All human endeavour is ultimately pointless. Have a great weekend!
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Nah this hole I’m digging is pretty neat
Human advancement is only useful for as long as there are humans
Not even anywhere near that long. There have been humans for probably more than 200,000 years. Probably more. It gets confusing when you go back that far. But our written history only accounts for maybe 10,000 of those years. So 5% of total human history, if we take the minimum estimate of what it takes for us to be human. We have no evidence to support the fact that human advancement even lasts as long as written history. I mean, shit… the Romans had central heating and cement, and then they died out and we forgot how to do those things for 1,000 years. Our knowledge, and the acquisition of same is not exactly linear. Lots of fits and starts over the course of the various human civilizations that have occurred.
An important thing, about Homo Sapiens, is if we got the look of homo sapiens 200000 years ago, they still had the same brain volume and shape that their predecessors. It tooks some time for reach the modern brain volume/shape. Then previous homos steps was important too, in the discovery they made. So it’s quite reductice to limit humanity to homo sapiens.
There is no meaning apart from what we make of it.
The shit that we’ve shot into space, and the signals we have broadcast will be our only legacy. The Voyager probes with their golden records are our best shot right now at letting something else out there know we existed.
How exactly do you know that? The universe is going to be around for a while, and we just evolved and have just started to understand the universe. I find it absurd to think there isn’t at least a chance we colonize a significant part of our region of the milky way.
The check list of shit to-do to colonize something not on earth is pretty long. We still have to
-Find a more reliable way to get to space than sitting on an explosion.
-Figure out how to make faster ships so we get someplace cool in a reasonable amount of time. (Generstion ships are hard)
-Figure out the life support requirements for long term voyages.
-Figure out how to produce all required items on said colony (Looking at you STCs from 40k)
-Figure out how to come back to earth without packing twice as much fuel. (Or not, hopefully we don’t fuck things here up that baddly)
Finally, there is a time limit to get this shit done. Either climate change or kessler syndrome will punch our ticket and there will be no humans outside of our unfashionably small blue-green mud ball.
I applaud the optimism, I cant say that I have the same.
I think orbital rings are actually a viable solution for the first thing. https://youtu.be/LMbI6sk-62E?si=85ODl9PWDVpbjJuH
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/LMbI6sk-62E?si=85ODl9PWDVpbjJuH
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I mean as of right now. Of course we have plenty of opportunities to leave a greater legacy. But on the cosmic scale, we’ve barely done anything to leave a mark.
Heat death of the universe is unavoidable. Entropy can’t be reversed. It’s ultimately pointless.
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One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Just because there are no longterm benefits does not mean that your short term existence is pointless. Find pride and a reason in what you do for yourself and don’t wast your time thinking about what could potentially be in 500 years. Only your own experience is real and meaningful to you.
Depends on your definition of “long-term”. The biggest accomplishments of Man have been acknowledged for maybe 10,000 years at the very extreme limits. 10,000 years is not even a drop in the bucket of geological or celestial time. So it very much depends on your perspective.
What happened 11,000 years ago? I mean, we’ve got some pottery fragments. Other than that, ???
A buried temple. A huge one. Gobelki Tepe.
… Ok, fair. 11,000 years was the wrong cut-off date. 12 - 13,000 years would have illustrated my point better.
A movie, it’s titled 10000bc. You should check the wikipedia article. There isn’t huge events, more plenty of average ones, like the start of pottery.
It seems a bit obvious that the answer is “no”. It has to matter to someone, and when we’re gone, who is left to care?
Other humans, maybe a small pet for a fleeting minute. Everything is pointless. There is no meaning.
There won’t be other humans or pets lol
Well, there’s the Anthropocene. That has to count for something.
Universal significance? Isn’t that scale a bit too big? Is there anything that significant?
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On the scale of the universe, we are just a spark, tiny, and which dissapears as soon as it appears.
It’s only depressing if you’ve convinced yourself that you’re something more than an intelligent ape.
If you think about it from the perspective of an animal that had no concept of time, space, ethics, or philosophy just a few hundred thousand years ago, then we’re actually pretty impressive.
We probably won’t have any significant effect on the galaxy, but we sure have an effect on Earth.
It’s only depressing if you’ve convinced yourself that you’re something more than an intelligent ape.
An intelligent ape leaves no mark beyond their life. Their peers don’t do record keeping, nor have any sense of history or larger events than their own life
Humans affect other humans, and leave a mark for that person’s life. We compile records and histories that last long past our lives, and many of us have children where we leave a mark for their lives, or grandchildren.
Even beyond human memories and record keeping, societal development is incremental and we can take comfort in knowing that we helped increment that toward a greater society, even if our mark were not significant to be recorded as such. For example, I’ve worked with web apps since they were first created in the 1990s. I cant take credit for any significant milestones but I did work for many companies over that period in incrementing the state of corporate web apps. You’ll never see me on Wikipedia but I have been part of that information revolution and I did leave a few faint marks that have touched many, though they won’t realize it
Like I said, humans have had a big impact on Earth. No argument there.
There were also thousands of homo erectus and homo habilis individuals that were clever enough to use tools and adapt to new environments. They’re a part of the process of coevolution between people and technology that we are still experiencing. That’s why we’re special, that process. The process will end at some point, and that’s ok.
There are people in this thread that think their lives are meaningless if they don’t leave some irreversible mark on the fabric of reality. I don’t think that’s a reasonable perspective. I prefer the perspective of an intelligent ape. Intelligent ape is excited about smartphones and antibiotics, even if the Earth is doomed to be swallowed by the sun.
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Humans have no more abject worth than crickets or antelopes or carp.
