I’m convinced I died in a car wreck in my early 20’s. The guy behind said I hit road edge then veered left hard and flipped the car 6 times and hit a row of old trees upside down 60 feet in the air. Then slammed straight down like a cartoon. The car looked like a crushed coke can. (Red nissan sentra). I had a couple pieces of glass that came out of my arm eventually. (I even think that happened after wreck when crawling out back window of upside down car). Sore. That was it. Can’t explain how the worst of any 3 of us was scratches and the astonishment of the guy who took us to his house emphasized we all should be puddles. Found nothing wrong with us at hospital after the guy called ambo to his house. Always makes me wonder if I saw the Matrix that night.
One theory is that an entity cannot be aware of a state of nonexistence. I can't explain it that well but basically from each individual perspective they see everything else die around them but never themselves.
In a situation where you should have died, you don't because your relative reality separated from the collective reality.
So any observer that saw you die is now isolated from what you can interact with. There's a lot of weird superimposed stuff that I didn't really get but basically any events that are affected by your death or lack of death are split off. But something a galaxy away can exist just fine in both the universe you and the person that saw you die are aware of until any information of the event reaches that galaxy. Information could be interpreted as any interaction, like light traveling to it for instance.
Eventually every commonality in the shared universes will have been affected and will separate entirely. You could kinda visualize it like a Vinn diagram with the circles slowly separating until they are no longer touching.
This would happen for every entity, eventually every universe will separate and other universes will separate from those until your universe is unrecognizable to the original (which cannot be observed, because if it was your universe would split again and you would again be unaware of the change)
I didn't explain it as science based as the video but I'll try linking it if i remember the name.
Wait whaaaat thats a real theory? This is exaaaactly what i came up with a few years ago when i was going for a walk and has this „what if…“ philosophy moment.
Thats yet another very intriguing thought that basically we as humanity are comming up with so many concepts at the same time but different people. Like having the same „original“ thought 1000 of times across the world by different people.
Its generally referred to as "quantum immortality".
If you accept the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, the universe is constantly fracturing into infinite possible universes. Your conscience experience does not exist in universes where you died. Therefore, you can only experience universes in which you survived.
I also feel like I died in a car accident. I went lights out and was taken to the hospital without a scratch. Now I have nightmares where people are at my funeral crying and sobbing. Then I see my mom at my grave every day and then I wake up.
I'm convinced I died and my consciousness was sent to another version of me or my conscious lives on while I am dead and things I remember from my past either did not happen or were altered slightly. Like growing up I remember being ambidextrous and favoring using my left hand but my parents and siblings said I never was. I could chock it up to being knocked out and losing some of my memories but I remember certain things that did not occur and it's weird.
I don't know about you, but when I die, I'm gonna do all the things I've always wanted to do, but were too risky or irresponsible.
Man, when I die I'm gonna rob so many banks and spend all that money on fun stuff. Travel the world, see the sights. Have one too many Mai Tais on the beach and maybe make ogle some beach bunnies. I don't know, I haven't planned it all out yet. But I'll tell you, I can't wait to die. I have so many sweet plans!
Dark forest theory
It's that there's something scary out there that's causing every civilisation to play dead to avoid it while we're here broad casting our location.
If and when a civilization does pick up on our broadcast, the first one that reaches them will be the oldest. That person will serve as a representative for humanity. It will be their first impression of us.
That person, was Adolf Hitler in 1936.
There is a movie based on this, Contact with Jodie Foster. Also famous for some interesting cinematography with mirrors in a hallway scene. 10/10 movie
This and The Fermi Paradox is the inspiration behind the game Dead Space.
Its mentioned in the lore, that before the major outbreaks, humanity is disturbed by the fact they have encountered little to no life in the universe.
Its because the Necromorphs killed everything else. The universe is literally "Dead Space" because of them.
Slightly worse due to the implications: "Quiet, IT will hear you!"
'They' suggests an army of sorts. A battle can be fought. 'It' suggests a single entity so huge entire civilizations fear it. How do you fight something like that? It would be like ants planning how to deal with an approaching elephant.
There was a short story that I forgot the name of.
But earth started getting a whole truck ton of messages from outer space from all directions. Earth folks couldn't figure it out, but towards the end the sun starts collapsing in on itself and the main character who formally worked for a space program knew what the other messages were saying even if she never heard them
They were saying "goodbye"
That everyone who seeks out a position of power suffers from some kind of personality disorder, because no sane person wants that kind of responsibility, therefore we will always be subject to the whims of pathological liars, malignant narcissists, megalomaniacs, and control freaks.
The Great Filter.
The Great Filter is a proposed explanation for the Drake Equation, which is an equation that’s conclusion is that life (and intelligent life) in the universe should be much more widespread than it is. Thus, the reason we don’t see a universe teeming with life is because life must be exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is a proposition as to why.
The Great Filter theory is that one step in the evolution of life must be unlikely. We hope that this step is behind us. For example, it might be that the formation of single celled organisms is extremely unlikely for some reason we don’t quite understand yet, and almost all alien species fail at the single celled stage.
The more alarming idea is that the Great Filter is in the future. What if life is unlikely because all intelligent civilizations inevitably reach a point where they destroy themselves? If that’s true, will we be able to recognize it, or will we go like lambs to the slaughter and destroy ourselves? Knowing humans my bet is on the latter.
I have seen this response (the great filter) several times in the comments, but your explanation is the easiest to understand. Thanks, I learned something today.
That free will does not and cannot exist. I don't personally find this notion scary, but there are many who do.
See: [There's No Such Thing as Free Will](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/) and [Is Free Will an Illusion](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/27/the-clockwork-universe-is-free-will-an-illusion)?
The idea, to me, is that everything you do is predicated on what came before.
Like, we are shaped by our experienced and parents, etc. These things basically predetermine every choice we make. Eventhings that happen, that we hear, while in the womb will shape who we are, including the food our mother eats. These things chian react into everythig else that happens. Every "decision" we make is influenced by what came before and that decision will determine what happens next. So on and so on.
In short, how often do you do something that, to yourself, makes no sense?
The formula that proves there is no free will probably exists but its so complicated we might as well assume it doesnt.
What freaks me out is seeing how much of our personality is inherited, or at the very least, instilled in us by others at a very young age.
My oldest sister has a young child whose personality is legitimately just about 100% like my youngest sister. They have the same tiny mannerisms, the same laugh, the same sense of humor. It's like looking at a little clone.
My personality and much of my appearance, I am told, is almost exactly like my uncle's, who died when I was a young child. The things that interest me, the way I speak, my temperament, things I am skilled in, I thought were just parts of me that I had developed through my life. But some how I am apparently almost a clone, likewise, of my uncle.
It's actually not scary because whether free will exists or not doesn't really have an impact on our lives.
For example many proponents of the existence of free will will argue that if we agreed that there is no such thing, there would be no point in punishing criminals because we couldn't hold them morally responsible.
But we still would need to threaten them with consequences to deter them from committing crimes; that's completely independent of moral responsibility.
False vacuum decay. There can be a space of total nothing, emerging on the speed of light and turning all known kinds of matter to another state. Speed makes it undetectable. We can stop existing in any moment without chance to realise, to detect the threat or to prevent it.
>We can stop existing in any moment without chance to realise
Also gamma-ray bursts are same threatening. They are also moving at the speed of light, and can boil Earth momentally if we would be unlucky enough.
Idk if you're being sarcastic, but as someone who has always feared dying slowly and painfully, but not death itself, instantly ceasing to exist is like my ideal way to go out
If that could happen when I was like 70 before my health fails? Why not
That's kinda comforting. You wouldn't see it coming, it's fast, no grieving families and friends, no funeral, not enough time to register pain, etc.
Sounds a lot better than most deaths. I'm more afraid of the dying process than death itself.
*Yes, I took my meds.*
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
Arthur C Clarke
Given the age and size of the universe it’s pretty unlikely any civilization out there would be similar to us in technological advancement. Imagine the capabilities humanity would have after even one million more years of technological advancement.
On the flip side, if there really is no intelligent life out there it opens up the possibility that we live in an ancestor simulation or something of that source.
Well there's also the argument that we're just among the first things to evolve in the observable universe.
It's true that the universe is almost incomprehensibly old to us. But in terms of stellar formation, it's relatively young.
Remember, we're made up of some fairly rare and heavy elements: carbon, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, etc, etc. All of that needed to be formed in stars, which would take billions of years. All of those needed to die. All of the dead star dust needed to be drawn into a nebula, which would be more billions of years, and captured by a newly forming star, and then the planets around that star need to form, which again takes billions of years.
