Great thread, OP!

I think its a telling fact that there are so many people on this thread who claim that just because things such as war, crime, and a myriad of other painful and terrible things exist in humanity, that we therefore aren't really that advanced at all. Considering the rather comfortable and peaceful lives that many of us live, we don't see any value in things that make us suffer. I would argue, however, that there is a tremendous amount of value in our suffering; people are loathe to learn anything, much less remember it, without some degree of accompanying suffering. Nature has built into us the mechanism to learn from things that hurt us, and to try to prevent them from happening again in the future. It's a bit of a cliche, but many of the terrible things that humanity progresses through can be likened to growing pains. In my earnest hope that we will outgrow them soon.

As for other species being more or less advanced than us, its entirely unpredictable. I believe there was a figure being tossed around of there being 70 sextillion stars in the Universe. Its quite literally impossible to know how many stars there are in the Universe. Things like the Drake equation are useful for illustrating the likelihood of intelligent life, but are also utterly useless in serious scientific research, IMHO. We just have to wait and see. Right now, I believe most of humanity feels incredibly lonely, as for now we are the only kids on the playground, so to speak. Perhaps we have had visitors, perhaps not. Considering the massive amount of space that exists in Space, I'm hopeful that if/when we encounter another intelligent species, they'll be glad for the company. Life in such a vast and empty place is more precious than water in the Sahara.

Originally posted by runetang
When I get to that point in the thought process, I become gladdened by the fact that the only possible explanation that any human being could comprehend for such a massive creation would be God?

Not necessarily. The multiverse, essentially that repository for all possible possibilities, that infinite definition of what nothing is NOT, is endlessly mighty big. Conceivably then, within there somewhere, even humans existing doing what you all are doing is surely possible too, and thus all this is. (self evident) God may not be some kind of (impotent) omnipotent deity that could only conjur up one version of all this and how your life will be ~ freewill dictates the necessity of a navigable multiverse. God may simply be an undeniable fact that nothing was always impossible, that zero could never be without inferring what everything zero is not ~ which would be that infinite eternal matrix of all things possible that nothing is not. God could be logic. If 4 exists because zero alone is not possible, then certainly 5 must be possible too. Thus, certainly within the realm of all possibilities, some kind of creature that is as superior over the humans as the humans are to their cows, must exist. And snack on humans for lunch too. Be afraid, be very very afraid.

I dont know. I think physically, we are perfect for our environment, but not benevolent people as a whole.

I can just hear an alien, a slimey green creature, grotesque to humans say: "Oman, those idiot humans just launched another of their little toys into space. What morons"

I guess my point is even if they were repulsive, they are more likely to be a little more advanced.
Anyway, i have to take into account all the visitations to Earth since the beginning of time, and all the accounts of people of the Bible, Torah, Koran, etc. They all speak of visitors from the skies.

Originally posted by SoundFX
I guess it's possible that we are the most advanced but I have a hard time accepting it. Like you said we have advanced very quickly as a species since the first humans and we could easily be "behind" another planet by a billion or so years in existence of intelligent life.

Just think that not even 100 years ago, people would probably not be able to comprehend us posting messages/conversing on a medium such as this, or a cell phone, or a bunch of other stuff we have. Just think what could and probably is out there that we can't even imagine. I mean by 2108 there will probably be stuff on Earth that would blow our mind. Thats why I don't doubt intergalactic travel and the like is possible for some very advanced civilizations.

Sorry SoundFX - missed this when I was reading through before.

The point I make about reaching the limits of possibility (which SkyFloating for one quite reasonably disagrees with) is that, there may come a time where the curve of our achievement, like most curves, flattens out. I put forward the hypothesis that we may be nearer that than we think. Others on this thread have talked about the idea that we only have 1% of the knowledge that we might have - but they don't offer any evidence that that is so.

Well, they can't really, I suppose - if they knew what it was we don't know, we'd know it, wouldn't we? I'm starting to sound like Donald Rumsfeld...

It could be said, though, that there is evidence that we have reached the limits. We know that to traverse great distances in the universe we need to find a way to move at near or more than light speed - but it may be that the laws of physics prevent us from doing so. We may have reached the point at which we can no longer break down particles to even smaller constituent parts. We may, as it were, have reached the event horizon of our understanding.

Many people rely on the idea of superior understanding elsewhere in the universe to protect them from the limits of their own knowledge. If there's someone who knows more out there, they may help us - goes the theory. I'm postulating the idea that we know nearly as much as there is to know (this is a postulation, not necessarily my belief, I'm not arrogant enough to believe anything of the sort).

But If that is so, how should we go about dealing with the fact that we will never cross the universe, and no one will cross it to reach us?

LW

There are way more advancements than can be made on the human race. We are a corrupt and wasteful form of life, what have we contributed to the universe itself? Nothing.

If we are the only form of life in the universe then we automatically have the most developed civilization, but I highly doubt that were alone.

well, if we are the top of the line in terms of life evolution in the universe then I´ll have to start believing in the existence of god.

fred

I have a hard time beliveing were the dominant species in the galaxy or universe.
We've become technologically advanced, in the last 100 years
We've been around about 100,000 years
Life on this planet began about 2 billion years ago
Our planet has been around 4.5 billion years
The universe is around 12-20 billion years old (depending on who is talking at the time)

when you look at it on that particular time scale, its hard to picture us at the top of the pile or even as alone

You got a S&F as I like the original post!

NEW HEADING:


Humans - the most under developed children in the universe...