13 ms·

That tiny little speck in that endless blackness is us. All of the human race living on this tiny rock fighting over who owns which piece of land and whose reli

That tiny little speck in that endless blackness is us. All of the human race living on this tiny rock fighting over who owns which piece of land and whose religion is most peaceful. All the world leaders should be spent to space to understand how insignificant we are and how petty and insignificant our disagreements are.

ysavir 10y ago
So size is the most critical aspect of significance?
- ucontrol 10y ago
  Excellent observation. Most critical? Maybe not. But it is undoubtedly very much a significant and underrecognized factor. The Overview Effect is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    I've always thought the Overview Effect is a cognitive error, but it has this cloud of piety surrounding it "because astronauts". At its best, it inspires calls to environmentalism (the fragility of the Earth), but at its worst, and it's usually at its worst, it inspires nihilistic Carl Saganisms like the Pale Blue Dot.
    - knowaveragejoe 10y ago
      How is Pale Blue Dot in any way nihilistic? I feel like you missed the point of the entire thing if the message you got was one of hopelessness.
      - compton_effect 10y ago
        I mean it is a bit nihilist but again just calling something nihilist doesn't invalidate it. I agree The way he[Carl Sagan] weighs it is the way that I think people should view this idea. Instead of taking it to believe nothing matters, take it as a means to strive to do better, to see the only barriers that prevent our civilization from accomplishing greatness are artificial.
      - nsxwolf 10y ago
        Because you could insert any other human concern into those enumerated in "Pale Blue Dot", and they become just as easily diminished. Like human rights, for instance. Who cares about female genital mutilation - after all, Betelgeuse is huge, man! Who cares about something as small as a clitoris?
        ucontrol 10y ago
        See, I have always considered that it had the opposite effect - by looking at the big picture, putting things in perspective and calling for a more humanistic outlook on life, it inspires empathy and action towards "making the world a better place". Far from trivializing widespread issues such as the ones you pointed out. But then again, you already acknowledged this out in your previous comment, and I get that here you were just trying to explain what you thought the alternative was.
        kitsunesoba 10y ago
        This is how I take it too. Sagan isn't saying that all human problems are insignificant or unimportant, but it's entirely true that many of the things we fight over and even kill each other over are, when put into perspective, pretty stupid. The whole point is to take a step back and carefully evaluate things as a first course of action and to try to save conflict and aggression for situations where it's meaningful and likely to make a positive impact in the bigger picture.
  - jmmcd 10y ago
    I agree with other commenter that the overview effect is real but an error. Just because earth is smaller than Saturn doesn't make it insignificant, or make our concerns - wars, religions, reality TV and all - petty. There is absolutely nothing of significance in Saturn that compares to what we have on earth. Significance can't even exist without life.
    - burke 10y ago
      The thrust of Sagan's monologue was to encourage re-evaluation of religiously-motivated anthropocentrism. To me, at least, it's less of "how could anything here matter when Saturn is so big?" and more of "does it really seem plausible that this vast universe was created for the benefit of some creatures on the surface of this little speck? Do you really think we're that special?" Certainly it's possible to ride the Overview Effect all the way to nihilism, but it seems clear to me that unexamined anthropocentrism is at least as incorrect.
  - ysavir 10y ago
    Intoxication is real as well, but I rarely apply any of my drunken epiphanies when sober.
    - ucontrol 10y ago
      I understand what point you are trying to make, but it's hardly a fitting analogy, and I don't think it's a fair point. One is a short-lasting altered state of consciousness. The other is an idea, a change of perspective that can inspire action and positive lifestyle change. Or perhaps a descent into nihilism, depending on circumstance.
secstate 10y ago
If we're being honest here, I don't think most world leaders are quite as blindly caught up in our significance as the majority of humanity. If anything, world leaders play the game and understand that it's all a house of cards. Meanwhile, the people who lack personal agency moan and thrash about wondering why we're still so ignorant, even though we're in the middle of the Great Peace, prosperity on a global level is rising rapidly, and our ability to explore the stars is just beginning.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > If we're being honest here, I don't think most world leaders are quite as blindly caught up in our significance as the majority of humanity. They're all small fish trying to reduce the size of the pond they're in so they seem bigger.
yeukhon 10y ago
This comment leaves me in a void state. There's so much emptiness.The density of our population in a metropolitan city, is insignificant when you think of it at the scale of space. I just picture me as one of trillions of rocks going around at an extreme velocity around the Saturn ring. Each rock represents a violent pass of this galaxy. We also know there's a black hole in the center of this galaxy, let alone we have many mores across the whole galaxy. What's even more void is this universe is so big, so big, so big we can't even know what's out there. What's with this tiny dot in this universe doing? So much life so much memory so much humanity, yet, we are so tiny. Indeed, we are so insignificant. Turn our attention back on Earth. Every step we take every air we breathe, every rock we see, has a history. Our ancestors walked on our lands, all sorts of amusing creatures once lived on this planet. What's beneath us are the remaining and the history of planet Earth. Our petroleum oil is the product of the past living organisms. Years from now, our decedents will walk on this land like we do today, wondering about their ancestors' past, what they did, how they lived, amused at our modern fashion taste and our modern technology. Are we the only intelligent organism out there? Is there another universe? As the universe expands, what does it mean? What's actually space and time without all the mathematics? Can we even picture what it is like for the universe to stretch, like a force field / shield expanding? Could we rewind to the past like in sci-fi movies? Can you imagine what it is like to have hundreds of billions of galaxies around us? Going to M31 would probably take at least 10M years at 60mph. As I am writing this, new stars are borning, some other stars are about to explode, some stars and planetary objects are ripping apart by black holes, galaxies are ripping each other apart as they collide crossing each other's path, our space explorers out there are watching and analyzing the space out there, and other people whom I may not know are dying on this planet Earth. Mysterious forces are every where. Most importantly, our Sun is heading to a dying state like all of us, eventually the Sun will burn out and as it