2 Minute History...Wow!

[DesDownunder]

I know I would have been trying to do this if I had the equipment.

As it is I can rejoice in knowing that someone has been this brilliant.

Expand to full screen and turn the sound up loud

[dude]

Wow!

[DesDownunder]

I should add this was done by a student for a school project.

[Madrigal]

The last 10 seconds of that were quite scary. We know it will eventually happen... but fuuuudge.

Good concept, though the first set of images (first half) were sloppily chosen/placed.

[Richard Norway]

To me, humans have a short attention span, at least from what I've seen. Two minutes of the history of our species is probably all that many of us can concentrate on at one time. Sad...but true. If you have any knowledge of what had happened as depicted in those microsecond film bytes, the thoughts of all of the rest of history surrounding that byte should have screamed through your mind, bringing you to the knowledge of the full spectrum of our history as you remember it. And as the next microsecond byte screamed past you, you could connect the previous one to the present one.

Some of the video bytes were taken from what was available at the time, and as our history progressed, our ability to record that history also progressed.

All I can say is that this student hit the proverbial nail on the head. They got us to look at ourselves...but really to concentrate on ourselves...to connect histories historical bytes...and look at what we have wrought.

It's good to watch history unfold itself on CNN, but it happens slowly. What an insightful way to put it all together for those of us that seem to lose the big picture, being wrapped up in daily detail.

[EleCivil]

Very cool video.

Here's something staggering:

If that video had been to scale (homo sapiens having been around for ~100,000 years vs. the Earth's ~4.7 billion), there would have been (if my figures are adding up right) about 1533 hours of footage before the two minutes where humans showed up. Meaning, if we wanted to watch Earth's history compressed to this time scale, we would be watching for about 64 days before we got to the part with our particular species...and then it'd be over two minutes later.

All the advancements we've made in the last, say, hundred years - scientifically, socially, etc. - would fly by so fast that our brains would barely register them. You'll notice, too, that in this video, the majority of the "modern, civilized" era was represented by our various wars. Again, if we put all of Earth's history to this scale, the amount of time we've spent building and creating would be a blink compared to the amount of time we've spent killing each other and smashing things. An outside observer would note that humans, as a whole, have spent the majority of their time on this planet being terrible to each other.

[Cole Parker]

An outside observer would note that humans, as a whole, have spent the majority of their time on this planet being terrible to each other.

Which, I believe has been the basis of several sci-fi movies and books, hasn't it?

C

[Paul_and_Paco]

I once saw a video of Michelangelo's life in art, much like this one, also set to music. It was three minutes long, and done by a professional artist. Do you know how old the student was who accomplisted this piece?

The only parts I had trouble with were that most of the footage seemed to be USA centered, and the final scenes that seemed so fatalistic. To just give up to the "inevitable", sounds like giving in to me. I am a fighter. I refuse to just give up.

[DesDownunder]

Paul, it's being realistic to foresee that our planet will cease to exist, if not in the immediate future, then certainly when our sun finally expires. But you are correct in thinking that we should never give up. Human existence is really the only way that we know that the cosmos is aware of itself. So long as we keep trying to extend that awareness...our awareness, and whatever our consciousness becomes, then it is unlikely we will become extinct. What we become is at least influenced by our willingness to adapt, and be more than we thought possible.

The inevitable doesn't have to be an end, it can also be a beginning.

For me, the video ends with wondrous possibilities spiralling through the cosmos.

As EleCivil notes, humanity's existence is a cosmic blink or two, and the real threat to our existence is from our not overcoming our confrontations in wars.

And yes Cole, if we do ourselves in, it won't be because Hollywood didn't warn us, although I'm hoping for a happy ending.

[EleCivil]

The only parts I had trouble with were that most of the footage seemed to be USA centered, and the final scenes that seemed so fatalistic. To just give up to the "inevitable", sounds like giving in to me. I am a fighter. I refuse to just give up.

Agreed about the USA-centric part. We've only been around for 200 years compared to say, India's 5500+ years. Think about the kind of change that's taken place there over that length of time. That would make a good video on its own.

As far as the fatalism...well, yeah, kinda. Eventually Earth will go. Maybe by then we'll have colonized other planets, so that humanity will still be around. But eventually, those planets will go. And so on, and so on. In the 60's and 70's a lot of absurdist authors used the idea of the heat death of the universe - the notion that eventually all the stars would burn out and the universe would be reduced to a cold, barren soup of entropy - to poke at both our pettiness and our pretentions. "Why are you fighting? What are you bragging about? Don't you realize that the heat death of the universe is only a few billion years away, at which point - win or lose - none of your little squabbles will have mattered?" While it's not something I'd prefer to think about constantly, it is a good way of staying humble.

