51–60 of 84 posts
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Not necessarily.
Yes necessarily. You can't build an interstellar spaceship without an industrial base, and creating an industrial base is going to have the same effect on the local ecosystems that humanity is being damned for. At best, our alien hive mind is a giant hypocrite.
Starship Troopers.
Sci-fi scenario: We find evidence of microbial life from billions of years ago, when Mars was briefly a warm, wet place. Decades hence, a researcher realizes that Mars still has microbial life, but that it has evolved as its environment has, so it's as arid and rarefied as its present atmosphere, wispy and almost not there. Sadly, she realizes that human activity has already doomed it to extinction.
Look no further than The Mars Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
As the subject matter is very interesting to me, I started the series with great expectations and positive anticipation. I ended up very disappointed.
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Look no further than The Mars Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
Very tedious trilogy. It had great potential but just drowned the reader in unnecessary detail on subjects that had nothing to do with the theme of the books(s). As the subject matter is very interesting to me, I started the series with great expectations and positive anticipation. I ended up very disappointed.
To me the overload/tangential style felt essential.
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You might want to use a dot for those non-Germans over here.
I'm pretty sure more countries in the world use a decimal comma than a decimal point. Certainly more than use Fahrenheit, anyway.
The widespread use of the decimal point in SA is presumably the legacy of cheap digital calculators that couldn't be localised effectively.
I wonder how other decimal comma countries have been able to stave off the decimal point.
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Very tedious trilogy. It had great potential but just drowned the reader in unnecessary detail on subjects that had nothing to do with the theme of the books(s). As the subject matter is very interesting to me, I started the series with great expectations and positive anticipation. I ended up very disappointed.
I'd be interested to know what you think those themes are, and which details were unnecessary. To me the overload/tangential style felt essential.
Far too detailed descriptions of landscapes and environment. The first couple of times they are great to read, after that, very boring.
Far too detailed description of politics.
The books could have been half the size and probably would have been better for it.
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No, it's called a "floating period", like in the US.
I'm in the US and I've never heard that term before. Google seems equally confused.
It may not have been the best joke ever but I don't think it deserved 3 downvotes. People can be really tiresome sometimes.
(I'm not saying to you BTW; I don't think you downvoted.)
Edit: Okay, I received two upvotes after writing this, so now my post feels way too bitter. I'll leave it because I do think the point still stands - people are sometimes way too ready to downvote posts here (I don't mean mine, but anyone's) - but I'll also say people here are really very nice most of the time too.
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Alternative dystopian scenario: we eventually find evidence of (sometimes extinct) life on all planets and moons that had encountered specific chemical conditions for a long enough period of time. We realize en masse (more than we realize now) that life isn't a unique snowflake, but simply a geological process, not that far removed from rocks and volcanoes. The realization causes a broad spiritual/existential crisis…
> spiritual/existential crisis Only for abrahamic religions. Hinduism/Buddhism and other oriental/ddharmic religions repeatedly downplay our centrality.
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Alternative dystopian scenario: we eventually find evidence of (sometimes extinct) life on all planets and moons that had encountered specific chemical conditions for a long enough period of time. We realize en masse (more than we realize now) that life isn't a unique snowflake, but simply a geological process, not that far removed from rocks and volcanoes. The realization causes a broad spiritual/existential crisis…
I don't think you'd have to assume that's a dystopian scenario. The Copernican Revolution and associated existential crises -- that we're not in a privileged location at the center of the universe -- changed human culture mostly for the good.
We are not at all post-Copernican, strictly speaking. We value living things like we never did before. You occasionally hear discussion about granting rights to non-human animals: dolphins, apes, etc. That almost never happened in human history (save for a few cultures where certain animals are held to be holy). You are talking about moving away from anthropocentrism, while the scenario I'm describing is a bleak world where all life as such isn't valued. In that world, there isn't even any point of talking about "saving the planet," because "for whom are you saving it for? For polar bears? How are they any better than lifeless rocks: both products of geology?"
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I'm pretty sure more countries in the world use a decimal comma than a decimal point. Certainly more than use Fahrenheit, anyway.
In South Africa, the decimal comma is the standard, but beyond school, I almost never see it used. The space is still retained as a thousands seperator (I don't think I've ever seen a comma thousands seperator in a South African context). The widespread use of the decimal point in SA is presumably the legacy of cheap digital calculators that couldn't be localised effectively. I wonder how other decimal comma countrie…
Yes, I looked it up a while ago for some reason, and was surprised the comma was so widely used.
I'm also surprised SA uses the comma, because if there's any kind of pattern it seems to be former British Empire countries, or places where Britain had some historical connection, that use decimal point, and Continental Europe, or former European colonies, using the decimal comma.
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Alternative dystopian scenario: we eventually find evidence of (sometimes extinct) life on all planets and moons that had encountered specific chemical conditions for a long enough period of time. We realize en masse (more than we realize now) that life isn't a unique snowflake, but simply a geological process, not that far removed from rocks and volcanoes. The realization causes a broad spiritual/existential crisis…
The possibility of panspermia means simply finding that life won't, by itself, mean life is inevitable. It will simply mean it happened at least once in the solar system and might spread easily. Finding microbial life through the solar system won't really make us any less special. Even if we find evidence suggesting microbial life is common throughout the universe, it does not imply that complex animal life is common…