> So, ignoring all the "spiritualism" stuff, which is (as yet) scientifically unprovable
I think that the "as yet" words are the key there. Of course with our own science the claim may sound absurd, and even when you actually try to prove/disprove it with the basic science, and start digging things up and thinking, it might as well turn out that this is BS.
If I were to check all of his claims by myself, I suppose that many of them will turn out to be either untrue or unprovable (see another thread in this discussion, about global warming). The only problem is that humans were making many "true" statements in the past that later (with the advancements in science) were proved to be false, or were generalized and proved to only be true under certain circumstances. We cannot assume that we know any final, unchangeable truth. We can only observe the universe and refine our models.
And as of the soul, I'm quoting the alien verbatim (in Polish):
"Na dzien dzisiejszy mozna dowiesc istnienia ciala niematerialnego za pomoca aparatu do fotografii kirlianowskiej (...)" -- which would roughly translate to: "As of today, it is possible to prove the existence of non-material body using kirlian photography" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography). The experiment is very simple: you cut off a finger and photograph the hand. On the photograph, the finger is still present -- even after many years since the damage has been done. If you'd like to see some really neat stuff on the photos though, you should ask a channeler to pay you a visit.
There's another, a lot easier, a little less scientifical, and also a bit less brutal experiment: rub your hands intensively for a few seconds, and put them about two feet away from each other, in front of your chest, with inner sides facing each other in parallel. Then start SLOWLY bringing the hands closer to each other -- at some point you're going to feel slight resistance, as if you were holding a balloon or something. If there's someone else in the room, he/she could wave a hand between your hands -- you will most probably feel the resistance disappear. (I'm not a native English speaker, so these instructions are not exactly as precise as they would be in Polish. Blame my English teachers.)
I think that these two things put the "spirituality" topic in a much different light.
Interesting. There was a time that I also were fascinated in Jedi as a religion and a way of living, although I realized that it is merely just another religion, and that believing it doesn't actually give me any force powers. (later I also concluded that the path of the light side is actually harmful to a being - denying oneself the right to express negative emotions leads to even more mind fuckup than toying with the dark side. If you read the history of the SW universe and the Jedi Order carefully, you'd find that the light v. dark schism is actually artificial (and harmful))
If you're interested in actually working, Jedi-like "magic", you might want to research the topic of Huna and shamanism (go pick your fav esoteric bookstore). It won't give you an ability to hurl force lightning on your enemies, but knowing how to cure oneself through meditation is a really useful skill that I'm very glad I've learned.
Actually, the supposed alien is almost perfectly sure that this plan will fail. Either due to the race to the throne among the villains, or because of the revolutionists, who will be already outraged at the time (and the war would just make them start acting). That doesn't mean that some group doesn't have such plan, and that it isn't getting closer to completion (and epic failure! ^^).
Uh, and one more thing -- from what I've read about the supposed "real" alien tech, our current weaponry is stones and sticks. It's somewhat relieving that they are friendly (and willing to defend us from those who aren't). There were almost no details about the alien tech in the book (except for the terraforming tech I've mentioned), exactly because most of it could be used by an irresponsible human. However, the supposed alien claims that the secret labs have a control over a group of people whose mental capabilities sound... Not human. Well, not human, mainly because most humans (contrary to the better spiritually evolved aliens) cannot lurk into the future, observe parallel universes or use telepathy to read minds.
I have my own personal reasons to rather believe the last claim than not: I have used telepathy myself (well: it just often turns out that very often I think exactly the same thing as some other person -- way too often for a mere coincidence); I know a woman who can count the number of people in a room with her eyes shut (except for one girl (my ex, coincidence?), who seems just "invisible" to mediums); another guy regularly wins on a lottery -- maths says the odds are 1/57 to hit three numbers (6 from 49), he wins far more often than that; and so on.
Well, I think that if they have mastered things like interstellar travel or telepathy, are remembering their memories from the previous lives, and are in almost every single aspect technologically and spiritually superior from us, they would have some way of keeping the moon from imploding, keeping the mass/size ratio intact, etc., wouldn't they?
Well, this is your POV. I'm not really that much interested in this topic to argue with you. I'd rather waste time discussing OS design, music, sailing, conspiracy theories, theology... I'm not a globalwarmist.
> (if you are mentally capable of understanding simplistic mathematics)
It is so much easy to assume that someone is stupid, isn't it? Any other reason to insult me?
