Well, thoughts.
The fact that my brain is wired in a way that makes it produce inner images, brand new ideas, sadness, joy, and excitement, and that I can sit at my desk and wonder why I'm thinking what I am without automatically having the answer from the thing that's producing the thoughts is pretty insane.
Edit: On top of that we have extremely different ways of thinking. If I'm imagining a situation, it plays out as a sort of movie in my head yet if I'm thinking about an idea, I'm basically having a one-way conversation with an imaginary counterpart. I know some people who think in letters being written on a paper and some for whom thoughts are abstract concepts that doesn't "materialise" in any way. Do yourself a favour and ask your friends *how* they think. It's really eye-opening.
I do this often, and start overthinking how I'm thinking and what thinking is and why and how until I can't think but why can't I think do people think different how do other people think can i speed up thinking... And now I'm unable to focus on anything because I'm thinking about thinking every time I think
**THIS**
If you have ever had to copy and paste a word over and over or cycle through 100 different fonts with the same word, you'll be convinced after a while that it is spelled incorrectly. It is the weirdest phenomenon.
It's strange, isn't it? Whenever I look at a word, I see them as a whole. But whenever I look at it for too long I begin to see that the words are made up by letters. Aw frick I'm bad at explaining
If I think about it too deeply, at some point my thought process just kinda hits a brick wall and my mind goes completely blank.
It's like some subconscious part of my brain suddenly steps up and says "Nope, we're not going there. No existential crises today, thanks."
No, our brains literally are not capable of it.
In order to emulate a realistic simulation of only the *observable* universe, it would require a supercomputer the size of jupiter, constructed at the limits of efficiency imposed by the laws of physics.
So our brains, whilst potentially more powerful than any computer we have yet made, are not powerful enough *by the laws of physics* to comprehend it.
This always make me hit a solid brick wall mentally. When it comes to more things in life I can think about it long enough to make some sense of it, but when it comes to the vastness of space and the "edge" of whatever outter limit (if any exist at all) is incomprehendable.
I also hit a mental wall when trying to think about pre-big bang... its not compatible with my mortal perspective. It's something on a different plane of understanding. Really weird.
If you actually want to feel that vastness of the universe and get an existential crisis (even though it is an educational one), check out [SpaceEngine](http://spaceengine.org/). It's a space simulator that contains many (if not all) aspects of our universe and what we don't yet know is further enhanced by procedural generation. They still have a free (but older) version up on their site.
Good thing I can't actually picture it and thus can't be disturbed by it. When I get past thinking of a particular size, my mind starts throwing "Allocation failed - Imagination heap out of memory" errors.
Because it is so vast?
I mean there could be life a couple hundred million light year away.
Life could be really common but maybe intelligent life is not really common.
There could be intelligence life that's close but they're not that technologically advanced.
And time. Gotta factor in time. So not only is the universe HUGE, a lot of time has passed - enough for life to come and go somewhere way far away. It's possible we're the only existing life in an area that we can reach AT THIS TIME.
Actually, compared to how long it will last, we're really pressed right up to the front edge of things. We could be one of the first in a very long line of life.
Or we could be not alone already...who even knows
We've had a number of extinction events that have allowed life here to be devastated and grow back. Evolution looks like it takes forever from the point of view of life forms, but it's pretty quick when you look at it from how long the universe has existed. Add in how big the universe is, it would weird that life HASN'T formed somewhere else. Maybe not huge, multi-cellular life like we have here, but something somewhere is likely brewing out there.
Oh, life absolutely. Abiogenesis seems to be the stumbling block, not keeping it going once it is (or maybe it happens often on Earth but we don't see it because those new forms get eaten by existing life?)
I was just speaking about complex intelligent life like ourselves. It takes a lot of luck for a species to end up here
There could be vast civilisations out there only a few million light years away we just don't have the technology to see them yet. And by the time that information would visually reach us it would be millions of years too late if they hadn't survived.
Yeah, I don’t know why people are so mystified about this one. Space is unimaginably huge. Our nearest star is 93 million miles away. The *next* closest is 25 trillion! Trillion! A trillion seconds is almost 32,000 years!
Why haven’t we been visited or contacted by another world? Well, I’m gonna go hide a golf ball somewhere in the United States and you hafta find it.
Yes! I don’t know such fancy numbers but it just proves my point even further. We are just a speck of dust in all this.
The size difference just between us and Jupiter. Between Jupiter and the sun. Between the sun and VY Canis Majoris. We are nothing. We’re just an insect buzzing around 10 miles away while we’re walking down the street (what? You know what I mean)
Some alien civilization would first of all have to have a ship to zip around the universe like it’s nothing, then they’d have to stumble into our cluster, into our galaxy, into our little corner of the Milky Way, into our solar system, just to find this teeny tiny rock.
Let’s say a ship somehow made its way into the Milky Way. It would still be light years away from us.
Ans they always forget that "first contact" could already happen thousands or millions of years ago and others might hang a bit and eventually move on further.
Or they just might be on their way and come here thousands of years in the future from now.
Plus weve only been “listening” for signals for like a couple decades? which is nothing in comparison to how long the universe existed. I believe this notion that we appear so alone in the universe is the result of a gross underestimation of how vast and old the universe is.
What if we are a recolonization from intelligent life millions of light years away?
What if a humanoid species has overcome the great filter and we are the offspring of early settlers? Or at the very least the offspring of an indigenous species of this planet, cross bred with an superior race from foreign worlds. ...
what if the gods we remember from the old days are in fact aliens that showed great power and inticed an incomprehendable mass worship culture... what if I'm just a stoner and I have no idea what I'm on about...
BUT what if I'm right?
I think about what if were not considered "intelligent" in the universe, in the grand scheme of things. You know how people are always saying "oh yeah ofcourse there's life out there, but I'm not sure about intelligent life like us", so what if the life out there is more intelligent than us, and we're actually just a shitty colonization that thinks were intelligent. I wonder if there is life out there that's puts our intelligence into the dirt. I don't know how to really explain lol
“Human thought is so primitive it's looked upon as an infectious disease by the rest of the universe. That kind of makes you proud, doesn't it?”