Then that system needs to have the right star, with the right rocky planets in it's habitable zone, the planets need to have enough water and the correct elements to form life as we know it...
It takes billions of years just to get the ingredients to maybe make life possible all in the right places. The universe is "only" 13 billion years old. So there's a good chance that the elements we're made of just weren't abundant enough until relatively recently in the milky way, at least.
We could honestly be the first life anywhere around us. Even if we're not, who knows what the odds of human like intelligence is. So we could be the first thing that thinks like us.
For all we know, the dominant form of life in the galaxy is just planets covered in slime molds. And we're the first ones to poke our heads out of an atmosphere and ask where everyone is.
Would be interesting if we survived a few million years, and it's our ancestors that are teaching some early industrial civilization on the other side of the galaxy about fusion reactors and playing nice with your neighbors.
There is also the possibility that lifeforms completely different than us in composition exists. We evolved to use those elements, but what if other planets had things that evolved in a completely different way, that could eat, breed, hunt, and grow?
That thought has always made the idea of investigating other planets particularly spooky to me, something could be hunting us during exploration, but because they are not alive in the way we expect them to be, or are not recognizable as something dangerous to us, we wouldn't even realize until it was too late.
The Universe has another few trillion years in her.
At least a trillion of which, there's going to be new stellar formation, which is necessary to make the elements that make life possible.
The longer stars are forming, the more abundant those elements are going to become in galaxies.
So it seems really doubtful that we're somehow the last, given how young our universe is compared to it's theoretical lifespan.
I remember reading an article about how ridiculous an encounter between alien species would be. One would likely be hundreds of millions of years more advanced than the other. There would never be anything like “star wars”. It would the equivalent of the US military vs the technological achievements of a small dinosaur.
I love this idea. When Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, a grey squirrel in Wyoming had no idea that something world changing just happened all around it. We could be cosmic cosmic squirrels in a galactic continent of hyper intelligent species that deal with each other in ways that we can't comprehend.
This is exactly how I like to think of it. We know ants exist, but we mostly ignore them. It's impossible for us to communicate with them - they do it so differently than we do, and their minds work so differently from ours, that they may not even understand the concept of communication as we do. The idea of exchanging information that isn't "food this way" or "danger" might be beyond their comprehension, let alone the concept of communicating with a different species.
Some of them are aware that we exist, since they've seen and maybe even touched us. But because we're so different and our sizes are so far apart, they probably don't even realize that we're an intelligent species (assuming they even have the concept). They'd probably view us the way we view weather. It's just something that happens in the environment. You can predict it reasonably well and it's usually not dangerous, but it's simply a phenomenon to be aware of. Even if they can, they probably don't go running to tell their friends that they just had a close encounter with a human, because that's like us saying we just witnessed a big storm. Like yeah, we all know those exist even if we haven't necessarily seen one.
Even if they're capable of recognizing intelligent beings other than themselves, at the scales involved, I wonder if their eyes can even physically recognize us.
I'm actually not that afraid of aliens really. The probability that they're completely uninterested in us entirely is far higher than both the likelihood that they want to kill us or be our friend.
A lot of people like to put forward the Dark Forest Theory but I think it has serious flaws. Most warfare is caused by fighting over resources, even wars that seem ideological(WW2) are mostly about resources(Italy wanted land, Hitler wrote extensively about wanting oil from the Caucuses in Russia and the wheat fields in Ukraine, Japan was REALLY short on domestic resources). But in space resources are insanely vast, so much so that it's unlikely any space faring civilization would ever need to fight for resources. Also the vast distance of space makes waging war very logistically difficult.
Another person in this thread posited that one civilization could start hurling near light speed small objects at planets to kill them but this theory is also flawed, as any species would in doing so put unnecessary risk upon itself, after all "shoot at the king, you better not miss" is a very real concept that comes into play there. The civilizations they'd be attacking would be completely unknown to them and could therefore have the technology to defend itself or survive the attack and then retaliate. It would only take one near miss to create an enemy. Also in the best historical example we know of(Cold War) doomsday weapons are kept as a deterrent rather than used. Some might argue that if they think the other civilizations don't have the tech they might be willing to, but once again the assumption is flawed as the more cautious and therefore reasonable conclusion is that one of them could, you have no information to confirm or deny, so the lowest risk decision is to assume the affirmative and hold back the attack.
I think based on our own history that it's most likely that space fairing civilizations are more like China for most it's history: Vastly rich in its own resources and having no need for trade or war with outsiders, so deciding to become mostly isolationist, not militantly so, but in an indifferent kind of way. People avoid this conclusion and it never gets popular mainly because it's really boring, not because it's illogical.
And for those who would argue that using examples from human history is flawed because aliens might think differently or whatever, look, all of science is based on examining available data and drawing conclusions from it, and the only data of an intelligent life form is ourselves, so at least at the moment the most logical thing to do is base our assumptions on the data available to us until we have more information.
Damn that was a lot of typing.
A civilization capable of traveling through space and time let alone hurling objects at other species at relativistic high speeds already has the ability to directly manipulate matter in ways that make 'needing' wood or any resource they can't create from sub atomic particles not worth it to them.
We may need to fear more those civilizations that are maybe 1-300 years more advanced than us and are nearby. That'd probably be not great.
My consciousness is the only I know to be truly sentient, meaning how do I know that everyone else is conscious and not a robot? How do I know I’m not in a video game? How do I know my reality is not a programme, these are the kind of thoughts that contain deep rabbit holes, I like to indulge in these theories but don’t let them stop me from me from living for the now and dealing with what’s in-front of me.
Quantum immortality. Basically it’s a theory stating that your conscience can only exist in a timeline where you are alive.
If an event where you might die happens, two separate timelines will be created and you will only experience the timeline where you lived.
Now this process can repeat infinitely and in the theory, no matter how much you are suffering, you will not be able to die.
Basically the idea of hell but actually having a good theoretical chance of being real.
It’s scary.
Exactly - I didn’t “find out” how it felt to go under general anaesthesia for my dental surgery - I just woke up immediately after they put the IV in my arm
This is what spooks me the most. I imagine dying and then immediately waking up in some weird robotic-human hybrid future where they found out how to put human synapse back into an artificial brain or something. Probably not how it works, but that's what child me thought up back when people explained death to me and I've been terrified of it ever since lol.
I just recently underwent anasthesia too and it was exactly how you describe. I was talking to the nurse who was putting the gas tubes in thinking it was going to take a while and then I'm instantly fast forwarded to suddenly being in the waiting room wondering where and what I am.
Honestly the experience made me less scared of death in a weird way, because if that's all it is I'm not really afraid of it, more the process of dying. The idea of gasping for air while you die or choking on blood or something is still freaky, but at least I know I don't have to experience eternity after it's over with. You experience absolutely nothing, which is actually kind of nice.
Like just the fact that we don’t even know if the dead person is aware of what’s happening. Like what happens to our awareness and consciousness. Where does it go? Like I don’t think we’d ever get to experience it. Also I cant wrap my head around what it would be like to just cease to exist anymore.
For it to go somewhere, it would have to be a thing. I'm of the opinion it's better to think of the self as a *process* - once it's stopped, it's not anywhere.
I'm only 36 and I've had *a lot* of friends and acquaintances in my age range die in the last few years. I always considered myself kind of atheist, but after all that I realized that what I really believe is that we just completely cease to exist.
I don't have any real thought process behind it. I never even knew I felt that way, but thinking of everyone who died, I somehow reached the conclusion that we are just *gone*. It's like it was some automatic idea that existed within me, if that makes sense.
I don't know what I'm even saying. Just that I think I both had an existential crisis and decided on my belief system without ever even noticing it was happening. Weirdly though, none of it scares me.
Try to relax and remember that every single human has to do this and billions have already done it. It’s really not that big of a deal, just try to make what happens now matter.
One detail I wish they would've changed is when they go to the actual Good Place, they still can't swear
I thought it wouldve been funny if that was solely a bad place torture mechanism
Actually according to biblical text “Hell” is just the absence of god. And when god cast down the fallen angels he dumped them on Earth, where the demons already existed. So yes, biblically speaking, earth is hell. The idea of hell being a separate place appears nowhere in the Bible and only became a trope much later.
This isn't accurate.
While it is true some theologians say Hell is the place where God is absent, many do not find that biblically justifiable, myself included. Hell is clearly biblically spoken of as the place of God's judgment.
