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as humans why are we told we are insignificant compared to the universe we are always being told this only this morning on Radio 4 yet again we were told this.
1. Maybe the universe is insignificant without us...
2. to my family (children/wife/parent/brothers&sisters) I am their universe and vice versa.
3.I'm not getting religious...
Thoughts ?
Well, in size obviously we are insignificant. In the span of history, we are insignificant. Even to this planet we're insignificant - noting we've done will matter in 10 million years, which is nothing to the planet.
On the other hand, the most complex thing in the universe, by several orders of magnitude, is the human brain.
If Brian May was right on Stargazing and we are the only life in the universe that may change their perspective a little.
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To quote Douglas Adams:
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
But I agree with you. Insignificant to whom/what? God? Well that's probably a contradiction.
Well, for a start, I think you misundertood the R4 piece (thought for the day?)
[i]On the other hand, the most complex thing in the universe, by several orders of magnitude, is the human brain. [/i]
That's a pretty bold statement.
Okay, that we know of.
Depends what you define as significant. In an infinite universe what significance would you expect to have....In an infinite universe nothing is the only significance.... 🙂
If you were significant, you'd probably know why.
you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store
I take it that's from an American translation? I'm sure I don't remember something as jarring as "drug store" in the original. *shudders*
And on the OP - significance is subjective, but you'd have to be a fairly rampant egoist* to argue that you are more important than the billions and billions of other wonders on this planet, let alone the universe.
*Lance Armstrong, for example
If we were to cause a big kick ass..full blown Nuclear war...blew up the moon and perhaps caused a change in the gravitational pull of the planets...
I think we would have made our mark! 😉
But I think it's safe to say things would carry on their way (probably better) without the Human bods about...we are part of the system, but the system is much too big to be bothered by us.
2. to my family (children/wife/parent/brothers&sisters) I am their universe and vice versa.
Then your "family (children/wife/parent/brothers&sisters)" lack imagination.
Of course you are insignificant.
Just work out how old you are and compare.
How big you are and compare.
How much change you can cause and compare.
Anything you can do / will do will have no impact whatsoever compared to what happens over the timescales and size of the universe.
Remember the Dinosaurs lived far far longer than we have, the universe has forgotton them.
All we have left are a few footprints on the moon. We have ruined our own planet and in a short while we will be gone.
Get some perspective !
that may effect our solar system...If we were to cause a big kick ass..full blown Nuclear war...blew up the moon and perhaps caused a change in the gravitational pull of the planets...
Turn it round, though, and the universe as a whole is pretty insignificant to me, too. I mean, I like looking at the stars, and reading about the Big Bang etc., but on a day-to-day basis my kids, wife, job, bikes, and so on are infinitely more important.
Have a play with this then come back feeling insignificant:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347
On the stargazing prog last night they were talking about a galaxy where light takes several billions of years to reach Earth.
That's a looooong way away 🙂
That made the human race seem pretty insignificant in the whole scheme of things.
Caring about your significance as relates to the universe utterly pointless. Why bother, it's your significance to those you care about that matters.
Turn it round, though, and the universe as a whole is pretty insignificant to me, too
The universe would still be pretty much the same without us.
However, we would not exist without it.
Ignoring the universe doesn't make it insignificant.
Individual people are pretty insignificant just on our planet - there are over 7 billion of us, what significance does any one of us really have? (other than to our family/friends?)
thats what philosophers call a personal truth....but its not significant to others.but on a day-to-day basis my kids, wife, job, bikes, and so on are infinitely more important.
You need to get out on your bike. Feeling bad about your lack of significance in the Universe will do your head in.
Beyond questions of scale, there is of course the question of what we mean by signification. Do we adopt a deontological system where certain norms are fixed so for us to be able to benchmark significance, or do we prefer a pragmatic approach where value shifts in reference to social arrangements/knowledge norms prevalent at any one time? Regardless, given that we are the only creatures known to us to ask questions about significance, I'd say that makes us pretty significant.
You were listening to "thought for the day"?
Pfft.
Regardless, given that we are the only creatures known to us to ask questions about significance, I'd say that makes us pretty significant.
Are you saying a fly doesn't ponder his own place in the universe whilst buzzing around eating shit?
I think it's a religious thing, how better to convince someoen there's an afterlife and that your life does have a meaning, than to get science to tell everyone that they're insignificant.
On the other hand, the most complex thing in the universe, by several orders of magnitude, is the human brain.
Three things:
1) Bold assumption there's not a more inteligent lifeform in the universe.
2) Just because we (as STW, I'm sure a brain surgeon knows it better) don't understand it, doesnt make it complicated.