I believe the current prediction, rather than heat death, is "The Big Crunch" - sort of the Big Bang in reverse. Eventually, as astral bodies pull further and further apart, they'll start to lose momentum from the initial "Bang" until they stop...at which point gravity will start to draw them back toward each other, faster and faster, until they all cruch down together into a singularity. And then it will explode, and it'll all start again. And maybe 17 billion years from then, someone quite similar to me will be typing a sentence quite similar to this on a machine that may or may not be made from the very same particles from which this computer was made. I don't know how valid that hypothesis is - I haven't researched it very thoroughly, myself - but it's a bit more romantic than heat death. Haha.

Oh man, it's 3:00 a.m. already!? See what happens when I don't sleep? My posts get increasingly stranger.

[DesDownunder]

In the 60s, there was a popular theory which posited that the size of the Universe was so large that there were many 'Earths' each with exact copies of our history and population. If true that would mean that are 'many' DesDownUnders typing exactly these words on several Earths at the same time as I am typing them.

I prefer to think I am a little more unique than that...vain person that we are...I mean, I am.

As for the universe (Cosmos) collapsing upon itself to once again expand, will that episode of the big bang theory be a repeat, or a brand new series? Will Sheldon still be played by a gay actor?

Maybe we can think of it like breathing in and breathing out. But then, it was the Upanishads, I think, who said ever time we breathe in, the universe breathes out, (and vice versa.)

I like to think that our awareness is the consciousness of the Cosmos, in as much as we are its manifestation that is aware of itself; or more lyrically:

"Man is the eye through which the Universe sees itself."

About as close as we can get to expressing what we know, was summed up by the physicist, Eddington when he wrote, "Something unknown, is doing we don't know what."

[EleCivil]

Haha, how did I know you'd be the one to bring up the Upanishads, Des? Tat tvam asi!

But yeah, I was thinking a bit of the Mahavakyas when I wrote that. Combine the idea that all consciousness is eventually indistinguishable from the universe itself, and that the Big Bang, Big Crunch, and the period in between coincide with Brahma's creation of the universe, Shiva's destruction of the universe, and Vishnu's preservation of life in between, and the eventual destruction of everything doesn't sound so bad.

[Paul_and_Paco]

"Why are you fighting? What are you bragging about? Don't you realize that the heat death of the universe is only a few billion years away, at which point - win or lose - none of your little squabbles will have mattered?" While it's not something I'd prefer to think about constantly, it is a good way of staying humble.

I am not bragging. I was not even refering to the death of our world by heat. I was talking about the emphasis on war, and our possible self-destruction, other than forgeting to take care of our enviroment. I think the human race has accomplished more than finding new ways of eradicating each other.

[EleCivil]

I am not bragging. I was not even refering to the death of our world by heat. I was talking about the emphasis on war, and our possible self-destruction, other than forgeting to take care of our enviroment. I think the human race has accomplished more than finding new ways of eradicating each other.

Oh, I didn't mean to make it seem like that quote was directed at you - that was just an illustration of absurdist thought toward annihilation, more directed at the very people starting wars in the first place. As if to say to world leaders "The universe is going to disolve into nothingness, and you're going to waste the time we've got killing each other? Why? Over land that will cease to exist? Over ideology that will all be meaningless in the end? How absurd."

[DesDownunder]

Absurd indeed, EleCivil, I couldn't agree more.

[Gee Whillickers]

If that video had been to scale (homo sapiens having been around for ~100,000 years vs. the Earth's ~4.7 billion), there would have been (if my figures are adding up right) about 1533 hours of footage before the two minutes where humans showed up. Meaning, if we wanted to watch Earth's history compressed to this time scale, we would be watching for about 64 days before we got to the part with our particular species...and then it'd be over two minutes later.

All the advancements we've made in the last, say, hundred years - scientifically, socially, etc. - would fly by so fast that our brains would barely register them. You'll notice, too, that in this video, the majority of the "modern, civilized" era was represented by our various wars. Again, if we put all of Earth's history to this scale, the amount of time we've spent building and creating would be a blink compared to the amount of time we've spent killing each other and smashing things. An outside observer would note that humans, as a whole, have spent the majority of their time on this planet being terrible to each other.

I liked the video, but that was my first thought too upon watching it. It was terribly non-linear. I can understand why we place more importance on what we've done, but it does give a very inaccurate picture. Also, it's worth noting that according to most sociologists and historians, despite our general sense that we live in violent times and things are getting worse in this regard, very much the opposite is actually true. What has happened instead is that our knowledge of what is going on at any given moment has expanded radically from the small area in which we each live to the entire global population. We hear about more violence so it seems there is more violence.