> Sounds PLAUSABLE, but there is no evidence at this time.
I'm not a native English speaker, so sometimes I use a word that does not exactly mean what I mean. I am very, very, very aware of the lack of any evidence -- otherwise, if there would be the evidence, we wouldn't be where we are now. Oh, the world would be SO much different.
> There are no civilizations that appeared out of nowhere, > just you and the authors ignorance.
OK, I'd be happy if you can point me at any evidence of the Bering Strait theory. Any reason why people would want to travel one whole continent before starting to develop a civilization. Or simpler: a reason why the civ in South America was more advanced than the one at the north. This is something I'll be very interested to see. (!~)
> Inspire and not teach? what a crock.
Maybe I have misused the word "teach". I have meant something along what Christians think of the Bible -- the author of the book I've read clearly stated at the end that he's not interested in believers or followers, and that he wanted us to think for ourselves. I wouldn't be surprised if he intentionally dropped a small lie here or there, just so we can experience the effects of simply "believing". I wouldn't be surprised at all if the whole book were a hoax, yet still made with the ideas of the claimed purpose in mind -- to make such "open minded" people like me a little more critical.
> Spreading fanciful lies like this HURTS people.
Is an opinion a lie? Is quoting a supposed liar, while stating that his words are not mine, lying?
On another side of the same coin: let's assume for a moment that we have just discovered that global warming is merely sun's mood. Does the liar suddenly become someone who's telling the truth? Was he a liar or truth-teller? What if another evidence shows that GW is actually caused by human activities on Earth? Does the truth-teller become a liar again?
My personal view is that as long there's any controversy on a given subject, there is no truth or lie, there are only opinions.
Oh, and btw, I always liked you, and I still do. Your "~" is an interesting idea, but doesn't seem to catch on.
With one of the moons in our solar system (argh, never remember its name, I promise to find the references ASAP) being artificial, and in the shape of the Death Star, I wouldn't be so eager to joke:)
Yeah, I have noticed many small inconsistencies across the book by myself. For example: TSA (The Supposed Alien) enumerates twelve stages of spiritual evolution, from primitive bacteria to uniting with what could be called "god" (humans are supposedly on the 4th stage - they are able to think abstractly and create a civilization). The next stage would be becoming aware of the reincarnation, having all the memories of the past lives back, becoming able to contact what TSA calls "the Universe's Memory" - a spirit that is able to objectively retrieve any exact sequence of events that ever happened (like a video tape of some sort). OK, I'm open minded enough to not discard this at the first glance, but not enough to believe this outright.
Then, in another chapter, TSA mentions that the Earth is the only place in the whole galaxy (he hadn't said anything about other galaxies or universes (he's claiming there are many)) in which "the Law of Karma" applies -- in short, the law is an artificial creation that tried to "repair" some of "god"'s "mistakes", by introducing karma - it works exactly like here on/. - you get good karma for doing good and bad for doing evil. But the law has a side effect - the karma carries on through the incarnations, and causes humans to not remember their previous lives. From the context, I concluded: there was a time in our history when we were on a higher level of evolution, and karma has devolved us.
This is a grand inconsistency -- in another chapter, TSA claims that no being in the whole history of the creation (== all the universes) has ever devolved into something less, and that this is simply fsckin' impossible due to the all-loving nature of "god" (== the creation). Furthermore, if the 4th stage of spiritual evolution is the only stage where the beings are (somewhat) aware, but still cannot access their past lives' memories, does it mean that there is no single planet but Earth that is on the 4th stage? Or that karma is not as artificial as he claims it is?
There are many more subtle inconsistencies, and while I believe that TSA could've simply overlooked many things (hey, he's just a hum-- err, an alien), these are the reasons why I've chosen "let's wait and see" attitude.
==
However, the "World War -1" is a very different thing. You are talking about destroying the world we know; TSA has talked about destroying the world that was there in the past. From the description of his own homeworld: they have no countries, there are only about 400,000 of people on his planet, they use no electronic devices (he claims they have had access to superior tech for millions of years), they don't live in cities, but rather in big houses far away from each other (they also live in multilateral families == 5-15 adults in one home, and about the same amount of children), and so on. TSA also mentioned, that this is their second civilization - Saleinji (his homeworld) was almost completely destroyed with a giant meteor, and they've survived only because they've terraformed another two planets of their solar system long time ago, and re-terraformed Saleinji after the catastrophe. The second civilization was way different from the first, and it repaired many of the mistakes (e.g. by not letting people overpopulate the globe or divide the land into countries ruled by politicians -- they're all libertarians now).
