There's something so funny about extrapolating modern human behavior up to hypothetical alien civilizations. It's a part of our science fiction that hasn't changed much from the days when life on Mars or a water-rain soaked Venus was still Hard Since Fiction. Like, they even admit 99.99% of the video is imaginary -- but they can't imagine anything else? Silly.
At 5:32 they show this stylized progression from hunter-gatherers, to agrarian settlements, to modern cities. What's telling is that the agrarian settlements are bleak beige and yellows and oranges; poop and skeletons piled up everywhere. The modern city is a pristine and healthy green, with roads and airplanes and clean water. If there's any consideration to the consequences of present day life, it's a footnote. A bug to be ironed out in the next technological rollout.
They just love to end videos on a sort of 'Cosmic Call to Arms', where humanity goes on to colonize the stars. Never any consideration of what may need to happen before, the work and organization necessary to facilitate such a lofty undertaking. Modern problems are barely worth considering, because we'll just engineer our way around it, by Jove!
If it was just Kurzgesagt, I probably wouldn't bother to write this out. But it's the most prominent and competently produced version of a narrative that seems to be everywhere. There's also a lot of lefty analysis and breakdown of these tropes. But I think that's only half of the work necessary. You can't just shoot down a story and call it a day. You have to fill that space with a more compelling story, give people something to think about and contemplate instead. Otherwise the old story just hangs around, getting bigger and more silly with each refutation it survives.
I've gotten reactions from :wojak-nooo: to :frothingfash: for saying so before, but I'll say so again: fuck Kurzgesagt and their cutely cartoonish bazinga propaganda.
The decisive end of me taking anything they said seriously was that video about mass extinction events, with climate collapse being the most obvious and imminent version of them, where they said "even if 99.99% of humanity is wiped out that is a net win for Team Humanity(tm)(r)!" :so-true:
I wonder what that miniscule fraction would be implied to be? :cap-think:
What turbo lib malded at you criticizing people literally funded by Bill gates?
My favorite part was their "debunking" video where they said Bill Gates was only a small fraction of their current income, without mentioning that he gave them a ton of money in 2015 when they were still a tiny channel
A bit like saying A New Hope was only a small fraction of George Lucas's filmography.
Yeah you'll get pilloried for it on :reddit-logo: but I'm certain the party line here has been "Kurzgesagt is Gates Foundation dogshit"
I’m certain the party line here has been “Kurzgesagt is Gates Foundation dogshit”
It is now but that wasn't always the case. :homer-bye:
You might be right, I could be thinking a lil bit about the r/cth days.
it's been a while since Kurzgesagt was relevant enough for a thread :shrug-outta-hecks:
it’s been a while since Kurzgesagt was relevant enough for a thread
GOOD. :mao-clap:
It's happened all over the place. :reddit-logo: was the most common and obvious place, but it's happened here in the past, too.
kurtzgesagt is a great example of how quality of presentation is entirely unrelated to quality of content
I always counter the dark forest with Posadas' analysis of the necessary social conditions of interstellar travel. Not that it's any less imaginary, but at least it's different.
Starting from the fact of the existence of extra-terrestrial beings, we can accept that UFOs also exist. We need to wait for further proof. It is possible that they have appeared, though it is also possible that there has been much fantasising, exaggeration or mystical deductions on the part of those who have seen them. But there is testimony from people who seem thoughtful. Neither the capitalist system nor the bureaucracy [in the workers’ states] have an interest in researching this subject, because they cannot draw any commercial, political or military benefit from it. Socialism, on the contrary, does have an interest in this, and so too do the masses. Capitalism feels that it has been made to look inferior, faced with a system that it sees as superior. People draw the conclusion that capitalism is useless. They say ‘Look at that! And you, what are you any good for?’ The ruling class feels diminished. If it could draw a military gain from doing so, it would conduct research. But capitalism tries, on the contrary, to spread the impression that this is fantasy, so people will not think that there are superior forms of relations and that capitalism is incapable of reaching this level. The workers’ state will act in a different way, because it has an objective interest in developing socialism. But at all events, the facts are coming to light in spite of the smokescreens, because there have already been many testimonies. The capitalist ruling circles, the chemists, the military, are hiding the facts. But all the information still gets published – amidst all the current worry about war, revolutions, the preparation of the final settling of accounts between capitalism and the world revolution, the constant strikes in anger against the capitalist system, the occupations of factories, of universities, of land – because these questions preoccupy the whole world. In spite of all these other concerns, people are interested in UFOs.
We do not know what form they take, or their number, but they must exist, or else they would not appear like this. There are reasons enough why capitalists would not invent these matters. They could try to use them to distract attention. But all this runs against their interests. They could divert attention to a concrete fact. But they do nothing but increase peoples’ certainty that the capitalists are no good. Besides, all this concern with UFOs does not stop strikes or factory occupations or revolutions, nor the progress towards socialism. The preoccupation with studying these phenomena has not yet developed in the workers’ states, given people’s concentration on getting by and because the bureaucracy is hiding these matters. It is, certainly, hiding a great amount of research that has taken place in the workers’ states. People would see forms of existence superior to those we have today. Socialism, on the contrary, has no fear in being compared with or integrated into higher forms of progress.
