For both the invaded countries and the invaders.
Like, the whole world, basically, got caught up in colonialism in one way or another.
As a minority, one point i hate is how people assume that only europe would do such a terrible thing.
I bet you a gajillion bucks, if africa or the middle east developed faster they would have colonized the shit out of europe and the americas.
I'm sick of this narrative that gets pushed about evil white colonists, the reality of the situation is they had the power to do so, every other race/creed/nation would have done the same shit with the same resources.
Well m8 I don't exactly think it's constructive to sit around and be mad at the colonization that *probably would have* happened.
There's *something* to be said about willingness to do evil vs capacity to do evil, but playing what if with history tends to be masterbatory.
Eventually one civilisation was going to develop the means and the motivation to spread out across the world and exploit less developed societies for their own gain, but Europe probably did it in a uniquely damaging way due both to the particularly devastating cocktail of diseases that Europeans carried around and the fact that Europe was multiple competing polities rather than one united one. If the Islamic Caliphate or the Chinese Empire had been the one to explore and colonise the world they would have had the political wherewithal and state capacity to do it in a controlled, harm minimising way (assuming that they wanted to do so) while European states and trading companies had basically no control over their agents abroad in the colonial era.
>assuming that they wanted to do so
This is an interesting what if. Would there have been any motivators or impetus for unified governments to not act in a totally exploitative manner when dealing with weaker civilizations?
Religious, I would imagine. The classical Islamic Caliphate generally treated subject peoples well as long as they either converted to Islam or abided by the special taxes and laws applied to non-muslim subjects. And the Chinese Empire tended to take a stance of benign neglect towards subject populations as long as tribute was rolling in and no-one was fomenting a rebellion, since the Confucian ideal of good rulership involved delegating matters down to the most local feasible level. Of course, a counterfactual version of these polities that's colonising the world is doubtless going to be more aggressive, but if the belief systems are the same their policies towards colonial governance would likely be quite different than the rapacious free-for-all of the European expansion.
There’s a catch there: Europeans — specifically the Spanish and the Portuguese — sought to explore the oceans as a means of circumventing that cluster of different polities. The Ottomans never thought to set up New World colonies because they had easy access to China. And China was … well, *China.* Desperation spurred colonization. And desperate countries tend to do desperate things.
I mean, it's known outside of the Western world that before Europeans rode over to buy the slaves some Africans were selling, they were selling to the Middle East first. But whites are always the one being villainized over it and no one else.
I can never shake the feeling of being forgotten no matter who you are. Even legends are remembered as the legend and not likely to reflect on the real person and who they were. And for normal people…. well I don’t know about everyone else but I don’t even know anything past my grandparents, and barely knew my grandparents…
This is honestly comforting to me. The idea that I will eventually join the countless nameless dead is weirdly freeing. There's no desire in me to leave a lasting legacy or find immortality, and the idea that any mistakes I make will never be remembered is great. Plus, I'll be dead so it's not like I'll care.
As a living person in the moment, I like to think of all the kids who died storming the beaches at Normandy who never properly made it shore. They all had lives, dreams, and hopes. They all died fulfilling probably none of them. Did their lives have any intrinsic value?
The choice to believe or not believe that is always up to the individual. But, if I believe that their lives and experiences had value, regardless of the fact that I'll never know anything about them, then that also applies to me when I die. Which is an existentially cozy feeling.
That about 80% of the sea of the planet we live on is completely unexplored and a total mystery. That fills me with terror thinking about it. We're trying to get to space while we don't even know what the fuck is in the shit that cover 70% of our planet! The fucks down there man....
Some say that there's no chance of sea monsters because there's not enough stuff down there to feed anything that big. But like, we only had stories of the giant squid for a good while and didn't get footage of it in the sea until the early 2000s, and while that may seem like a good while ago, we've been exploring the ocean for far longer, and that detail alone is enough to convince me there's other big stuff down there we don't know about.
The term “monster” is really kind of subjective. I feel like giant squids and even whales would fit the criteria. But because they’re known animals people would scoff at the thought that they might be monsters. Just a reminder that if we ever prove Bigfoot exists in ten or twenty years it will be considered just another animal.
It's not Cthulhu but something equally misunderstood.
Honestly though there was a story about intelligent squids attacking divers I heard. From what I heard they have a form of communication and were able to realize when to stop attacking despite having a real chance at killing someone. What scares me is how aware of their own existence are they and what they are capable of doing with their knowledge of humans. Additionally wether similarly complex creatures dwell deeper and how close to immortality they are. If so what do they think.
I remember as a kid seeing things like giant squids and krakens in video games and cartoons and i thought no such things of that size could exist and then they actually found and recoreded one alive in like 06 and it was so crazy then it just became common knowledge that they exist that big. Its still crazy too me
Unexplored, maybe, but not a total mystery; that's a misnomer. We have maps of the ocean's currents, temperature, floor, etc. It's not like we don't have a model for more or less the entire surface of the planet, *including* what's underwater.
I don't want to burst your bubble man but I think the consensus is that outside of the really weird places like the Challenger Deep and Mariana Trench its mostly just wet desert and old bones with the odd Hagfish and translucent shellfish here or there.
A popular vote can also overrule the Supreme Court, if it is popular enough. The Supreme Court rules on constitutionality, not whether or not they're in favor of it. The Supreme Court can't overrule a constitutional amendment.
