Re: Mind's Eye UFO's: Fact or Fantasy?

Living creatures can be quite cooperative- maybe moreso than humans-
in fact, I'd say humans have been the most destructive creature on
earth.

As far as the human "lust for reproduction", it served a social
purpose: slave labor, warriors, factory workers, settlements/towns,
political and religious power, customers. Large families had an
economic purpose in the past with a preference for males.

On Sep 28, 4:33 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We live on a hill between two rivers Allan.  The town here floods, but
> its such a dump now we don't go there.  The weather in NW England is
> pretty bad generally, but this has been a very bad summer as opposed
> to standardly bad.  I'm off to the dog track at Belle Vue on Saturday
> night - just for a daft night out.  I expect a few 'alien runners'
> there!
>
> If there is intelligent life elsewhere I expect they won't be animal
> like us.  Evolution is red in tooth and claw in part, but also about
> cooperation and Borg-like integration of species.  Whilst I see mind
> as a lot to do with brain processing, evidence mounts that this is
> only part of the story - some ants that are enslaved now act in
> rebellion against there masters with no 'hope' of improving their own
> individual condition, presumably on behalf of the rest of their
> species. I expect aliens to be able to be able to do the Borg thing
> and make use of what is biologically and technically available to make
> themselves and not be stuck with our lusts for reproduction.  My guess
> is such assimilation would not be to dominate or produce 'drones'.
>
> On he speed of light we know it depends on the medium it is travelling
> in, slowing to about bicycle speed in a Bose-Einstein condensate,
> almost stopping in such and emerging as a matter wave.  If gravity
> exists we don't know how fast it travels or how fast space expands.
> The issue of quantum stuff like instantaneous knowing in wave equation
> systems in which the bits 'know' each other remains.
>
> Other species are nw only with us in assimilation or history and our
> fate may be little more.  We are only special in made-up stories of
> god, origin and heroes we know are trash.  One of my questions about
> robot heaven or advanced inter-galactic society is why anyone would
> risk human beings spoiling it!
>
> On 28 Sep, 13:28, rigsy03 <rigs...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > What about the Elysian Fields for fallen heroes and the blessed-
> > mentioned in the Odyssey and Aeneid? I worry about the non-heroes and
> > esp. those who are massacred and dumped in a pit or potter's grave
> > with no ceremony. But I do agree, we dabble in heaven and hell during
> > our lifetimes. For instance, a bad marriage is compared to Hell-
> > true! :-) A sensory delight of the flesh or palate is compared to
> > Heaven. The afterlife was popular in early Christianity to give the
> > poor hope but later you could buy your way into heaven with
> > indulgences and the guilt remains, perhaps, with charities and
> > volunteerism. I have a more practical view but let's face it- people
> > want easy answers, easy fixes/exits.
>
> > On Sep 28, 12:17 am, William L Houts <luka...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I wonder if humans do dream of uncorrupted worlds, in general. You'd
> > > think that would be universal, and it does seem to be borne out by
> > > Western mythologies, with some exceptions.  For instance, the Greeks had
> > > Olympus, but except for Heracles no one got to go there; everyone else
> > > went to Hades, which was gloomy and boring if you were lucky enough to
> > > land there in general population, and terrifying if the gods put you in
> > > Tartarus.  And the Romans didn't seem to place faith in any sort of
> > > afterlife at all, which is one of the main reasons whyChristianity sold
> > > like hotcakes.  Eastern religions such as Buddhism had various hells and
> > > heavens, but they were sort of besides the point:  your karma is / was
> > > supposed to boil down to nothing and liberate you from the Wheel of
> > > Rebirth, which was supposed to put you  in Nirvana, which was less a
> > > Heaven than it was a Nowhere. And Taoism doesn't have much to say about
> > > heavenly afterworlds;  its whole point is to make this world more just
> > > and balanced and leaves heavens to the individual to figure out.
>
> > > But as to your question of whether humans long for uncorrupted worlds, I
> > > think that besides the Abrahamic religions noone takes them very
> > > seriously.  And I think they've got a point:  I mean, if you're taking
> > > your present existence at all seriously, then just what is an afterlife
> > > supposed to be about?  Are we supposed to be eating bonbons all day and
> > > living in some version of American luxury?  I'd like to believe in
> > > Heaven  --which for me looks like a kind of liberal college town, with
> > > libraries and funky old cinema houses-- but all of that seems kind of
> > > empty if there's no gravitas, no seriousness.   Without death, without a
> > > final marker which howls at us, Do what you must do NOW and die knowing
> > > that you've used your life well--without that, I think heaven would
> > > become kind of slouchy and boring, or worse.  Unless, of course, what's
