Weird Stuff (tinfoil hat wearing goons only, please) - The Bear and Badger

yourfavouriteuncle

“Make Earth Great Again” we’ll be chanting before you all know it. My money’s on Donald junior junior (able-y supported by Justin Farage-Johnson the second to lead our fight back to reclaim are borders from those horrible aliens with their funny faces, coming down here, not working and raping all OUR women.
Just you non believers see.

bad_hair_day

They're certainly fucking with our cows.

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

Kow

Well fuck you

Yossarian

bad_hair_day wrote:

I feel an THC fuelled FNF after hours discussion likely

I think that’s highly probable.

bad_hair_day

Kow, keep away from the 37th Parallel and you'll be fine.

[Deleted User]

bad_hair_day wrote:

'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.'

- Arthur C. Clarke

I don’t find the notion that we are alone particularly terrifying. We can’t miss out on something we’re unaware of. From the universe’s point of view, if other intelligent life is anything like us, then the fewer of us around, the better.

Mankind has done literally nothing good that isn’t
a) of benefit to us and us alone, or
b) simply undoing some harm caused by one or more of us.

Yossarian

a) is only true if there isn’t any other intelligent life in the universe or if we never meet them. If there is and we do, our intellectual pursuits may well be of benefit to them too.

[Deleted User]

That’s highly debatable, and the statement is still true in and of this moment in time.

Yossarian

I mean, it’s debatable, but it’s pretty likely. It’d take a remarkable lack of curiosity from other life forms not to be true.

It’s also not even true at this moment in time, the things we’ve done already may be of benefit to others in the future. This may never come to pass, of course, but even if we were all to disappear tomorrow, that may not preclude things we’ve done being appreciated in a million years’ time. The benefit is there now for anything that can understand it, the only question is whether anything else can understand it.

[Deleted User]

I’d argue that it’s pretty unlikely.

If we take our culture, the reality is that any civilisation we encounter will have frames of reference so different to ours, that we won’t fully be able to appreciate it. Even if we can, that’s not really of benefit to the rest of the universe. “Hey, we’ve done something that two species can enjoy instead of just one. Woo hoo.”

If we take our science, the practical applications are very much based on our world, and how things work here. Translating that to applications in other worlds is a different matter. And if we do? Well, we only enhance that one species. If we’ve learned anything from our history, it’s that the advancement of one species imbalances the natural order and balance of the planet it inhabits. It’s own advancements are to its own benefit, to the detriment of others. If our technology helps another civilisation, all we achieve is the acceleration of another cancerous species.

Yossarian

Andy wrote:

“Hey, we’ve done something that two species can enjoy instead of just one. Woo hoo.”

So not us and us alone.

Yossarian

If you think culture has value, and I do, then it has value above and beyond our appreciation of it.

acemuzzy

What does "the benefit of the rest of the universe" even mean if we're alone?

Yossarian

If we’re alone, nothing.

[Deleted User]

acemuzzy wrote:

What does "the benefit of the rest of the universe" even mean if we're alone?

We share a planet with countless other species and were fucking it up royally for pretty much all of them.

Yossarian wrote:

So not us and us alone.

Not if we’re being pedantic, no. But if you place value in making other species as bad as us, you’ve got a warped sense of what is good.

Yossarian wrote:

If you think culture has value, and I do, then it has value above and beyond our appreciation of it.

I do think culture has value, but it has no value beyond our appreciation of it. Beyond our appreciation, David is a lump of stone, the Mona Lisa is pigments in oil on a bit of wood, and Barber’s Adagio is vibrations in air. It’s only value is in our appreciation.

Yossarian

Andy wrote:

Not if we’re being pedantic, no.

We aren’t. You made a clear and unambiguous statement within a particular context, I disagreed with it within that exact context. It’s not pedantry, it’s me disagreeing with the substance of a statement you made.

Lord_Griff

You two are ruining the universe.

SpaceGazelle

The Drake equation is it's not an equation but a biased guestimate based on Earth stuff, which is exactly the opposite stuff it's trying to guess about. It can, in no way, be used to estimate anything, even probalistically. The observable universe is so big it makes more statistical sense to consider it infinite in size (and it may well be) but finite in age. 1% of infinity is still infinity and Drake doesn't even attempt to answer this. Light is fast on Earth but even on a galactic scale it's painfully slow. We're certainly a local anomaly and this is all we know. Planets might be teeming with life but it might be a rare thing that can build a radio.