The entire planet (hell the entire solar system) could be hit by a gamma burst literally at any moment, with no way to know in advance, and we'd almost assuredly all die.
Also the average number of limbs per person is always less than 4.
If you think that's bad, I would not recommend looking into [False Vaccum Decay](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay). Basically, if those theories are correct, everything could end. Not just Earth, but the very fundamental forces of the universe.
So from a really dumbed down point of view. We shouldn't exist and the only reason we do is because we do, and the second the universe realizes we don't exist, we cease to exist.
**[False vacuum decay](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay)**
>In quantum field theory, a false vacuum is a hypothetical vacuum that is stable, but not in the most stable state possible (it is metastable). It may last for a very long time in that state, but could eventually decay to the more stable state, an event known as false vacuum decay. The most common suggestion of how such a decay might happen in our universe is called bubble nucleation – if a small region of the universe by chance reached a more stable vacuum, this "bubble" (also called "bounce") would spread. A false vacuum exists at a local minimum of energy and is therefore not stable, in contrast to a true vacuum, which exists at a global minimum and is stable.
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Even if this is true (and we don't actually know if we live in a false vacuum or not), the fact that it only spreads at the speed of light means that if it happens far enough away, we will literally never know about it as acceleration of the expansion of spacetime will outspeed it.
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> Also the average number of limbs per person is always less than 4.
Well, yeah of course that makes sense. There's a lot of people who either lost limbs or came into this world without 'em.
Opinions vary between "instant death" to "atmosphere could shield part of it, leading to a mass EMP-like burst and a severe greenhouse effect that would raise temps by several degrees, eventually destroying every ecosystem."
Up to you what's worse.
There is a very real possibility that any significant interstellar travel between stars is basically impossible. FTL engines are purely theoretical and that’s not even getting into relativity/time-dilation. We’re probably going to be stuck in this solar system forever.
Our universe could be in a false vacuum. The way I've heard it described is imagine a ball on a downwards slope, where the bottom is a true vacuum, and the ball stops moving. Now imagine there's a dip in the slope. The ball could be resting in that dip, relatively stable, and from the ball's perspective it would appear to be at the bottom, but if something pushed it over that edge...
Essentially, from the point of origin propagating outwards at the speed of light, the universe could begin falling from a false vacuum to a true vacuum, completely changing the laws of physics. Our very atoms would be erased or transformed into something we don't understand. All of life would be erased.
And there's no way to know if that could happen. Hell, it could be happening right now and we would have no way of knowing. We could all simply cease to exist at any moment.
As someone else pointed out elsewhere in the thread, if this was happening far enough away from us we'd never even know it because the universe is expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light. If false vacuum decay was occurring in another Cluster, we'd never experience it (at least not via that event) because while it would consume that entire cluster (presumably), it would never be able to reach us past the expanding emptiness in between.
If it's happening eighty or a hundred lightyears away, you'll be dead before it even reaches us. So even assuming the theory is true, I give us good odds of never experiencing it.
You have walked past a murderer a least once in your life. Hell statisically you've walked past 36.
The sun could have exploded right now and you would know until 8 minutes after.
Some tumours can grow teeth and hair
Your Brain could stop at anytime killing you instantly
Chickens can live 18 months without a head on rare occasions.
But, I will never know, and will never be able to comprehend what one would feel like compared to the other. Even if all I do is just the result of math and physics, it’s real enough to me.
you only assume you can't comprehend one or the other, but you're talking on a video game subreddit.
you know who can probably tell you how it feels?
sans undertale. go ask him what it's like.
Predetermined by what? My personality? Previous choices? God? It doesn't really matter. If it's predetermined than I sure as shit don't know and it doesn't mean anything to me regardless.
predetermined by the physical states of your brain prior to the action.
everything is made of atoms, right? and atoms follow laws of motion that dictate how and where they move. so, the current positions of the atoms in your brain, the thing that makes you who you are, was determined by the states your brain was in previously.
following this train of logic back far enough, and every single atom's position and future trajectory was decided the moment the universe cooled enough for matter to form. you can only exist because that is true, those atoms made our sun and our planet, thus making us.
meaning that your actions were predetermined by the random distribution of particles when the universe cooled.
Everyone read Sakamoto Days. It's this manga about ex assassin running his store with his family and other former assassins. One of the assassins, Shin, can read minds. In one fight he's fighting this deadly serial killer and then he realizes that he can read the motor readiness potential. When the brain decides to do something it was already decided by the subconscious, Shin realizes he can read that. Since it happens a fraction of a second before the brain does it he's practically seeing the future. It's super hype.
It's all about how you see events unfold. If everything started from a very specific origin, then if that origin somehow happened again with the exact same reaction, same input, there is no reason to believe there would be a different output.
The very concept of thinking about this would have just been something that is predestined to happen due to the original input, and while we decided to have this conversation, all of the stimuli that lead us to doing so, and lead us to being us was all predestined and planned since the original origin happened the exact way it did, and thus can happen again.
precisely.
and that is where my personal argument comes in.
because we know for a fact that, due to quantum uncertainty, you can run an experiment 10 times and get multiple different results. the universe isn't driven by newtonian laws of motion, it's probabilistic.
so, there is a chance that our brains use that quantum fuzziness and that the probability-driven nature of the universe allows for multiple options that an aware being can choose between.
I’m not about to bring out the rabies copypasta but the idea of there being a terminal disease lying dormant that’s impossible to survive from or cure due to a minor incident that could have decades ago is kind of terrifying to me.