TSA claimed that Earth's ancient civilization also used a very different tech, and simply lived in a "different world". When reasoning about it, we'd have to take into account that: they might have not known the plastic (or had something superior), they might have not lived in big cities, there might have been less of them, they might have had X, Y, and didn't knew Z, etc. TSA also claims that one side of the conflict worked on a weather control system (for military use -- the possession of that system was the probable cause of the war).
What's more -- TSA says it straight and outright: the ancient humans were *very* different (but not diff
http://smn.klm.net.pl/kosmita3.pdf -- it's in Polish, and the book has been released just a few weeks ago (and it's an alpha version, btw), so it hasn't been translated to any other languages yet (although the author himself is encouraging readers to translate the work (he seems to be a moderate fan of open source -- as I mentioned, the tales about Saleinji (the planet) and the Saleinjians have a value in themselves)).
Back on the topic -- from what I have read from the summary, they're measuring the effect on a moon-based station. You argue that the equipment is cheap -- I do not know the exact costs of sending such stuff to the orbit, let alone moon, so I guess my choice is to either believe your word or not:) And even assuming "our" results as valid, how long have we been observing the sun like that? The supposed aliens could have observed our solar system (and, since they've mastered interstellar travel, other systems as well) for millions of years. If we assume that they're really aliens, and that they do not lie to us, this renders our own conclusions somewhat less accurate.
But here we fall into something I call "the Bible trap" -- if we assume the Bible to be true, the Bible has an unquestionable proof of its own trueness:)
has an elaborate explanation of all the moon-related anomalies. I would just simply cut&paste a quote from that book, but it probably would be of no use to most/.ers (because, it's, well, in Polish, and while it's my native language, I'm never good at translating stuff -- too much CPU overhead for my brain).
Also... some scientists argue that the mass of Jupiter could have probably caused the 5th planet to not form at all, the billions of years ago when our solar system formed itself, and the asteroids were there from the beginning. I think not; some of these asteroids have natural satellites of other asteroids (!), and that simply could not last for billions of years -- the tidal forces would crush the rocks after a mere few millions of years.
Well, once I've been modded troll, flamebait, insightful, informative, interesting and funny (each of these a couple of times), all in one post (the post was somewhat controversial, but I clearly stated that it was merely my own opinion -- but, sadly, most people seem not to get the difference between a fact and an opinion). Since then, slight disagreements between/. mods no longer surprise me.
Dunno, do you have any references about the warming? Any reason why the scientists shouldn't fake the results to get more funding?
The fake UFO attack sounds somewhat probable. After all that's what I'd do if I had a few spare aircrafts that look alien enough, a few spare bucks in one hand, US govt in another, and an ambition of taking over the world. I think we'll have interesting times watching how Obama is going to perform as the president.
An ancient, advanced civilization on Earth also sounds reasonable (in this context of course). From what I know about Mesopotamia, it really looks like the civilization happened "out of nowhere". Also the Aztecs - the "official" story talks about Bering Strait, but if I were Indians, I wouldn't bother migrating that far to the south to form a civilization there, I'd just settle on the north -- please notice, the Aztec civilization seems *much* older than their northern cousins.
As I said, I'm not going to believe any of this until I see enough evidence (and I don't think it'll show up any time soon, if it would at all). But the book was still nice to read (the supposed alien had many interesting and somewhat enlightening views on politics and ethics, a few chapters were about life on his planet, and he underlined many times that he doesn't give a fuck if anyone believes him, and he'd be even happier if nobody would believe and instead would think for himself, and that his primary goal was to inspire, not teach. The book would still be great even with a clear "SF" label on it).
The distance between every Nth planet and the sun is always (a*(N**2))+(b*N)+c (I forgot the exact values of a,b,c but you can easily check this by yourself if you're interested), with one exception: the 5th planet between Mars and Jupiter, that has been (IMO) most probably destroyed.
There are of course theories that civilizations could have existed on all three (Earth, Mars, the 5th). Let's just not care about the reasons about why the hypothetical 5th planet could've been destroyed, if it was done by intelligent beings or if it was a natural catastrophe, or whatever else, let's just assume for a while that it somehow exploded:
I imagine that the blast could've destroyed life, oceans and atmosphere on Mars, and on Earth, caused what the Bible refers to as the Great Flood.