3) Get parraliticaly drunk and you don't feel slow headed, how do we know the random jumble of nerve cells that makes up our brains is anywhere near working the way it should/could? For all we know when we do find other life we might come accross as the slack jawed yokles.
Alternatively, we may represent the initial seed that is destined to populate the universe. A singular beacon of complexity in an otherwise barren universe that will spread out and propagate exponentially, eventually finding the means to reach out into alternative dimensions before the inevitable heat death of the universe in this dimension.
Bridging time and space, the very last humans, 423 trillion years from now, unrecognisable to our current form, watch on with sadness as the multiuniverse ends, only moments before triggering the birth of a new chain reaction to start the whole process over.
That's whats going to happen, I've decided. I'll start working on it after lunch.
Demodex Folliculorum - a tiny parasitic mite that lives on your eyelash.
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How significant is a mite on your eyelash to the weather in Hong Kong?
Do you reckon you are more or less important than that in the scale of the universe?
Torminalis, I like it!
I've often thought we've got the potential to populate this galaxy. Fire of bacteria onto other planets the evolves enough to build machines to fire off other bacteria. We're barking up the wrong tree trying to colonise other planets as humans.
1 . Brian May is wrong (and a dull presenter too he's no Patrick Moore)
2. Why the human brain, whats to say a whales or a dogs brain is more complex , you are showing bias there
3.the sun and stars do not revolve around the earth infact we are just a tiny transient speck amongst the rest of the universe, infact the stuff of us may be a cosmic. abberation compared to dark matter and energy
4. the question is why does it bother you ? its not like people are saying kill yourself now because you are so pointless and obviously its all relative your 80 years may be nothing to the last 20 000 000 000 000 or so of the universe's but to you they are everything
5.my copy of hitch hikers is boxed up while I build some shelves but I'm sure it doesn't say drug store !
Are you saying a fly doesn't ponder his own place in the universe whilst buzzing around eating shit?
Ponder - doubtful, but it is continually trying to orient itself by means of what is significant for it.
Here at the [i]Restaurant At The End Of The Universe[/i], it's great to see so many of you go back to your own times to struggle and fight long and bloody wars for what you know to be right. It gives one such hope for the future of life-kind, except that...
[i]we[/i] know...
It hasn't got one.
I like that.....Alternatively, we may represent the initial seed that is destined to populate the universe. A singular beacon of complexity in an otherwise barren universe that will spread out and propagate exponentially, eventually finding the means to reach out into alternative dimensions before the inevitable heat death of the universe in this dimension.
Torminalis - MemberAlternatively, we may represent the initial seed that is destined to populate the universe. A singular beacon of complexity in an otherwise barren universe that will spread out and propagate exponentially, eventually finding the means to reach out into alternative dimensions before the inevitable heat death of the universe in this dimension.
Bridging time and space, the very last humans, 423 trillion years from now, unrecognisable to our current form, watch on with sadness as the multiuniverse ends, only moments before triggering the birth of a new chain reaction to start the whole process over.
That's whats going to happen, I've decided. I'll start working on it after lunch
but time is purely conceputal idea so surely you could finish this off earlier than lunch - if you really tried. But then again why bother go enjoy a Meatball Maranara Sub with cheese instead, I find it solves most problems.
What's George got to say?
One definition of significance is that it indicates meaning. The universe knows no such thing as meaning. There is however meaning to be found in our own minds as a result of stimulus from the universe.
Another definition is that something that is significant is worthy of note. Worthy of note to whom? The universe cannot note anything. Only we 'note' things.
As such, significance is an entirely human creation & condition. Without us, there is no such thing as significance, and nothing to experience it. Surely that's significant?
It's beautiful because we are a part of the universe. The universe and us are one and the same - there is no us without it, there is no it without us, because we are a product of the same interactions that created [i]everything[/i].
The universe and us are one and the same - there is no us without it, there is no it without us
I'm pretty sure the universe would still exist without us. Plenty of other 'species' have become extinct and the universe didn't end.
Most of what we do damages the place anyway in some way or another.
Perhaps it's better off without us.
😀
GrahamS - [quoteHow significant is a mite on your eyelash to the weather in Hong Kong?
Now I am aware of the mite, I am now concerned about both!
Most of what we do damages the place anyway in some way or another.
Same could be said of the sun, I mean just think of how much hydrogen has been gobbled up by our sun in the last few billion years. Seriously destructive things, stars...
As such, significance is an entirely human creation & condition. Without us, there is no such thing as significance, and nothing to experience it. Surely that's significant?