> > > waiting for us on the other side is something superrational but
> > > beautiful, like being absorbed into the godhead, if such there be.
>
> > > So in answer to your question, I think we do dream of uncorrupt worlds,
> > > but if we examine them too closely, they tend to be bustable soap
> > > bubbles. And maybe I lack imagination, but I wonder, how could it be any
> > > other way?  Frankly, I'd like to be told how. I sound sensible about all
> > > of this if a little pessimistic, but in reality I'm a scared ex-Catholic
> > > who is terrified  of death and wants to solve the Big Question before
> > > they're performing Last Rites on his sorry ass.
>
> > > --Bill
>
> > > On 9/27/2012 7:20 PM, rigsy03 wrote:
>
> > > > I wonder where you put the mythological and religious other-worldlies-
> > > > from gods to guardian angels, etc.? Or the construct of Dante's
> > > > "Divine Comedy", for instance. Do humans long for uncorrupted worlds?
>
> > > > On Sep 27, 6:23 pm, William L Houts <luka...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >> I'm with the pragmatists on the question of intelligent alien species.
> > > >> Many scientists who speculate on this sort of thing --though there
> > > >> really aren't that many of them-- say that such species wouldn't
> > > >> resemble anything so comforting as a humanoid physiology, but I think
> > > >> they're partly mistaken.  Surely there would be surprises in the way
> > > >> nature cooks up life on other planets with radically different
> > > >> chemistries than our dear old Mama Earth.  But I think there's reason to
> > > >> suppose that many alien species would resemble us.  After all, any
> > > >> species we might imagine has to cope with gravity as it evolves.  So
> > > >> they're much more likely to evolve some form of locomotion which
> > > >> involves  two, four or six pedal extremities (as Fats Waller calls them)
> > > >> rather than three or five:  even-numbered legs are less wobbly and more
> > > >> amenable to balanced movement which consumes fewer calories. . Also,
> > > >> sense organs like eyes and ears are likely to be located in or close to
> > > >> a head, as there is survival value in having sense organs located close
> > > >> to a brain, or whatever such species might use for brains. Finally,
> > > >> everyone in the cosmos requires energy to get going, so they're either
> > > >> going to evolve photosynthesis and take their energy directly from their
> > > >> sun or suns, or they're going to take their sunbeams indirectly by
> > > >> consuming something lower in the food chain.  I'm sure there are lots of
> > > >> evolution pathways I'm leaving out, seeing as I'm a curious poet rather
> > > >> than a serious scientist type of guy, but I think these notions are, as
> > > >> Allan named other ideas of mine, sensible provisos.
>
> > > >> PS.  I left out centipedes and millipedes with their scores of legs, but
> > > >> I think y'all's get what I'm saying here.
>
> > > >> --Bill
>
> > > >> On 9/27/2012 3:57 PM, archytas wrote:
>
> > > >>> I haven't seen any UFOs and tend not to be much interested in people
> > > >>> who claim to have - at least without Bill's sensible provisos.  The
> > > >>> speed of thought as a brain process is slower than light-speed - but
> > > >>> then I'm basically a tropical fish realist.  I'd have a bet that no
> > > >>> one in this group would really have much of a definition of light-
> > > >>> speed and the Ricel curvature tensor, Euler Langrangian and the rest
> > > >>> of Einstein's field equations.  I mean no offence and don't do much of
> > > >>> this science myself.
> > > >>> If you point out to a physicist that the people from the future who
> > > >>> have invented the time machine are in extraordinarily short supply in
> > > >>> our present he may come up with some mathematical guff on the shape of
> > > >>> the universe that explains this or makes time travel only possible to
> > > >>> the future.  I have seen demons - plodding back to camp after a week's
> > > >>> endurance exercise with no food for two days I was visually convinced
> > > >>> the sentries were vampires but still asked them where the Naffi was.
> > > >>> My guess is that we travel through space as primitive life-forms with
> > > >>> evolution built-in and waiting to unfold.  We may thus have come from
> > > >>> a much more advanced civilisation than ours bound by the speed of
> > > >>> light, capable of the biological engineering but not space-flight much
> > > >>> more advanced than our own.  Calculations give 28 years as the time to
> > > >>> reach the edge of the known universe - but this is the time inside the
> > > >>> ship accelerating to near light speed fairly slowly.   Space is not
> > > >>> friction free and it's doubtful we or our instruments could take the
> > > >>> radiation of light-speed flight.
> > > >>> I rather hope there are some nice, genuinely civilised aliens thinking
> > > >>> of coming here.  In my speculation, intelligent life tends to worry
> > > >>> about food chains led by apes as these have been notoriously war-like.
> > > >>> I'm into bees and ants rather than UFOs at the moment.  Bees use
> > > >>> 'pharma' to combat fungal infections.  Ants take slaves - killing the
> > > >>> adults of another species and
>
> ...
>
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