burns out, the temperature will rise to the point we can't survive on this planet. Eventually we will have total darkness and total coldness here, some billion years from now. Oh, and our planet is four billions old, and this modern human civilization is only roughly 5,000 years ago and "humans" probably around 3-5M years. Our legacy our human world may collapse due to human conflicts or due to cosmetic events, and then maybe we will turn into natural resources too. M31 is approaching and billion years from now we will be in another galaxy collision event. Perhaps the cycle will repeat. We think everything in this natural world has one order: there's a beginning and there's an end state. But this perception isn't true at all. Our chemical compositions never lost, they just become other things, over time. Some of our human ancestors think when people die they become a star and at night they will shine and look after the livings. Those who died before us are already decomposing and becoming part of everything we experience every day. It isn't far stretch to say those stars out there, trillion miles away from us, perhaps did make up of other living creatures before us, and trillion years from now, our photon, might escape and able to travel to other stars. This is depressing.
luxpir 10y ago
I think you're right in that everyone should be aware of the scale of the universe. But importance seems to be fractal in the way that electrons are important to protons, salty and sweet food is important to me, stars to planets, galaxies to universes and so on. We are important, to ourselves. And I think that's OK.
- cjauvin 10y ago
  The analogy with fractals is beautiful, and quite illuminating IMO.
  - ismail 10y ago
    Yep. Great analogy. There's a book: Where good ideas come from. The thesis is that most of nature is fractral and in it The author draws parallels to innovation. https://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-From/dp/1594487715 https://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-From/dp/1594487...
- Razengan 10y ago
  Exactly. One of the personal existential dilemmas I face regularly is reconciling the importance of the human condition with its insignificance. I've come to decide that all the infinity of the Universe may just as well not exist if there were no sentient beings to experience it. Even if I were immortal, and had a spaceship that could take me anywhere instantly, I would still ultimately get attached to the stories and struggles of individual beings, no matter how localized and of infinitesimal consequence they may be. I can imagine that there must be unimaginable beauty out there; endless fields of exotic crystals, planetoids drifting through sparkling nebulas, rogue planets far away from the light of any star, islands floating in the multicolored clouds of a gas giant – even our own planet has many surreal places most people aren't even aware of, like [0] – but even such beauty would become depressing if there is no other being to share it with. I know that this kind of thinking is a human thing; a member of a hive-mind species may probably never feel that way. An species with no biological mating, or an species where all members are identical clones, may have no concept of love or beauty. But again, these differences between species, races, and individuals is what makes everything interesting. [0] http://imgur.com/gallery/ql0uurU http://imgur.com/gallery/ql0uurU
sametmax 10y ago
No. Somebody that would realize that by going to space would already be a decent person on earth. You say this because you already have a perspective on things.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
avenoir 10y ago
A lot of astronauts had a pretty life changing experience when looking at the earth from cosmos. So much so that there a name for this phenomena called "the overview effect" [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
- rdiddly 10y ago
  In the 70s all the media seemed fascinated with that photo of Earth from the Moon (and spent the decade throwing it at us at every conceivable opportunity). Something tells me this one won't be quite so popular, though it might be more illustrative in some ways.
vintagedave 10y ago
> All the world leaders should be spent to space You know what I'm afraid of? Some country's leader will go up there, see their bit, and think "All the rest of that should be mine." I agree with your sentiment, but writing it is based on the assumption that all people are like you (or us) in our sense of goals and community. It's not true.
- ehsankia 10y ago
  That would actually be awesome! If they spend money on creating the technology to go up there and claim it all, along the way we will learn and advance so much, just like the rush for getting to the moon.
- vog 10y ago
  Still, I have often heard that people change their view of the "world", once they had an impressive experience regarding our place in the universe. After people are "infected" by the "space virus", and often adjust their priorities. Of course, that might more more correlation than causation. But I still like the idea that people can be cured from megalomania by a quick trip to the moon, the space station, or by just driving up and down one of our space elevators.
  - inimino 10y ago
    It's probably worth noting that all the humans who have been in space have had a deep commitment to science and risked their lives for it. When space tourism becomes a thing, then I guess we'll see...
jimmyk 10y ago
What do you expect out of creatures that were molded by billions of years of evolution? If their ancestors hadn't been willing to fight over pieces of that rock, whether that willingness came from genetics or culture, they wouldn't be here today. I'm not aware of any good reason to believe that's about to change.
- dorgo 10y ago
  Environment is changing. Fighting over pieces of that rock may be less beneficial in our age. Evolution will teach us to change.
  - jimmyk 10y ago
    Could you expand on that?
    - freeflight 10y ago
      While I'm not the OP, I believe I get his point: With the environment changing so do the evolutionary advantages that come with the environment. In that regard, an evolutionary trait that is considered disadvantageous in one environment might be actually advantageous in a different environment. Case in point: Humans fighting over rocks. When there were only a few humans around but lots of "good rocks" to fight over, being competitive for the few humans might have been an advantage. Because there had been enough "good rocks" around so everybody could get their own piece of rock if they compete and some can even get more than just one rock. Now change the ratio between humans and "good rocks", whether that be because there are a lot more humans than there used to be or because there are far fewer "good rocks" around to compete for or simply a combination of both. In such a scenario competition for the sole ownership these few remaining "good rocks" between big numbers of humans, might be a massive resource waste compared to a more cooperative approach that doesn't pit everybody against each other for a scarce resource.
      - jimmyk 10y ago
        It may certainly be a massive resource waste compared to an idealized system where everyone chooses to selflessly cooperate. But what is going to happen to the people in your scenario who choose not to compete for control over a slice of the rock when other people continue to compete for control over a slice of the rock?