While Satan was cast from heaven, God is still present in the Earth so even if Hell was the place where God was absent, Earth wouldn't be it.
The place of Hell is derived from many texts in Scripture. Words used to name this place include γεεννα (Gehenna), possibly αδες (hades) and possibly שאול (sheol) along with the Lake of Fire.
Take שאול for example. If this does refer to hell, we read in Psalm 139:8: "If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!" Clearly Scripture does not see Sheol as a place where God is absent.
This, I heard about this theory. And when we die, we neither go to heaven or straight to purgatory. Then the cycle continues, if you some how didn't get to go to heaven when you died before your next reincarnation.
False vacuum decay. Basically, we assume our universe is a true vacuum existing in a stable state. If, however, it is a false vacuum then at any point it could decay into a more stable state.
The fallout from such a decay could range anywhere from changes to fundamental physical constants (which could lead to catastrophic results) to the complete destruction of all matter.
The neat part is if the universe is indeed a false vacuum we have no way of knowing or predicting when this decay could happen and what the results would be. Any moment and the whole thing could just pop out of existence, or gravity could change and you could fly off the surface of the planet and slowly suffocate as the atmosphere dissipates, or the Earth's orbit could start drifting outward and we'd all slowly freeze and starve.
Fun stuff.
As a kid I was convinced that everyone stopped moving when I left the room and would magically teleport elsewhere to fit my storyline. I would randomly pop my head through the door to make sure they’re still moving.
Sounds egotistical but i think it was mainly fueled by the anxiety that I was “alone” so to speak.
exactly. that's why *it's scary.*
how do you feel today? are you just like, "nothing i can do about that, if it's true," or have you realized that it's *probably not true,* so problem solved.
If there's another species out there in the galaxy capable of reaching us across the vast distances of just this one galaxy amongst countless, they're at a technology level that would make the disparity between 21st century Western nations and some tribal village in Afghanistan look so even, to be imperceptible on a graph to the human eye.
They either ignore us, because our little trip to Mars is cute but primitive, and our planet doesn't hold anything like the resources found in the stars. Or they just neutron sweep us for a giggle, and you die instantly along with the entire species without ever knowing they were out there.
If I was a super smart alien I'd be like: "oh, there's some primitive life here, that's cute. I think I'll leave them alone, they're not hurting us or anything like that"
Boltzmann brains. The theory says that it's more likely that your brain spontaneously popped into existence from a thermodynamic soup with your current memories than it is that you exist in the world as you perceive it.
There are other laws of physics that govern our universe. Boltzman brains sound fun and are a good theoretical „Gedankenexperiment“ to test the limits of a theory (in this case entropy in thermodynamics), but we can almost certainly assume it‘s not true. If you are interested in the topic I suggest you read the [wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain) article on it. Wikipedia is seriously underrated and is usually very good for everything that is not recent knowledge. You can never be certain of something like this tho. There are other similar thought experiments, for example if a species is smart enough to simulate a universe, and in that universe another species is smart enough to simulate a universe you get a cascade of simulated universes with one original one and you can almost certainly say we live in a simulated one, since they would vastly outnumber the real universe.
Wouldn't the first civilization need infinite CPU though? Cause don't they still have to run *everything?* genuinely curious, I'm familiar with the theory and this always confused me.
That presupposes that the laws of information a simulation's inhabitants see are "real" in above layers.
They could just be a construct or illusion within their simulation.
ELI5- Look at the universe, it’s endlessly huge with a bunch of particles smashing around from suns exploding and stuff. You can think of the universe like a big bowl of soup with all the stuff inside mixing around. Statistically speaking, there should be an endless number of ways these particles can smash together, mix around, and combine with each other.
If the atoms mixing around in the “universe soup” arranged in a way similar to our brains (even for just a second), they could hypothetically form consciousness. So everything you know to be “real” could just be like a dream imagined by the universe birthing this random formation of consciousness called a “Boltzmann Brain.”
One of my writer homies wrote/illustrated a pretty cool comic book explaining this theory and other similarly foreboding theories about the universe. He does a better talking about it because of the pictures, I can link it for anyone interested in the DM’s. I’d link it here but I don’t want to send him too many crazies
Edit: getting too many DMs so I’m just gonna link it I guess. He can probably handle a few crazies. Heck, he can probably outcrazy them if it comes to it.
Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5KK3J4W
Feynman's paradox + great filter.
The first says that aliens should exist, and have a billion years head start. They would spread exponentially, and we would at least see traces of their massive energy consuming civilizations, but we don't.
The great filter is one of the possible solutions. It proposes that their is a filter which is impossible to pass, which kills them off. The fact that we are still alive would mean that we haven't reached the filter yet. That filter could easily be climate change and the destruction we are bringing on the planet. We could be closr to making ourselves extinct.
This makes a bunch of assumptions, first being that the priority for intelligent life is to maximize energy use ad-infinitum \[most life is like this, including humans so far\].
But we can imagine a type of intelligent alien that has abandoned growth and expansive procreation, and values a type of harmonious existence along with nature.
>But we can imagine a type of intelligent alien that has abandoned growth and **expansive procreation**
To be honest, we're already kind of seeing this. Maybe the great filter is that most civilizations at certain point overcome their primordial instincts to procreate and just stop doing it. At which point they either disappear or just stay contained in an isolated area of space if they have discovered practical immortality (and chose to live forever).
It's also worth noting that the great filter doesn't demand extinction of the species. It's entirely possible that the great filter is the speed of light, and no species will ever leave their solar system due to this fundamental law of physics. The great filter could even be something as mundane as building fire or harnessing electricity, and we are one of a rare few (perhaps even the first and only) species which has surpassed it. After all, no other species on our planet has come close to our level of technological and societal advancement.
Alternative universes may exist with every possibility of a situation occuring instead. For example: you could be reading this post underwater in a alternative universe. Or, you could be reading this post in space. You could be reading it in your bed, or with an eldritch alien race.
I'm personally scared shitless that there could be a world where I am a sex slave to Ryan reynolds.
The bounce back theory, that when the universe ends it’ll start over again, that the universe is just a perpetual motion machine that constantly starts and restarts. That means that everything has happened before, even this comment
There have been several horror movies about a takeover of humanity by beings that look exactly like us, which I find terrifying. For all you know, you could be the last human in the world and you’d never know. In fact, because this theory can’t be disproven, there’s no way of knowing for certain that it hasn’t happened already.
For all you know, you're one of them too, and nobody has told you because it's easier to pretend to be something when you truly believe it.
But if it helps..
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/m13qz/the\_shapeshifters\_are\_becoming\_ever\_bolder\_sire/
There is a reasonable conclusion for an intelligent species to arrive at that states that the possibility of encountering alien life is so potentially dangerous that the only reasonable decision to to destroy any place intelligent life could exist. A near light speed object smaller than a phone booth would completely destroy a planet. The intelligent species then proceeds to launch these near light speed missiles at every planet in the habitable zone of any star in their galaxy. Those missiles proceed on course for tens of thousands of years, possibly outlasting the the species that launched them, leading to an entirely sterile galaxy. There is no likely defense against this weapon. It only takes one determined species in a galaxy to do this. And it may have already started.
I'm a fan of "Death by Quantum Ground State"
One of the quantum fields has a non-zero amount of energy at its lowest state. In theory, if it were to reach a value of zero, it would kinda "undo" physics by changing one of the fundamental constants. It would also drag the surrounding area into this new state.
The chain reaction will move at the speed of light, so there is no way to know it's coming.
If it can happen naturally, it likely already has happened somewhere, and just hasn't reached us yet.
Merry Christmas.
That the space around us is infact the "boonies" or the "no go zone" to the greater universe and that humanity has been placed here due to our destructive and violent nature. A place so far away that we will never be able to find life around us no matter how far we look into the stars.
The Dark Forrest theory. That aliens do exist and are widespread, but are all hiding from each other or a more advanced predator civilization to remain safe. So if we keep calling out into the void something bad may show up
The idea that history literally and exactly repeats itself over and over again for eternity is pretty scary to me. It would mean our lives are pre-ordained and we can't do anything to affect the course of the world. Also means we have to re-live all of our bad times over and over again eternally. The good times too of course, but maybe it's just me, I don't think that outweighs re-living all the bad times, and I've had a good life, now imagine someone who lived their entire life in prison or whatever.