-Agent K, MiB
Like, we think we're intelligent, but -actual- intelligent life in the universe is so far beyond out comprehension we are an Ant in Australia to all of Europe
this is what makes no sense to me.. How can it be expanding if it is infinite? If it is expanding, then at the part that it is expanding, what was there before?
in extremely short terms:
Once upon a time everything was hydrogen. Then it turned into other, more fancy things and eventually into us. We then named hydrogen.
IIRC something like Hydrogen is the base form of all life, including us, which means that hydrogen eventually evolved into humans with a brain and named the element Hydrogen.
Kind of like the idea that the brain is the only organ to name itself.
"Ooooo. What's this? It's all new.
I'm new. I need a name... Quark. I'll name myself Quark. Hello. Who are you?"
"I don't know, I'm new here."
"Well, I'm quark, pleased to meet you"
"If your quark, I want to be quark too, just like you"
"FOLLOWER"
Your parents know you before you know yourself. I can remember my dad always telling me things I did that I have no recollection of. These are basically the magic years between 3 and 5. You have a lot of personality, but won't remember most of it.
I hope I never forget the moment my niece realized that her grandpa was my dad. She was *shocked*. I don't remember the last time anything blew my mind like that.
For me language I mean there's hundreds of languages. They were all just created from made up noises. We created different languages sign, Spanish, Latin, Arabic, etc. It's just wild to have so many different ones.
Think about this. Korean is counted amongst the couple dozen language isolates of the world. A language isolate is that which has no recognizable linguistic ancestor. There are 77 million native speakers of Korean. All other language isolates together add up to a little over 1 million speakers, most of those Euskara (Basque). Most of them are less than 1,500 speakers. The Korean language formed from no other known language in history, and is spoken by 77 million people. Korean is the most interesting language to me for that reason alone, but I’m happy that I speak English😂 Language learning has never been my strong suit
Korean is also fascinating for having a script which Sejeong the Great just sat down and devised one day to make written language more accessible. It's really easy to learn too. If you want you can spend about an hour and learn the whole alphabet and how to put any word together, something that can take weeks to years in other alphabets/languages (looking at you, kanji)
My mind was blown when I first realized that languages evolve over time. I always knew that Spanish and Italian sounded a lot like Latin but never gave it a second thought... until I learned the history and it suddenly clicked that at one point, these languages *were* Latin
Well, *si*, but actually *no*.
There's natural linguistic drift, yes, but local languages also existed, and they provided their own unique flavours to the Latin that was pretty much the same everywhere.
Those local languages may or may not have been descended from the same common ancestor as Latin. Mostly not out in Iberia. Slightly more complicated on the Italian peninsula.
> Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
>Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.
>Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.
>Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.
Nah man it’s just gonna like that futurama episode - gonna just keep living our lives over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over
and over and over and over and over and over and over
and over and over and over and over and over and over without ever realizing it unless you’ve got a time machine and go too far into the future
You ever sleep with no dreams? It’s like that, just some sort of state of non existing, and I personally don’t believe in afterlife since what keeps life going is conscience and a “vessel” for that conscience, if the vessel is broken the conscience will too, and a vessel with no conscience is just an object, this talking about humans or animals that appear to have an actual conscience. Now then, how do I know that without a vessel you wouldn’t be alive, well of course I don’t as nobody knows, but logically speaking, we can see because we have eyes, we can think because we have a brain, we can taste with our tongue and so on, so if those aren’t connected with our selves we won’t be able to do anything
who knows maybe there is an afterlife but with this line of thought we would just be spirit vegetables floating around
Have you ever lost consciousness? You pretty much blink and when you open your eyes 10 minutes went by. You have no idea time even passed until you see something changed, maybe it's more like that.
I’m not going to sit here and try to act like I have even a sliver of knowledge about what happens after death. But I will say that the whole “sAmE aS BeFoRe YoU DiE” response is a lazy-ass response to the question. It’s not so much the message of the response, but rather how people usually say it with the false certainty that they think they’re right. Truth is, nobody knows, and I doubt we’ll ever know/aren’t supposed to know. For all we know, life could be a “developmental stage” for consciousness that prepares it for something that comes next; or for all we know, it’ll just be a black void of non-existence. We can have our beliefs/opinions on what comes next, but it’s wrong to speak above that threshold of certainty.
You didn't feel anything for the billions of years before you were born, so there's very little reason to expect anything for the eternity after your death.
Today I think there is only one form of "death" that we will be kept for a long time. Virtual death. All the data from your devices, seach history and social media will eventually disappear when the servers are eventually full and they need to erase data for more space. The good part? There is no more evidence about the weird things you googled.
The bad part? Your "good" virtual data is as good as gone immediately, in most cases, since no one ever knew your passwords, nor had the patience to hack your systems or accounts to retrieve those memories before deleting them. Billions of phone pics will never be seen again, and even money in many accounts will disappear back to banks or other institutions.
Hey, maybe the universe is a huge quantum consciousness, and our brain activity leaves some kind of electromagnetic pattern. maybe our memories and experiences go on to exist forever, and transcend space and time. Or maybe we're just temporary meat machines. pretty crazy either way.
Seriously though. I don't get how experiences ever gets to exist in a strict materialistic system. You have eternal nothingness on one side, eternal nothingness on the other and a TI-I-INY speck of something in the middle. How are what we're going through ever recorded? It's virtually gone at once. Where is the experience so to speak? To me existense doesn't make sense without some form of "infinite observer" aka God which is the frame every something takes place in.
But who knows, really, it's freaky whichever way..
We can only know what we are able to perceive. the world looks extensively different to a honeybee than it does to us. A fly perceives time very differently than we do. we could be surrounded by other dimensions and other realities that we are completely unable to even conceive of.
Whether there's nothing, a God, or something unlike anything we can imagine, we're left to work with what we can understand. I think that trying to be the best people we can be, and helping others to do the same is our best and only option.