ysavir 10y ago

So size is the most critical aspect of significance?

ucontrol 10y ago
Excellent observation. Most critical? Maybe not. But it is undoubtedly very much a significant and underrecognized factor. The Overview Effect is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  I've always thought the Overview Effect is a cognitive error, but it has this cloud of piety surrounding it "because astronauts". At its best, it inspires calls to environmentalism (the fragility of the Earth), but at its worst, and it's usually at its worst, it inspires nihilistic Carl Saganisms like the Pale Blue Dot.
  - knowaveragejoe 10y ago
    How is Pale Blue Dot in any way nihilistic? I feel like you missed the point of the entire thing if the message you got was one of hopelessness.
    - compton_effect 10y ago
      I mean it is a bit nihilist but again just calling something nihilist doesn't invalidate it. I agree The way he[Carl Sagan] weighs it is the way that I think people should view this idea. Instead of taking it to believe nothing matters, take it as a means to strive to do better, to see the only barriers that prevent our civilization from accomplishing greatness are artificial.
    - nsxwolf 10y ago
      Because you could insert any other human concern into those enumerated in "Pale Blue Dot", and they become just as easily diminished. Like human rights, for instance. Who cares about female genital mutilation - after all, Betelgeuse is huge, man! Who cares about something as small as a clitoris?
      - ucontrol 10y ago
        See, I have always considered that it had the opposite effect - by looking at the big picture, putting things in perspective and calling for a more humanistic outlook on life, it inspires empathy and action towards "making the world a better place". Far from trivializing widespread issues such as the ones you pointed out. But then again, you already acknowledged this out in your previous comment, and I get that here you were just trying to explain what you thought the alternative was.
        kitsunesoba 10y ago
        This is how I take it too. Sagan isn't saying that all human problems are insignificant or unimportant, but it's entirely true that many of the things we fight over and even kill each other over are, when put into perspective, pretty stupid. The whole point is to take a step back and carefully evaluate things as a first course of action and to try to save conflict and aggression for situations where it's meaningful and likely to make a positive impact in the bigger picture.
- jmmcd 10y ago
  I agree with other commenter that the overview effect is real but an error. Just because earth is smaller than Saturn doesn't make it insignificant, or make our concerns - wars, religions, reality TV and all - petty. There is absolutely nothing of significance in Saturn that compares to what we have on earth. Significance can't even exist without life.
  - burke 10y ago
    The thrust of Sagan's monologue was to encourage re-evaluation of religiously-motivated anthropocentrism. To me, at least, it's less of "how could anything here matter when Saturn is so big?" and more of "does it really seem plausible that this vast universe was created for the benefit of some creatures on the surface of this little speck? Do you really think we're that special?" Certainly it's possible to ride the Overview Effect all the way to nihilism, but it seems clear to me that unexamined anthropocentrism is at least as incorrect.
- ysavir 10y ago
  Intoxication is real as well, but I rarely apply any of my drunken epiphanies when sober.
  - ucontrol 10y ago
    I understand what point you are trying to make, but it's hardly a fitting analogy, and I don't think it's a fair point. One is a short-lasting altered state of consciousness. The other is an idea, a change of perspective that can inspire action and positive lifestyle change. Or perhaps a descent into nihilism, depending on circumstance.