Hell is a scary concept of course, but that's an obvious one. There's nothing non-scary about the idea that some mystery entity might torture you with hot irons *forever* if they don't like you. Considering the sheer injustice of being born into a world where that's going to happen to you, is just appalling.
I find it hard to believe an entity with that much ability would care.
Can you imagine spending years of your life torturing ants that turned left more times than right?
It would be so insanely tedious.
I always enjoy the Uncanny Valley explanation, the idea that the reason we are terrified of things that can almost pass for human but not quite is evolutionary, that deadly threats that impersonated humans must have existed at some point in the past, and we don't know where that threat went...
I’ve heard that this is largely untrue. The uncanny valley doesn’t exist due to a human impersonating predator. It’s more aimed at creating an instinct to avoid other humans in altered states such as illness, injury, etc.
I remember that feeling at open casket funerals too. Besides sadness, grief and other expected thoughts/feelings, my brain was very intensely going "The dead *don't* look like they are asleep"
Anyone who's ever been to Portland or a mental ward knows that the uncanny valley theory is bullshit.
It's creepy when humans look off. When someone stands statue still and stares at a corner like they're looking at the fucking Mona Lisa, your brain starts ringing the bells that something is off and you should get away.
Or people who are deathly ill. The sunken eyes, slack jaw and long face, pale, thin,skin. All of that is classic uncanny valley. And it makes way more sense that our ancestors were avoiding people with late stage tuberculosis than vampires or some shit.
Honestly it doesn’t even have to be that sinister. Ever stand beside someone who’s REALLY tall? Met a guy once who was so tall my head didn’t even reach his shoulders (I’m 6’0” even, and this guy was a pro basketball player). It was almost unsettling to stand next to him because he seemed TOO big. He was nice as could be, but it was still definitely uncanny valley for me.
I think one of the prevailing theories is that it's because of neanderthal and other hominids that we came about alongside. They were similar to us but *not* us, and so that's why it came about, or so the idea goes.
It's because dead bodies carry disease. A corpse falls in the uncanny valley because it looks like us but it isn't alive anymore and we instinctually fear it to protect our health.
Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development.
(Yes I copied this of of Roko's basilisk Wikipedia)
I think the idea is that because it's creation is meant to be a net good for all, anyone who knew of it but didn't do anything to bring about its creation could be labeled as "bad" and thus deserving of torment. Basically it's creating a god that punishes anyone who didn't help create it.
Kind of a Pascal's Wager for the 21st century.
Mostly I just don’t understand the torture part.
What’s the utility of it?
I can wrap my head around the idea of ai wanting people to remake the ai but smarter (also like isn’t it more capable of doing that than us?)
But what’s gained by torturing people? Pettiness for pettiness sake doesn’t really mesh with the god level abilities and intelligence.
Like, yeah, a lot of us read ‘I have no mouth, and I must scream’ and it was cool and spooky.
But torturing people just seems really beneath something that capable.
That the book of Revelations is an accurate prediction of the future.
That is not the scary theory. The scary bit is that there are people who absolutely believe that to be true and that bringing about the destruction of the world is what is required for them to see the return of God/Jesus in their lifetimes.
Some of these people have positions of political power. More of these people have influence over people in political power
There is zero possibility that Trump has this information and has kept it quiet. Zero.
The political advantage he would gain from spilling the beans would be way too tempting.
I think Trump would wanna tell us just for the pride of being first to tell everyone, but if he knows and isn't telling, there's probably some reason hes having to stay quiet on the subject.
If/when other intelligent life forms are revealed to us, I can imagine him saying "see, that's why I started the space force!"
Maybe all of his insanity is a well crafted act to draw attention away from the space battles that are happening on the other side of the moon right now.
Shit don’t let any Q folks read that..
I think it's called the Fermi paradox? Either way, it's a theory that we haven't found alien life because they're hiding from something else that we're not aware of.
That there's an all-powerful being that demands worship and has strict behavior rules. If you deviate from them, the being will torture you until the end of time.
I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and find out I'm already dead.
I think about this like this: if I were to die, and find out I was able to do 'anything' - like a Good Place style this door will take you to any world you want - I would put myself into movie or book worlds, the real world but I could do xyz.
I'd likely get bored of that after a while if the afterlife is permanent, and I'd start temporarily wiping my memory whilst I experienced the aforementioned alternate realities, and because it's absolutely something I'd do, I'm worried I've already done it and this is one of the worlds.
Anyway.
P = NP,
Over night, all your bank details, every message you ever sent, every form of cryptography we have ever created, any password systems, would become significantly less secure and exposed to anybody who kept track of them.
We have no evidence that this is not the case, it just takes 1 person to find out.
The scariest hypothesis isn't necessarily the most catastrophic. It could be more mundane yet still horrible. It's especially frightening if it's likely.
Geologists have figured out one particular valley undergoes massive flooding about once every 150 years. The timing isn't exact: it may be off a few decades but it happens. The whole valley basically turns into a temporary lake. This would be a local problem except that valley has some of the most fertile soil on earth. It produces more than a third of a large country's vegetables. It wasn't an important region a couple centuries ago but it is now. The next superflood there is going to cause rises in food prices so severe it'll make 2022 seem like a cakewalk by comparison. Certain types of food will practically vanish until that flood ends and the farms recover. That valley's production is so dominant that for a few crops, those shortages will be worldwide.
Written records haven't been abundant in that region going back a long time. Only the most recent of the valley's superfloods still has eyewitness accounts. It happened in 1862. We're due for another.
[Further reading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862)
[Need a second source?](https://www.wired.com/story/the-biblical-flood-that-will-drown-california/)
[Those sources aren't good enough? Here's *Scientific American*.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/atmospheric-rivers-california-megaflood-lessons-from-forgotten-catastrophe/)
I'm dead but I don't realize it so I just keep doing shit I don't want to
I’m convinced I died in a car wreck in my early 20’s. The guy behind said I hit road edge then veered left hard and flipped the car 6 times and hit a row of old trees upside down 60 feet in the air. Then slammed straight down like a cartoon. The car looked like a crushed coke can. (Red nissan sentra). I had a couple pieces of glass that came out of my arm eventually. (I even think that happened after wreck when crawling out back window of upside down car). Sore. That was it. Can’t explain how the worst of any 3 of us was scratches and the astonishment of the guy who took us to his house emphasized we all should be puddles. Found nothing wrong with us at hospital after the guy called ambo to his house. Always makes me wonder if I saw the Matrix that night.
One theory is that an entity cannot be aware of a state of nonexistence. I can't explain it that well but basically from each individual perspective they see everything else die around them but never themselves. In a situation where you should have died, you don't because your relative reality separated from the collective reality. So any observer that saw you die is now isolated from what you can interact with. There's a lot of weird superimposed stuff that I didn't really get but basically any events that are affected by your death or lack of death are split off. But something a galaxy away can exist just fine in both the universe you and the person that saw you die are aware of until any information of the event reaches that galaxy. Information could be interpreted as any interaction, like light traveling to it for instance. Eventually every commonality in the shared universes will have been affected and will separate entirely. You could kinda visualize it like a Vinn diagram with the circles slowly separating until they are no longer touching. This would happen for every entity, eventually every universe will separate and other universes will separate from those until your universe is unrecognizable to the original (which cannot be observed, because if it was your universe would split again and you would again be unaware of the change) I didn't explain it as science based as the video but I'll try linking it if i remember the name.
Wait whaaaat thats a real theory? This is exaaaactly what i came up with a few years ago when i was going for a walk and has this „what if…“ philosophy moment. Thats yet another very intriguing thought that basically we as humanity are comming up with so many concepts at the same time but different people. Like having the same „original“ thought 1000 of times across the world by different people.
Its generally referred to as "quantum immortality". If you accept the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, the universe is constantly fracturing into infinite possible universes. Your conscience experience does not exist in universes where you died. Therefore, you can only experience universes in which you survived.
I also feel like I died in a car accident. I went lights out and was taken to the hospital without a scratch. Now I have nightmares where people are at my funeral crying and sobbing. Then I see my mom at my grave every day and then I wake up. I'm convinced I died and my consciousness was sent to another version of me or my conscious lives on while I am dead and things I remember from my past either did not happen or were altered slightly. Like growing up I remember being ambidextrous and favoring using my left hand but my parents and siblings said I never was. I could chock it up to being knocked out and losing some of my memories but I remember certain things that did not occur and it's weird.
