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Have you gone down any rabbit holes that gave you an existential crisis? (discuss.online)

submitted 4 months ago by Jobseekers@discuss.online to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Have you went down any internet rabbit holes only to come out with a deep set existential crisis? If so, what are they?

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I just think:

how many living species have been on earth? Millions probably

How many of those species are intelligent? 1

How long have this intelligent species been around? Nothing at a cosmic timescale.

How many of this intelligent species have become "interstellar"? 0

I don't think those numbers can be extrapolate, even to the observable universe, to ensure that there are any species capable of interestellar travel around. Living species and even intelligent ones? Maybe. But a long lasting inteligent and interestellar species? We are not an example of that, so we have 0 examples to extrapolate. Only our wishful thinking that humanity will last longer and keep progressing, but that is just a hope, not real yet.

[–] TheFinalCapitalist@hexbear.net 5 points 4 months ago

Well there is plenty of intelligent species on the planets, but having the correct evolutionary features of being intelligent and having the capacity to manipulate the environment to an extreme degree is the rare combo. Kinda nit picky but I think its an important one

[–] Mrs_deWinter@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 4 months ago

Very true. Also in itself kinda creepy.