(disclaimer: I'm not Christian, nor a member of any other religion, before you all start bitching.)
Err, I see a small difference between: being interested in a book, waiting and seeing if it's going to be true, and: taking part in an aggressive, greedy, mind-washing cult that is no less hypocritical than the Catholic Church (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Zone_(Scientology) ). Maybe you should get an idea of what Scientology is?
I'm equally against all religions, including atheism.
I have recently read a book that was supposedly written by an alien. He claimed that: the Moon is empty inside and is a home to a race of living beings that are on a very high level of spiritual evolution, the global warming is caused solely by the sun (and the other planets of the solar system are warming up too), that there was a very advanced (more advanced than ours, both technologically and spiritually) civilization on Earth millenia ago, that vanished due to a world war in which nuclear weapons were used, that the fact that Mesopotamian or Aztec civilizations seemed to appear "out of nowhere" is due to the survivors of the ancient WW, the lack of visible "side effects" (radiation) of the WW is due to a terraforming technology that involved "changing the atomic state of chemical elements by shooting out protons and electrons using condensed streams of photons" (or however someone more fluent in English would translate this from Polish), which is the technology we are going to use to recover Earth after World War III (which is going to start in a few decades), that humans are the only race in our galaxy that does not preserve their memories during reincarnation (this ought to be a side effect of an artificial "law of Karma", and could be undone if we wish to), that there is a great disproportion between the state of our technological and spiritual advancement (again, the greatest in the galaxy), that we are in a constant danger from a few alien races that would want us dead (they're supposed to have weapons that could destroy souls -- a final death, reincarnation impossible) and Earth exploited to their benefit, that the "Galactic Union" is taking great measures to fend them off until we are able to defend ourselves, that aliens are not going to reveal themselves, because in the past such events started a few religious cults (which are the sources of religion on our planet, and that our planet is the only one on which religion ever happened -- everyone else just *knows* that reincarnation is happening, because they're *experiencing* it), and that the US government (or rather: whoever runs the government) is planning a *fake* "alien invasion", using their own half-baked UFOs to attack the Earth (and then take over all the armies of the world to "fend off" the fake attack, and then create a worldwide regime) -- as of the last one, I wouldn't be surprised -- the ground is already being prepared, see all the/. threads about surveillance, taking away our freedom, etc.
My opinion: even if this is bullshit, every good lie has a kernel of truth in it. I'm going to sit and observe, and take action if some of the things that that (supposed) alien is claiming would turn out to be true.
Are you saying that I am saying that I think that imagination should replace the technology altogether, and people should live in caves of their own minds?
I'm stating that I'm worried with the current tendency to do exactly the opposite - to replace the imagination with tech and make people brainless zombies (which is also sitting in caves). The TV is a brainwashing machine, yet even people who admit it still spend their days watching it. Going HD, then VR, then $whateverthenewtechofthefuture, isn't actually any progress, it's just getting better at standing still.
Tech should be used as a tool to help us express ourselves, and to help in our daily lives. I can imagine a house that I'd want to live in, and then use a CAD program to design it, hand the project over to an architect that would revise it, and later see my new home becoming real. Much different from simply daydreaming, isn't it?
I have a good enough imagination to both imagine the application I just described, and to enjoy its augmentation of my senses.
:)
But indeed, most adults don't. Which is why goggles like these would be popular.
That's right. But while one cannot grow a replacement arm if they lose one, having artificial implants to make up for the lost imagination is a step in wrong direction. Oh wait, TV and the other Media of Mass Manipulation are already setting us up on this path...
Well, people could use such goggles to boost their creative processes (eg. I'm a "retired" map designer, and I could imagine myself now tweaking all the details of my maps using similar tech). I really wouldn't like to sound pessimistic here, but I'm almost certainly sure that such technology would simply become "HDTV+1" of some sort and will be mainly used to spoon-feed people with even more crap. We easily get addicted to TV and the intertubes even when there's still that barrier of the screen and input devices.
Slashdot Mirror
> So, ignoring all the "spiritualism" stuff, which is (as yet) scientifically unprovable
I think that the "as yet" words are the key there. Of course with our own science the claim may sound absurd, and even when you actually try to prove/disprove it with the basic science, and start digging things up and thinking, it might as well turn out that this is BS.