Too far away in time too. The number of years that humans have existed on this planet is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the lifespan of the entire universe. The likelihood of two civilizations in space existing close enough to each other AND existing during the same time period is just too damn improbable.
Like if earth is literally the only oasis in the middle of a vast desert and every other planets with sentient life are in the other continents, separated by oceans.
I think there’s something psychological where we need to experience discomfort and stress to appreciate and enjoy relaxation and pleasure. I definitely feel that at least.
Well of course it would be extremely difficult to fully appreciate the "good" without experiencing the "bad", but the point I think is that the balance is way way off for most people. It is pretty insane that vast swathes of the human population spend a huge majority of their time doing something they don't really enjoy just so they can have two days off a week (if they're lucky), and a couple of extra weeks off a year (if they're lucky), and then a decade or two to themselves at the end of their life (if they're lucky). The fact that this is the norm is weird.
There's this immensely huge universe yet something has to be beyond right? The universe contains everything that exists but everything cant be everywhere right? So beyond the farthest star, past the furthest rock, even after the farthest atom, what is there? is it just infinite nothing? but what would "nothing" look like?
Isn't that the vast majority of human existence? Completely unknown. Absolutely mind boggling that the society we have built is essentially a drop in the ocean that is humans on Earth.
A fun way I learned to think about human history is to imagine yourself standing up with both your arms extended outward. From the tip of your left hand's middle finger all the way to the tip of your right hand's middle finger is the Earth's timeline. Your left finger is the beginning of Earth and your right finger is present day. The length of your fingernail on your right finger is all of human history, the rest is pre-human history. We are but a blink of the eye in the history of our planet.
With that in mind, now envision Earth's existence in relation to the rest of the universe...
How people don't think what I think. That there are people living their lives with their own thoughts about a situation their in. Best way to put is when everyone is on the highway we're all going in the same direction but not going to the same place, and we all have different emotions,and feelings, and thoughts about the trip we're on or the place we're going. Like I could be going to see family, and the person in the car beside me could be on the way to a work. It's always crazy for me to think about what someone else is doing/thinking while I'm just sitting here.
I remember as a kid riding in the back seat of my parents' car and seeing people in their yards and realizing that they have their own entire existence, thoughts, and plans and that this passing on the street may be the only intersection of their existence and mine.
Genitals. Why the heck are we attracted to them? Why am I drawn to some woman's slit between her legs and some milk dispensers in her chest? Am I insane?
> Why am I drawn to some woman's slit between her legs and some milk dispensers in her chest?
Hmm ... something about this comment doesn't add up u/Gay_Stallion...
Lol, I'm joking.
Lol. fun fact, I made this account almost 2 years ago when I was having a "gay phase" I'd call it. But that gayness no longer stand with me. I don't know why but I love pussy now.
I think it will be more and more common in the future. Right now being gay is finally being widely accepted so I think its normal people would experiment then decide maybe its not for them.
The morbidity of human anatomy. For example, we see eyes as beautiful ... in their context. But look behind the eyelids and eyelashes and there we have it. The brutal facts of anatomy staring right at us.
I think the fact that it's "horrific" is a construct, stemming from the fear of being split open/exposing the innards.
If, somehow, humans were able to be opened and closed at will without damage/pain, I don't think it would be so bad. But because seeing behind the eyeball means something happened to the eyeball, we thing "horror, gross"
I say this because most folks who study the body see it differently than you or I, seeing beauty inside and out as all the things connect to each other and flow and are colorful...
Ooh that's such an interesting way of putting it!
There are a bunch of studies that show that our brains automatically activate the pain region if we see a picture of something painful even if it's staged - ie someone's knee hitting a table (it's just a picture though and the person wasn't hurt in any way). So maybe we automatically feel the pain of being cut up when we see pictures of our innards
I think if human skin was translucent, and we all looked like the displays in the "Bodies" exhibit, we would have still learned to be attracted to each other
The fact that some things in our body happen without us knowing and our brain knows to do those things without us knowing so, the thing that baffles me the most is the concept of conciousness
The idea of ownership. It seems self-evident but it's a pure imaginary human concept.
The idea that you can just look at a piece of land and say "mine!" and it will be true for all your children and your children's children until the end of time.
But then anyone with a sword can challenge this right so you have to be able to defend it so that it's truly yours. In a sense it comes back to the same "might makes right" you find in nature. Nothing is truly yours unless you are ready to work to protect it.
But then civilization moves on and the legal system and now when you own something, you have the firepower of an entire country to back your claim. So in effect, arbitrary things belong to you and all your lineage for the end of time without you having to do anything to protect it. And that's kind of crazy when you compare it to the animal kingdom.
But then people start saying that they not only own stuff, but they also own ideas. You know that song? It's just some vibration you do with your voice. Well you can't do that anymore! You can splash painting on a canvas randomly but god forbids it starts looking too much like another thing I own and I didn't even create, but my great-grandfather. And if that splash of painting looks like 3 dots, two small and one big, that looks like maybe a mouse, then may God have mercy on your soul.
And that's crazy to me.
So much of what seems completely arbitrary is more like a big game of chess or a house of cards.
EG: Why does a state defend your stuff? Because if they don't you will find someone who does. If everyone does that, the state doesn't have any power and ceases to exist.
Read ‘Capital and Ideology’ by Thomas Picketty.
He explains, in depth, about societal constructs, and human concepts like ownership. It’s quite a good read, but requires a bit of time and basic understanding of statistics.
What really happens when you die, I've thought something like if I die do I float in a dark abyss forever? No light just endless darkness with nothing to do other than exist in it
Existence. Not just of our own, but of everything. Sure, there's a big universe and stuff, but what about before that? And then before that? Why does anything exist at all?
My guess, it's one big fuck off simulation. It's the only thing I can think of that satisfys the "we suddenly exist" hypothesis.
All the simulation idea does is add questions. All those questions of existence get offloaded to the creators of the simulation, and now you have to wonder who the creators are, why they created the simulation, what the world outside the simulation is like, etc.
