blondie0420

Do you ever find it amazing that humans have such incredible minds as to think so deeply about things so much greater than themselves?

Think of all the things humans have thought about: real, tangible, useful things like airplanes and skyscrapers and even central air conditioning. I mean, you don't see beavers out in the wild with central air, do you? It was humans who thought up all of these things. And besides those tangible things we've thought about, what about all of the philosophical (and mostly intangible) things we've thought about?

Look at the newest threads in this Philosophy sub-forum:

"Fact or myth: are aliens real?"
"What happens when you die?"
"Your heaven."
"Genetics."
"The end of the world."
"Challenge: Prove your existence."
"Theory on how everything works."
"The power of ignorance."

And this all from a group of stoners who are just having some friendly discussions at their computers.

That humans are capable of knowing what DNA is and understanding how it works is pretty amazing if you think about it, right? I mean, we're the species that knows about genetics. We're the only species that performs surgeries. We're the only species with machinery, schools, hospitals, gravity, anesthesia, physics, trains, aerospace engineering, automobiles and drugs to help anything that's bothering you (or not bothering you ). Shit, I mean just think of all of the things we have that people have just thought up, which is everything. Look around the room you're in. Nothing is there that some human didn't come up with. Even lights, something we consider very basic. No other species on this planet has figured out how to make artifical light for itself yet. Shit, none of the other species have even figured out fire.

And that we can think about things like the existence of a higher power, the end of the world, and what happens after death, that's incredible if you think about it. It's a little crazy to acknowledge that our minds are so advanced. But if you think about how far we as a species have come, we've really come an incredibly long way, haven't we?

We always assume aliens, if we ever find them, will be super-intelligent. But what if they're as undeveloped as the majority of species we have thus far identified on earth. There are between four and six million species (estimated) on earth (source) and just one of them (humans) is this developed. So why should we assume that alien lifeforms are necessarily going to be intelligent? (Surely if they find us first, they're probably intelligent, but we do our own searching too, so we might just come across a species somewhere that's not.)

The power of the human mind is a reason why I believe in a power higher than myself ("God"). I mean, the human mind is so powerful, but I can still imagine something more powerful than humans could ever be, and that powerful thing, to me, is God. The human mind is incredibly powerful, but its power is finite. God is infinite.

I don't know, I just got stoned and thought about this, and kept smoking as I typed it, so there's kind of some random thoughts going on. But anyway, I'm curious, what do you think about thinking? What are your thoughts on the thoughts and minds humans have?

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kushsmoke420

Its very interesting....

Us humans are elite to any other animal on earth.
Or is it, that animals simply "work" in a way that we can't comprehend, thus can't interact and look at them as a lesser?

Deismona leOmega

Ler

I think it's interesting that we can use our minds to consider what our mind is exactly, and how it works. It's sort of weird isn't it? We can ponder about the process of pondering, about what is happening in our brains, as we think these things.

I'm getting confused.

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Trocisp

As a point of clarification, we're not the only specie with gravity or drugs.

And as for aliens being less intelligent than us? It's not unlikely, in fact I'd say it might even be probable. However, a whole line of specie are intelligent, not just humans. We happen to be the only ones left from this line.

Genus Homo, only 2.5 million years old, is the root to which we owe our Tree of Knowledge.

Hashishi

Dunno... have we? It's been an estimated 10,000 years since we developed agriculture and animal husbandry. Before that we were pretty indistinguishable from the rest of the earth's life-forms as far as basic feeding habits go.

The Neanderthals were probably telling themselves that before we wiped them off the face of the Earth.

Current scientific estimations and predictions are geared towards discovering microbes.

There's something called the 'rare earth' hypothesis that states the conditioning for an intelligent species to dominate a planet is incredibly rare. Jupiter's huge gravity, for instance, collects asteroids that would otherwise be sent hurtling into the inner solar system. That's just one solar system in billions comprising a galaxy- billions of which aren't even fractionally enough to fill our estimations of the size of the universe.

Humanity is a random path taken in an ancient process of replication and reproduction. Upon close inspection there is, to me, a distinct absence of God. We share the majority of our genes with chimpanzees right through to fruit flies. Seems to me that God couldn't give a flying fuck which one of us hopped up the evolutionary trail the fastest.

Well, language permits the exchange of thoughts and ideas far more effectively than learning by itself. Killer whales demonstrate a 'surf' tactic to their young that allows them to ride waves into the land, snap up unwary seals and ride back without becoming beached. If we were whales, we'd be able to describe the process in as much detail as is required to negate participate learning. It couldn't end there, though; we'd have to prove our adeptness to ensure the survival of our species.

Language and communication has therefore been a facility with which we've surpassed all contention for dominance. It is by no means unique to us, though; we just got there first.

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SpiralArchitect

My brain after reading this thread:



Where to begin, where to begin...

aha!

The beginning.

I am thinking right now.

It's amazing, even as I am typing this so much is going through my head. Conversations from this morning, a job interview from a few hours ago, how much weed is still in my nug jug, if I have any movies I haven't watched yet -- shit, I'm off course... but wait, I am still on the same track.

But it's beyond this. As your reading this, I bet so much is going on through your head!!!

As Ler put it so well, 'to ponder on pondering' is an extraordinary thing that only us humans have. I dunno, what I would do without it. My brain is like a criss-cross mesh of thoughts, and it is fucking cool, I love it.

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Ler

Beautiful, anytime that you can catch a glimpse of someone elses thought process it is truly amazing. We all think so differently it's almost makes you a little uneasy, you hear a friend thinking out loud when they think no one is listening and you can't help but admire it but at the same time feel hesitant towards seeing how another person draws conclusions or makes decisions.

Merry-juana

Yay, my thread was included in your list!

Anyway, I think there might be beings WAY smarter than us, I mean, we are pretty stupid you know. Our universe is so big, if we where to be the most intelligent species then I am worried greatly. I say everything that is possible, exists somewhere, and everything is possible, otherwise it wouldn't be anything. There exists more things than the entire earth's conciousness combined (human or otherwise) can even imagine in an infinite time. Think about it this way, the universe is infinite, thus everything exists somewhere. If we look at just the size of our planet we live on, we basically do not even exist, now, our solar system is already so big our planet barely exists, and our galaxy is so big our solar system basically doesn't exist, and our universe is so big, our galaxy basically doesn't exist, so, the universe is incomprehensibly big, in fact, our minds can not truly comprehend even the sizes of our houses in which we live in, just think how many of you there has to be just to fill the volume of the room you are sitting in right now, you cannot really comprehend it, we can only comprehend the numbers, not the true size. By this conclusion, even the smartest amongst us are incredibly stupid, and there is an infinite universe out there and somewhere there exists something that is infinitely smarter than us.

And no, I am not stoned, I wish I was though, then I might be able to understand myself.