If I were to check all of his claims by myself, I suppose that many of them will turn out to be either untrue or unprovable (see another thread in this discussion, about global warming). The only problem is that humans were making many "true" statements in the past that later (with the advancements in science) were proved to be false, or were generalized and proved to only be true under certain circumstances. We cannot assume that we know any final, unchangeable truth. We can only observe the universe and refine our models.
And as of the soul, I'm quoting the alien verbatim (in Polish):
"Na dzien dzisiejszy mozna dowiesc istnienia ciala niematerialnego za pomoca aparatu do fotografii kirlianowskiej (...)" -- which would roughly translate to: "As of today, it is possible to prove the existence of non-material body using kirlian photography" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography). The experiment is very simple: you cut off a finger and photograph the hand. On the photograph, the finger is still present -- even after many years since the damage has been done. If you'd like to see some really neat stuff on the photos though, you should ask a channeler to pay you a visit.
There's another, a lot easier, a little less scientifical, and also a bit less brutal experiment: rub your hands intensively for a few seconds, and put them about two feet away from each other, in front of your chest, with inner sides facing each other in parallel. Then start SLOWLY bringing the hands closer to each other -- at some point you're going to feel slight resistance, as if you were holding a balloon or something. If there's someone else in the room, he/she could wave a hand between your hands -- you will most probably feel the resistance disappear. (I'm not a native English speaker, so these instructions are not exactly as precise as they would be in Polish. Blame my English teachers.)
I think that these two things put the "spirituality" topic in a much different light.
http://smn.klm.net.pl/kosmita3.pdf
Go on if you speak Polish.
Interesting. There was a time that I also were fascinated in Jedi as a religion and a way of living, although I realized that it is merely just another religion, and that believing it doesn't actually give me any force powers. (later I also concluded that the path of the light side is actually harmful to a being - denying oneself the right to express negative emotions leads to even more mind fuckup than toying with the dark side. If you read the history of the SW universe and the Jedi Order carefully, you'd find that the light v. dark schism is actually artificial (and harmful))
If you're interested in actually working, Jedi-like "magic", you might want to research the topic of Huna and shamanism (go pick your fav esoteric bookstore). It won't give you an ability to hurl force lightning on your enemies, but knowing how to cure oneself through meditation is a really useful skill that I'm very glad I've learned.
Actually, the supposed alien is almost perfectly sure that this plan will fail. Either due to the race to the throne among the villains, or because of the revolutionists, who will be already outraged at the time (and the war would just make them start acting). That doesn't mean that some group doesn't have such plan, and that it isn't getting closer to completion (and epic failure! ^^).
Uh, and one more thing -- from what I've read about the supposed "real" alien tech, our current weaponry is stones and sticks. It's somewhat relieving that they are friendly (and willing to defend us from those who aren't). There were almost no details about the alien tech in the book (except for the terraforming tech I've mentioned), exactly because most of it could be used by an irresponsible human. However, the supposed alien claims that the secret labs have a control over a group of people whose mental capabilities sound... Not human. Well, not human, mainly because most humans (contrary to the better spiritually evolved aliens) cannot lurk into the future, observe parallel universes or use telepathy to read minds.
I have my own personal reasons to rather believe the last claim than not: I have used telepathy myself (well: it just often turns out that very often I think exactly the same thing as some other person -- way too often for a mere coincidence); I know a woman who can count the number of people in a room with her eyes shut (except for one girl (my ex, coincidence?), who seems just "invisible" to mediums); another guy regularly wins on a lottery -- maths says the odds are 1/57 to hit three numbers (6 from 49), he wins far more often than that; and so on.
Well, I think that if they have mastered things like interstellar travel or telepathy, are remembering their memories from the previous lives, and are in almost every single aspect technologically and spiritually superior from us, they would have some way of keeping the moon from imploding, keeping the mass/size ratio intact, etc., wouldn't they?
Assuming they exist, of course.
> [global warming]
Well, this is your POV. I'm not really that much interested in this topic to argue with you. I'd rather waste time discussing OS design, music, sailing, conspiracy theories, theology... I'm not a globalwarmist.
> (if you are mentally capable of understanding simplistic mathematics)
It is so much easy to assume that someone is stupid, isn't it? Any other reason to insult me?
> Sounds PLAUSABLE, but there is no evidence at this time.
I'm not a native English speaker, so sometimes I use a word that does not exactly mean what I mean. I am very, very, very aware of the lack of any evidence -- otherwise, if there would be the evidence, we wouldn't be where we are now. Oh, the world would be SO much different.