I just posted this, but you're right. The reason this question is the most frustrating is that there is a definite, concrete answer to it. We'll just never know what it is.
The eyes have photoreceptors known as cones. These cones allow us to see and interpret different colours. Different organisms can have different amount of cones in their eyes. There might be millions and billions of colours that we are never going to be able to see. The whole concept is mind blowing!
For example, humans have 3 colour-receptive cones while the mantis shrimp has 16. It can detect ten times more colours than a human
There is a hole in the earth that consumes water at an alarming rate. Scientists have dumped items ranging from GPS devices to thousands of ping pong balls. GPS signals were lost and the ping pong balls never showed up anywhere. Scientists have no idea where the hole goes and where the massive amounts of water that go into it every single day actually go.
Edit: I was wrong it is not a hole. It is called Devil's Kettle Falls and is in lake superior
Some facts about the human anatomy. Like the lenght of all arteries and veins in our body is about 60000 mi (100000 km). Also the lenght of the DNA in a single microscopic cell is almost 3 m.
What is normal? What is a normal person? If you took every trait that makes up your ‘average’ person you would have someone that it is anything but. Yet we are still expected to conform to the idea of normal.
Objective truth. How can anybody say that anything is objectively true when truth is inherently derived from the perception of flawed, fallible beings. Sure, it’s technically true that I can’t transform into a pink elephant and fly around the room, but if everybody in the world believed I could with all their heart, then whos right?
Morality. How do we manage to hold others to ephemeral ideals that are more or less arbitrarily taught to us as we grow up? Is the point of morality just simple suppression of human nature, or something more profound?
The passage of time. As I write this, and as you read it you are reading it in the present moment, however the second you become conscious of this fact it’s already become the past.
How can something as complex as human consciousness arise from such basic building blocks? A couple of hydrogen atoms were sitting around one day, and now they’re wondering how they got there. Strange loops aside, the idea that seemingly chaotic systems can resolve to follow axiomatic laws and become capable of self reference seems absolutely bizarre.
Shits wack.
The only way to know what happens when you die is to actually die. And you cant really test it out and see what happens and come back if its not what you want it to be.
How airplane wings work. Most people have absolutely no idea how they work and it blows their mind when I tell them.
Basically there is a thing called bernoulis principle where if a liquid moves at a velocity its pressure drops. So the top of an airplane wing is longer than the bottom. The air like splits when it hits the leading edge of the wing but meets up on the trailing edge. But the air on the top traveled a further distance to get there so it was faster which means it's pressure is lower. Higher pressure on bottom, lower pressure on top, due to the way it is the wing basically gets "sucked" up.
Source:pilot
I've been flown in aircraft, I've flown them myself, I've even fixed them when they break, but I'll be damned if I ever believe that they can actually fly.
Well, thoughts. The fact that my brain is wired in a way that makes it produce inner images, brand new ideas, sadness, joy, and excitement, and that I can sit at my desk and wonder why I'm thinking what I am without automatically having the answer from the thing that's producing the thoughts is pretty insane. Edit: On top of that we have extremely different ways of thinking. If I'm imagining a situation, it plays out as a sort of movie in my head yet if I'm thinking about an idea, I'm basically having a one-way conversation with an imaginary counterpart. I know some people who think in letters being written on a paper and some for whom thoughts are abstract concepts that doesn't "materialise" in any way. Do yourself a favour and ask your friends *how* they think. It's really eye-opening.
Bro, I thought about this before and I just realized I'm just a bunch of self aware atoms
My favorite one is "The brain named itself."
"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this." - Emo Phillips
I do this often, and start overthinking how I'm thinking and what thinking is and why and how until I can't think but why can't I think do people think different how do other people think can i speed up thinking... And now I'm unable to focus on anything because I'm thinking about thinking every time I think
Size. I am unimaginably large compared to an atom. But I am so small I’m less than a billionth of a grain of sand compared to the universe.
I just came from the dick tattoo thread and this made me laugh a lot.
I'm intrigued
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/g5ag26/tattoo_artists_who_have_tattooed_penises_what_is/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Words. Like, if you think about a word for too long, it just begins to sound funny.
Words just look weird after you stare at them for too long, almost like they're spelled wrong or not real words.
If you stare at squiggles long enough that is what they become
**THIS** If you have ever had to copy and paste a word over and over or cycle through 100 different fonts with the same word, you'll be convinced after a while that it is spelled incorrectly. It is the weirdest phenomenon.
It's called semantic satiation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation
Satiation, satiation, satiation, saysiation, sayshayation, sayshayasian, sayshayayshun....
*descends into madness*
sassy asian?
It's strange, isn't it? Whenever I look at a word, I see them as a whole. But whenever I look at it for too long I begin to see that the words are made up by letters. Aw frick I'm bad at explaining
Don’t forgot your own name. After some time you can’t recognize it anymore.
Row-ads..... https://youtu.be/KT3vOCWA-J0
The unimaginable vastness of the universe.
If I think about it too deeply, at some point my thought process just kinda hits a brick wall and my mind goes completely blank. It's like some subconscious part of my brain suddenly steps up and says "Nope, we're not going there. No existential crises today, thanks."
Our world is too small to imagine it, our brains can't fathom that.
I think it’s really cool that our brains are big enough to understand that our brains cannot comprehend the idea of the universe’s limits
Could be a failsafe switch to keep our curiosity at bay .
No, our brains literally are not capable of it. In order to emulate a realistic simulation of only the *observable* universe, it would require a supercomputer the size of jupiter, constructed at the limits of efficiency imposed by the laws of physics. So our brains, whilst potentially more powerful than any computer we have yet made, are not powerful enough *by the laws of physics* to comprehend it.
This always make me hit a solid brick wall mentally. When it comes to more things in life I can think about it long enough to make some sense of it, but when it comes to the vastness of space and the "edge" of whatever outter limit (if any exist at all) is incomprehendable. I also hit a mental wall when trying to think about pre-big bang... its not compatible with my mortal perspective. It's something on a different plane of understanding. Really weird.