secstate 10y ago

If we're being honest here, I don't think most world leaders are quite as blindly caught up in our significance as the majority of humanity. If anything, world leaders play the game and understand that it's all a house of cards. Meanwhile, the people who lack personal agency moan and thrash about wondering why we're still so ignorant, even though we're in the middle of the Great Peace, prosperity on a global level is rising rapidly, and our ability to explore the stars is just beginning.

jacquesm 10y ago
> If we're being honest here, I don't think most world leaders are quite as blindly caught up in our significance as the majority of humanity. They're all small fish trying to reduce the size of the pond they're in so they seem bigger.

yeukhon 10y ago

This comment leaves me in a void state. There's so much emptiness.The density of our population in a metropolitan city, is insignificant when you think of it at the scale of space. I just picture me as one of trillions of rocks going around at an extreme velocity around the Saturn ring. Each rock represents a violent pass of this galaxy. We also know there's a black hole in the center of this galaxy, let alone we have many mores across the whole galaxy. What's even more void is this universe is so big, so big, so big we can't even know what's out there. What's with this tiny dot in this universe doing? So much life so much memory so much humanity, yet, we are so tiny. Indeed, we are so insignificant. Turn our attention back on Earth. Every step we take every air we breathe, every rock we see, has a history. Our ancestors walked on our lands, all sorts of amusing creatures once lived on this planet. What's beneath us are the remaining and the history of planet Earth. Our petroleum oil is the product of the past living organisms. Years from now, our decedents will walk on this land like we do today, wondering about their ancestors' past, what they did, how they lived, amused at our modern fashion taste and our modern technology. Are we the only intelligent organism out there? Is there another universe? As the universe expands, what does it mean? What's actually space and time without all the mathematics? Can we even picture what it is like for the universe to stretch, like a force field / shield expanding? Could we rewind to the past like in sci-fi movies? Can you imagine what it is like to have hundreds of billions of galaxies around us? Going to M31 would probably take at least 10M years at 60mph. As I am writing this, new stars are borning, some other stars are about to explode, some stars and planetary objects are ripping apart by black holes, galaxies are ripping each other apart as they collide crossing each other's path, our space explorers out there are watching and analyzing the space out there, and other people whom I may not know are dying on this planet Earth. Mysterious forces are every where. Most importantly, our Sun is heading to a dying state like all of us, eventually the Sun will burn out and as it burns out, the temperature will rise to the point we can't survive on this planet. Eventually we will have total darkness and total coldness here, some billion years from now. Oh, and our planet is four billions old, and this modern human civilization is only roughly 5,000 years ago and "humans" probably around 3-5M years. Our legacy our human world may collapse due to human conflicts or due to cosmetic events, and then maybe we will turn into natural resources too. M31 is approaching and billion years from now we will be in another galaxy collision event. Perhaps the cycle will repeat. We think everything in this natural world has one order: there's a beginning and there's an end state. But this perception isn't true at all. Our chemical compositions never lost, they just become other things, over time. Some of our human ancestors think when people die they become a star and at night they will shine and look after the livings. Those who died before us are already decomposing and becoming part of everything we experience every day. It isn't far stretch to say those stars out there, trillion miles away from us, perhaps did make up of other living creatures before us, and trillion years from now, our photon, might escape and able to travel to other stars. This is depressing.