> There are no civilizations that appeared out of nowhere,
> just you and the authors ignorance.
OK, I'd be happy if you can point me at any evidence of the Bering Strait theory. Any reason why people would want to travel one whole continent before starting to develop a civilization. Or simpler: a reason why the civ in South America was more advanced than the one at the north. This is something I'll be very interested to see. (!~)
> Inspire and not teach? what a crock.
Maybe I have misused the word "teach". I have meant something along what Christians think of the Bible -- the author of the book I've read clearly stated at the end that he's not interested in believers or followers, and that he wanted us to think for ourselves. I wouldn't be surprised if he intentionally dropped a small lie here or there, just so we can experience the effects of simply "believing". I wouldn't be surprised at all if the whole book were a hoax, yet still made with the ideas of the claimed purpose in mind -- to make such "open minded" people like me a little more critical.
> Spreading fanciful lies like this HURTS people.
Is an opinion a lie? Is quoting a supposed liar, while stating that his words are not mine, lying?
On another side of the same coin: let's assume for a moment that we have just discovered that global warming is merely sun's mood. Does the liar suddenly become someone who's telling the truth? Was he a liar or truth-teller? What if another evidence shows that GW is actually caused by human activities on Earth? Does the truth-teller become a liar again?
My personal view is that as long there's any controversy on a given subject, there is no truth or lie, there are only opinions.
Oh, and btw, I always liked you, and I still do. Your "~" is an interesting idea, but doesn't seem to catch on.
To quote myself:
"Atheism: There is no evidence to the existence of God, and there is no evidence to the nonexistence of God, therefore God cannot exist".
Try again.
With one of the moons in our solar system (argh, never remember its name, I promise to find the references ASAP) being artificial, and in the shape of the Death Star, I wouldn't be so eager to joke :)
Yeah, I have noticed many small inconsistencies across the book by myself. For example: TSA (The Supposed Alien) enumerates twelve stages of spiritual evolution, from primitive bacteria to uniting with what could be called "god" (humans are supposedly on the 4th stage - they are able to think abstractly and create a civilization). The next stage would be becoming aware of the reincarnation, having all the memories of the past lives back, becoming able to contact what TSA calls "the Universe's Memory" - a spirit that is able to objectively retrieve any exact sequence of events that ever happened (like a video tape of some sort). OK, I'm open minded enough to not discard this at the first glance, but not enough to believe this outright.
/. - you get good karma for doing good and bad for doing evil. But the law has a side effect - the karma carries on through the incarnations, and causes humans to not remember their previous lives. From the context, I concluded: there was a time in our history when we were on a higher level of evolution, and karma has devolved us.
Then, in another chapter, TSA mentions that the Earth is the only place in the whole galaxy (he hadn't said anything about other galaxies or universes (he's claiming there are many)) in which "the Law of Karma" applies -- in short, the law is an artificial creation that tried to "repair" some of "god"'s "mistakes", by introducing karma - it works exactly like here on
This is a grand inconsistency -- in another chapter, TSA claims that no being in the whole history of the creation (== all the universes) has ever devolved into something less, and that this is simply fsckin' impossible due to the all-loving nature of "god" (== the creation). Furthermore, if the 4th stage of spiritual evolution is the only stage where the beings are (somewhat) aware, but still cannot access their past lives' memories, does it mean that there is no single planet but Earth that is on the 4th stage? Or that karma is not as artificial as he claims it is?
There are many more subtle inconsistencies, and while I believe that TSA could've simply overlooked many things (hey, he's just a hum-- err, an alien), these are the reasons why I've chosen "let's wait and see" attitude.
==
However, the "World War -1" is a very different thing. You are talking about destroying the world we know; TSA has talked about destroying the world that was there in the past. From the description of his own homeworld: they have no countries, there are only about 400,000 of people on his planet, they use no electronic devices (he claims they have had access to superior tech for millions of years), they don't live in cities, but rather in big houses far away from each other (they also live in multilateral families == 5-15 adults in one home, and about the same amount of children), and so on. TSA also mentioned, that this is their second civilization - Saleinji (his homeworld) was almost completely destroyed with a giant meteor, and they've survived only because they've terraformed another two planets of their solar system long time ago, and re-terraformed Saleinji after the catastrophe. The second civilization was way different from the first, and it repaired many of the mistakes (e.g. by not letting people overpopulate the globe or divide the land into countries ruled by politicians -- they're all libertarians now).
