Big thinks?

>>37108396
>If the galaxy is so quiet we're either all alone, or everyone else is dead
wasn't the popular idea that communication more advance than us would be more common and more stealthy

>We're trying to hand the keys to humanity off to something we can't know how to contain or educate.
evolution means eventually no more humans, either way. robots or better animal. don't sweat extinction.

>We can literally never travel fast enough to go anywhere
yeah, ballistics travel is garbage. gonna have to get some cool space folding or dimension hopping shit going if real travel is desired.

>some kind of contingency for something on earth going terribly wrong
if humanity is the problem, then colonizing around doesn't make much sense to me. might as well have a backup in case of deadly super asteroid strike i guess

>conspicuous consumption/hedonism
money is power and power is sexy. nevermind that a million won't even buy one measly senator anymore - but people like to pretend they're anything at all. can't really fault the hedonists who know they ain't shit and go out in full decay mode.

>Age-immune humans currently being developed.
But not bullet immune, I imagine.
I wonder how terrified of death these immortals will become.

>>37108662
>communication more advance than us would be more common or more stealthy.

Stealthy from what, then?
Are we in someone's territory, and they're just... what, keeping an eye on us?
Do our vessles just whistle through the cluster whilst everyone watches with a raised eyebrow like 'look at these primatives go'.

I'm thinking... if there even is something out there, they know something we don't, and that's why they're keeping their heads down.
We're the one lit room in a big dark city, and we're cruising towards a bundle of extinction events which majority pop doesn't give a fuck about.

Also tonight I felt really lonely for no reason and started listening to songs by a band my ex-gf.. four gf's ago liked, which was pretty sad.
Little thinks actually seem to affect me more.

>Fermi Paradox
this is shit, it's not one or the other. Maybe space travel is just too fucking difficult and every being is stuck on it's own planet.

>>37109011
Does that mean we're gonna be stuck on our own planet for the next million years until we die too?
Seems like a sad ending.

>>37108396
>Fermi paradox
there is no scientific basis for believing in life outside of earth anyway.
this paradox extends to other sci-fi concepts, such as time travel. if time travel is possible, why haven't any arrived in this timeline and shown themselves?

>>37109263
>Hence, all alone.
Which is terrifying in itself.

But I feel like I'm the only guy on my side of the fence here.
Might just let this thread slip away and go back to trawling for bewbs.

>consciousness
>many thought experiments and much philosophizing goes into what the consciousness is and how it is manifested.
>e.g you can live with only half a brain, so what if we cut your brain in half and put each half in a brainless clone of your body, which one would "you" be in
> I theorize that long term consciousness is an illusion, "you" are a single electrical transmission in the brain, "you" exist for a fraction of a second before returning from the nothingness "you" came from, just like death. memory creates the illusion that you have been one cohesive sentience for your whole biological life.
>ever since I've thought about it like that the concept of consciousness makes more sense and death is a lot less scary as it is something which is constantly happening and i can't tell so i wont be able to tell when i'm dead.

>>37109011
i don't think it's impossible, but i think a species will always use advanced technology to eradicate it'self before it may develop technology advanced enough to mitigate that destruction via expansion.

>>37110650
>except then the memories will be gone too.

>>37111049
so? i'm not reading the memories, a future me is, as i have cycled through hundreds of discrete consciousnesses while typing this comment.

>>37111220
what's the single unit of time that equals one discrete moment of consciousness?
if there is no smallest, then maybe it means consciousness is necessarily continuous in some way

>>37111271
it could be as short as one electrochemical transmission, fractions of a second (what i think) or it could be as long as from waking up to going to sleep.

>>37111220
It's a curious idea. I'd say that the discrete 'you' changes through personality shifts rather than discrete moments though.
If you were to say we die every time the flicker of electricity in our brains changes, then what you're saying is that our consciousness is that flicker.
That, at our base, we are an impulse shooting around a piece of seperate, alien anatomy, feeling a discrete moment of consciousness, thought and feeling, and then disappearing abruptly.
In which case does only sentient electricity have a soul?

>>37111485
yes you've described it quite well, and as i stated at the start, i believe that because of this consciousness as a whole is an illusion. I wouldn't say only electrical machinery may delude it'self with the concept of consciousness but that electrical machinery is simply the most complex incarnation of consciousness to the point of being able to entertain the idea of the consciousness's own existence. i believe an ungodly complex clockwork machine could have consciousness equal to or exceeding our own. and from that i would say that all animals are conscious to a degree and in the same measure that our most complex computers are just as conscious as some bugs or fish or reptiles or something. consciousness is the illusion created by a difference engine examining it's memory, and the "you" behind the eyes, the "soul" is the very same illusion, only extant for a single calculation or operation.

>>37111687
Then wouldn't the value be found in the breeding cycle of those consciousnesses?
That, once the host body becomes unfit and those consciousnesses are no longer able to be generated, therein is a problem?
Do you feel bad for the few consciousnesses at the end which are generated only to feel pain and contemplate eternity?