On the contrary, it seeks out this progress. ‘We have nothing to lose but our chains’. This phrase of Marx’s can be applied to everything. Moreover, it is absurd that people are discussing the problems with UFOs while millions of others are dying of hunger. It is capitalism and the bureaucracy of the workers’ states that have led to this prejudice that exists in the world. There are possibilities of exploiting matter that this society is incapable of employing. Capitalism, as well as the bureaucracy [in the workers’ states], is aware of this inferiority. In the workers’ states, there are researchers who do not measure things in terms of inferiority or superiority, but simply note that in other galaxies and planetary systems, in other universes, it is possible to fully utilise matter and eliminate all this concern with hunger and class struggle. It is possible to wipe the ruling classes out of existence. The system, there, is superior. The inhabitants of other planets who come here must consider the Earth’s inhabitants as mad, always fighting one another. The notion of struggle, of confrontation, certainly does not exist where they come from. Why fight? The historical foundation of the capitalists’ and workers’ states’ bureaucracies’ lack of interest in studying UFOs and living beings on other planets is that they see the threat of their own elimination. As such they do not interest themselves with the continued existence, the life, of human beings.
Everything that is not of commercial use, or does not serve to facilitate the existence and perpetuation of capitalist power, does not interest them. But since society must live and the proletariat and socialism must advance, these things stimulate people in the capitalist system to concern themselves with the existence of beings on other planets. So too in the workers’ states. The existence of flying saucers and living beings on other planets is a phenomena that the dialectical conception of history can admit. The most immediate consequence we can draw is that, if these beings do exist, they must have a societal organisation superior to our own. Their appearances are not the effect of bellicose or aggressive sentiments.
This means that they have no need for war, that they do not come to Earth with goals of conquest in mind. In this planet’s history, when a people has felt itself to be more capable and invaded another country, it did so with conquest in mind, in the form of war. The class struggle on Earth is the result of the organisation of society into classes, that of the possessors and that of the exploited, the bourgeoisie set against the proletariat which wants to overthrow it and build socialism. The behaviour of these beings, if it is true that they exist, seems not to be aggressive in character. All the people who say that they have seen them, say that none of them were of an aggressive disposition or inspired fear in them. All of the say that they awakened their curiosity. If these were beings from afar (as we have known in our planet’s history) with swords, arquebuses, cannons, stones and rocks, with tools of conquest, they would inspire fear through their aggressive behaviour. But these beings come to observe, they try to make it understood that they intend no harm. Their behaviour expresses their superior organisation.
They have no aggressive impulse, they have no need to kill in order to live: they come only to observe. We can foresee the existence of such beings, even taking into account the fantasies that exist among the reports, stories, observations and statements. If they exist, we must call on them to intervene, to help us resolve the problems we have on Earth. The essential task is to suppress poverty, hunger, unemployment and war, to give everyone the means to live in dignity and to lay the bases for human fraternity. To this end, we must suppress the capitalist system, as well as the bureaucracy of the workers’ states and Communist Parties who do not want to seize power. The fundamental obstacle we face is the capitalist system. We must suppress the force currently in the hands of the capitalist system: nuclear weapons. Destroy all nuclear weapons. Destroy the whole military power of the capitalist system, of Yankee, French and British imperialism. Appeal to the masses and give them the means immediately to destroy capitalism, overcome the bureaucracy of the workers’ states and establish a new society: socialism.
We must appeal to the beings on other planets, when they come here, to intervene and collaborate with Earth’s inhabitants in suppressing poverty. We must make this call to them. It is possible to make ourselves understood to them. We must not, of course, expect that they will understand immediately. But we must make appeals to them, if we believe that they can, indeed, exist. If we have any possibility of making contact with them, we must not fall into individual scientific curiosity, out of some desire to see where they come from and to visit other planets.
We must unite with them, they who seem more powerful than human beings, such that they will come and help us resolve Earth’s problems. Then we can concern ourselves with going to see what other planets are like, how life and matter are organised, and everything regarding nature. But most important is first to resolve the problems of humanity on Earth. We do not have a fantasist or idealist position with regard to flying saucers. As we accept that they exist, we want to use all means at hand, including those from outside of this planet. When we seriously reach a scientific discovery, we must try to use it to the benefit of humanity.
:posadas: https://www.marxists.org/archive/posadas/1968/06/flyingsaucers.html
The "Three Body Problem" sequel that spawned this jerk-off video posits a Sci-Fi-esque natural resource which all intelligent life values immensely. And it is the demand for this resource that ultimately drives interstellar conflict. Dune had a similar premise, although Hebert took it in a different direction.