Bit of a human-centric egoist position that.
Would other life on this planet not "experience" it if we were not here?
And what about the life on other planets?
Re. human brain - yes there may well be more intelligent life elsewhere, that's why I appended "that we know of". Why is a human brain more complex than a dog or a whale? Well, for a start, we're the only ones who do thinks like investigate the universe.
It's not a homocentric viewpoint, I'm not making value judgements about the "worth" of a human versus a whale, it's a simple fact about the processing power of the human brain.
Would other life on this planet not "experience" it if we were not here?
It wouldn't experience being hunted, shot, battery-farmed, run over, hooked in the face and thrown back, swatted, stamped on, burned with a magnifying glass, made extinct ... lots of lovely enjoyable experiences
joao3v16 - MemberThe universe and us are one and the same - there is no us without it, there is no it without us
I'm pretty sure the universe would still exist without us. Plenty of other 'species' have become extinct and the universe didn't end.
Most of what we do damages the place anyway in some way or another.
Perhaps it's better off without us.
So let's see what George says about it, shall we?
Torminalis - MemberAlternatively, we may represent the initial seed that is destined to populate the universe. A singular beacon of complexity in an otherwise barren universe that will spread out and propagate exponentially, eventually finding the means to reach out into alternative dimensions before the inevitable heat death of the universe in this dimension.
Bridging time and space, the very last humans, 423 trillion years from now, unrecognisable to our current form, watch on with sadness as the multiuniverse ends, only moments before triggering the birth of a new chain reaction to start the whole process over.
That's whats going to happen, I've decided. I'll start working on it after lunch
I'm pretty sure that's the end of the last book in James Blish's 'Cities In Flight' series
What's the American translation of 'freddled gruntbuggly'?
It wouldn't experience being hunted, shot, battery-farmed, run over, hooked in the face and thrown back, swatted, stamped on, burned with a magnifying glass, made extinct ... lots of lovely enjoyable experiences
Hunted? I'm pretty sure animals hunt other animals. And swat them, stamp on them, and make them extinct.
Humans do some pretty awful things, but don't pretend that nature would be lovely and fluffy if it wasn't for us.
>>The universe and us are one and the same - there is no us without it, there is no it without us
>I'm pretty sure the universe would still exist without us. Plenty of other 'species' have become extinct and the universe didn't end.
That's not what I mean - the universe would undoubtably exist without us in the future. But we are a creation of the universe in the same way the stars and galaxies are. And yet, short of other life, there is nothing about the stars or galaxies that means they can make value judgements about significance.
As for other life, yes - it would experience the universe. There's nothing to suggest that it would ascribe value to it in the way we do. Equally, there's nothing to suggest that it wouldn't - but given the sheer number of variables I would suggest it is unlikely that other life will be the same as us.
Concerning our destruction tendencies - as a living system we consistently increase the entropy of our surroundings to minimise the entropy within our own system. As life brings an entropy increase within the walls of its own system, the net entropy increase of the universe is minimised through life.
The sun doesn't do this.
And anyway - significance is only a system of classification, a lazy and simple comparison between different things. Why is significance significant? 😉
Concerning our destruction tendencies - as a living system we consistently increase the entropy of our surroundings to minimise the entropy within our own system. As life brings an entropy increase within the walls of its own system, the net entropy increase of the universe is minimised through life.
The sun doesn't do this.
entropy fail?
Individual people are pretty insignificant
Psychopath quote of the week 😉
The Andromeda Galaxy is of no significance to the Oort Cloud. The Galactic black hole matters not a jot to the stars it pulls upon. These things just are.
The opinion of my boss and what I'm having for lunch are significant.
Concerning our destruction tendencies - as a living system we consistently increase the entropy of our surroundings to minimise the entropy within our own system. As life brings an entropy increase within the walls of its own system, the net entropy increase of the universe is minimised through life.
The sun doesn't do this.entropy fail?
Blame [url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life#Negative_entropy ]Schrödinger.[/url] - People aren't a closed system.
If we were to cause a big kick ass..full blown Nuclear war...blew up the moon and perhaps caused a change in the gravitational pull of the planets...I think we would have made our mark!
really?
For the Universe, the galaxies are our small representative volumes, and there are something like 1,000,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy, and there are perhaps something like 1,000,000,000,000 or 10,000,000,000,000 galaxies.
With this simple calculation you get something like 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the Universe.
source [url= http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/How_many_stars_are_there_in_the_Universe ]ESA website[/url]
If you really think destroying a planet or a moon is "significant" then you are showing just how insignificant we really are.
as humans why are we told we are insignificant compared to the universe...