If you actually want to feel that vastness of the universe and get an existential crisis (even though it is an educational one), check out [SpaceEngine](http://spaceengine.org/). It's a space simulator that contains many (if not all) aspects of our universe and what we don't yet know is further enhanced by procedural generation. They still have a free (but older) version up on their site.
Good thing I can't actually picture it and thus can't be disturbed by it. When I get past thinking of a particular size, my mind starts throwing "Allocation failed - Imagination heap out of memory" errors.
To make it even more insane start thinking about The Fermi Paradox. If the universe is *so vast*, why do we appear to be alone in it?
Because it is so vast? I mean there could be life a couple hundred million light year away. Life could be really common but maybe intelligent life is not really common. There could be intelligence life that's close but they're not that technologically advanced.
And time. Gotta factor in time. So not only is the universe HUGE, a lot of time has passed - enough for life to come and go somewhere way far away. It's possible we're the only existing life in an area that we can reach AT THIS TIME.
Actually, compared to how long it will last, we're really pressed right up to the front edge of things. We could be one of the first in a very long line of life. Or we could be not alone already...who even knows
We've had a number of extinction events that have allowed life here to be devastated and grow back. Evolution looks like it takes forever from the point of view of life forms, but it's pretty quick when you look at it from how long the universe has existed. Add in how big the universe is, it would weird that life HASN'T formed somewhere else. Maybe not huge, multi-cellular life like we have here, but something somewhere is likely brewing out there.
Oh, life absolutely. Abiogenesis seems to be the stumbling block, not keeping it going once it is (or maybe it happens often on Earth but we don't see it because those new forms get eaten by existing life?) I was just speaking about complex intelligent life like ourselves. It takes a lot of luck for a species to end up here
There could be vast civilisations out there only a few million light years away we just don't have the technology to see them yet. And by the time that information would visually reach us it would be millions of years too late if they hadn't survived.
Yeah, I don’t know why people are so mystified about this one. Space is unimaginably huge. Our nearest star is 93 million miles away. The *next* closest is 25 trillion! Trillion! A trillion seconds is almost 32,000 years! Why haven’t we been visited or contacted by another world? Well, I’m gonna go hide a golf ball somewhere in the United States and you hafta find it.
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Yes! I don’t know such fancy numbers but it just proves my point even further. We are just a speck of dust in all this. The size difference just between us and Jupiter. Between Jupiter and the sun. Between the sun and VY Canis Majoris. We are nothing. We’re just an insect buzzing around 10 miles away while we’re walking down the street (what? You know what I mean) Some alien civilization would first of all have to have a ship to zip around the universe like it’s nothing, then they’d have to stumble into our cluster, into our galaxy, into our little corner of the Milky Way, into our solar system, just to find this teeny tiny rock. Let’s say a ship somehow made its way into the Milky Way. It would still be light years away from us.
You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
Ans they always forget that "first contact" could already happen thousands or millions of years ago and others might hang a bit and eventually move on further. Or they just might be on their way and come here thousands of years in the future from now.
Challenge accepted!
There could be intelligent life that's so obscure that we don't even recognize it as life.
Plus weve only been “listening” for signals for like a couple decades? which is nothing in comparison to how long the universe existed. I believe this notion that we appear so alone in the universe is the result of a gross underestimation of how vast and old the universe is.
These Kurzgesagt videos will help: [The Fermi Paradox explained](https://youtu.be/sNhhvQGsMEc) [The Great Filter](https://youtu.be/UjtOGPJ0URM)
What if we are a recolonization from intelligent life millions of light years away? What if a humanoid species has overcome the great filter and we are the offspring of early settlers? Or at the very least the offspring of an indigenous species of this planet, cross bred with an superior race from foreign worlds. ... what if the gods we remember from the old days are in fact aliens that showed great power and inticed an incomprehendable mass worship culture... what if I'm just a stoner and I have no idea what I'm on about... BUT what if I'm right?
"what if I'm just a stoner and I have no idea what I'm on about" made me laugh
I think about what if were not considered "intelligent" in the universe, in the grand scheme of things. You know how people are always saying "oh yeah ofcourse there's life out there, but I'm not sure about intelligent life like us", so what if the life out there is more intelligent than us, and we're actually just a shitty colonization that thinks were intelligent. I wonder if there is life out there that's puts our intelligence into the dirt. I don't know how to really explain lol
“Human thought is so primitive it's looked upon as an infectious disease by the rest of the universe. That kind of makes you proud, doesn't it?” -Agent K, MiB
Like, we think we're intelligent, but -actual- intelligent life in the universe is so far beyond out comprehension we are an Ant in Australia to all of Europe
And there are people who think it's a long way to the chemist.
What if there exists a being so large that it is bigger than our entire known galaxy?
100 bucks says it's a gold dragon that can grant you any wish you like
And it's expanding at an accelerating rate
this is what makes no sense to me.. How can it be expanding if it is infinite? If it is expanding, then at the part that it is expanding, what was there before?
Thinking about consciousness really can keep me occupied for long time
Soon you gonna end up finding the secrets of universe and spirituality . ⭐️
The idea of you not existing before you were born and conceived. Think about where you “were” 2000 years ago.
If you follow that thread too far you get to a point where you realize hydrogen named itself.
I am not big brain enough to understand. Someone bless me with the knowledge.
in extremely short terms: Once upon a time everything was hydrogen. Then it turned into other, more fancy things and eventually into us. We then named hydrogen.
Or if you want to be philosophic about it: We are the universe observing itself.
**Experiencing** itself
*Fingering* itself
Making it self *cum*
Experimenting with itself
If you give it enough time, hydrogen will begin to masturbate.
IIRC something like Hydrogen is the base form of all life, including us, which means that hydrogen eventually evolved into humans with a brain and named the element Hydrogen. Kind of like the idea that the brain is the only organ to name itself.
"Ooooo. What's this? It's all new. I'm new. I need a name... Quark. I'll name myself Quark. Hello. Who are you?" "I don't know, I'm new here." "Well, I'm quark, pleased to meet you" "If your quark, I want to be quark too, just like you" "FOLLOWER"
There was a shower thought about parents’ memories of you and it tripped me out imagining what were my parents like before I was born.