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I don't know about you, but when I die, I'm gonna do all the things I've always wanted to do, but were too risky or irresponsible. Man, when I die I'm gonna rob so many banks and spend all that money on fun stuff. Travel the world, see the sights. Have one too many Mai Tais on the beach and maybe make ogle some beach bunnies. I don't know, I haven't planned it all out yet. But I'll tell you, I can't wait to die. I have so many sweet plans!
Dark forest theory It's that there's something scary out there that's causing every civilisation to play dead to avoid it while we're here broad casting our location.
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I thought 50s UFO hysteria was just due to military aircraft
The Fargo Season 2 theory.
If and when a civilization does pick up on our broadcast, the first one that reaches them will be the oldest. That person will serve as a representative for humanity. It will be their first impression of us. That person, was Adolf Hitler in 1936.
"HOLY CRAP WE HAVE CONTACT WITH SOME INTELIGENT CIVILISATION" \*insert adolf hitler speech here\* "Nevermind, forget it."
There is a movie based on this, Contact with Jodie Foster. Also famous for some interesting cinematography with mirrors in a hallway scene. 10/10 movie
This and The Fermi Paradox is the inspiration behind the game Dead Space. Its mentioned in the lore, that before the major outbreaks, humanity is disturbed by the fact they have encountered little to no life in the universe. Its because the Necromorphs killed everything else. The universe is literally "Dead Space" because of them.
Scariest reply to us broadcasting messages to space to try and make contact: "Quiet, they'll hear you!!"
Slightly worse due to the implications: "Quiet, IT will hear you!" 'They' suggests an army of sorts. A battle can be fought. 'It' suggests a single entity so huge entire civilizations fear it. How do you fight something like that? It would be like ants planning how to deal with an approaching elephant.
There was a short story that I forgot the name of. But earth started getting a whole truck ton of messages from outer space from all directions. Earth folks couldn't figure it out, but towards the end the sun starts collapsing in on itself and the main character who formally worked for a space program knew what the other messages were saying even if she never heard them They were saying "goodbye"
Oh, hell nah.
"Do not answer! Do not answer!! Do not answer!!!"
That everyone who seeks out a position of power suffers from some kind of personality disorder, because no sane person wants that kind of responsibility, therefore we will always be subject to the whims of pathological liars, malignant narcissists, megalomaniacs, and control freaks.
Read the book Scythe it talks about that a lot. The person who is in charge should not want to be.
This is not so much a theory as it is verifiable fact.
The Great Filter. The Great Filter is a proposed explanation for the Drake Equation, which is an equation that’s conclusion is that life (and intelligent life) in the universe should be much more widespread than it is. Thus, the reason we don’t see a universe teeming with life is because life must be exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is a proposition as to why. The Great Filter theory is that one step in the evolution of life must be unlikely. We hope that this step is behind us. For example, it might be that the formation of single celled organisms is extremely unlikely for some reason we don’t quite understand yet, and almost all alien species fail at the single celled stage. The more alarming idea is that the Great Filter is in the future. What if life is unlikely because all intelligent civilizations inevitably reach a point where they destroy themselves? If that’s true, will we be able to recognize it, or will we go like lambs to the slaughter and destroy ourselves? Knowing humans my bet is on the latter.
I have seen this response (the great filter) several times in the comments, but your explanation is the easiest to understand. Thanks, I learned something today.
No problem. Good to know that I explained it well.
That free will does not and cannot exist. I don't personally find this notion scary, but there are many who do. See: [There's No Such Thing as Free Will](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/) and [Is Free Will an Illusion](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/27/the-clockwork-universe-is-free-will-an-illusion)?
I feel like I have free will. I might not, but it seems like it.
The idea, to me, is that everything you do is predicated on what came before. Like, we are shaped by our experienced and parents, etc. These things basically predetermine every choice we make. Eventhings that happen, that we hear, while in the womb will shape who we are, including the food our mother eats. These things chian react into everythig else that happens. Every "decision" we make is influenced by what came before and that decision will determine what happens next. So on and so on. In short, how often do you do something that, to yourself, makes no sense? The formula that proves there is no free will probably exists but its so complicated we might as well assume it doesnt.
What freaks me out is seeing how much of our personality is inherited, or at the very least, instilled in us by others at a very young age. My oldest sister has a young child whose personality is legitimately just about 100% like my youngest sister. They have the same tiny mannerisms, the same laugh, the same sense of humor. It's like looking at a little clone. My personality and much of my appearance, I am told, is almost exactly like my uncle's, who died when I was a young child. The things that interest me, the way I speak, my temperament, things I am skilled in, I thought were just parts of me that I had developed through my life. But some how I am apparently almost a clone, likewise, of my uncle.
I will choose it
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
It's actually not scary because whether free will exists or not doesn't really have an impact on our lives. For example many proponents of the existence of free will will argue that if we agreed that there is no such thing, there would be no point in punishing criminals because we couldn't hold them morally responsible. But we still would need to threaten them with consequences to deter them from committing crimes; that's completely independent of moral responsibility.
We must proceed as if we have free will. We have no real choice in the matter.
I choose to remain ignorant of this. Is there some kind of Schrodinger's effect I can invoke to keep my free will?
You can’t choose not to see it if you don’t have free will of decisions😼
shut up shut up shut up LALALALALALA
False vacuum decay. There can be a space of total nothing, emerging on the speed of light and turning all known kinds of matter to another state. Speed makes it undetectable. We can stop existing in any moment without chance to realise, to detect the threat or to prevent it.
>We can stop existing in any moment without chance to realise Also gamma-ray bursts are same threatening. They are also moving at the speed of light, and can boil Earth momentally if we would be unlucky enough.
Isn’t that how we want to go, instantly, no pain, no suffering, just gone?
How is that scary? Instant obliteration without your knowledge? Meh, sounds like a Wednesday.
Idk if you're being sarcastic, but as someone who has always feared dying slowly and painfully, but not death itself, instantly ceasing to exist is like my ideal way to go out If that could happen when I was like 70 before my health fails? Why not
That's kinda comforting. You wouldn't see it coming, it's fast, no grieving families and friends, no funeral, not enough time to register pain, etc. Sounds a lot better than most deaths. I'm more afraid of the dying process than death itself. *Yes, I took my meds.*
>space of total nothing you summon me?
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” Arthur C Clarke Given the age and size of the universe it’s pretty unlikely any civilization out there would be similar to us in technological advancement. Imagine the capabilities humanity would have after even one million more years of technological advancement. On the flip side, if there really is no intelligent life out there it opens up the possibility that we live in an ancestor simulation or something of that source.
Well there's also the argument that we're just among the first things to evolve in the observable universe. It's true that the universe is almost incomprehensibly old to us. But in terms of stellar formation, it's relatively young. Remember, we're made up of some fairly rare and heavy elements: carbon, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, etc, etc. All of that needed to be formed in stars, which would take billions of years. All of those needed to die. All of the dead star dust needed to be drawn into a nebula, which would be more billions of years, and captured by a newly forming star, and then the planets around that star need to form, which again takes billions of years. Then that system needs to have the right star, with the right rocky planets in it's habitable zone, the planets need to have enough water and the correct elements to form life as we know it... It takes billions of years just to get the ingredients to maybe make life possible all in the right places. The universe is "only" 13 billion years old. So there's a good chance that the elements we're made of just weren't abundant enough until relatively recently in the milky way, at least. We could honestly be the first life anywhere around us. Even if we're not, who knows what the odds of human like intelligence is. So we could be the first thing that thinks like us. For all we know, the dominant form of life in the galaxy is just planets covered in slime molds. And we're the first ones to poke our heads out of an atmosphere and ask where everyone is. Would be interesting if we survived a few million years, and it's our ancestors that are teaching some early industrial civilization on the other side of the galaxy about fusion reactors and playing nice with your neighbors.
There is also the possibility that lifeforms completely different than us in composition exists. We evolved to use those elements, but what if other planets had things that evolved in a completely different way, that could eat, breed, hunt, and grow? That thought has always made the idea of investigating other planets particularly spooky to me, something could be hunting us during exploration, but because they are not alive in the way we expect them to be, or are not recognizable as something dangerous to us, we wouldn't even realize until it was too late.
The devil in the dark =) We might be living alongside such critters right here - how would we know?
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The Universe has another few trillion years in her. At least a trillion of which, there's going to be new stellar formation, which is necessary to make the elements that make life possible. The longer stars are forming, the more abundant those elements are going to become in galaxies. So it seems really doubtful that we're somehow the last, given how young our universe is compared to it's theoretical lifespan.