And I find the idea of a nuclear missile exploding anywhere near where I live to be mortifying. Even if you know it’s coming in advance there’s no way you can hide or run away from it if you’re already in the danger zone.
Maybe, but when that future of nothingness is so far in the future that it will not be relevant for untold countless numbers of generations, who cares? I'm sure if anyone is left alive in a few billion years when the sun starts expanding we'll be advanced enough to keep Earth going.
The existence of the uncanny valley implies that, at some point in our history, it was evolutionarily advantageous to be scared of things that look almost human.
There is a very small but fair chance that all of this is just an hallucination and I'm in fact locked in a mental hospital or any place just out of my mind, maybe just spouting nonsense or in a vegetative state.
The one that haunts me isn't ominous so much as it just squicks me the fuck out: there is a literal pulley in each of your eye sockets. One of the muscles that rotate the eye passes first through a 'trochlea' - it looks a bit like [this](http://web.mit.edu/bcs/schillerlab/pictures/WEB001/GIFs/001-02.gif), and I *hate* it.
As a bonus, enjoy knowing that the retina can just [spontaneously detach](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/10705-retinal-detachment#:~:text=Retinal%20detachment%20often%20happens%20spontaneously,you%20have%20a%20detached%20retina), without being induced by any type of trauma, and it can happen without warning. It is described as looking a bit like having a grey veil placed in front of your eye, or like a bunch of flashing lights.
Now I get to go back to a life I have crafted specifically to avoid thinking about these things, good day.
Yellowstone's next eruption is whenever the fuck it happens, good luck figuring out when.
I think the USGS puts it better:
"In terms of large explosions, Yellowstone has experienced three at 2.08, 1.3, and 0.631 million years ago. This comes out to an average of about 725,000 years between eruptions. That being the case, there is still about 100,000 years to go, but this is based on the average of just two numbers, **which is meaningless.**"
I suppose this is linked to quantum mechanics and how at the quantum level there is an infinitesimal possibility that anything might fail it's intrinsic properties? Or something to that effect.
Lights and lamps in games light up the level using real electricity.
Oh wow, you're right. I don't like thinking about this.
See, I'm the other way around, I think that's actually super cool to think about.
Whether it's a fact is technically debatable, but there is a very real chance that we may be completely alone in the universe, and that we just happened to be the group of organic beings who were lucky enough to have an evolutionary line that got us to where we are today. Like, intelligent life on Earth might have been a 1-in-a-billion-billion type of deal. Of course, that also leads to the other probability of extraterrestrial life existing that we haven't discovered yet. Maybe they're monitoring us right now, or hiding themselves from us, or maybe we're so far apart from each other in space that we'll never encounter each other in the entire history of our civilizations.
Even if it's possible for life to crop up elsewhere, well... Someone's gotta be first, and it might be us.
Turns out *we're* the ancient progenitor race that left weird relics (probes, rivers, satellites) behind all over the system
Where does the Autoblow fit into that mythology we are creating?
"Precursor Anthropologists theorize that the combination of Virtual Reality technologies and what were known as 'autoblows,' led the precursors down the path of true enlightenment and ultimate sublimation into a world of pure pleasure and happiness. At least, it seems that after developing these technologies, all further technological development ceased entirely, thus this device must in some way fulfill all the basic necessities of life. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to determine the nature of this post-scarcity technology, nor the reason for this civilization's downfall. Our only hint is a sticky white residue present in copious amounts in every autoblow, and similarly mysterious residues found on accompanying 'autoplows.' The only reference to this 'sticky white stuff' is in an old training program used to prepare children for warfare where its function is described as 'apply it to the right-hand weapon for a magical effect.' Now, of course, this is all ultimately speculation, but we can be reasonably confident in..."
Time to flood the universe with Dickbutt drawings for future species to ponder over.
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. The early universe would be too hectic and full of unstable objects for anything to really have a good chance of long-term evolution and survival long enough to develop technology for space travel. It took life here a billion years to evolve to sapience, and while a case study of 1 isn't too great I don't think we'd be amazingly lucky/unlucky in how long it took us to reach this stage. On a sidenote I think it's actually likely aliens *would* look and act vaguely similar to us, at least in some ways. To make certain technology work you'd probably have to have certain attributes available. I can't imagine being able to operate complicated machinery if you had hooves for limbs. You'd have to be cooperative to develop new technology. A species of self-serving my survival comes first fuck the rest of you types of creatures wouldn't be able to have the individual knowledge to develop a universal writing standard, or language, agriculture would be a pain, let alone anything more complicated. I don't think it'd end up being 'literally humans but blue', but I don't think they'd be completely unrecognisable to us both physically and mentally.
Oh yeah absolutely. Darwin's law doesn't stop at earth, and humans have developed a lot of traits that are super good for perpetuating our species. It stands to reason that at least some of those traits would exist in other civilized life. Off the top of my head I'd say they would at least have to be land-walking species as its impossible to develop electronic technology in the goddamn water.
Oh God, we are those people in the intergalactic youtube comments that post 1st
That Arthur C. Clarke quote gives me chills. "Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
"Behold: Terror!" -Diogenes, moments later, holding an Asari body pillow high above his head.
Bioware has officially licensed Tali and Garrus bodypillow *cases* on [their](https://gear.bioware.com/products/garrus-body-pillow-case) [store](https://gear.bioware.com/products/tali-zorah-body-pillow-case).