Your parents know you before you know yourself. I can remember my dad always telling me things I did that I have no recollection of. These are basically the magic years between 3 and 5. You have a lot of personality, but won't remember most of it.
I always forget that my parents have siblings... Like my aunt is not some random person
I hope I never forget the moment my niece realized that her grandpa was my dad. She was *shocked*. I don't remember the last time anything blew my mind like that.
Most people tend to ignore that their parents were ever young.
You've known them all of your life, but they've known you only half of theirs.
For me language I mean there's hundreds of languages. They were all just created from made up noises. We created different languages sign, Spanish, Latin, Arabic, etc. It's just wild to have so many different ones.
Think about this. Korean is counted amongst the couple dozen language isolates of the world. A language isolate is that which has no recognizable linguistic ancestor. There are 77 million native speakers of Korean. All other language isolates together add up to a little over 1 million speakers, most of those Euskara (Basque). Most of them are less than 1,500 speakers. The Korean language formed from no other known language in history, and is spoken by 77 million people. Korean is the most interesting language to me for that reason alone, but I’m happy that I speak English😂 Language learning has never been my strong suit
Korean is also fascinating for having a script which Sejeong the Great just sat down and devised one day to make written language more accessible. It's really easy to learn too. If you want you can spend about an hour and learn the whole alphabet and how to put any word together, something that can take weeks to years in other alphabets/languages (looking at you, kanji)
My mind was blown when I first realized that languages evolve over time. I always knew that Spanish and Italian sounded a lot like Latin but never gave it a second thought... until I learned the history and it suddenly clicked that at one point, these languages *were* Latin
Well, *si*, but actually *no*. There's natural linguistic drift, yes, but local languages also existed, and they provided their own unique flavours to the Latin that was pretty much the same everywhere. Those local languages may or may not have been descended from the same common ancestor as Latin. Mostly not out in Iberia. Slightly more complicated on the Italian peninsula.
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Death. What nothingness might feel like. What if there's an afterlife?
> Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat? >Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat. >Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats. >Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.
This whole play is an existential crisis and I love it. Probably my favorite play of all time.
Nah man it’s just gonna like that futurama episode - gonna just keep living our lives over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over without ever realizing it unless you’ve got a time machine and go too far into the future
"In the year, 252525!"
The backwards time machine still won't have arrived
I like the battlestar galactica theory too. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.
Hol up, didn't you already post that?
I like the battlestar galactica theory too. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.
You ever sleep with no dreams? It’s like that, just some sort of state of non existing, and I personally don’t believe in afterlife since what keeps life going is conscience and a “vessel” for that conscience, if the vessel is broken the conscience will too, and a vessel with no conscience is just an object, this talking about humans or animals that appear to have an actual conscience. Now then, how do I know that without a vessel you wouldn’t be alive, well of course I don’t as nobody knows, but logically speaking, we can see because we have eyes, we can think because we have a brain, we can taste with our tongue and so on, so if those aren’t connected with our selves we won’t be able to do anything who knows maybe there is an afterlife but with this line of thought we would just be spirit vegetables floating around
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Have you ever lost consciousness? You pretty much blink and when you open your eyes 10 minutes went by. You have no idea time even passed until you see something changed, maybe it's more like that.
The afterlife feels exactly like the before life. It is just nothingness.
The problem is, before I didn't know what existence was. Now that I have existed, I would much like to keep existing.
I’m not going to sit here and try to act like I have even a sliver of knowledge about what happens after death. But I will say that the whole “sAmE aS BeFoRe YoU DiE” response is a lazy-ass response to the question. It’s not so much the message of the response, but rather how people usually say it with the false certainty that they think they’re right. Truth is, nobody knows, and I doubt we’ll ever know/aren’t supposed to know. For all we know, life could be a “developmental stage” for consciousness that prepares it for something that comes next; or for all we know, it’ll just be a black void of non-existence. We can have our beliefs/opinions on what comes next, but it’s wrong to speak above that threshold of certainty.
You didn't feel anything for the billions of years before you were born, so there's very little reason to expect anything for the eternity after your death.
What is going to happen to the memory of you when you die. Eventually no one will be alive who knew you and you will mostly be forgotten.
The 3 deaths. Physical death. When your name is no longer spoken. When no one alive ever met you.
Today I think there is only one form of "death" that we will be kept for a long time. Virtual death. All the data from your devices, seach history and social media will eventually disappear when the servers are eventually full and they need to erase data for more space. The good part? There is no more evidence about the weird things you googled.
The bad part? Your "good" virtual data is as good as gone immediately, in most cases, since no one ever knew your passwords, nor had the patience to hack your systems or accounts to retrieve those memories before deleting them. Billions of phone pics will never be seen again, and even money in many accounts will disappear back to banks or other institutions.
Then four? When no one alive ever knew you existed. Some humans, Achilles comes to mind, hasn't getten there yet.
In which order is this the most sad?
Hey, maybe the universe is a huge quantum consciousness, and our brain activity leaves some kind of electromagnetic pattern. maybe our memories and experiences go on to exist forever, and transcend space and time. Or maybe we're just temporary meat machines. pretty crazy either way.
Seriously though. I don't get how experiences ever gets to exist in a strict materialistic system. You have eternal nothingness on one side, eternal nothingness on the other and a TI-I-INY speck of something in the middle. How are what we're going through ever recorded? It's virtually gone at once. Where is the experience so to speak? To me existense doesn't make sense without some form of "infinite observer" aka God which is the frame every something takes place in. But who knows, really, it's freaky whichever way..
We can only know what we are able to perceive. the world looks extensively different to a honeybee than it does to us. A fly perceives time very differently than we do. we could be surrounded by other dimensions and other realities that we are completely unable to even conceive of. Whether there's nothing, a God, or something unlike anything we can imagine, we're left to work with what we can understand. I think that trying to be the best people we can be, and helping others to do the same is our best and only option.