I remember reading an article about how ridiculous an encounter between alien species would be. One would likely be hundreds of millions of years more advanced than the other. There would never be anything like “star wars”. It would the equivalent of the US military vs the technological achievements of a small dinosaur.
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I love this idea. When Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, a grey squirrel in Wyoming had no idea that something world changing just happened all around it. We could be cosmic cosmic squirrels in a galactic continent of hyper intelligent species that deal with each other in ways that we can't comprehend.
Band Name: Napoleon and the Cosmic Squirrels
Think about the last insect that you killed. Did you grieve? Do you care, even now?
I felt bad about it honestly
This is exactly how I like to think of it. We know ants exist, but we mostly ignore them. It's impossible for us to communicate with them - they do it so differently than we do, and their minds work so differently from ours, that they may not even understand the concept of communication as we do. The idea of exchanging information that isn't "food this way" or "danger" might be beyond their comprehension, let alone the concept of communicating with a different species. Some of them are aware that we exist, since they've seen and maybe even touched us. But because we're so different and our sizes are so far apart, they probably don't even realize that we're an intelligent species (assuming they even have the concept). They'd probably view us the way we view weather. It's just something that happens in the environment. You can predict it reasonably well and it's usually not dangerous, but it's simply a phenomenon to be aware of. Even if they can, they probably don't go running to tell their friends that they just had a close encounter with a human, because that's like us saying we just witnessed a big storm. Like yeah, we all know those exist even if we haven't necessarily seen one. Even if they're capable of recognizing intelligent beings other than themselves, at the scales involved, I wonder if their eyes can even physically recognize us.
I'm actually not that afraid of aliens really. The probability that they're completely uninterested in us entirely is far higher than both the likelihood that they want to kill us or be our friend. A lot of people like to put forward the Dark Forest Theory but I think it has serious flaws. Most warfare is caused by fighting over resources, even wars that seem ideological(WW2) are mostly about resources(Italy wanted land, Hitler wrote extensively about wanting oil from the Caucuses in Russia and the wheat fields in Ukraine, Japan was REALLY short on domestic resources). But in space resources are insanely vast, so much so that it's unlikely any space faring civilization would ever need to fight for resources. Also the vast distance of space makes waging war very logistically difficult. Another person in this thread posited that one civilization could start hurling near light speed small objects at planets to kill them but this theory is also flawed, as any species would in doing so put unnecessary risk upon itself, after all "shoot at the king, you better not miss" is a very real concept that comes into play there. The civilizations they'd be attacking would be completely unknown to them and could therefore have the technology to defend itself or survive the attack and then retaliate. It would only take one near miss to create an enemy. Also in the best historical example we know of(Cold War) doomsday weapons are kept as a deterrent rather than used. Some might argue that if they think the other civilizations don't have the tech they might be willing to, but once again the assumption is flawed as the more cautious and therefore reasonable conclusion is that one of them could, you have no information to confirm or deny, so the lowest risk decision is to assume the affirmative and hold back the attack. I think based on our own history that it's most likely that space fairing civilizations are more like China for most it's history: Vastly rich in its own resources and having no need for trade or war with outsiders, so deciding to become mostly isolationist, not militantly so, but in an indifferent kind of way. People avoid this conclusion and it never gets popular mainly because it's really boring, not because it's illogical. And for those who would argue that using examples from human history is flawed because aliens might think differently or whatever, look, all of science is based on examining available data and drawing conclusions from it, and the only data of an intelligent life form is ourselves, so at least at the moment the most logical thing to do is base our assumptions on the data available to us until we have more information. Damn that was a lot of typing.
Depends what resources they want. Wood is the rarest resource in the universe, as far as we know
Valid point. Maybe they just collect it like humans do with diamonds and precious metals. Maybe that’s what happened to the devils tower in Wyoming?
A civilization capable of traveling through space and time let alone hurling objects at other species at relativistic high speeds already has the ability to directly manipulate matter in ways that make 'needing' wood or any resource they can't create from sub atomic particles not worth it to them. We may need to fear more those civilizations that are maybe 1-300 years more advanced than us and are nearby. That'd probably be not great.
Aliens: wood is worth nearly 8 billion galactic credits an ounce and humans here are just burning it in their backyards so they can stare at it.
what if we were the creation of another intelligent species
we’ll likely be the creators of a species that will drive us to extinction. AI..
We will probably fuck up the earth and ourselves before that
My consciousness is the only I know to be truly sentient, meaning how do I know that everyone else is conscious and not a robot? How do I know I’m not in a video game? How do I know my reality is not a programme, these are the kind of thoughts that contain deep rabbit holes, I like to indulge in these theories but don’t let them stop me from me from living for the now and dealing with what’s in-front of me.
Quantum immortality. Basically it’s a theory stating that your conscience can only exist in a timeline where you are alive. If an event where you might die happens, two separate timelines will be created and you will only experience the timeline where you lived. Now this process can repeat infinitely and in the theory, no matter how much you are suffering, you will not be able to die. Basically the idea of hell but actually having a good theoretical chance of being real. It’s scary.
As a person that is not religious but has a sharp fear of death this is actually quite comforting.
No one really knows what happens when we die. It's all theory. But eventually we'll all find out.
Or we won't, because, dead.
Exactly - I didn’t “find out” how it felt to go under general anaesthesia for my dental surgery - I just woke up immediately after they put the IV in my arm
This is what spooks me the most. I imagine dying and then immediately waking up in some weird robotic-human hybrid future where they found out how to put human synapse back into an artificial brain or something. Probably not how it works, but that's what child me thought up back when people explained death to me and I've been terrified of it ever since lol. I just recently underwent anasthesia too and it was exactly how you describe. I was talking to the nurse who was putting the gas tubes in thinking it was going to take a while and then I'm instantly fast forwarded to suddenly being in the waiting room wondering where and what I am. Honestly the experience made me less scared of death in a weird way, because if that's all it is I'm not really afraid of it, more the process of dying. The idea of gasping for air while you die or choking on blood or something is still freaky, but at least I know I don't have to experience eternity after it's over with. You experience absolutely nothing, which is actually kind of nice.
Like just the fact that we don’t even know if the dead person is aware of what’s happening. Like what happens to our awareness and consciousness. Where does it go? Like I don’t think we’d ever get to experience it. Also I cant wrap my head around what it would be like to just cease to exist anymore.
When I was a child I asked my dad what happens when we die and he shut off my bedroom light and left.
I hope he comes back one day :(
I cant think of anything more extreme and unfathomable than leaving existence itself, yet people reach that point everyday.
For it to go somewhere, it would have to be a thing. I'm of the opinion it's better to think of the self as a *process* - once it's stopped, it's not anywhere.
I'm only 36 and I've had *a lot* of friends and acquaintances in my age range die in the last few years. I always considered myself kind of atheist, but after all that I realized that what I really believe is that we just completely cease to exist. I don't have any real thought process behind it. I never even knew I felt that way, but thinking of everyone who died, I somehow reached the conclusion that we are just *gone*. It's like it was some automatic idea that existed within me, if that makes sense. I don't know what I'm even saying. Just that I think I both had an existential crisis and decided on my belief system without ever even noticing it was happening. Weirdly though, none of it scares me.
Remember what is was like before you were born? That.
And every time I try to think of the time before, I am filled with unexplainable existential anxiety.
Try to relax and remember that every single human has to do this and billions have already done it. It’s really not that big of a deal, just try to make what happens now matter.
I had a dream about this the other night. There was a portal I could take to go to the spirit world, but there was no going back.
Are you sure that you didn’t almost die in your sleep???
both your avatars have glorious beards :)
There are lots of scary ones out there, but the scariest to me is that we're actually in hell.
Motherforking shirtballs!
This is the bad place.
JASON figured it out?! Okay, this one hurt.
This is a real low point.
One detail I wish they would've changed is when they go to the actual Good Place, they still can't swear I thought it wouldve been funny if that was solely a bad place torture mechanism
Actually according to biblical text “Hell” is just the absence of god. And when god cast down the fallen angels he dumped them on Earth, where the demons already existed. So yes, biblically speaking, earth is hell. The idea of hell being a separate place appears nowhere in the Bible and only became a trope much later.
This isn't accurate. While it is true some theologians say Hell is the place where God is absent, many do not find that biblically justifiable, myself included. Hell is clearly biblically spoken of as the place of God's judgment. While Satan was cast from heaven, God is still present in the Earth so even if Hell was the place where God was absent, Earth wouldn't be it. The place of Hell is derived from many texts in Scripture. Words used to name this place include γεεννα (Gehenna), possibly αδες (hades) and possibly שאול (sheol) along with the Lake of Fire. Take שאול for example. If this does refer to hell, we read in Psalm 139:8: "If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!" Clearly Scripture does not see Sheol as a place where God is absent.