luxpir 10y ago

I think you're right in that everyone should be aware of the scale of the universe. But importance seems to be fractal in the way that electrons are important to protons, salty and sweet food is important to me, stars to planets, galaxies to universes and so on. We are important, to ourselves. And I think that's OK.

cjauvin 10y ago
The analogy with fractals is beautiful, and quite illuminating IMO.
- ismail 10y ago
  Yep. Great analogy. There's a book: Where good ideas come from. The thesis is that most of nature is fractral and in it The author draws parallels to innovation. https://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-From/dp/1594487715 https://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-From/dp/1594487...
Razengan 10y ago
Exactly. One of the personal existential dilemmas I face regularly is reconciling the importance of the human condition with its insignificance. I've come to decide that all the infinity of the Universe may just as well not exist if there were no sentient beings to experience it. Even if I were immortal, and had a spaceship that could take me anywhere instantly, I would still ultimately get attached to the stories and struggles of individual beings, no matter how localized and of infinitesimal consequence they may be. I can imagine that there must be unimaginable beauty out there; endless fields of exotic crystals, planetoids drifting through sparkling nebulas, rogue planets far away from the light of any star, islands floating in the multicolored clouds of a gas giant – even our own planet has many surreal places most people aren't even aware of, like [0] – but even such beauty would become depressing if there is no other being to share it with. I know that this kind of thinking is a human thing; a member of a hive-mind species may probably never feel that way. An species with no biological mating, or an species where all members are identical clones, may have no concept of love or beauty. But again, these differences between species, races, and individuals is what makes everything interesting. [0] http://imgur.com/gallery/ql0uurU http://imgur.com/gallery/ql0uurU

sametmax 10y ago

No. Somebody that would realize that by going to space would already be a decent person on earth. You say this because you already have a perspective on things.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

avenoir 10y ago

A lot of astronauts had a pretty life changing experience when looking at the earth from cosmos. So much so that there a name for this phenomena called "the overview effect" [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

rdiddly 10y ago
In the 70s all the media seemed fascinated with that photo of Earth from the Moon (and spent the decade throwing it at us at every conceivable opportunity). Something tells me this one won't be quite so popular, though it might be more illustrative in some ways.

vintagedave 10y ago

> All the world leaders should be spent to space You know what I'm afraid of? Some country's leader will go up there, see their bit, and think "All the rest of that should be mine." I agree with your sentiment, but writing it is based on the assumption that all people are like you (or us) in our sense of goals and community. It's not true.

ehsankia 10y ago
That would actually be awesome! If they spend money on creating the technology to go up there and claim it all, along the way we will learn and advance so much, just like the rush for getting to the moon.
vog 10y ago
Still, I have often heard that people change their view of the "world", once they had an impressive experience regarding our place in the universe. After people are "infected" by the "space virus", and often adjust their priorities. Of course, that might more more correlation than causation. But I still like the idea that people can be cured from megalomania by a quick trip to the moon, the space station, or by just driving up and down one of our space elevators.
- inimino 10y ago
  It's probably worth noting that all the humans who have been in space have had a deep commitment to science and risked their lives for it. When space tourism becomes a thing, then I guess we'll see...

jimmyk 10y ago

What do you expect out of creatures that were molded by billions of years of evolution? If their ancestors hadn't been willing to fight over pieces of that rock, whether that willingness came from genetics or culture, they wouldn't be here today. I'm not aware of any good reason to believe that's about to change.

dorgo 10y ago
Environment is changing. Fighting over pieces of that rock may be less beneficial in our age. Evolution will teach us to change.
- jimmyk 10y ago
  Could you expand on that?
  - freeflight 10y ago
    While I'm not the OP, I believe I get his point: With the environment changing so do the evolutionary advantages that come with the environment. In that regard, an evolutionary trait that is considered disadvantageous in one environment might be actually advantageous in a different environment. Case in point: Humans fighting over rocks. When there were only a few humans around but lots of "good rocks" to fight over, being competitive for the few humans might have been an advantage. Because there had been enough "good rocks" around so everybody could get their own piece of rock if they compete and some can even get more than just one rock. Now change the ratio between humans and "good rocks", whether that be because there are a lot more humans than there used to be or because there are far fewer "good rocks" around to compete for or simply a combination of both. In such a scenario competition for the sole ownership these few remaining "good rocks" between big numbers of humans, might be a massive resource waste compared to a more cooperative approach that doesn't pit everybody against each other for a scarce resource.
    - jimmyk 10y ago
      It may certainly be a massive resource waste compared to an idealized system where everyone chooses to selflessly cooperate. But what is going to happen to the people in your scenario who choose not to compete for control over a slice of the rock when other people continue to compete for control over a slice of the rock?