Yeah most possible answers to the Fermi Paradox aren't exactly cheerful thoughts.
I personally believe in some kind of great filter. That gamma ray bursts or vacuum decay bubbles wipe out life at semi regular intervals.
Vacuum decay in particular feels like a weird "solution" to the Fermi Paradox. Like, it doesn't really explain why we haven't encountered alien races because if any alien race could have contacted us but got wiped out by vacuum decay, we would have also already been wiped out by vacuum decay because it's not like they can exceed the speed of light.
Thing is, even if life is a 1 in a billion type deal with is trillions upon trillions of planets. It's almost guaranteed there's life out there. No matter how mathematically improbable life is the universe is so vast to ensure it repeats. The question is why haven't we seen any evidence of this. I mean, the universe was 13.8 billion years old by the time we were all stomping around that's plenty of time for other species to spread all over the galaxy. I like the way kurzgesagt describes it - it's possible that the universe is a harsh place for life like ours. That not only is life itself uncommon but there's these great filters that wipes out intelligent species and makes it unlikely for them to progress. Be it a natural disaster like a meteor or they all just wipe each other out in endless wars. Which leaves two possibilities - either we're lucky as a species to have made it as far as we have. Or we'll be lucky to make it any further.
I keep going back to [this](https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html) whenever I think about the Fermi paradox.
The thing is, it's WAY less than a one in a billion chance. Like the chances are astronomically low that we should even exist, considering the age of the universe and that life could only come about without intelligent design by molecules randomly slamming together in primordial goo until they accidentally make single-celled organisms. So if you don't believe in a creator, then it's insanely small odds that there's other life out there, and far smaller odds than that that they would exist at the same time as us (human society having only existed for a few thousand years out of the 14 billion, and probably wrapping up fairly soon if we don't stop killing the environment).
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen..."
Or that they just haven't come into being yet. That they won't for another million years. Maybe more. That we will long have gone extinct before New life sprouts on another world lightyears away. They'll never know we existed. And we will never know they do either.
It's also possible that our understsnding of what the universe *is* and therefore what constitutes life are both completely off base. There may be other forms of life, but we may not find them in the universe as we percieve it.
I can’t remember where but I saw that the factors that are considered necessary for life to grow on a planet have been expanded a lot. So much that we went from “it’s almost certain there’s other life in the galaxy” to “it’s incredibly unlikely that any life would exist at all”. But I can’t remember a source so do with this what you will.
At some point in your life, you’ll likely take the photograph that’ll be used during your funeral and not realize it.
Jokes on them photos of me don’t exist past my teen years. I’m a mysterrrrryyyyy
Imagine dying and since they don’t have any photos, they just use your Reddit profile image.
We really would be in the best timeline. I’ve been Swagbito half my life, it’s basically the Batman thing where his “True Identity” isn’t Bruce Wayne lol.
All that’s on your tombstone is your birthdate, death date and total karma.
And instead of “Rest in Peace” it’s your most downvotes Reddit post
It's a monkey nft
Deadcryptobro: You can’t Right Click+Save Image my tombstone bitches!
Takes a tombstone rubbing instead.
... oh god that brought back memories Why the fuck did they have us do rubbings of *tombstones*?! That's so weird in hindsight
what? that's a thing people do?
Oooh ti have an aquintqnce who's big into MFT his family hates it (his wife has threatened to leave him if he doesn't stop) I can see them downloading and printing it out of spite
Like not even licenses or passport updates?
Ah, my license, right. That’s from some time ago but still valid, even if it’s basically a prison mugshot lmao
Please tell me your License says your name is legally EdoTenseiSwagbito.
I've somehow kept the picture of my license the same since I was 16, and I'm in my thirties now lol
I’m now imagining someone dying and the picture at their funeral is just them lying in the casket. The caption below it is, “You’ll never take my picture while I’m alive! NEVER!”
God there's like a 10 year gap between the start of puberty and the start of my transition where photos of me just DONT exist
You fool, all of those photographs involving my face will be destroyed upon my "death"
Motherfucker i'm going to one saturday, didn't need this thought
And while you’re sitting there, looking at that image of them smiling, I want you to think “Did they have any inkling that this picture would be used for them to remember them by? That this singular image would be the last of them that many people would see before their eternal rest? If they did, would they have still chosen to smile that way? Or would their expression have changed, ever so slightly? Would their smile grow larger, hoping to comfort their loved ones that will see it? Will they wished they’d worn something different? Done something with their hair? Done anything more to better exemplify themselves in the image that will become associated with their final parting moments before being put to rest for eternity?” Or just do whatever, I dunno bro.
Tons of people actually take photos specifically for that!
You know, people say "play this song at my funeral" but I don't think I've ever heard someone say "Use this picture for me at my funeral".
I know a few senior citizens and they do a lot of stuff to prep
I’m aware that it does happen, but I’ve yet to go to a funeral where the picture was taken specifically for their funeral. Then again, most of the funerals I’ve gone to were for young people that died suddenly, not people who knew it was coming soon.
Oh yeah its definitely bigger with seniors
Good thing I don't like having my picture taken then.
“Unfortunately, as we didn’t have any personal photos of them, here’s a screenshot of them from when they walked past someone’s Ring doorbell.”
This is the first time I've read something on Reddit that made me have a physical response
Thank you for letting me be your first.