In fact, despite all the real violence and problems that certainly do exist, we live in the most peaceful time in human history, and despite lots of bumps along the way, this has increased fairly linearly for the past ten thousand years. Pick a random person off the face of the earth, then pick a whole bunch more until you have a good sample size. Then do the same thing at all the points of history back to cave-man days. Measure their likelihood of dying by violence, being involved in war or combat, or having an immediate family member die by violence. This number has gone down (with a few notable exceptions) steadily.

A hunter-gatherer male of 15-30 years of age was more likely to die by violence from another human being than from any other cause. Mostly due to inter-tribal warfare. By medieval times this number had dropped significantly. Disease became the biggest killer, and despite the horrible warfare the chances of dying by violence, even for the highest demographic (young male adults) dropped well below 50%. As history rolled on, this number continued to drop, yes, even despite World War I and II. Now, the probability hovers at around 0.7%. That's miniscule. We are not getting more violent. The opposite is true.

I believe the current prediction, rather than heat death, is "The Big Crunch" - sort of the Big Bang in reverse. Eventually, as astral bodies pull further and further apart, they'll start to lose momentum from the initial "Bang" until they stop...at which point gravity will start to draw them back toward each other, faster and faster, until they all cruch down together into a singularity. And then it will explode, and it'll all start again. And maybe 17 billion years from then, someone quite similar to me will be typing a sentence quite similar to this on a machine that may or may not be made from the very same particles from which this computer was made. I don't know how valid that hypothesis is - I haven't researched it very thoroughly, myself - but it's a bit more romantic than heat death. Haha.

Sadly, no, the evidence is pretty solid, and continuing to mount, that the universe will indeed continue to expand and everything will slowly fizzle out until there is nothing left but cold, inert, dust. Forever. Probably in another few hundred billion years.

Don't despair though! Despite the inevitable end of everything into a cosmic version of the dust on the back shelf in your basement corner, there's a lot of fascinating and weird stuff going on. Black holes, quantum mechanics, string theory, supersymmetry, gauge-gravity duality, brane theory, and on and on... Who knows, when the final star fizzles down to a dying ember in the vast darkness of forever maybe our great (x10 to the nth) grandchildren will simply pop over to a fresh universe and plant a nice garden, build themselves a comfy chair in front of a nice fireplace, and swap stories about the good old days in the previous universe.

[Cole Parker]

Why talk about the end? It's the beginning that fascinates me. What was the beginning? And what was there before that?

C

[EleCivil]

In fact, despite all the real violence and problems that certainly do exist, we live in the most peaceful time in human history, and despite lots of bumps along the way, this has increased fairly linearly for the past ten thousand years. Pick a random person off the face of the earth, then pick a whole bunch more until you have a good sample size. Then do the same thing at all the points of history back to cave-man days. Measure their likelihood of dying by violence, being involved in war or combat, or having an immediate family member die by violence. This number has gone down (with a few notable exceptions) steadily.

I haven't read it yet, but this book that makes that case is sitting in my "to-read" pile. I'll get to it eventually! Haha.

Despite the inevitable end of everything into a cosmic version of the dust on the back shelf in your basement corner, there's a lot of fascinating and weird stuff going on. Black holes, quantum mechanics, string theory, supersymmetry, gauge-gravity duality, brane theory, and on and on...

Speaking of, I nearly posted this in the News section, but figured it was kind of esoteric - just yesterday, researchers at CERN announced that they've found new evidence of the Higgs-Boson! ...Still not enough to say they've "Discovered" it, but along the lines of "We've got everything short of actually seeing it."

The Sci-Fi side of my brain is spinning with possibilities of what we could do if we could understand - and eventually manipulate - the very thing that gives mass to matter.

[DesDownunder]

This is all somewhat Awesome, Dudes.

Let's back up to the historical references to violence. It's interesting that there is a difference between instinctual violence for survival of the aggressor's life, including the protection of offspring. Strangely enough there is evidence in some species that the offspring are not safe from being killed by their own parents. However as far as we can tell such infanticide is not due to their young refusing to believe in their parent's faith...

This is where we might consider the difference between instinctual violence and intellectual, thought provoked, violence. Once we attain self-awareness we introduce the possibility of premeditated violence, but this is accompanied with thought acting as conscience, and then sense of 'guilt' comes into play with all its psychological implications. Indeed, the guilt mechanism is associated with the religious condition to find explanation for existence. This along with our empathy for the suffering of each other, is the real source of morality. Of course it is all much more convoluted and complex than I can go into in this thread because of the variations of belief, and the corruptions of power, but it is essentially true for most rules of conduct that manifest themselves into religions.

Fundamentally, the evolutionary displacement of instinct with intellect occurs with self awareness, at least partially. This ongoing process has assisted our survival but it also threatens us.

On the one hand our intellect and science provides with bigger and better tools with which to annihilate each other. On the otherhand our arts and science have produced not only the greatest reason to enjoy our existence but also hope for its ongoing longevity.