It's a form of fascist, totalitarian propaganda.
Tell everyone that they don't matter, and that other people don't matter, enough times and they'll start to accept it.
Because we are, innit.
[i]To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.[/i]
oh and wrt the op
1. Maybe the universe is insignificant without us...2. to my family (children/wife/parent/brothers/sisters) I am their universe and vice versa.
3.I'm not getting religious...
1 - no - if we all die the universe continues, if the universe dies, so do we
2 - no - if they all die and you don't, you'll soldier on, maybe remarry and have more kids, life goes on, and vice versia
3 - religion begins by trying to explain your place in Great Scheme, so you probably are.
religion begins by trying to explain your place in Great Scheme
So astronomers are innately religious?
The trouble with Humankind is we think we are significant. We need bringing down a peg or two. This will happen, at some point...
😕
So astronomers are innately religious?
No, just like everybody with a full head of black hair is not bald, but not everybody who is not bald has a full head of black hair, or politician are lying shits, but not all lying shits are politicians.
It's a form of fascist, totalitarian propaganda.
Love it.
The universe is a conspiracy to oppress us, man. It's really just a big black curtain with little holes in it. 😀
And anyway - significance is only a system of classification, a lazy and simple comparison between different things. Why is significance significant?
Significance has to be significant! If it wasn't then the first stage in our functioning as a sentient life form would be screwed up. Anything and everything that our senses come in to contact with is primarily assesed by our unconscious brain into "significant" or "insignificant" categories, before moving on to more complicated things like "can I eat it?" "will it hurt me?" "can I shag it?" type categories!
Concerning our destruction tendencies....
Surely "destruction" as a concept is a human construct anyway? All the killing, maiming and suffering we cause provide benefits to other life forms or systems. If people weren't getting killed left right and centre what would all the saprophytes do?!
No, just like everybody with a full head of black hair is not bald, but not everybody who is not bald has a full head of black hair, or politician are lying shits, but not all lying shits are politicians.
Indeed, and not everyone who is trying to establish their place in the universe is [i]probably[/i] religious.
3 - religion begins by trying to explain your place in Great Scheme
And the Bible begins by explaining exactly where we all fit "in the Great Scheme" ...
(But this thread wasn't getting religious, so you didn't read that ^)
I've read several books recently that deal with precisely this subject, all of them taking the perspective that we are absolutely not insignificant, indeed we may be entirely unique to the universe.
The Erie Silence is by Paul Davies and both Alone in the Universe and The Reason Why are by John Gribbin. Both are highly acclaimed scientists in the areas of astrophysics, cosmology etc, as well as acclaimed popular science writers and all three books are fascinating, illuminating, well written and very compelling. They all suggest that our place here is so bewilderingly against the odds that perhaps we aren't that insignificant. Note that neither author takes a religious or spiritual perspective to this conclusion (which in my view would denigrate the credibility of the book).
Pale. Blue. Dot.
Pale. Blue. Dot.
They all suggest that our place here is so bewilderingly against the odds that perhaps we aren't that insignificant.
Scientists they may be, but I'd question their grasp of probability (or your interpretaion of what they wrote). Improbable events happen all the time. The odds of an individual winning the lottery is vanishing small, and yet someone wins almost every week.
The Erie Silence is by Paul Davies and both Alone in the Universe and The Reason Why are by John Gribbin
I've read one Paul Davies book "The Goldilocks Enigma" it was a little crypto-religious
The only John Gribbin book i've read was "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat" I might give "Alone in the Universe" a read.
I don't think you can compare the significance of an individual, society or species to the universe.
It's pointless, significance or otherwise is in the eye of the beholder
Indeed, and not everyone who is trying to establish their place in the universe is probably religious.
what I said was
3 - religion [b]begins[/b] by
and religions take as their starting point how we got here. All religions have a creation theory and most try to explain natural phenomena in terms that made sense when we lived in mud huts and caves. Maybe a bit less relevant today because we know how the sun and moon work and that it isn't because the sun is one eye of the god Horus whilst the other is the moon.
Obviously we're very significant in our own sphere. Our significance to the rest of the universe is minimal as the overwhelming majority of the fabric of the universe isn't sentient. We don't mean anything to dust, gas and radiation. If there is sentience elsewhere its either unaware of us, or totally aware and completely disinterested.
[url= http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120821-how-many-alien-worlds-exist ]Drake Equation[/url]
Fewer than I though to be honest.
The trouble is the span of time a civilization will exist for.
