A Fascinatingly Disturbing Thought About Intelligent Life in the Universe

Looks like this guy got a Masters from UT and then they gave him the boot when he was trying to get a PHD:

http://alcalde.texasexes.org/2012/02/star-power/

 

He was pretty much trying to encourage a push for more NASA funding. I believe someone posted the whole lecture here. i'll try to search for it, but it was it's own thread probably since so many folks on here go to UoH.

 

Here's the thread...there are a lot of other lectures by him in there as well.

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=201862&highlight=Tyson

 

FINALLY

 

Seen this before, but yeah, it blew my mind, too. I think it's very probable that intelligent life exists out there in the universe, but improbable that we'll run into each other.

 

I like this part of the video (the first 5 or so minutes). Highly recommended for tinfoil hat wearing paranoid schizophrenics.
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NSJElZwEI8o?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

New World Order? A conspiring group of the uber wealthy bankers/world leaders/corporate elite/Illuminati (the 13 families -Rothschilds, Van Duyn, Rockefellers, etc.) buying political influence to change laws and transform governments to amass the world's wealth while using the media to control the masses.

Doesn't seem too farfetched to me. Still haven't bought into it completely yet, though

 

Utah Jazz fans.

 

The problem that most people can't conceptualize is that it's not some top down bureaucracy but more a common group of conspirators with different interests and a lust for power even amongst themselves but a common goal of enslaving the globe under their control to the point that it's impossible to fight back (because they have the money, technology and control the flow of information).

It's so much for any individual person to wrap their mind around and given how busy people are, let alone indoctrinated from the word "Go," I don't think most can grasp in. And it doesn't make the average person stupid but it's more the fact that it's out of sight and out of mind.

Anyone who breaks down some of the symbolism and meaning from "The Matrix" movie series, especially the first one, knows what we're up against (and NO, I'm not saying we live in a false reality created by sentient machines who use our body for energy).

 

"Nimrod" was a biblical figure, a great hunter, and one of the most powerful kings. But after Bugs Bunny sarcastically began calling Elmer Fudd (the hunter who might be wetawded) a "nimrod", and later Bugs and Daffy cartoons continued using it as an insult, its meaning was misconstrued as an "idiot". And its definition/usage changed.

Etymology of cretin...

1."Christian," and that indeed modern society views adherents of traditional Christian beliefs as simple-minded.
While the derivation is correct, the word "Chrétien" — or its dialect version — was used in the French-speaking Alpine valleys for cretins to make it clear that these beings were humans, not brutes.
The term was rather the opposite of denigration. There was no intention in those places and times to equate simple-mindedness and Christianity."
(similar to the depraved and insecure mindset that turned a country in Africa to the N-word).

2.Other sources suggest that Christian describes the person's "Christ-like" inability to sin, stemming, in such cases, from an incapacity to distinguish right from wrong

And yes, some Christian rituals may have pagan ritual similarities, but mainly because both are human expressions of celebration/worship. Bachelor parties, b-day's, spring break = meet up, go to titty bar, get drunk, have hangover the next morning. Similar rituals, different celebrations.

Paganism and Christianity's core doctrines are also night and day. These doctrines are totally unique to Christianity.

- Jesus died as a voluntary sacrifice for His own creatures and will return again. Only Jesus died for the forgiveness of sin. No pagan gods deaths had the intention of helping humans

- Jesus' death was an actual event in history. The incontestable fact that the early church believed that its proclamation of Jesus' death and resurrection was grounded in an actual historical event makes absurd any attempt to derive this belief from the mythical, non-historical stories of the pagan cults

- Jesus' death was not a defeat but a triumph. This stands entirely apart from the pagan mysteries. The New Testament's mood of exultation contrasts sharply with that of the pagan religions, whose gods met a horrible fate to be mourned.

"I cannot think of a single case in which Christianity can be shown to have borrowed a core doctrine from another religion. This does not include minor borrowings which everyone admits, such as the dating of Christmas to 25th December (an old Roman sun-festival), or the use of holy water and incense in worship, or the wearing of wedding rings, or dedicating churches to named saints (just as pagan temples were dedicated to different deities).

In such cases, the borrowings were not clumsy or furtive: rather, they were deliberate and unashamed. A good example is the Pope's use of the old Roman chief priest's title 'Pontifex Maximus', a title which the Christians deliberately appropriated to emphasize that their religion had defeated and replaced Roman paganism."

http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/pagint.html

Btw, you do sound condescending and arrogant, and almost spiteful towards Christians or people with religious beliefs. I'd like to know why so many atheists act like this.

