Do you believe aliens exist?

Do you believe aliens exist?

  • Yes

    Votes: 351 69.1%

  • No

    Votes: 105 20.7%

  • Other

    Votes: 52 10.2%
  • Total voters
    508
wingnut771 said:
I wonder what the first world countries will look like after they've let all the third world in.
Click to expand...
We can just look at Rome, got to big, got invaded by Vandals, Barbarians, Goths and eventually just collapsed with the Eastern Empire holding on for longer, but cause it never evolved also faded.
The biggest thing empires need to do is evolve, not stagnate and go this is our way.
 
Lupus said:
We can just look at Rome, got to big, got invaded by Vandals, Barbarians, Goths and eventually just collapsed with the Eastern Empire holding on for longer, but cause it never evolved also faded.
The biggest thing empires need to do is evolve, not stagnate and go this is our way.
Click to expand...
Build cool shyte, hey world look at our cool shyte, nah bro, why are looting, pillaging my cool shyte, rinse wash repeat. :p
 
Moosedrool said:
Exactly.

Physics like newton gave engineers the ability to build things more efficiently. We can move heavier things with less as well but if there’s no need to then we don’t do it.
Click to expand...

Also when we need to we use concrete.
 
gotaway said:
I asked this because we’re quick to assume the past was primitive and that we’re the pinnacle of human knowledge.
Click to expand...
Relative to us the past was primitive and we are the pinnacle of human knowledge.

gotaway said:
Maybe some ancient people were far smarter than we give them credit for - not with lasers or spaceships, but with skills and knowledge that have been lost over the millennia. Who knows what else vanished?
Click to expand...
They were arguably as smart as we are today. Intelligence isn't the issue, knowledge and technology is. Technological evolution is a valid concept. They're on the wrong end of it time-wise.

gotaway said:
The Antikythera Mechanism predicted astronomical events. The Incas’ stonework is precise. Roman aqueducts and concrete still stand. Ancient Egyptian medical texts show detailed knowledge.
Click to expand...
Sure. All of which pales in comparison to the knowledge we have today.

You're looking at what's basically stonecutting and going "omg look how advanced!"... mate we have surgical lasers, military drones and we put Men on the Moon. Which year did Cleopatra send the first Egyptonaut into orbit again?

gotaway said:
Exceptional humans were sometimes mythologized - like Hammurabi, remembered as chosen by the gods, or Jesus, divine in Christianity but a revered prophet in Islam.

Today, when we see something unexplained, we often think aliens, not gods. In both cases, extraordinary knowledge or achievement gets turned into “other” rather than recognized as human.
Click to expand...
No when I see something unexplained I say "I don't know". I don't irrationally jump to aliens.

gotaway said:
Occam’s Razor: Aren’t gods and aliens just humans being smarter than we’re willing to acknowledge? Jumping straight to aliens, assuming we know all of history, or labelling ancient societies as “primitive”? That’s modern ego, not open-mindedness.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure what you're on about. We have a pretty good idea of how people back in those days could build the pyramids. It doesn't require magic.

Occam's Razor, BTW, also didn't exist as a concept in 3000BCE. You're applying your way of thinking to ancient people. It's unreasonable to do so. They lived in a different time with a different understanding of the world.
 
Last edited:
wingnut771 said:
Out of interest, how did ancient eqyptians work out the size of the earth?
View attachment 1860708
Click to expand...
Quite simple really, they measured the sun's shadow, placing it at two different locations and measured the angle and based on the angle calculated the distance based on that.

On the summer solstice the sun was directly over head syene, on the same day and time in Alexandria they placed a stick in the ground and measured the angle 1/50 of a full circle, they roughly knew the distance between syene and Alexandria, and based on that was able to calculate 360 degrees circumference, roughly 40000km.

The measurement for distance was a caravan or stadia, pending the size you get a margin for error. But anyway the distance between syene and Alexandria was roughly 5000 stadia, having measured the angle at 7.2 degrees it was 1/50th of a full 360 degrees 5000 x 50 = 250000 stadia, roughly 40000km....

Geometry, the sun and shadows.....
 
wizardofid said:
Quite simple really, they measured the sun's shadow, placing it at two different locations and measured the angle and based on the angle calculated the distance based on that.

On the summer solstice the sun was directly over head syene, on the same day and time in Alexandria they placed a stick in the ground and measured the angle 1/50 of a full circle, they roughly knew the distance between syene and Alexandria, and based on that was able to calculate 360 degrees circumference, roughly 40000km.

The measurement for distance was a caravan or stadia, pending the size you get a margin for error. But anyway the distance between syene and Alexandria was roughly 5000 stadia, having measured the angle at 7.2 degrees it was 1/50th of a full 360 degrees 5000 x 50 = 250000 stadia, roughly 40000km....

Geometry, the sun and shadows.....
Click to expand...
Goes back to humans were not stupid
 
porchrat said:
They were arguably as smart as we are today. Intelligence isn't the issue, knowledge and technology is. Technological evolution is a valid concept. They're on the wrong end of it time-wise.
Click to expand...
Agree. straight up intelligence they were probaly equal, but think of the breadth of human knowledge that has been discovered since then. Just as smart, just didn't know as much.
 
wizardofid said:
Quite simple really, they measured the sun's shadow, placing it at two different locations and measured the angle and based on the angle calculated the distance based on that.

On the summer solstice the sun was directly over head syene, on the same day and time in Alexandria they placed a stick in the ground and measured the angle 1/50 of a full circle, they roughly knew the distance between syene and Alexandria, and based on that was able to calculate 360 degrees circumference, roughly 40000km.

The measurement for distance was a caravan or stadia, pending the size you get a margin for error. But anyway the distance between syene and Alexandria was roughly 5000 stadia, having measured the angle at 7.2 degrees it was 1/50th of a full 360 degrees 5000 x 50 = 250000 stadia, roughly 40000km....

Geometry, the sun and shadows.....
Click to expand...
Indeed. Working out that the Earth was round and its rough size was something a lot of people accomplished. Apparently it's not that complicated.

Proving heliocentrism apparently that was pretty difficult because we didn't provide definitive evidence for that until a few hundred years ago.

Though ancient Greeks were already proposing that the Earth revolved around the Sun... they couldn't prove it.
 
Last edited:
Lupus said:
We can just look at Rome, got to big, got invaded by Vandals, Barbarians, Goths and eventually just collapsed with the Eastern Empire holding on for longer, but cause it never evolved also faded.
The biggest thing empires need to do is evolve, not stagnate and go this is our way.
Click to expand...
didnt the eastern empire last longer than the western empire lasted?
 
wizardofid said:
it's funny, they had pretty much what we have today, a tax system, laws, language, arts and culture, science, biology. They had knowledge with in the scope of their understanding and development.
Click to expand...
What about Sub-Saharan Africa?
 
wingnut771 said:
What about Sub-Saharan Africa?
Click to expand...
Not all cultures developed the same way, but that doesn’t make any of them “primitive.” They just worked with what they had and observed the world around them. You don’t need telescopes or calculators to notice patterns — the sun rises between those two rocks, the air gets colder after that, the animals start moving — boom, you’ve got a calendar. Observation was their technology, and the village elder was basically the local data server, keeping the knowledge alive through stories.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X