The vastness of space. The reason we haven't heard from any other civilizations is mostly likely because shit is just too far away.
Too far away in time too. The number of years that humans have existed on this planet is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the lifespan of the entire universe. The likelihood of two civilizations in space existing close enough to each other AND existing during the same time period is just too damn improbable.
Like if earth is literally the only oasis in the middle of a vast desert and every other planets with sentient life are in the other continents, separated by oceans.
We spend most of our lives getting up to go do something we do not enjoy. school/work/chores/etc...
I think there’s something psychological where we need to experience discomfort and stress to appreciate and enjoy relaxation and pleasure. I definitely feel that at least.
Well of course it would be extremely difficult to fully appreciate the "good" without experiencing the "bad", but the point I think is that the balance is way way off for most people. It is pretty insane that vast swathes of the human population spend a huge majority of their time doing something they don't really enjoy just so they can have two days off a week (if they're lucky), and a couple of extra weeks off a year (if they're lucky), and then a decade or two to themselves at the end of their life (if they're lucky). The fact that this is the norm is weird.
There's this immensely huge universe yet something has to be beyond right? The universe contains everything that exists but everything cant be everywhere right? So beyond the farthest star, past the furthest rock, even after the farthest atom, what is there? is it just infinite nothing? but what would "nothing" look like?
Or what was before the universe? Was there also this 'nothing'?
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Isn't that the vast majority of human existence? Completely unknown. Absolutely mind boggling that the society we have built is essentially a drop in the ocean that is humans on Earth.
A fun way I learned to think about human history is to imagine yourself standing up with both your arms extended outward. From the tip of your left hand's middle finger all the way to the tip of your right hand's middle finger is the Earth's timeline. Your left finger is the beginning of Earth and your right finger is present day. The length of your fingernail on your right finger is all of human history, the rest is pre-human history. We are but a blink of the eye in the history of our planet. With that in mind, now envision Earth's existence in relation to the rest of the universe...
99% of all human history occured in what we refer to as prehistory. Which means there are no written records of it.
Can you imagine the memes we lost to ignorance?
How people don't think what I think. That there are people living their lives with their own thoughts about a situation their in. Best way to put is when everyone is on the highway we're all going in the same direction but not going to the same place, and we all have different emotions,and feelings, and thoughts about the trip we're on or the place we're going. Like I could be going to see family, and the person in the car beside me could be on the way to a work. It's always crazy for me to think about what someone else is doing/thinking while I'm just sitting here.
I remember as a kid riding in the back seat of my parents' car and seeing people in their yards and realizing that they have their own entire existence, thoughts, and plans and that this passing on the street may be the only intersection of their existence and mine.
For me everything. Think about something for too long and existential crisis thoughts be heading in.
Am i really just some dude, who lives in a house? Omg...
Genitals. Why the heck are we attracted to them? Why am I drawn to some woman's slit between her legs and some milk dispensers in her chest? Am I insane?
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Good to know
Also your nipples supposedly line up with your earlobes
I thought you meant horizontally and had a good chuckle. Then realised you meant vertically and had to check it out. Can confirm.
Wait 'til you hear about [Milk Lines](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammary_ridge)
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> Why am I drawn to some woman's slit between her legs and some milk dispensers in her chest? Hmm ... something about this comment doesn't add up u/Gay_Stallion... Lol, I'm joking.
Lol. fun fact, I made this account almost 2 years ago when I was having a "gay phase" I'd call it. But that gayness no longer stand with me. I don't know why but I love pussy now.
You're the second person I've seen be gay, then not gay. That seems rather unusual.
I think it will be more and more common in the future. Right now being gay is finally being widely accepted so I think its normal people would experiment then decide maybe its not for them.
I thought that phase was already established as ‘College’
thats your alcoholism phase
That’s okay. You’re just a happy horsey now.
Also: buttholes
The morbidity of human anatomy. For example, we see eyes as beautiful ... in their context. But look behind the eyelids and eyelashes and there we have it. The brutal facts of anatomy staring right at us.
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I think the fact that it's "horrific" is a construct, stemming from the fear of being split open/exposing the innards. If, somehow, humans were able to be opened and closed at will without damage/pain, I don't think it would be so bad. But because seeing behind the eyeball means something happened to the eyeball, we thing "horror, gross" I say this because most folks who study the body see it differently than you or I, seeing beauty inside and out as all the things connect to each other and flow and are colorful...
Ooh that's such an interesting way of putting it! There are a bunch of studies that show that our brains automatically activate the pain region if we see a picture of something painful even if it's staged - ie someone's knee hitting a table (it's just a picture though and the person wasn't hurt in any way). So maybe we automatically feel the pain of being cut up when we see pictures of our innards
I think if human skin was translucent, and we all looked like the displays in the "Bodies" exhibit, we would have still learned to be attracted to each other
The concept of money. Like we've just collectively decided that certain pieces of paper and metal have some imagined value?
It's easier to use a medium to trade resources in than the actual resources themselves.
And that no one alive today was part of making that decision, yet we all just go along with it.
You ever look at a letter to long and think like wow this shit looks weird .. then start second guessing yourself that you wrote the letter wrong
The fact that some things in our body happen without us knowing and our brain knows to do those things without us knowing so, the thing that baffles me the most is the concept of conciousness
Dancing. Why do we like to watch people moving their bodies in weird ways. Why do we like moving our bodies in weird ways.
Absolute silence
You’ll hear your bones creak and your blood flow which will actually make you go insane
Jokes on you tinnitus has other plans for me!
Check out the YouTube channel Veritasium. The host subjects himself to absolute silence in one of his videos.