>>37112197
think of it as instincts and biological programming are code and consciousness is the execution of the code, through evolution it is beneficial for an animal to want to remain alive, so each consciousness that considers the organism's continued survival is reading from the ingrained "remain alive" code. as far as each instance of courteousness is directly affected, there is no difference between continuing with your day and being vaporized by a gamma ray burst, the effect is the same, that consciousness ceases to exist, and as it no longer exists, it makes no difference as to whether it is succeeded by another or not. however due to the illusion caused by memory, each consciousness thinks it is THE consciousness and as such will seek to maintain it's own existence, and while it fails, it will succeed in maintaining the existence of the organism, serving it's evolutionary programming.

>>37108396
>Had any big thinks recently?
Nah. Why bother? The last big think I had was what could happen if we even encountered aliens, would be like mentally ill liberals and accept them with open arms or go full imperium of man and start a war?

>>37113236
Does this mean that consciousnesses against the 'free will' argument will behave seperately?
The first consciousness decides to randomly slap the interviewer, and then the second consciousness has to deterministically follow that path?

Are reflexes other 'people' in our bodies doing things we aren't linked to?

>>37108396

>and the Andromeda window is closing

Isnt Andromeda the galaxy that is coming towards us and will shock against us in 2 billion years or something?

>>37113360
Well, I guess that's a different and more permanent sort of 'close' but yeah fuck you got me.

>>37108396
We are not alone but it'd take an entity that could transcend resources and physical distance, possibly physical space to reach us. So we're a useless physical speck to them. Roadside picnic style.

The first self improving ai will smash us to goo. Google the phrase
>organic life is the sex organ of the machine world
and see what you get, then go read the four Hyperion books and all of the Culture novels. Neuromancer too. Actually this is covered a lot.

Time is a factor and time is money. You need near infinite money to send people near infinite distances, money the investor will never see again. Space is not profitable and will probably stay unexplored. Mars is the same problem.

All my big thinks lately are about understanding women.

>>37113480
>We are not alone
how can you say this with such certainty?

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>>37108396
>If the galaxy is so quiet we're either all alone, or everyone else is dead

Or there's a massively advanced civilization who have uploaded their consciousnesses to a dyson-sphere sized computer (called a Matioshka brain) and they live immortal in a virtual reality utopia for billions of years, and only stirring to swat down lesser space-faring civilizations that discover their home.

Perhaps the ultimate goal of any civilisation is to realise that 3D is indeed PD.

The only thing I care about is creating a ASI so it will either extint us or evolve us

This needs to happens in my lifetime I do not wanna die without knowing what happens, this is the only reason I havent killed myself

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>>37108396
>Settling Mars:
>A planet which died about three hundred million years ago and we're trying to desperately breathe life into it so that we have some kind of contingency for something on earth going terribly wrong.

If you have the technology to live on Mars, then you have the technology to live on Earth after you fuck it up.

>>37113594
Statistics.
Any event that can happen once will happen again. But in a sufficiently large universe, those aliens are going to be incredibly far away.

If you look at point 2, it's probable that they left intelligent self replicating machines behind, life of a sort.

Go read Spin and you'll see what I mean.

>>37114071
>Statistics.
>Any event that can happen once will happen again.
that's not how statistics works.
flipping a coin and getting heads doesn't guarantee that you *will* get heads again, even given infinite subsequent flips.

>>37114405
>probability of atleast one heads tends to 1
yes, that is how the law of large numbers works, but the keyword here is "tends."
that's why i got on you for saying "we are not alone" instead of "we are probably not alone."
even in a situation where there are two possible outcomes that are equally likely, there is no promise that you will eventually get one or the other.

>>37114589
>Big decider is if the universe, or physical reality that can produce life, is infinite or finite.
well, which is it?

>>37110650
Whose memory? What's memory? If "you" exist for a fraction of a second and disappear the next fraction of a second, what is remembering all those past fractions of seconds that add up to the years in one's life?

Not questioning the theory (I've read it somewhere, and it is intriguing and sounds plausible), but was an answer ever given to my question?

>>37114803
Wait, I think I know what the answer is supposed to be, but I'm still not sure. Is it just the structural changes in the brain that are caused by the creation of long-term memories that are referred to by the "you" that exists for a split-second?

>>37113480
>All my big thinks lately are about understanding women.

Out of curiosity, are you saying this in a joking manner?

>>37114887
>>37114803

Not that anon, but yes. "You", your conciusness, exists just a little amount of time, and it thinks that it existed for longer because it has access to all the memories in first person stored in your brain.
I wouldn't say it lasts just a second like the other anon, though, I would bet more for a day. When you sleep, your conciusness literally vanishes, you (at least what the mayority of people would consider "the real you") are dead. When you wake up your brain just creates a new conciusness to operarse based on the memories it has stored. A new conciusness is born, but that conciusness thinks that it has always being there.