I'm not totally on board Posadas's conjecture, simply because I don't think the social conditions for interstellar travel solve for interstellar xenophobia (either natural or learned). Its very possible that you can have a True Perfect Communist society on one planet while collectively expressing Fascist attitudes toward your nearest neighbor. Certainly, AES cultures are not devoid of their own inherited bigotries and historical traumas.
I just don't think any kind of First Contact is going to be practical from a very material sense. Even if we do somehow manage to pick out another civilization, rather than loosing them all in the background radiation of the cosmos, what can we do that's more war-like than simply waving at another ship passing in the night?
Assuming we aren't talking about life bizarre that it beggers human comprehension - a planet sized superintelligence like Asamov's Nemesis or Gas Giant inhabitants like Ben Bova's Leviathans of Jupiter or the unphotographical fungoid Mi-Go of Lovecraft - how much time and effort would it take for any human to so much as reach out and touch another lifeform? Stretching our fingers across the void that we might brush them across the gray appendage of an extraterrestrial would take eons. How would we even conduct such a war? At best, we'd just be flipping each other off from opposite ends of the galactic freeway.
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
Even if there was a highly advanced species out there somewhere in the Milky Way, they'd need FTL travel to ever stumble upon us. And like, a lot faster than light. Not only would they need to figure out how to travel faster than light, they'd need to figure out how to supply the infinite amounts of energy required, or a way to circumvent that energy cost I guess.
If you assume that FTL travel is impossible, then I think it's also pretty impossible for aliens to ever come to our solar system because of the sheer, incomprehensible distance between the stars.
Well, that depends on how much time they're willing to spend traveling. Assuming that they would have to get here in a single human lifetime is already a very anthropocentric view.
Gotta remember to take into account exponential growth too, imagine a single self-replicating probe sucking up resources, then splitting into a couple hundred tiny probes every time it reaches a new star-system and you'd have total galactic coverage within a few tens of thousand years. These probes can be very small, possibly allowing for close to lightspeed propagation, and our galaxy is only 100k lightyears across. At that point, you would have a decent picture of where in the galaxy interesting shit is going to happen at some point, and send out actual first contact fleets. Those diplomats would probably never see their own civilization again, but they might not really care about that.
If UFO's are real and alien, they would most likely be automated information-gathering probes and who knows if you could even get the attention of their original makers
then splitting into a couple hundred tiny probes every time it reaches a new star-system and you’d have total galactic coverage within a few tens of thousand years.
Ok but those probes would have to all accelerate to those near-light speed velocities as well, that would require insane amounts of energy.
Energy is cheap when you have probes able to construct fusion reactors from whatever dirt is lying around any given solar system, and they wouldn't have to reach like 0.9999c, something like .7c is fine, and not nearly as expensive.
Gotta remember to take into account exponential growth too, imagine a single self-replicating probe sucking up resources, then splitting into a couple hundred tiny probes every time it reaches a new star-system and you’d have total galactic coverage within a few tens of thousand years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uiktk67vFps
The great filter is because a first contact probe programmer set a variable wrong. Checks out.
I liked the part where the wallbreakers were like "I am your wallbreaker!" And they broke walls all over the place.
I loved the part where the wallbreaker said "Trisolaris, tear down this wall!" and then the two solar systems lived in peace.
The only good strategy against trisolaris is offering to terraform Venus and Mars for them.
Gosh I have so much I could say about the premise of the series. I wish people would just take it as an enjoyable sci-fi series instead of a philosophical work.
Trisolarians were just doing a little bit of trolling with their tiny ass robots.
I mean, its immersed in philosophy. So much of the book takes premises from these old exercises in Socratic pre-science.
The first book has a very literal iteration of Descartes's Malicious Demon, messing with all our scientific experiments so that we can never advance our understanding of quantum physics. The Farmer and the Shooter parables are, similarly, musings on the nature of the universe and our capacity for understanding natural laws. The space battles expose all sorts of strategic and moral problems inherent to a war that's so far from home. The very title of the book is reference to fundamental struggles we experience with basic mathematics, and the philosophical implications of those struggles.
These are fundamentally philosophical texts. All the major crises within the chapters are predicated on an assortment of classical and modern philosophical thought experiments. There's definitely enjoyable Sci-Fi within its pages, but you're really missing the forest for the trees if you just tune out all the deep thinking shit.
Unrelated to any of this discussion: just imagine being a Kurzgesagt Patreon supporter. As if they are in any way meaningfully funded by viewers. Pure grift.
edit: LO FUCKING L, their first tier of subscription is literally just Catholic Indulgences, but for blocking their shitty ads. They even call it that! What the fuck?
just imagine being a Kurzgesagt Patreon supporter. As if they are in any way meaningfully funded by viewers. Pure grift.
Some bazingas directly donate money to :my-hero: . King Bazinga is paid billions by the United States government already but the faithful want the Singularity(tm) that much faster.
this isn't quite the dark forest (though I feel it wouldn't be a stretch for Kurzgesagt to endorse that lol)