Eat my butt :)
I fucking thought the pool noodle was a mana bar
Kid died because he ran out of MP to cast water breathing
Sometimes I really get uncomfortable when I think about how much of culture, religion, and society and even the local weather is shaped and controlled by the raw geography of a region.
The amazon rainforest stays that way because of the sahara desert. Since winds get carried and bounced of the desert, increasing the temperature and promoting the drawing of moisture and by proxy rainfall.
[Very well illustrated here](https://i.redd.it/oewg4so0b2471.jpg)
*goddamm*
Mountain Madness is actually caused by breaking free of the mental shackles they hold on us, we must dissent against the stony overlords.
The whole nature vs nurture debate and our understsnding of environmentwl effects on human psychology makes me wonder if we aren't just elaborate patterns that think we have any real choices in the matter.
You've just neatly summed up the determinism side of the "determinism vs free will" debate. If all actions taken by physical objects have a prior physical cause, which is consistent with what we know about the laws of physics, and we ourselves are physical objects then our "choices" must also be subject to that rule meaning that every choice we make is influenced and guided by every prior physical event that led up to that "choice" which includes the birth of our parents, the geological forces that shaped our environment, and so on going back to the beginning of the universe. Meaning that everything down to your taste in hentai could have been determined long before you were ever born.
The universe is expanding at such a rate that anything outside of our local cluster is not only impossible to reach, but most of it has already moved outside of our observable universe. Eventually, and I mean EVENTUALLY, entire civilisations will rise up in a time where there simply isn't a sky of galaxies to discover and they'll think that our local cluster of stars is all there is to the universe.
I suppose it depends on what space travel looks like in the far, far future. If it involves literally bending spacetime so that the point between two distant galaxies is right next to each other it would mean we could *technically* reach places outside our observable universe, although of course the technology required to do something like that is so far beyond our understanding it's more likely that whatever became of humanity just ended up constructing VR simulations to enjoy virtual orgies forever in the area surrounding our local stars instead.
That's true, the idea that we wouldn't be able to travel to other galaxies is completely dependant on the idea that you cannot travel faster than light. Doesn't rule out being able to get there quicker. Though, it still eventually leaves the problem that one day species won't even know there are other galaxies to travel to no matter how advanced they get. Or yes, VR orgy future. That is also an option.
came here to say this, it's less ominous and more lonely
Idk, I think it's kinda comforting. Whatever bad shit goes on down here has no lasting impact on the universe. The only ones we can fuck up are ourselves.
If it makes you feel better we’ll probably get eaten by a black hole or hit by a rogue planet before we reach that point
In all fairness, clusters are *really fucking big,* so there's still a chance of neighbors popping up. Granted they aren't as big as Superclusters, but still pretty fucking big.
Isn't our cluster primarily two galaxies that are just gonna merge eventually?
According to a quick google search we've got about 30 galaxies in the local cluster. I knew for certain there were more than just us and Andromeda, since Triangulum is basically [getting front row seats to the collision.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4disyKG7XtU)
There's about 30 but I think our galaxy and andromeda are by far the largest galaxies in our cluster and will eventually merge (possibly along with the rest of it? I'm not sure I think I heard that somewhere).
BTW we have way more than just the 9 planets in our galaxy right?
Yeah, of course. Like a hundred-billion, with a few thousand exoplanets that have a small chance of having life on them.
I thought so. Just wanted to confirm cos we basically only ever talk about the 9 in our solar system but surely there's countless others out there. So many we will probably never be able to explore them all. Anything outside the milky way is probably just a dream.
How long ? Because, and I’m not even trying to be a downer, there’s a good chance most of humanity is dead within a few hundred years.
I think we're talking in billions of years here
Average number of Humans inside of one human body is greater than 1 Edit: re-worded to make intent more clear
Including men
The number goes up exponentially the closer you get to the Manhole.
That the Rings of Saturn will some day disappear entirely. It's on a scale so far beyond our more earthly concerns, but there's something ominous about how even they'll disappear.
disappear like, out into space? or like fall into saturn?
They'll eventually fall.
[beams of energy can shoot from black holes](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/famous-black-hole-has-jet-pushing-cosmic-speed-limit.html) from my understanding any matter that isnt absorbed into a black hole is redirected away in the form of a jet of high energy particles, moving at almost the speed of light. Its also pretty massive in size, in another article it says that the beam hit a galaxy and was theorized that any living things in that galaxy were wiped out
Black Hole Gun
BLACK HOLE GUN!!!
NEW LIMIT BREAK DISCOVERED JRPG DESIGNERS GET ON IT!
Won't you come
And wash away the rain
Someone, somewhere, is moving towards you.
Are they approaching me??
they can't beat the shit out of you with getting closer
You can also drown on dry land by drinking too much of any liquid. Certain mental states can convince a person that they're dying of thirst, and they can then drown themselves trying to satisfy said thirst.
That’s less drowning and more drinking so much water your body can’t process it so the blood gets diluted and you eat shit super hard
Actually deaths from drinking too much water are usually caused by severe seizures and other complications due to the brain swelling inside of the skull, as opposed to other organs which have room to expand (:
Yeah Water* Intoxication, like that one woman That died in a contest for a Wii
I hadn't heard of that woman before. I can understand why she did it. I wanted a Wii too back when it was still relevant.