 

Degrasse IS a badass

 

DeGrasse...the Jeremy Lin of astrophysicists or whatever they are called. I expect a "degrasse is a joke" thread any day now.

 

Extra-terrestrial life

There is a serious problem with trying to establish the probability of "intelligent" life elsewhere, as with the the Drake equation That is simply the inadequacy of reliable input. Even one incorrectly guessed input variable rendering the output meaningless.
We must always remember the IT mantra of GIGO : garbage in – garbage out.

However, with regard to the wider issue, a very good case can be made for the presumption that, whatever the time-scale, humankind will never encounter extra-terrestrial "intelligent" (I prefer the neologism "Imaginatory" ) life.

Simply because, should we manage to escape (or at least postpone) extinction, the next, non-biological, phase of "life" could well prohibit contacts of this kind between more primitive organisms such as we..

This kind of cosmic censorship provides one possible explanation for the Fermi paradox.

And it is consistent with the pattern of autonomous evolution of technology that is so evident today.
Very real evidence indicates the rather imminent implementation of the next, (non-biological) phase of the on-going evolutionary “life” process from what we at present call the Internet.It is effectively evolving by a process of self-assembly. You may have noticed that we are increasingly, in a sense, “enslaved” by our PCs, mobile phones, their apps and many other trappings of the increasingly cloudy net.

We are already largely dependent upon it for our commerce and industry and there is no turning back. What we perceive as a tool is well on its way to becoming an agent.

Consider this:

There are at present an estimated 2 Billion Internet users. There are an estimated 13 Billion neurons in the human brain. On this basis for approximation the Internet is even now only one order of magnitude below the human brain and its growth is exponential.
That is a simplification, of course. For example: Not all users have their own computer. So perhaps we could reduce that, say, tenfold. The number of switching units, transistors, if you wish, contained by all the computers connecting to the Internet and which are more analogous to individual neurons is many orders of magnitude greater than 2 Billion. Then again, this is compensated for to some extent by the fact that neurons do not appear to be binary switching devices but can adopt multiple states.

Without even crunching the numbers, we see that we must take seriously the possibility that even the present Internet may well be comparable to a human brain in processing power.
And, of course, the degree of interconnection and cross-linking of networks within networks is also growing rapidly.The culmination of this exponential growth corresponds to the event that transhumanists inappropriately call “The Singularity” but is more properly regarded as a phase transition of the on-going “life” process.
The emergence of a new and predominant cognitive entity that is a logical consequence of the evolutionary continuum that can be traced back at least as far as the formation of the chemical elements in stars.

The broad evolutionary model that supports this contention is outlined very informally in “The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?”, a free download in e-book formats from the “Unusual Perspectives” website.

 

Artists have been using symbolism forever, it's a pretty handy thing to use and a way to communicate to your more alert fans.

The problem with conspiracy theories is that they have been around forever.

There is always this "Big thing" that will happen with them. Like soon, the government will do this...just wait and watch...you'll see! 10 years later they are saying the same thing but naming a different group.

It's the same thing with the End of the world doomers....who have been around since ancient times making sure that everyone knew that the world was going to end...this time just you wait! It's going to happen!

I hear the same thing from the theorists. Either these groups are planning some kind of mass death for whatever reason, to get rid of a large chunk of the world's population...or perhaps they are trying to create some one world government which is supposed to be realllly bad!

Why is some one world government such a bad and evil idea any ways? If humanity were to become a interstellar race like something you'd see on Star Trek wouldn't that be necessary?

Oh yeah and they always have all the details. Literally every single detail. Apparently these theorists are really good detectives. They are able to reveal really big secrets that apparently the government/illuminati/ bilderberg/reptiles do not want you to have. Sometimes they will tell you they are being followed and maybe almost ran off the road that one time...

 

Carl Sagan once said
if we make contact, we are ****ed lol

 

If you copy from a source it's best to at least link to it...sheesh.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2012/11/finding-life-on-other-planets-may-be-even-harder-than-we-thought/

 

QUESTION: As I look at game development and our ability to make better CGI etc.

Do you think it will be possible [esp if we make very convincing holograms]
that we would be more interested in CREATING A Universe than exploring it?

We have more control when we create. . . . at best we send unmanned probes to give
us new ideas etc. . . .

Do you think we reach a point where we figure it is too risky and worrisome to put foots on ships and explore the universe .. . but rather do it by remote or sit on our couch and watch someone else's vision of the universe?

Rocket River

 

Burn.