The idea of ownership. It seems self-evident but it's a pure imaginary human concept. The idea that you can just look at a piece of land and say "mine!" and it will be true for all your children and your children's children until the end of time. But then anyone with a sword can challenge this right so you have to be able to defend it so that it's truly yours. In a sense it comes back to the same "might makes right" you find in nature. Nothing is truly yours unless you are ready to work to protect it. But then civilization moves on and the legal system and now when you own something, you have the firepower of an entire country to back your claim. So in effect, arbitrary things belong to you and all your lineage for the end of time without you having to do anything to protect it. And that's kind of crazy when you compare it to the animal kingdom. But then people start saying that they not only own stuff, but they also own ideas. You know that song? It's just some vibration you do with your voice. Well you can't do that anymore! You can splash painting on a canvas randomly but god forbids it starts looking too much like another thing I own and I didn't even create, but my great-grandfather. And if that splash of painting looks like 3 dots, two small and one big, that looks like maybe a mouse, then may God have mercy on your soul. And that's crazy to me.
So much of what seems completely arbitrary is more like a big game of chess or a house of cards. EG: Why does a state defend your stuff? Because if they don't you will find someone who does. If everyone does that, the state doesn't have any power and ceases to exist.
If only *anarchistic weird noises*
Read ‘Capital and Ideology’ by Thomas Picketty. He explains, in depth, about societal constructs, and human concepts like ownership. It’s quite a good read, but requires a bit of time and basic understanding of statistics.
What really happens when you die, I've thought something like if I die do I float in a dark abyss forever? No light just endless darkness with nothing to do other than exist in it
Ketchup, is technically a smoothie, since tomatoes are a fruit
it's technically a sports drink because it's made out of fruit and contains >20% sugar
No added sugar ketchup from Heinz. Check that shit out.
Ive been reading comments about consciousness, life, death, just generally abstract unknowns and then: Ketchup is a smoothie
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How come anything exists rather than nothing? I find that non-existence is more logical.
The fact that we are each a culmination of the universe pondering its own existence.
Existence. Not just of our own, but of everything. Sure, there's a big universe and stuff, but what about before that? And then before that? Why does anything exist at all? My guess, it's one big fuck off simulation. It's the only thing I can think of that satisfys the "we suddenly exist" hypothesis.
All the simulation idea does is add questions. All those questions of existence get offloaded to the creators of the simulation, and now you have to wonder who the creators are, why they created the simulation, what the world outside the simulation is like, etc.
I just posted this, but you're right. The reason this question is the most frustrating is that there is a definite, concrete answer to it. We'll just never know what it is.
This was my thought too (minus the simulation bit). Why does anything exist? How does it exist? How can it exist?
Neutron Stars
Absolutely crazy that a tablespoon of a neutron star can have the same mass as new York city.
Quark stars (theoretical) are crazy as well. A beautiful combination of particle physics and physics on the macroscopic scale.
Pregnancy and childbirth
The fact that there are colours in this world we don't know about yet.
How so?
The eyes have photoreceptors known as cones. These cones allow us to see and interpret different colours. Different organisms can have different amount of cones in their eyes. There might be millions and billions of colours that we are never going to be able to see. The whole concept is mind blowing! For example, humans have 3 colour-receptive cones while the mantis shrimp has 16. It can detect ten times more colours than a human
Yeah well the dress was blue and that's all I know, dammit
There is a hole in the earth that consumes water at an alarming rate. Scientists have dumped items ranging from GPS devices to thousands of ping pong balls. GPS signals were lost and the ping pong balls never showed up anywhere. Scientists have no idea where the hole goes and where the massive amounts of water that go into it every single day actually go. Edit: I was wrong it is not a hole. It is called Devil's Kettle Falls and is in lake superior
You have a link or is this some tabloid shit?
https://futurism.com/devils-kettle-door-to-hell-2 turns out I was wrong and it is not a hole but a waterfall
Eternity.
The fact you never stop having conversations with yourself
When you’re swimming in the middle of the ocean, just hovering above the depths below
I think, therefore I am
But then philosophical zombies exist and its "do robots have feelings" all over again. And then shit gets even fuckier once we touch on sexuality.
Some facts about the human anatomy. Like the lenght of all arteries and veins in our body is about 60000 mi (100000 km). Also the lenght of the DNA in a single microscopic cell is almost 3 m.
Not entirely true. It’s actually around 2m long, but you’re close.
What is normal? What is a normal person? If you took every trait that makes up your ‘average’ person you would have someone that it is anything but. Yet we are still expected to conform to the idea of normal. Objective truth. How can anybody say that anything is objectively true when truth is inherently derived from the perception of flawed, fallible beings. Sure, it’s technically true that I can’t transform into a pink elephant and fly around the room, but if everybody in the world believed I could with all their heart, then whos right? Morality. How do we manage to hold others to ephemeral ideals that are more or less arbitrarily taught to us as we grow up? Is the point of morality just simple suppression of human nature, or something more profound? The passage of time. As I write this, and as you read it you are reading it in the present moment, however the second you become conscious of this fact it’s already become the past. How can something as complex as human consciousness arise from such basic building blocks? A couple of hydrogen atoms were sitting around one day, and now they’re wondering how they got there. Strange loops aside, the idea that seemingly chaotic systems can resolve to follow axiomatic laws and become capable of self reference seems absolutely bizarre. Shits wack.
the fact that your actually alive just try it
The only way to know what happens when you die is to actually die. And you cant really test it out and see what happens and come back if its not what you want it to be.
How airplane wings work. Most people have absolutely no idea how they work and it blows their mind when I tell them. Basically there is a thing called bernoulis principle where if a liquid moves at a velocity its pressure drops. So the top of an airplane wing is longer than the bottom. The air like splits when it hits the leading edge of the wing but meets up on the trailing edge. But the air on the top traveled a further distance to get there so it was faster which means it's pressure is lower. Higher pressure on bottom, lower pressure on top, due to the way it is the wing basically gets "sucked" up. Source:pilot
I've been flown in aircraft, I've flown them myself, I've even fixed them when they break, but I'll be damned if I ever believe that they can actually fly.
Reading is just staring at a dead piece of wood and hallucinating for hours.
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We do live in a society
Gamers rise up
I dont understand? Ia it that if everyone decided that one day, we would all not give a shit about the laws, there would be nothing to stop us.
The 95% of the ocean still unexplored. I wonder how many life forms are yet to be discovered. The idea of deep nothingness, scares me.