TSA claimed that Earth's ancient civilization also used a very different tech, and simply lived in a "different world". When reasoning about it, we'd have to take into account that: they might have not known the plastic (or had something superior), they might have not lived in big cities, there might have been less of them, they might have had X, Y, and didn't knew Z, etc. TSA also claims that one side of the conflict worked on a weather control system (for military use -- the possession of that system was the probable cause of the war).
What's more -- TSA says it straight and outright: the ancient humans were *very* different (but not diff
Duh, my book was free at least >:P :)
:) And even assuming "our" results as valid, how long have we been observing the sun like that? The supposed aliens could have observed our solar system (and, since they've mastered interstellar travel, other systems as well) for millions of years. If we assume that they're really aliens, and that they do not lie to us, this renders our own conclusions somewhat less accurate.
:)
http://smn.klm.net.pl/kosmita3.pdf -- it's in Polish, and the book has been released just a few weeks ago (and it's an alpha version, btw), so it hasn't been translated to any other languages yet (although the author himself is encouraging readers to translate the work (he seems to be a moderate fan of open source -- as I mentioned, the tales about Saleinji (the planet) and the Saleinjians have a value in themselves)).
Back on the topic -- from what I have read from the summary, they're measuring the effect on a moon-based station. You argue that the equipment is cheap -- I do not know the exact costs of sending such stuff to the orbit, let alone moon, so I guess my choice is to either believe your word or not
But here we fall into something I call "the Bible trap" -- if we assume the Bible to be true, the Bible has an unquestionable proof of its own trueness
> what caused the moon to be here when it shouldn't have been.
/.ers (because, it's, well, in Polish, and while it's my native language, I'm never good at translating stuff -- too much CPU overhead for my brain).
Actually, the supposed alien I was talking about in this post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1033381&cid=25802679
has an elaborate explanation of all the moon-related anomalies. I would just simply cut&paste a quote from that book, but it probably would be of no use to most
Also... some scientists argue that the mass of Jupiter could have probably caused the 5th planet to not form at all, the billions of years ago when our solar system formed itself, and the asteroids were there from the beginning. I think not; some of these asteroids have natural satellites of other asteroids (!), and that simply could not last for billions of years -- the tidal forces would crush the rocks after a mere few millions of years.
Well, once I've been modded troll, flamebait, insightful, informative, interesting and funny (each of these a couple of times), all in one post (the post was somewhat controversial, but I clearly stated that it was merely my own opinion -- but, sadly, most people seem not to get the difference between a fact and an opinion). Since then, slight disagreements between /. mods no longer surprise me.
Dunno, do you have any references about the warming? Any reason why the scientists shouldn't fake the results to get more funding?
The fake UFO attack sounds somewhat probable. After all that's what I'd do if I had a few spare aircrafts that look alien enough, a few spare bucks in one hand, US govt in another, and an ambition of taking over the world. I think we'll have interesting times watching how Obama is going to perform as the president.
An ancient, advanced civilization on Earth also sounds reasonable (in this context of course). From what I know about Mesopotamia, it really looks like the civilization happened "out of nowhere". Also the Aztecs - the "official" story talks about Bering Strait, but if I were Indians, I wouldn't bother migrating that far to the south to form a civilization there, I'd just settle on the north -- please notice, the Aztec civilization seems *much* older than their northern cousins.
As I said, I'm not going to believe any of this until I see enough evidence (and I don't think it'll show up any time soon, if it would at all). But the book was still nice to read (the supposed alien had many interesting and somewhat enlightening views on politics and ethics, a few chapters were about life on his planet, and he underlined many times that he doesn't give a fuck if anyone believes him, and he'd be even happier if nobody would believe and instead would think for himself, and that his primary goal was to inspire, not teach. The book would still be great even with a clear "SF" label on it).
I have a different theory.
Look at this picture (the distances are on a logarithmic scale):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/03/SolarSystemUnmarked.png
The distance between every Nth planet and the sun is always (a*(N**2))+(b*N)+c (I forgot the exact values of a,b,c but you can easily check this by yourself if you're interested), with one exception: the 5th planet between Mars and Jupiter, that has been (IMO) most probably destroyed.
There are of course theories that civilizations could have existed on all three (Earth, Mars, the 5th). Let's just not care about the reasons about why the hypothetical 5th planet could've been destroyed, if it was done by intelligent beings or if it was a natural catastrophe, or whatever else, let's just assume for a while that it somehow exploded:
I imagine that the blast could've destroyed life, oceans and atmosphere on Mars, and on Earth, caused what the Bible refers to as the Great Flood.
