Society/Culture The case against genocide

[Thats Wright]

Sorry Mal

Fire with fire mate

 

[katana]

I'm not so secretly persuaded that we're on the brink of WW3. A sharp rise in nationalism, fundamentalism and far right wing politics around the world, Russias bold hacking of the US election and moves into Syria and Crimea. North Korea being on the brink of testing out the US an invading the South. The South china sea dispute kicking off and China reclaiming Taiwan. Japans repudiation of its 'no army' constitution. Europe fragmenting amid old tensions, couple with huge money issues, resource problems, and one of them electing in a far right wing ultra nationalist government (France had me real worried until recently). India or Pakistan kicking off and going nuclear. The Islamic Wahabbi death cult fundies getting their hands on a Nuke (which is only a matter of time),

All the red flags are there.

I honestly think its going to kick off sometime between now and 2020.

Someone (Korea, Russia, China) is going to test the US and do something stupid. The dominoes will fall from there. It only took the assassination of Franz Ferdinand as the first domino to fall and kick off WW1.

Feel free to bookmark this and rub my nose in it if global war doesn't break out in the next 3 years.

I hope I'm wrong.

so...you'd say.... after connecting the dots... that we're on the brink.... of calamity?

 

[Malifice]

so...you'd say.... after connecting the dots... that we're on the brink.... of calamity?

Yeah. To be more precise, I think that a large scale global conflict is very likely to occur sometime in the next few years.

 

[Malifice]

Do you have a theory on the bootes void?

I didnt even know what it was until you mentioned it. No opinion than 'It's a large area of space with no other galaxies in it'.

Which is (even in astrological terms) underselling how large it is.

Are you expecting alien beings to be evolved in the same image as humans?

Certainly other biological life in the universe could be similar in basic biological and chemical compostion to us (carbon based, reliant on hydrogen/ oxygen and water) seeing as we already know that this particular combination of chemicals 'works', but I wouldnt be surprised if there were other forms of radically different life out there (amonia based, hydorcarbon based etc) radicaly different in chemical structure to us.

I mean; presuming we can create AI in the near future, that to me counts as a form of non biological life.

How do you put your faith in the laws of physics when it's limited in outer space?

What? They dont change in space.

And for the record, I think the theories behind the laws of physics (Newton, Einstein etc) will be falsified in the mid to near future and replaced with a totally different theory connected to emerging Quantum theories pioneered by Heisenberg, Schroedinger and Planck.

Just curious to why you take such a negative view, fermi aside?

I have little faith in humans. We are still (at heart) tribal. Warlords committing genocide based on differences of opinion, skin color or what made up god one believes in. Banding together in fictional 'nations' or 'tribes' or 'cultures' and killing hundreds of thousands of other people of a different 'nation' or 'tribe' or 'culture'. Drawing dotted lines on maps. Raising bits of colored cloth on poles.

Its all made up. Black vs White, Left vs Right, Us vs Them, Rich vs Poor, Liberal vs Conservative, Denier vs Believer, Christian vs Atheist, Muslim vs Kafir, West vs East, etc etc etc.

Its absolute utter madness. We'll lead 6 million people to the gas chambers based on nothing more than made up fictions of 'race' or 'nationhood' or 'religion'.

We even go so far as to ritualise this insane tribal behaviour via sports. 'Red' team vs 'Blue' team, fighting it out with an inflated bit of inflated pig skin for 'victory' while fans of each side cheer them home, and 'hate' the other side.

Hundreds of submarines prowl the seas, armed with dozens of nuclear weapons each, their only mission to commit mutually assured annhilation of the species in the event of a nuclear attack by someone else. We live in a world with enough atomic weaponry to annhilate all life on the planet, just a button away, and all we do is constantly bicker and fight over small differences, most of which are entirely made up and fictional. Stepping back to look at it, it is utter lunacy we let this happen. We have people arguing that climate change isnt happening just to get wealthy, despite the possible catastrophic effects on the planet (the only one we have, and our home). Each day dozens of species are becoming extinct in a mass extinction larger in scale than what killed the dinosaurs. Somewhere in the world as we speak, people are playing with nerve agents, biological weapons and other horrible thngs designed to kill millions. Etc etc etc.

If any alien life has ever visited us, they would be horrified with what they see.

Surely you aren't the atheist version of a fundy Christian or the Kidd version of fascism?

Im agnostic, not athiest. Im open to the idea that anyone could be right, but convinced that the truth of existence can never be known for sure.

Each to their own.

 

[Kynge of Begrem]

Read the link I posted above. Its a solid prediction. It comes from the Fermi Paradox. The Fermi Paradox is:

• There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun, many of which are billions of years older than Earth.
• With high probability, some of these stars will have Earth-like planets, and if the Earth is typical, some might develop intelligent life.
• Some of these civilizations might develop interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now.
• Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years

You are forgetting to factor in time.

 

[Lethality]

You are forgetting to factor in time.

Time/distance are my bet. We're talking thousands of light years.

Then there's relativity, which dictates that we are effectively in a different time zone relative to other planets which could harbor intelligent life.

There are many problems or objections with the paradox; self-destruction or annihilation by other means are only a few explanations out of many.

 

[Lebbo73]

Read the link I posted above. Its a solid prediction. It comes from the Fermi Paradox. The Fermi Paradox is:

• There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun, many of which are billions of years older than Earth.
• With high probability, some of these stars will have Earth-like planets, and if the Earth is typical, some might develop intelligent life.
• Some of these civilizations might develop interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now.
• Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years

Accordingly the galaxy should be teeming with life, with planets colonized by at least one advanced civilization. A life form in the galaxy even a measly 100,000 years more advanced than us would have populated the entire milky way by now with colonies. The galaxy would be lit up with interstellar communication and transport.

Instead the universe is totally quiet and there is nothing; no space communication, no colonies, no spaceships, no galaxy spanning interstellar civilizations, nothing. Yet there are billions of planets that are billions of years older than us. In this galaxy alone.

Either:

1) We are the most advanced species in the entire universe.
2) We are the only intelligent species to have ever existed.
3) Other life forms exist, but are 'hiding' from us somehow.
4) Other life forms have existed, but is the nature of intelligent life to wipe itself out (usually happening shortly after spaceflight is achieved, but before interstellar communication possible). Likely culprits are global warming/ climate change, nuclear annihilation, a science experiment gone wrong (LHC/ accidentally creating a black hole etc), the creation of AI triggering a technological singularity, nanotechnology (tiny self replicating robots) getting loose and turning everything into grey sludge, etc



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

The doomsday clock just got set to 2 minutes to midnight:

We're nearly at critical mass.

At least we all get to see the end of the species.

That clock is a ******* joke. We should be at about 6 minutes to midnight when comparing today with The Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

[Chief]

That clock is a ******* joke. We should be at about 6 minutes to midnight when comparing today with The Cuban Missile Crisis.

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