It is ironic that our human achievements provide us with longer life, a decrease in violence, and extraordinary cultures resplendent of art in various forms. Those same achievements can become the means to kill more of us in a single instance than all previous acts of violence combined. Our laboratories are dangerous places.

Then we come to the concern, the seeming hopelessness and futility of it all, because our self-awareness now seems to be global, even somewhat extraterrestrial, making us aware that everything will one day end, that ultimately the fires of the cosmos will become dark stars, and life will have ceased, everywhere in all dimensions of the cosmos.

This thought forgets, overlooks, even ignores that as evolutionary beings we are still adapting, growing developing, perhaps even mutating. Whatever we are doing, there is one thing that gives us hope, and that is our pursuit of knowledge. Look at Higgs-Boson, for example. The thought occurs to me, that early though it is in this investigation with the CERN accelerator, and what might yet be learned, it is not unreasonable to project that we may well discover the means to light the fires of dead suns. Imagine if we could give CPR to the universe. Is that our destiny...to be the guardians of life throughout the universe?

As Richard Norway quotes in his signature panel,

"Our deepest fear is NOT that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."

Marianne Williamson

As immodest as it might seem to suggest such a thing, it must in all humility be said, that could be our destiny even if not in our present form.

The danger is that we do it so we can be violent. At the moment we are trying to learn that our affinity for each other is in our love for each other, symbolising our love of life itself. We haven't quite got the hang of that, yet.

The thought also occurs, that maybe, it wouldn't be the first time the universe has given CPR to itself.

[Cole Parker]

What is the general concensus? If we do explore the universe, if we do find other advanced lifeforms, will we treat them with respect and expect them to be peaceful, or will we treat them as we would enemies?

Are the world's leaders warlike as a first thought, or tolerant, accepting and peaceful?

C

[Merkin]

If we and other nations continue to develop and train personnel for space programs through existing military structures and models we will inevitably end up with mission commanders and other quasi-military personnel manning space flights. I would anticipate 'them vs. us' attitudes to prevail, and shoot first actions to dominate over wait and see precautions.

[Cole Parker]

That's precisely what I think, too, and it's scary as hell.

C

[Gee Whillickers]

I think it will depend a lot on context. If we both want the same limited nearby resources, then look out. The bullets (or lasers or whatever) will be flying before you can yell, "Death to aliens!" But, if their needs are so different from our needs that there is little overlap in need for land, air, other resources, etc, then I'm not sure too many people would bother. Wars are expensive and demand effort, time, and resources. The payoff is usually territory or even more resources. Without these factors in play hopefully it wouldn't make sense to fight.

The other thing: If we ever manage to figure out a way to travel outside our own solar system, even if we meet other life doing the same, and even if they are interested in the same resources, space is kinda big. Actually it's really big. In fact, it's ridiculously, hugely, unimaginably big. It's still likely to be easier and cheaper to get what we want from a nearby spot than to fight over it. Hopefully. Maybe.

[DesDownunder]

Conflicts with extraterrestrials are really a science fiction consideration and the likelihood of even a peaceful starship quasi-military organisation as in Star Trek is going to test the best resolve of mankind. As I said, "At the moment we are trying to learn that our affinity for each other is in our love for each other, symbolising our love of life itself. We haven't quite got the hang of that, yet."

Even in this thread we can't seem to avoid reacting against a threat which is only in our minds.

Mankind does need to stop instinctively reacting to existence, and, as we have done and indeed, are doing, use our intelligence to investigate, assess existence as it is. That includes of course, over-throwing myths and superstitions, whether they be religious or even secular in nature. No alien is going to see us a threat if they have developed space travel. It is more then likely that if they are nearby, that they have a beacon on the other side of Pluto that warns space travellers to stay away from the third planet from the sun, as the inhabitants have not yet come to terms with their self-awareness.

Should we develop weapons capable of defending ourselves? Yes, we may need them to destroy a runaway asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Should we develop weapons to attack space travellers simply because we want their resources? No...there is the prime directive to, "First do no harm." If that seems too passive it's because we, as a race, have not yet learned to not defend ourselves by adopting the tactics of our enemies.

There is a parallel in all this if we compare the LGBTQ claiming its human rights equality, but not going in to the churches of the religions and doing to them what they would do to us; victimise us, incarcerate us, stone us or execute us.

LBTQ people may well be the peace-makers. After all, most of us would much rather make love than war. Maybe the aliens are super cute.

[colinian]

Cole, it depends on who we meet first. Will they treat us with respect? Will they be peaceful? Will they treat us as enemies?

On the other hand, as you said, what will we be like then? Will we be warlike? Will we be tolerant? Will we be accepting? Will we be peaceful?

What is the probability that anyone reading this post has of being around when such a meeting takes place? I think it's asymptotic with zero.

Colin