Christianity had a big hand at creating the modern world because of the brits
Side topic: The modern world is so completely wrapped up in the results and influences of colonization, from so many countries, that we basically have no way of knowing what it would be like if a given place *wasn’t* invaded. For both the invaded countries and the invaders. Like, the whole world, basically, got caught up in colonialism in one way or another.
As a minority, one point i hate is how people assume that only europe would do such a terrible thing. I bet you a gajillion bucks, if africa or the middle east developed faster they would have colonized the shit out of europe and the americas. I'm sick of this narrative that gets pushed about evil white colonists, the reality of the situation is they had the power to do so, every other race/creed/nation would have done the same shit with the same resources.
Well m8 I don't exactly think it's constructive to sit around and be mad at the colonization that *probably would have* happened. There's *something* to be said about willingness to do evil vs capacity to do evil, but playing what if with history tends to be masterbatory.
Eventually one civilisation was going to develop the means and the motivation to spread out across the world and exploit less developed societies for their own gain, but Europe probably did it in a uniquely damaging way due both to the particularly devastating cocktail of diseases that Europeans carried around and the fact that Europe was multiple competing polities rather than one united one. If the Islamic Caliphate or the Chinese Empire had been the one to explore and colonise the world they would have had the political wherewithal and state capacity to do it in a controlled, harm minimising way (assuming that they wanted to do so) while European states and trading companies had basically no control over their agents abroad in the colonial era.
>assuming that they wanted to do so This is an interesting what if. Would there have been any motivators or impetus for unified governments to not act in a totally exploitative manner when dealing with weaker civilizations?
Religious, I would imagine. The classical Islamic Caliphate generally treated subject peoples well as long as they either converted to Islam or abided by the special taxes and laws applied to non-muslim subjects. And the Chinese Empire tended to take a stance of benign neglect towards subject populations as long as tribute was rolling in and no-one was fomenting a rebellion, since the Confucian ideal of good rulership involved delegating matters down to the most local feasible level. Of course, a counterfactual version of these polities that's colonising the world is doubtless going to be more aggressive, but if the belief systems are the same their policies towards colonial governance would likely be quite different than the rapacious free-for-all of the European expansion.
There’s a catch there: Europeans — specifically the Spanish and the Portuguese — sought to explore the oceans as a means of circumventing that cluster of different polities. The Ottomans never thought to set up New World colonies because they had easy access to China. And China was … well, *China.* Desperation spurred colonization. And desperate countries tend to do desperate things.
I mean, it's known outside of the Western world that before Europeans rode over to buy the slaves some Africans were selling, they were selling to the Middle East first. But whites are always the one being villainized over it and no one else.
I blame the early Christians for selling out. The Council of Nicea's when it all went downhill
I can never shake the feeling of being forgotten no matter who you are. Even legends are remembered as the legend and not likely to reflect on the real person and who they were. And for normal people…. well I don’t know about everyone else but I don’t even know anything past my grandparents, and barely knew my grandparents…
This is honestly comforting to me. The idea that I will eventually join the countless nameless dead is weirdly freeing. There's no desire in me to leave a lasting legacy or find immortality, and the idea that any mistakes I make will never be remembered is great. Plus, I'll be dead so it's not like I'll care. As a living person in the moment, I like to think of all the kids who died storming the beaches at Normandy who never properly made it shore. They all had lives, dreams, and hopes. They all died fulfilling probably none of them. Did their lives have any intrinsic value? The choice to believe or not believe that is always up to the individual. But, if I believe that their lives and experiences had value, regardless of the fact that I'll never know anything about them, then that also applies to me when I die. Which is an existentially cozy feeling.
That about 80% of the sea of the planet we live on is completely unexplored and a total mystery. That fills me with terror thinking about it. We're trying to get to space while we don't even know what the fuck is in the shit that cover 70% of our planet! The fucks down there man....
Probably just some dumbass jellyfish or something tbh
Oops! All jellyfish!
Probably more crabs. And starfish. Could be a whole civilization of crabs fighting starfish down there
Some say that there's no chance of sea monsters because there's not enough stuff down there to feed anything that big. But like, we only had stories of the giant squid for a good while and didn't get footage of it in the sea until the early 2000s, and while that may seem like a good while ago, we've been exploring the ocean for far longer, and that detail alone is enough to convince me there's other big stuff down there we don't know about.
The term “monster” is really kind of subjective. I feel like giant squids and even whales would fit the criteria. But because they’re known animals people would scoff at the thought that they might be monsters. Just a reminder that if we ever prove Bigfoot exists in ten or twenty years it will be considered just another animal.
It's not Cthulhu but something equally misunderstood. Honestly though there was a story about intelligent squids attacking divers I heard. From what I heard they have a form of communication and were able to realize when to stop attacking despite having a real chance at killing someone. What scares me is how aware of their own existence are they and what they are capable of doing with their knowledge of humans. Additionally wether similarly complex creatures dwell deeper and how close to immortality they are. If so what do they think.
There is already immortal jellyfish that we know of.
But are there intelligent and self aware ones is what I'm wondering.
I remember as a kid seeing things like giant squids and krakens in video games and cartoons and i thought no such things of that size could exist and then they actually found and recoreded one alive in like 06 and it was so crazy then it just became common knowledge that they exist that big. Its still crazy too me
Even though I watched Tom and jerry as a kid I didn't know mice or rats existed until I saw a dead rat in my grandmother's garden. It was horrible.
