Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 126 total)
  • What's mankind's greatest achievement?
  • avdave2
    Full Member

    Radio 4

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    Glass. Lots of things we take for granted would be impossible or impractical without it

    And the Harber Bosch process. Its credited with keeping 1 in 3 of us from starving to death and the rest of us from fighting over food.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    It showed us who we can be when we aim for the stars

    That’s just waffle. You may have enjoyed the moon landings, but to think this simple concept is more worthy in terms of self knowledge than the vast body of complex and deep philosophical thought is just daft.

    It’s just exploration. Not that different to the early global Europeans sailing around the world.

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    avdave2
    Full Member

    On a serious note agriculture and just as important trade.

    bencooper
    Free Member

    Glass. Lots of things we take for granted would be impossible or impractical without it

    True – we’d still be living in mud hovels without glass.

    Dwarf wheat – Norman Borlaug saved over a billion lives with that one.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    War. No other species does it, it urges huge technological and social upheaval, and gives us lots of content for films and video games. Achtung STW, for you the thread is over!

    bencooper
    Free Member

    War. No other species does it

    Chimps? Meerkats?

    You don’t know fear until you’re face to face with a meerkat with a bazooka.

    thestabiliser
    Free Member

    ‘Dwarf wheat – Norman Borlaug saved over a billion lives with that one.’

    Yeah but a billion dwarves had to die

    richmtb
    Full Member

    War. No other species does it

    Ants too

    dragon
    Free Member

    Steel and Stainless Steel. Antibiotics. Silicon chips. Radio. Nuclear Power. Steam Engine.

    The NHS isn’t simply because without the drugs, computers and the like developed elsewhere it would be a useless social construct.

    bencooper
    Free Member

    That’s the problem really – as anyone who’s played Civilization knows, all inventions are built on previous inventions.

    richmtb
    Full Member

    +1 for The Enlightenment and the Scientific Method

    Casting off superstition and dogma and adopting rational thought instead.

    Then recording and sharing all the information in a free and open manner

    Its the reason I’m typing this on a laptop and not still using ink and parcment

    allthepies
    Free Member

    Immunisation, printing press, democracy, abolition of slavery, Shimano SPDs.

    All up there IMO.

    plyphon
    Free Member

    Sui
    Free Member

    you lot are all barking up the wrong tree,

    The ability to understand and contemplate the importance of harnessing energy is the biggest achievement. I’m not talking about the physical side either.

    LapSteel
    Free Member

    Greggs cheese and onion pasties

    Sandwiched between a buttered oven bottom.

    hmmm it must be nearly lunchtime

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    The NHS isn’t simply because without the drugs, computers and the like developed elsewhere it would be a useless social construct.

    How dependent on computers do you think NHS was in 1948 when it was founded ?

    The NHS could manage without computers. Drugs are quite vital though, I’ll give you that 🙂

    lemonysam
    Free Member

    The ability to understand and contemplate the importance of harnessing energy is the biggest achievement. I’m not talking about the physical side either.

    If I’m not allowed abstract thought and natural language I think that’s probably out too.

    Personally I think it’s a pretty blinkered to hold that these development was all down to evolution* and not to human beings striving to explore their environment in exactly the same way as everything else in this thread but what the heck.

    *not that I deny this, but it’s a criticism that applies equally to everything humanity has ever accomplished.

    MSP
    Full Member

    That’s just waffle. You may have enjoyed the moon landings, but to think this simple concept is more worthy in terms of self knowledge than the vast body of complex and deep philosophical thought is just daft.

    It’s just exploration. Not that different to the early global Europeans sailing around the world.

    Who set constraints that it had to be “worthy in terms of self knowledge” and then you throw in “vast body of complex and deep philosophical thought” just to prove your waffling credentials 😆

    joeelston
    Free Member

    Glentress Forest 😉 especially midweek when’s its quiet!

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Who set constraints that it had to be “worthy in terms of self knowledge” and then you throw in “vast body of complex and deep philosophical thought” just to prove your waffling credentials

    No, but you said this:

    It showed us who we can be when we aim for the stars.

    So you started talking about self knowledge. I responded by saying that it didn’t give us anything like as much self knowledge as centuries of philosophy. My post was in direct response to yours, because I don’t think the moon landings are the greatest achievement.

    mikey74
    Free Member

    Exploration is mankind’s greatest achievement. If all we did was philosphize, then we’d just sit around thinking all day. Exploration is actually putting those thoughts into practice and going out and doing something about it; whether it be landing on the moon or inventing the wheel.

    fatyowls
    Free Member

    To con millions of people into believing there’s a man who lives up above us, looking down and he cares for each and everyone. Now that’s some serious bullshit!

    bencooper
    Free Member

    we’d just sit around thinking arguing on the internet all day.

    FTFY

    molgrips
    Free Member

    To con millions of people into believing there’s a man who lives up above us

    thestabiliser
    Free Member

    OP – can we inform the Royal Society that we’ve come to a satisfactory conclusion yet?

    tonyg2003
    Full Member

    Modern medicine for me too.

    “Mapping the human genome” is a bit of PR hype. We’re still mapping the genome. It’s just we realised that you have to map individual genomes not a composit one.

    chakaping
    Free Member

    With the same sentiment as Crikey but more broadly: Socialism.

    Or maybe the penis beaker.

    dragon
    Free Member

    The NHS could manage without computers.

    I don’t think so. So how are you controlling and imaging your Ultrasound, MRI scanners, X-rays, delivery pumps, monitoring devices etc.

    muppetWrangler
    Free Member

    As a single focused project demonstrating both mans ingenuity and quest for knowledge then I’m going to add the Large Hadron Collider.

    And given that this week saw the announcement of a major step forward I’m going to get in a couple of decades early with harnessing nuclear fusion.

    tonyg2003
    Full Member

    Muppet wrangler. You comment fits with the often said nuclear fusion joke “nuclear fusion is 10years away and it always has been”

    molgrips
    Free Member

    I think by arguing what the NHS can achieve with whatever technology you are missing the point. Its value as an achievement isn’t how many people it cures, it’s the fact that it exists as a concept. We all pull together and contribute to help those in need, whoever they are.

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    I don’t think so. So how are you controlling and imaging your Ultrasound, MRI scanners, X-rays, delivery pumps, monitoring devices etc.

    Well it clearly wouldn’t be as effective !…… but it would still exist even if computers didn’t.

    It might come as a terrible shock to some people but humans managed for thousands without computers. And, unbelievably, IT wallahs 🙂

    joolsburger
    Free Member

    Electric generator. Seems that the modern world is built on them.

    donks
    Free Member

    This surely!!

    coolhandluke
    Free Member

    Uplift for bikes

    chewkw
    Free Member

    What’s mankind’s greatest achievement?

    Greed …

    😡

    martymac
    Full Member

    survival.
    the fact that we have managed to survive despite having the means to destroy ourselves many times over is surely an achievement.

    yunki
    Free Member

    Chocolate cheesecake

    bearnecessities
    Full Member

    Chocolate cheesecake

Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 126 total)

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