Ah yes, "explorer." They were just looking around at stuff! Not looking for anything in particular. Just curious.
People to rape and enslave? Lands and wealth to steal?
Sadly, the true answers have been lost to time, but we believe they were trying to spread democracy.
According to the Argentinian right, Colombus and the Spaniards brought "civilization" to this "barren land" filled with people that "couldn't build for shit".
:doomjak:
And I get accused of "rewriting history" when I point out that Columbus was a genocidal maniac.
On the most recent episode of Guerilla History, they bring up Neil a few times. Evidently he once said that space aliens would have no interest in humans because we would be like insects to them. Thankfully, one of the hosts of the podcast is a biologist, and he said that even if that were the case, scientists are actually the most interested in "simpler" forms of life like nematodes or fruitflies, that at any given moment there are hundreds, maybe thousands of scientists out there dedicating their careers to studying these creatures. So in a way, Tyson's statement says much more about him than it does about the viewpoint of hypothetical extraterrestrials: he views human beings as worthless and uninteresting.
In one of the Symphony of Science songs, Tyson "sings" about wanting to grab people on the street and tell them how amazing astrophysics is. I know that Americans tend to not be the deepest thinkers, but many of them (particularly people in NYC) are probably aware that "we are made of star stuff," etc. It seems odd to assume that they wouldn't know, or that it would make a difference in their lives. Like, right now most people are focused on surviving, but as a minor celebrity mere survival does not seem to be a huge factor in Tyson's life.
Someone I know actually works alongside Tyson and generally describes him as annoying.
So in a way, Tyson’s statement says much more about him than it does about the viewpoint of hypothetical extraterrestrials: he views human beings as worthless and uninteresting.
No, I don't think it says anything beyond the fact that he likes to run his mouth and say shit he thought about for 0.2 seconds at best about things mostly unrelated to his expertise and then act smart about it.
Side point, i listened to that entire episode, and at one point one of them asks "why is no one talking about this UFO stuff, it was like discussed for a week and then entirely went away" without realizing that they just kinda waffled on the subject without saying anything meaningful or interesting (that hasn't been said for the last sixty years) for an entire hour and a half. No one's talking about it anymore because the information revealed doesn't, well, REVEAL anything.
Spain valued existing at a strategic trade location with access to the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea and also valued doing genocide
Gotta love people who are experts in one field automatically assuming that they're experts in every field :big-cool:
I'm no expert in history and yet I know that's the dumbest take
I guess this is what happens when your society devalues the humanities this much. People listen to this pop scientist explain that a historical outcome is due to the fact that different countries simply valued different things
that a historical outcome is due to the fact that different countries simply valued different things
Adam Curtis laughs nervously
Going to need to bust out the calipers to really get to the bottom of this.
Religion sucks because it distracts us from doing colonialism.
The birthplace of the European renaissance is backward and too religious because they didn't colonize enough places.
Also wasn't Spain a unified empire while "italy" was a collection of independent city states and fiefdoms at the time? Like of course a collection of small local powers weren't investing in armadas.
Religion is when you build poo poo god building smh
Science is when you give smallpox to indigenous people
And then all Italians chose to be dumb while all Spanish chose to be smart, the end.
The Republic of Venice, famous for its lack of global maritime trade routes.
He's wrong, but this point is wrong too. Italy is basically landlocked compared to the far west.
Its only out is Gibraltar, otherwise it's stuck in the Mediterranean Toilet
meanwhile Iberians just have to place a boat in the Atlantic, and it will eventually drift into the American net.
Ah yes I wonder how all those people learned Spanish. I wonder if the Spanish explorers built any kind of buildings to "instruct" the indigenous in a new language. It looks to me like the Filipinos really like cathedrals too Neil, how come the whole world isn't speaking tagalog?
It's especially dumb since when the Spanish came to places like California they build Missions to enslave and convert the indigenous people.