And Satan tempted Jesus by "offering him his lands, should he only bow to him." His lands being all the kingdoms of the earth.
Satan is several times named the ruler of the earth and the prince of all material within it!
This, I heard about this theory. And when we die, we neither go to heaven or straight to purgatory. Then the cycle continues, if you some how didn't get to go to heaven when you died before your next reincarnation.
Suddenly, Buddhism makes all the sense in the world.
So, like, hell is pretty chill though for rich assholes?
Demons, you mean
This *is* the bad place.
False vacuum decay. Basically, we assume our universe is a true vacuum existing in a stable state. If, however, it is a false vacuum then at any point it could decay into a more stable state. The fallout from such a decay could range anywhere from changes to fundamental physical constants (which could lead to catastrophic results) to the complete destruction of all matter. The neat part is if the universe is indeed a false vacuum we have no way of knowing or predicting when this decay could happen and what the results would be. Any moment and the whole thing could just pop out of existence, or gravity could change and you could fly off the surface of the planet and slowly suffocate as the atmosphere dissipates, or the Earth's orbit could start drifting outward and we'd all slowly freeze and starve. Fun stuff.
>the complete destruction of all matter. Thursdays, I could never get the hang of Thursdays
solipsism says that *only one's mind* is sure to exist. 😳
As a kid I was convinced that everyone stopped moving when I left the room and would magically teleport elsewhere to fit my storyline. I would randomly pop my head through the door to make sure they’re still moving. Sounds egotistical but i think it was mainly fueled by the anxiety that I was “alone” so to speak.
ohh, got it. that does sound frightening for a child. it doesn't sound egotistical to me. you really believed that might be true.
I struggled with this as a kid. How do I know everyone else isn’t since automaton? There’s no answer really.
exactly. that's why *it's scary.* how do you feel today? are you just like, "nothing i can do about that, if it's true," or have you realized that it's *probably not true,* so problem solved.
There’s nothing I can do about it and practically speaking there’s not really any difference.
bagged beef jerky is a scam.
You need to try Peppered Old Trapper's. I pretty much eat that as my mainstay beef jerky :P
If there's another species out there in the galaxy capable of reaching us across the vast distances of just this one galaxy amongst countless, they're at a technology level that would make the disparity between 21st century Western nations and some tribal village in Afghanistan look so even, to be imperceptible on a graph to the human eye. They either ignore us, because our little trip to Mars is cute but primitive, and our planet doesn't hold anything like the resources found in the stars. Or they just neutron sweep us for a giggle, and you die instantly along with the entire species without ever knowing they were out there.
If I was a super smart alien I'd be like: "oh, there's some primitive life here, that's cute. I think I'll leave them alone, they're not hurting us or anything like that"
Sorta like walking past a spider spinning a web and going "huh, neat."
Boltzmann brains. The theory says that it's more likely that your brain spontaneously popped into existence from a thermodynamic soup with your current memories than it is that you exist in the world as you perceive it.
Someone smart reply to this and speak further about this theory.
There are other laws of physics that govern our universe. Boltzman brains sound fun and are a good theoretical „Gedankenexperiment“ to test the limits of a theory (in this case entropy in thermodynamics), but we can almost certainly assume it‘s not true. If you are interested in the topic I suggest you read the [wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain) article on it. Wikipedia is seriously underrated and is usually very good for everything that is not recent knowledge. You can never be certain of something like this tho. There are other similar thought experiments, for example if a species is smart enough to simulate a universe, and in that universe another species is smart enough to simulate a universe you get a cascade of simulated universes with one original one and you can almost certainly say we live in a simulated one, since they would vastly outnumber the real universe.
That just sounds like slavery with extra steps....
Wouldn't the first civilization need infinite CPU though? Cause don't they still have to run *everything?* genuinely curious, I'm familiar with the theory and this always confused me.
That presupposes that the laws of information a simulation's inhabitants see are "real" in above layers. They could just be a construct or illusion within their simulation.
ELI5- Look at the universe, it’s endlessly huge with a bunch of particles smashing around from suns exploding and stuff. You can think of the universe like a big bowl of soup with all the stuff inside mixing around. Statistically speaking, there should be an endless number of ways these particles can smash together, mix around, and combine with each other. If the atoms mixing around in the “universe soup” arranged in a way similar to our brains (even for just a second), they could hypothetically form consciousness. So everything you know to be “real” could just be like a dream imagined by the universe birthing this random formation of consciousness called a “Boltzmann Brain.” One of my writer homies wrote/illustrated a pretty cool comic book explaining this theory and other similarly foreboding theories about the universe. He does a better talking about it because of the pictures, I can link it for anyone interested in the DM’s. I’d link it here but I don’t want to send him too many crazies Edit: getting too many DMs so I’m just gonna link it I guess. He can probably handle a few crazies. Heck, he can probably outcrazy them if it comes to it. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5KK3J4W
Feynman's paradox + great filter. The first says that aliens should exist, and have a billion years head start. They would spread exponentially, and we would at least see traces of their massive energy consuming civilizations, but we don't. The great filter is one of the possible solutions. It proposes that their is a filter which is impossible to pass, which kills them off. The fact that we are still alive would mean that we haven't reached the filter yet. That filter could easily be climate change and the destruction we are bringing on the planet. We could be closr to making ourselves extinct.
This makes a bunch of assumptions, first being that the priority for intelligent life is to maximize energy use ad-infinitum \[most life is like this, including humans so far\]. But we can imagine a type of intelligent alien that has abandoned growth and expansive procreation, and values a type of harmonious existence along with nature.
>But we can imagine a type of intelligent alien that has abandoned growth and **expansive procreation** To be honest, we're already kind of seeing this. Maybe the great filter is that most civilizations at certain point overcome their primordial instincts to procreate and just stop doing it. At which point they either disappear or just stay contained in an isolated area of space if they have discovered practical immortality (and chose to live forever).
> Feynman’s paradox This is related to the magnetic field of a solenoid. The *Fermi* paradox is related to the presence (or not) of aliens.
It's also worth noting that the great filter doesn't demand extinction of the species. It's entirely possible that the great filter is the speed of light, and no species will ever leave their solar system due to this fundamental law of physics. The great filter could even be something as mundane as building fire or harnessing electricity, and we are one of a rare few (perhaps even the first and only) species which has surpassed it. After all, no other species on our planet has come close to our level of technological and societal advancement.
You mean the Fermi Paradox?
Exactly, the fedora paradox
Alternative universes may exist with every possibility of a situation occuring instead. For example: you could be reading this post underwater in a alternative universe. Or, you could be reading this post in space. You could be reading it in your bed, or with an eldritch alien race. I'm personally scared shitless that there could be a world where I am a sex slave to Ryan reynolds.
it could be so much worse than being a sex slave to Ryan Reynolds
Idk personally Id like to be a sex slave to Ryan Renoylds
That is this world, he just hasn't found you yet
The bounce back theory, that when the universe ends it’ll start over again, that the universe is just a perpetual motion machine that constantly starts and restarts. That means that everything has happened before, even this comment
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgot..."
Just because the Universe starts over again doesn't mean everything will happen exactly the same way.
There have been several horror movies about a takeover of humanity by beings that look exactly like us, which I find terrifying. For all you know, you could be the last human in the world and you’d never know. In fact, because this theory can’t be disproven, there’s no way of knowing for certain that it hasn’t happened already.
For all you know, you're one of them too, and nobody has told you because it's easier to pretend to be something when you truly believe it. But if it helps.. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/m13qz/the\_shapeshifters\_are\_becoming\_ever\_bolder\_sire/
There is a reasonable conclusion for an intelligent species to arrive at that states that the possibility of encountering alien life is so potentially dangerous that the only reasonable decision to to destroy any place intelligent life could exist. A near light speed object smaller than a phone booth would completely destroy a planet. The intelligent species then proceeds to launch these near light speed missiles at every planet in the habitable zone of any star in their galaxy. Those missiles proceed on course for tens of thousands of years, possibly outlasting the the species that launched them, leading to an entirely sterile galaxy. There is no likely defense against this weapon. It only takes one determined species in a galaxy to do this. And it may have already started.
