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[Closed] What's mankind's greatest achievement?

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Radio 4


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 10:10 am
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 10:24 am
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 10:30 am
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On a serious note agriculture and just as important trade.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 10:53 am
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:02 am
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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!


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:08 am
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:10 am
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'Dwarf wheat - Norman Borlaug saved over a billion lives with that one.'

Yeah but a billion dwarves had to die


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:13 am
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War. No other species does it

Ants too


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:15 am
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:15 am
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That's the problem really - as anyone who's played Civilization knows, all inventions are built on previous inventions.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:16 am
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+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


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:24 am
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Immunisation, printing press, democracy, abolition of slavery, Shimano SPDs.

All up there IMO.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:29 am
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[img] [/img]


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:42 am
 Sui
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:53 am
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Greggs cheese and onion pasties

Sandwiched between a buttered oven bottom.

hmmm it must be nearly lunchtime


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 11:57 am
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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 ๐Ÿ™‚


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 12:03 pm
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 12:12 pm
 MSP
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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 ๐Ÿ˜†


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 12:22 pm
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Glentress Forest ๐Ÿ˜‰ especially midweek when's its quiet!


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 12:24 pm
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 1:26 pm
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 1:31 pm
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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!


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 1:36 pm
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we'd just sit around [s]thinking[/s] arguing on the internet all day.

FTFY


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 1:43 pm
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To con millions of people into believing there's a man who lives up above us

[img] [/img]


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 1:47 pm
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OP - can we inform the Royal Society that we've come to a satisfactory conclusion yet?


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 1:48 pm
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 1:54 pm
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With the same sentiment as Crikey but more broadly: Socialism.

Or maybe the penis beaker.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 2:10 pm
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 2:11 pm
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 2:16 pm
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Muppet wrangler. You comment fits with the often said nuclear fusion joke "nuclear fusion is 10years away and it always has been"


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 2:24 pm
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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.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 2:33 pm
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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 ๐Ÿ™‚


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 6:44 pm
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Electric generator. Seems that the modern world is built on them.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 7:33 pm
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This surely!!

[img] [/img]


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 7:44 pm
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Uplift for bikes


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 7:57 pm
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What's mankind's greatest achievement?

Greed ...

๐Ÿ˜ก


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 8:00 pm
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survival.
the fact that we have managed to survive despite having the means to destroy ourselves many times over is surely an achievement.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 8:24 pm
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Chocolate cheesecake


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 8:25 pm
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[s]Chocolate [/s]cheesecake


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 8:27 pm
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That is a very fair point


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 8:30 pm
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The cable tie?


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 8:36 pm
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Lately I had a pizza with a sausage incased in the crust... what will they think of next?

But before that, a few hundred years ago some German fella invented the printing press .... that went on to help quite a few of the other achievements above.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 9:20 pm
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feminism


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 9:23 pm
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To be self aware.


 
Posted : 11/10/2013 9:30 pm
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It might come as a terrible shock to some people but humans managed for thousands without computers. And, unbelievably, IT wallahs

True, but I bet they were doing some other job that involved pretending to be busy while getting paid good money to do whatever the 18th centry version of surfing the internet was.


 
Posted : 12/10/2013 10:28 am
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