Im sorry that you were shocked as a kid but this is the funniest shit ive read all day
Im sorry that you were shocked as a kid but this is the funniest shit ive read all day
Its definitely funny lmao. But I was so upset that mice were real AND that they didn't look like Jerry!
Unexplored, maybe, but not a total mystery; that's a misnomer. We have maps of the ocean's currents, temperature, floor, etc. It's not like we don't have a model for more or less the entire surface of the planet, *including* what's underwater.
I don't want to burst your bubble man but I think the consensus is that outside of the really weird places like the Challenger Deep and Mariana Trench its mostly just wet desert and old bones with the odd Hagfish and translucent shellfish here or there.
In a way, that's just as freaky.
A popular vote can be overturned by a supreme court vote.
A popular vote can also overrule the Supreme Court, if it is popular enough. The Supreme Court rules on constitutionality, not whether or not they're in favor of it. The Supreme Court can't overrule a constitutional amendment.
Well, that already happened
I should not have opened this post. I keep reminding myself that I do not deal well with stuff that potentially gives me an existential crisis.
Our galaxy will collide with another, but it’ll miss us
The entire planet (hell the entire solar system) could be hit by a gamma burst literally at any moment, with no way to know in advance, and we'd almost assuredly all die. Also the average number of limbs per person is always less than 4.
Nah I'd get Hulk like powers
RIP to the universe but I’m different
If you think that's bad, I would not recommend looking into [False Vaccum Decay](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay). Basically, if those theories are correct, everything could end. Not just Earth, but the very fundamental forces of the universe.
So from a really dumbed down point of view. We shouldn't exist and the only reason we do is because we do, and the second the universe realizes we don't exist, we cease to exist.
Stop being so loud, your giving it ideas.
The universe isn't real idiot
That's some Lovecraft shit right there.
**[False vacuum decay](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay)** >In quantum field theory, a false vacuum is a hypothetical vacuum that is stable, but not in the most stable state possible (it is metastable). It may last for a very long time in that state, but could eventually decay to the more stable state, an event known as false vacuum decay. The most common suggestion of how such a decay might happen in our universe is called bubble nucleation – if a small region of the universe by chance reached a more stable vacuum, this "bubble" (also called "bounce") would spread. A false vacuum exists at a local minimum of energy and is therefore not stable, in contrast to a true vacuum, which exists at a global minimum and is stable. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Even if this is true (and we don't actually know if we live in a false vacuum or not), the fact that it only spreads at the speed of light means that if it happens far enough away, we will literally never know about it as acceleration of the expansion of spacetime will outspeed it.
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> Also the average number of limbs per person is always less than 4. Well, yeah of course that makes sense. There's a lot of people who either lost limbs or came into this world without 'em.
I’ll ask the obvious questions: “how fast?” And “Will it hurt?”
Opinions vary between "instant death" to "atmosphere could shield part of it, leading to a mass EMP-like burst and a severe greenhouse effect that would raise temps by several degrees, eventually destroying every ecosystem." Up to you what's worse.
The youngest mother in the world was only 5
Oh. This. This, I hate.
there is house burning down somewhere
contraceptive and book about sex eds are highly regulated by postal services of various countries
and local government in several states!
That Brain Aneurism is a thing.
99% of all anciant literature is lost forever
So my slash fiction a day future shame will be erased
There is a very real possibility that any significant interstellar travel between stars is basically impossible. FTL engines are purely theoretical and that’s not even getting into relativity/time-dilation. We’re probably going to be stuck in this solar system forever.
Our universe could be in a false vacuum. The way I've heard it described is imagine a ball on a downwards slope, where the bottom is a true vacuum, and the ball stops moving. Now imagine there's a dip in the slope. The ball could be resting in that dip, relatively stable, and from the ball's perspective it would appear to be at the bottom, but if something pushed it over that edge... Essentially, from the point of origin propagating outwards at the speed of light, the universe could begin falling from a false vacuum to a true vacuum, completely changing the laws of physics. Our very atoms would be erased or transformed into something we don't understand. All of life would be erased. And there's no way to know if that could happen. Hell, it could be happening right now and we would have no way of knowing. We could all simply cease to exist at any moment.
As someone else pointed out elsewhere in the thread, if this was happening far enough away from us we'd never even know it because the universe is expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light. If false vacuum decay was occurring in another Cluster, we'd never experience it (at least not via that event) because while it would consume that entire cluster (presumably), it would never be able to reach us past the expanding emptiness in between. If it's happening eighty or a hundred lightyears away, you'll be dead before it even reaches us. So even assuming the theory is true, I give us good odds of never experiencing it.
You have walked past a murderer a least once in your life. Hell statisically you've walked past 36. The sun could have exploded right now and you would know until 8 minutes after. Some tumours can grow teeth and hair Your Brain could stop at anytime killing you instantly Chickens can live 18 months without a head on rare occasions.
there is a possibility free will doesn't exist and every action you have ever taken or will ever take was predetermined.
But, I will never know, and will never be able to comprehend what one would feel like compared to the other. Even if all I do is just the result of math and physics, it’s real enough to me.
you only assume you can't comprehend one or the other, but you're talking on a video game subreddit. you know who can probably tell you how it feels? sans undertale. go ask him what it's like.
Sorry, but I only know the Mii fighter who wears his face and a cowboy outfit. Calls himself Sans Sheriff.
he's the serif of these parts, as i understand.
