Quote from: RE300M years because before the Sun goes Red Giant, it starts emitting high energy EM radiation that will make the surface uninhabitable. Not just for people, all the way down to bacteria.
I don't use Red Giant because no one knows what the hell that is, and "the Sun is losing 4 million tons a second of mass....WE'RE DOOMED!!!" is more opaque and helps seperate those with at least 80 IQ points from the usual internet denizen. Let alone doomers just repeating whatever another Apocalyptian has spoon fed them. Peak oil, Yellowstone going boom, aliens lurking in the oceans, blue ocean event, the Mayan Calendar, global cooling, The Population Bomb (since converted more recently to Population Reduction) and so on and so forth.
Quote from: RERelative to Megalodon and all the other creatures it's not just Ego, we ARE different because of the Art, the Science. the Philosophy...all the Thinking things that disappear when the Last of Us dies off.Nah. That is just species egotism speaking. We be special because I be part of "we". That is more of a "We Be Borg" angle. Art, religion, science, I could just as easily say size, teeth and ferocity.
Quote from: REAll those Billions of Man-Hours spent studying for exams, writing poetry, playing Poker, inventing Iphones just time wasters on the way to extinction. Why bother even caring about being alive?
A parent could answer that question easily.
Quote from: REIt is certainly possible that all we amount to are agents of Entropy, I just find it unlikely. The Universe is so well organized it seems unlikely to have popped into existence with no Reason and no Plan. If the Purpose of Living is just to Die, creating a whole Universe with all these neat rules seems like a pretty big waste of time.That at its core is the religious argument, all of them suppose the same thing. We arrived for a purpose, as defined by our deity of choice. Humans really don't like the possibility they are just an accident of all the combinations of biological matter coming together in a certain way and arriving at...them. The Universe is a Monte Carlo simulator, and one of the outcomes is us. And megalodon. And plenty of other unimaginable combinations that silly bipeds can't.
Quote from: REAnyhow, I just have a feeling there is a greater purpose, just we haven't been able to figure it out yet. That's why it's such a bummer we're Extinctifying ourselves so rapidly. We might have figured it out given another Million years.
RE
Ah, odds are we won't come even that close to megalodons reign as king shit of the world's waters. As folks age they think differently, with "what the fuck was I put here for?" at the top of the list. Seems like you have already defined it for yourself, run around, see stuff, have a good time while times are good, hedonism rocks, etc etc. But your point/question is why religion works. It gives an easy explanation, provides purpose and structure, allows individual humans to walk off into the sunset with hope.
At the end of the day, we humans are naught but stardust. And given enough time, might get to be some small contribution to those 4 million tons a second used to bring visible light to some small part of our Universe.