The Drake equation's sceptical partner is [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%27s_paradox ]Fermi's Paradox[/url]
the very last humans, 423 trillion years from now, unrecognisable to our current form, watch on with sadness as the multiuniverse ends, only moments before triggering the birth of a new chain reaction to start the whole process over.
Oooh, do you think Chain Reaction would have a '10% off your first purchase voucher' for that?
The Drake equation's sceptical partner is Fermi's Paradox
And the Fermi Paradox's worrying partner is the Outside Context Problem*. If the galaxy is full of life, but it's not visiting us, then something must be happening to it. A spacefaring culture is going to be much more sophisticated than us, and we know from our own history that when an "advanced" culture meets a less advanced one, the results are never good for the less advanced society.
Maybe we should stop madly broadcasting the X-Factor into space - we don't know what we might be attracting.
*Iain M Banks' name for it, which I think is a good one.
BBSB old chap...
1) OP Said:
I'm not getting religious...
2) You said:
religion begins by trying to explain your place in Great Scheme, so you probably are.
So am I to understand that any search for meaning in the universe is likely to end up as religious?
I tend to find that religion is a mechanism to retrofit facts into ideas and science is the opposite, proving or disproving hypothesis with facts. You seem to be implying that any search for meaning will probably end up being religious.
This is what I was disputing.
Can you tell it is a slow day?
5.my copy of hitch hikers is boxed up while I build some shelves but I'm sure it doesn't say drug store !
Don't know about the book, but in the original radio series it was definately chemist.
.
There were other changes too, for instance Paul Neil Milne Jonston of Redbridge got annoyed at being described as the worst peot in the whole universe and became Paula nacy Milston Jennings in the book. Bloody Martin Smith from Croydon was happy to remain.
And the Hagganenons disapeared entirely, they were replaced in the book by the Disaster Area Stunt Ship, the main man of which was Hotblack Desiato. Adams got that name from an estate agent, he saw it on a board, liked it and rang to ask if he could use it. Thye said yes, and got calls for years afterwards from people saying 'it's a bit cheeky nicking your name from the HitchHiker's Guide.'
.
Anyway, in a universe this size everything is insignificant. By which I mean I mean each object is insignificant, obviously everything together is significant. Back to Aristotle and his heap of pebbles now...
god.
There. I said it.
It's been a while since we had a good old fashioned tear-up.
Come on, then! 😈
I just checked my copy: it says chemist. So the moral is: don't cut and paste data from the first entry thrown up by Google!
OP here
I really am not getting religious in anyway just saying I'm significant in my world...and I hate the way all the media/scientists says we are nothing compared to the universe...get something useful to say that means something to the ordinary person...(waits to be shouted at...)
Neutron stars are fairly significant events in the universe, and we are living, breathing, sentient creatures made from elements created in the core of a neutron star. Therefore our part in the universe is as significant as any other process that goes on.
However, the only way we can expand upon our significance from now on would be to go out and effect the universe in some way, changing our focus from isolationism to expansionism.
I really am not getting religious in anyway just saying I'm significant in my world...and I hate the way all the media/scientists says we are nothing compared to the universe...get something useful to say that means something to the ordinary person...(waits to be shouted at...)
Take a gander at the Deep Field Hubble photo to get a good idea of just how significant you are in the overall scheme of things...
we are living, breathing, sentient creatures made from elements created in the core of a neutron star
Nova or supernova - not really neutron stars. But yes, we are made of stardust, cheesily...
The fact is that the universe could wipe us out in the blink of any eye. Our powers only extend to our planet, and possibly the moon. In the sense, we are insignificant.
I wouldn't take it so personally. The scale of the universe is virtually impossible to comprehend, and therefore the easiest way to convey it to Johnny and Jane Public is to say that even us, with our huge human egos, are insignificant compared to the size and power of the universe within which we make up barely even a calculatable percentage.
tend to find that religion is a mechanism to retrofit facts into ideas
Whereas I look at why we got landed with it in the first place. Pretty much any civilization has wondered why we're here and what we're doing, so every one has come up with some form of explanation as to why we're here, some more entertaining than others. That's how religion starts, by trying to fit an explanation into the observable universe with no understanding of how any of it works because it almost invariably means a God being was involved so there's no real need to explain anything in detail. So if you're questioning our insignificance in the universe (not the nature of the universe itself) then you're well on the way to silly frocks and latin prayers (IMHO). On the other hand, if you're questioning the nature of the universe and pointing out our insignificance in it, then standing on a mountain top with a dopey grin and a nice book/TV deal is more likely
Can you tell it is a slow day?
not just me then?