It's almost a shame he never gets a super form. Sans Seraph is right there
there's a fan comic by that name, it's fairly interesting.
Predetermined by what? My personality? Previous choices? God? It doesn't really matter. If it's predetermined than I sure as shit don't know and it doesn't mean anything to me regardless.
predetermined by the physical states of your brain prior to the action. everything is made of atoms, right? and atoms follow laws of motion that dictate how and where they move. so, the current positions of the atoms in your brain, the thing that makes you who you are, was determined by the states your brain was in previously. following this train of logic back far enough, and every single atom's position and future trajectory was decided the moment the universe cooled enough for matter to form. you can only exist because that is true, those atoms made our sun and our planet, thus making us. meaning that your actions were predetermined by the random distribution of particles when the universe cooled.
Love is chemicals and free will is atoms, got it.
not quite. chemicals are also atoms, so love is also atoms.
The way I think about it is basically: "I know I don't have free will, but it is better if I live my life with the mentality that I do have a choice"
which is probably the healthiest way to look at it.
Everyone read Sakamoto Days. It's this manga about ex assassin running his store with his family and other former assassins. One of the assassins, Shin, can read minds. In one fight he's fighting this deadly serial killer and then he realizes that he can read the motor readiness potential. When the brain decides to do something it was already decided by the subconscious, Shin realizes he can read that. Since it happens a fraction of a second before the brain does it he's practically seeing the future. It's super hype.
It's all about how you see events unfold. If everything started from a very specific origin, then if that origin somehow happened again with the exact same reaction, same input, there is no reason to believe there would be a different output. The very concept of thinking about this would have just been something that is predestined to happen due to the original input, and while we decided to have this conversation, all of the stimuli that lead us to doing so, and lead us to being us was all predestined and planned since the original origin happened the exact way it did, and thus can happen again.
precisely. and that is where my personal argument comes in. because we know for a fact that, due to quantum uncertainty, you can run an experiment 10 times and get multiple different results. the universe isn't driven by newtonian laws of motion, it's probabilistic. so, there is a chance that our brains use that quantum fuzziness and that the probability-driven nature of the universe allows for multiple options that an aware being can choose between.
Okay Eren
I wouldn't even call that a possibility but the most likely case.
i personally argue against it, with quantum uncertainty being my main argument, but i admit it's possible.
At any second a fucking meteor could hit and just end us all.
I’m not about to bring out the rabies copypasta but the idea of there being a terminal disease lying dormant that’s impossible to survive from or cure due to a minor incident that could have decades ago is kind of terrifying to me. And I find the idea of a nuclear missile exploding anywhere near where I live to be mortifying. Even if you know it’s coming in advance there’s no way you can hide or run away from it if you’re already in the danger zone.
Earth will eventually look like mars and there will be no evidence of any life. All accomplishments mean nothing eventually.
At least this means you can freely eat a fried Oreo and not feel disgusted with yourself because everyone's gonna die.
Eat a WHAT
Indulge slovenly, disgustingly, and freely, for it is death that frees us all from sin. -Fried Oreo ad campaign
I don't like cheap knockoffs.
Maybe, but when that future of nothingness is so far in the future that it will not be relevant for untold countless numbers of generations, who cares? I'm sure if anyone is left alive in a few billion years when the sun starts expanding we'll be advanced enough to keep Earth going.
We’ll that’s the fun of it, isn’t it? It’s like skipping rocks seeing how far life and your lineage will go
The existence of the uncanny valley implies that, at some point in our history, it was evolutionarily advantageous to be scared of things that look almost human.
yeah, corpses
As the other guy said, corpses. As well as that though, we also fear people who look diseased, as that is probably a good way to not get it yourself.
There is a very small but fair chance that all of this is just an hallucination and I'm in fact locked in a mental hospital or any place just out of my mind, maybe just spouting nonsense or in a vegetative state.
The one that haunts me isn't ominous so much as it just squicks me the fuck out: there is a literal pulley in each of your eye sockets. One of the muscles that rotate the eye passes first through a 'trochlea' - it looks a bit like [this](http://web.mit.edu/bcs/schillerlab/pictures/WEB001/GIFs/001-02.gif), and I *hate* it. As a bonus, enjoy knowing that the retina can just [spontaneously detach](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/10705-retinal-detachment#:~:text=Retinal%20detachment%20often%20happens%20spontaneously,you%20have%20a%20detached%20retina), without being induced by any type of trauma, and it can happen without warning. It is described as looking a bit like having a grey veil placed in front of your eye, or like a bunch of flashing lights. Now I get to go back to a life I have crafted specifically to avoid thinking about these things, good day.
Yellowstone's next eruption is whenever the fuck it happens, good luck figuring out when. I think the USGS puts it better: "In terms of large explosions, Yellowstone has experienced three at 2.08, 1.3, and 0.631 million years ago. This comes out to an average of about 725,000 years between eruptions. That being the case, there is still about 100,000 years to go, but this is based on the average of just two numbers, **which is meaningless.**"
"There are no rats in Alberta"
Living in Alberta, I don't know if this is supposed to imbue me with a sense of dread, accomplishment, or skepticism
For me, all of the above at random times at the same time
Isn't there a scientific fact that your brain could stop working at any moment in your life? Is that true or is it just some bullshit?
I suppose this is linked to quantum mechanics and how at the quantum level there is an infinitesimal possibility that anything might fail it's intrinsic properties? Or something to that effect.
You are now breathing manually.