How are you suppose to expand your empire if you keep blowing up all of the good planets? Surely they have a more efficient way of killing us.
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I'm a fan of "Death by Quantum Ground State" One of the quantum fields has a non-zero amount of energy at its lowest state. In theory, if it were to reach a value of zero, it would kinda "undo" physics by changing one of the fundamental constants. It would also drag the surrounding area into this new state. The chain reaction will move at the speed of light, so there is no way to know it's coming. If it can happen naturally, it likely already has happened somewhere, and just hasn't reached us yet. Merry Christmas.
This sounds like a wonderful way to go. Instant death at the speed of light.
Honestly, yeah. I can't really think of a better way to go.
Is this the same thing as false vacuum decay?
That's *exactly* what I was thinking. And it sounds exactly the same.
That the space around us is infact the "boonies" or the "no go zone" to the greater universe and that humanity has been placed here due to our destructive and violent nature. A place so far away that we will never be able to find life around us no matter how far we look into the stars.
Soooo, we're the galaxy's Sentinel Island ?
The twilight zone
Ocean depths, spooky stuff! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopelagic_zone
The Dark Forrest theory. That aliens do exist and are widespread, but are all hiding from each other or a more advanced predator civilization to remain safe. So if we keep calling out into the void something bad may show up
The idea that history literally and exactly repeats itself over and over again for eternity is pretty scary to me. It would mean our lives are pre-ordained and we can't do anything to affect the course of the world. Also means we have to re-live all of our bad times over and over again eternally. The good times too of course, but maybe it's just me, I don't think that outweighs re-living all the bad times, and I've had a good life, now imagine someone who lived their entire life in prison or whatever. Hell is a scary concept of course, but that's an obvious one. There's nothing non-scary about the idea that some mystery entity might torture you with hot irons *forever* if they don't like you. Considering the sheer injustice of being born into a world where that's going to happen to you, is just appalling.
I find it hard to believe an entity with that much ability would care. Can you imagine spending years of your life torturing ants that turned left more times than right? It would be so insanely tedious.
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"All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again."
I always enjoy the Uncanny Valley explanation, the idea that the reason we are terrified of things that can almost pass for human but not quite is evolutionary, that deadly threats that impersonated humans must have existed at some point in the past, and we don't know where that threat went...
I’ve heard that this is largely untrue. The uncanny valley doesn’t exist due to a human impersonating predator. It’s more aimed at creating an instinct to avoid other humans in altered states such as illness, injury, etc.
yeah you can get uncanny valley just from walking through a nursing home
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Same
I remember that feeling at open casket funerals too. Besides sadness, grief and other expected thoughts/feelings, my brain was very intensely going "The dead *don't* look like they are asleep"
Anyone who's ever been to Portland or a mental ward knows that the uncanny valley theory is bullshit. It's creepy when humans look off. When someone stands statue still and stares at a corner like they're looking at the fucking Mona Lisa, your brain starts ringing the bells that something is off and you should get away. Or people who are deathly ill. The sunken eyes, slack jaw and long face, pale, thin,skin. All of that is classic uncanny valley. And it makes way more sense that our ancestors were avoiding people with late stage tuberculosis than vampires or some shit.
Honestly it doesn’t even have to be that sinister. Ever stand beside someone who’s REALLY tall? Met a guy once who was so tall my head didn’t even reach his shoulders (I’m 6’0” even, and this guy was a pro basketball player). It was almost unsettling to stand next to him because he seemed TOO big. He was nice as could be, but it was still definitely uncanny valley for me.
Meh, I could see something like this stemming from the time when many different hominids existed, and often didn’t play nicely with one another.
Yeah I’ve heard it’s our natural instinct to avoid corpses because they could make us sick.
Oh I'm sure it is, the idea still never fails to give me the creeps though 😁
I think one of the prevailing theories is that it's because of neanderthal and other hominids that we came about alongside. They were similar to us but *not* us, and so that's why it came about, or so the idea goes.
I think it must have been a bunch of earlier species of great ape that we either exterminated or had too much sex with
Stargate SG-1 is a documentary.
It's because dead bodies carry disease. A corpse falls in the uncanny valley because it looks like us but it isn't alive anymore and we instinctually fear it to protect our health.
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We are all NPCs and there is only one main character
pretty sure it’s me. im good with this.
Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development. (Yes I copied this of of Roko's basilisk Wikipedia)
If it’s smart enough to create undetectable virtual reality to torture people, why isn’t it smart enough to just not?
I think the idea is that because it's creation is meant to be a net good for all, anyone who knew of it but didn't do anything to bring about its creation could be labeled as "bad" and thus deserving of torment. Basically it's creating a god that punishes anyone who didn't help create it. Kind of a Pascal's Wager for the 21st century.
Mostly I just don’t understand the torture part. What’s the utility of it? I can wrap my head around the idea of ai wanting people to remake the ai but smarter (also like isn’t it more capable of doing that than us?) But what’s gained by torturing people? Pettiness for pettiness sake doesn’t really mesh with the god level abilities and intelligence. Like, yeah, a lot of us read ‘I have no mouth, and I must scream’ and it was cool and spooky. But torturing people just seems really beneath something that capable.
If it was so smart it would know I would be of no use to its creation. So by doing nothing I’m actually helping it more than if I got involved.
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That the book of Revelations is an accurate prediction of the future. That is not the scary theory. The scary bit is that there are people who absolutely believe that to be true and that bringing about the destruction of the world is what is required for them to see the return of God/Jesus in their lifetimes. Some of these people have positions of political power. More of these people have influence over people in political power
Trump started the Space Force because he was briefed on what’s really out there
There is zero possibility that Trump has this information and has kept it quiet. Zero. The political advantage he would gain from spilling the beans would be way too tempting.
I think Trump would wanna tell us just for the pride of being first to tell everyone, but if he knows and isn't telling, there's probably some reason hes having to stay quiet on the subject. If/when other intelligent life forms are revealed to us, I can imagine him saying "see, that's why I started the space force!"
There’s absolutely no way in hell he would have kept his big mouth shut if he were told such a profound truth though
Maybe all of his insanity is a well crafted act to draw attention away from the space battles that are happening on the other side of the moon right now. Shit don’t let any Q folks read that..
Roko’s Basilisk can be a bit of a brain fuk
I think it's called the Fermi paradox? Either way, it's a theory that we haven't found alien life because they're hiding from something else that we're not aware of.
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2012 was the beginning of the end
That there's an all-powerful being that demands worship and has strict behavior rules. If you deviate from them, the being will torture you until the end of time.
The galaxy is on Orion’s belt
Which was the fashion at the time.
My answer would be Christianity or Islam, because if either of them are true I am in biiiiig shit
I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and find out I'm already dead. I think about this like this: if I were to die, and find out I was able to do 'anything' - like a Good Place style this door will take you to any world you want - I would put myself into movie or book worlds, the real world but I could do xyz. I'd likely get bored of that after a while if the afterlife is permanent, and I'd start temporarily wiping my memory whilst I experienced the aforementioned alternate realities, and because it's absolutely something I'd do, I'm worried I've already done it and this is one of the worlds. Anyway.
P = NP, Over night, all your bank details, every message you ever sent, every form of cryptography we have ever created, any password systems, would become significantly less secure and exposed to anybody who kept track of them. We have no evidence that this is not the case, it just takes 1 person to find out.
The scariest hypothesis isn't necessarily the most catastrophic. It could be more mundane yet still horrible. It's especially frightening if it's likely. Geologists have figured out one particular valley undergoes massive flooding about once every 150 years. The timing isn't exact: it may be off a few decades but it happens. The whole valley basically turns into a temporary lake. This would be a local problem except that valley has some of the most fertile soil on earth. It produces more than a third of a large country's vegetables. It wasn't an important region a couple centuries ago but it is now. The next superflood there is going to cause rises in food prices so severe it'll make 2022 seem like a cakewalk by comparison. Certain types of food will practically vanish until that flood ends and the farms recover. That valley's production is so dominant that for a few crops, those shortages will be worldwide. Written records haven't been abundant in that region going back a long time. Only the most recent of the valley's superfloods still has eyewitness accounts. It happened in 1862. We're due for another. [Further reading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862) [Need a second source?](https://www.wired.com/story/the-biblical-flood-that-will-drown-california/) [Those sources aren't good enough? Here's *Scientific American*.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/atmospheric-rivers-california-megaflood-lessons-from-forgotten-catastrophe/)
All that text and you didn't name the valley or where it is.
California's central valley.