(disclaimer: I'm not Christian, nor a member of any other religion, before you all start bitching.)
Err, I see a small difference between: being interested in a book, waiting and seeing if it's going to be true, and: taking part in an aggressive, greedy, mind-washing cult that is no less hypocritical than the Catholic Church (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Zone_(Scientology) ). Maybe you should get an idea of what Scientology is?
I'm equally against all religions, including atheism.
But where is it now?
Interesting hypothesis.
/. threads about surveillance, taking away our freedom, etc.
I have recently read a book that was supposedly written by an alien. He claimed that: the Moon is empty inside and is a home to a race of living beings that are on a very high level of spiritual evolution, the global warming is caused solely by the sun (and the other planets of the solar system are warming up too), that there was a very advanced (more advanced than ours, both technologically and spiritually) civilization on Earth millenia ago, that vanished due to a world war in which nuclear weapons were used, that the fact that Mesopotamian or Aztec civilizations seemed to appear "out of nowhere" is due to the survivors of the ancient WW, the lack of visible "side effects" (radiation) of the WW is due to a terraforming technology that involved "changing the atomic state of chemical elements by shooting out protons and electrons using condensed streams of photons" (or however someone more fluent in English would translate this from Polish), which is the technology we are going to use to recover Earth after World War III (which is going to start in a few decades), that humans are the only race in our galaxy that does not preserve their memories during reincarnation (this ought to be a side effect of an artificial "law of Karma", and could be undone if we wish to), that there is a great disproportion between the state of our technological and spiritual advancement (again, the greatest in the galaxy), that we are in a constant danger from a few alien races that would want us dead (they're supposed to have weapons that could destroy souls -- a final death, reincarnation impossible) and Earth exploited to their benefit, that the "Galactic Union" is taking great measures to fend them off until we are able to defend ourselves, that aliens are not going to reveal themselves, because in the past such events started a few religious cults (which are the sources of religion on our planet, and that our planet is the only one on which religion ever happened -- everyone else just *knows* that reincarnation is happening, because they're *experiencing* it), and that the US government (or rather: whoever runs the government) is planning a *fake* "alien invasion", using their own half-baked UFOs to attack the Earth (and then take over all the armies of the world to "fend off" the fake attack, and then create a worldwide regime) -- as of the last one, I wouldn't be surprised -- the ground is already being prepared, see all the
My opinion: even if this is bullshit, every good lie has a kernel of truth in it. I'm going to sit and observe, and take action if some of the things that that (supposed) alien is claiming would turn out to be true.
...and Earth's water supplies are what, unlimited? Better get used to the thought that what you eat/drink/are has been something else before.
We still have no anti-sharks to mount these lasers on, so they're pretty useless ATM.
Are you saying that I am saying that I think that imagination should replace the technology altogether, and people should live in caves of their own minds?
I'm stating that I'm worried with the current tendency to do exactly the opposite - to replace the imagination with tech and make people brainless zombies (which is also sitting in caves). The TV is a brainwashing machine, yet even people who admit it still spend their days watching it. Going HD, then VR, then $whateverthenewtechofthefuture, isn't actually any progress, it's just getting better at standing still.
Tech should be used as a tool to help us express ourselves, and to help in our daily lives. I can imagine a house that I'd want to live in, and then use a CAD program to design it, hand the project over to an architect that would revise it, and later see my new home becoming real. Much different from simply daydreaming, isn't it?
I do not understand. Please use a car analogy.
That's right. But while one cannot grow a replacement arm if they lose one, having artificial implants to make up for the lost imagination is a step in wrong direction. Oh wait, TV and the other Media of Mass Manipulation are already setting us up on this path...
Well, people could use such goggles to boost their creative processes (eg. I'm a "retired" map designer, and I could imagine myself now tweaking all the details of my maps using similar tech). I really wouldn't like to sound pessimistic here, but I'm almost certainly sure that such technology would simply become "HDTV+1" of some sort and will be mainly used to spoon-feed people with even more crap. We easily get addicted to TV and the intertubes even when there's still that barrier of the screen and input devices.
Already doable.
This thing is called imagination and human children usually unlearn to use it as soon as they start seriously thinking about "growing up".
I've got an easy solution: I have no TV.
andnothingofthevaluewaslost
http://xkcd.com/298/
:)
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