We might mess the balance up but fuck me we are quite an amazing and unique animal.

nick_md

Tbh I'm just hoping to paying off my mortgage and enjoy time with loved ones whilst I'm here, the big questions like aliens I'll leave for other folk.

SpaceGazelle

Dinostar77 wrote:

Whether we think Lazaar is a fraud or telling the truth, one thing he did do was to make area 51 the most famous airforce base in the world. Anyway to quote myself, the ATTIP program revelations (which made the front page of the New York Times and CNN covered it) and the uss nitimtz battle group encounters are probably the best evidence we have in the public sphere that there is some weird stuff going on. It could be completely terrestrial and could be an evolution of the stuff lazaar alledgly worked on or it could be from elsewhere who knows?

Dinostar77 wrote:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/outlook/the-military-keeps-encountering-ufos-why-doesnt-the-pentagon-care/2018/03/09/242c125c-22ee-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care? We have no idea what’s behind these weird incidents because we’re not investigating...... * another video released, that is in the link * An F/A-18 Super Hornet military jet captured this infrared video from several miles away of an unidentified flying object moving at high speed.

SpaceGazelle

I just thought that deserved a special mention in the loons thread. A+.

SpaceGazelle

nick_md wrote:

Tbh I'm just hoping to paying off my mortgage and enjoy time with loved ones whilst I'm here, the big questions like aliens I'll leave for other folk.

The atoms in your body are alien so it seems remiss to ignore where you came from entirely. Religion is Earth-biased and it seems sensible to think outside that.

GooberTheHat

Dinostar77 wrote:

That Richard Dolan article is interesting.

....They also indicated this project had been continuing for “years and year” with “agonizingly slow” progress with “little or no success.” There was a “painful lack of collaboration” with the outside world and a very small number of cleared individuals – somewhere between 400 and 800....

I think if such a program exists the paragraph above is why we know so little about it. A lack of progress and not being able to collaborate with other scientists, engineers etc. I suppose it's like giving an iPhone to Roman empire and asking them to reverse engineer it. They simply dont have the tools, mindset, ability to do so. Its beyond their current understanding of physics and how shit works. I'd guess.

400 to 800 people is a huge number of people to be cleared onto a top secret project. Absolutely huge. No way they would be able to keep that secret with that many people in the know.

bad_hair_day

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Dinostar77 wrote:

Whether we think Lazaar is a fraud or telling the truth, one thing he did do was to make area 51 the most famous airforce base in the world. Anyway to quote myself, the ATTIP program revelations (which made the front page of the New York Times and CNN covered it) and the uss nitimtz battle group encounters are probably the best evidence we have in the public sphere that there is some weird stuff going on. It could be completely terrestrial and could be an evolution of the stuff lazaar alledgly worked on or it could be from elsewhere who knows?

Dinostar77 wrote:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/outlook/the-military-keeps-encountering-ufos-why-doesnt-the-pentagon-care/2018/03/09/242c125c-22ee-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care? We have no idea what’s behind these weird incidents because we’re not investigating...... * another video released, that is in the link * An F/A-18 Super Hornet military jet captured this infrared video from several miles away of an unidentified flying object moving at high speed.

bad_hair_day

GooberTheHat wrote:

400 to 800 people is a huge number of people to be cleared onto a top secret project. Absolutely huge. No way they would be able to keep that secret with that many people in the know.

Apple keeps their stuff under wraps and they are just guarding an IP.

Yossarian

No they don’t, it always leaks.

GooberTheHat

Trust me, 400 to 800 people is huge. I'm pretty sure most of Apples competitors know everything they need to about apples ip, but there are legal issues that prevent them from exploiting that knowledge.

Diluted Dante

There is no way there are 400-800 involved in Apple design stuff.

Yossarian

There are 20 in the design team. Plus a handful of execs, I presume.

https://www.cultofmac.com/303396/design-studio-behind-iron-curtain/

bad_hair_day

Okay nobody knows for certain, artist impressions it's all speculation until the reveal.

Howdy, Stranger!

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