I've come to decide that all the infinity of the Universe may just as well not exist if there were no sentient beings to experience it.
Even if I were immortal, and had a spaceship that could take me anywhere instantly, I would still ultimately get attached to the stories and struggles of individual beings, no matter how localized and of infinitesimal consequence they may be.
I can imagine that there must be unimaginable beauty out there; endless fields of exotic crystals, planetoids drifting through sparkling nebulas, rogue planets far away from the light of any star, islands floating in the multicolored clouds of a gas giant – even our own planet has many surreal places most people aren't even aware of, like [0] – but even such beauty would become depressing if there is no other being to share it with.
I know that this kind of thinking is a human thing; a member of a hive-mind species may probably never feel that way. An species with no biological mating, or an species where all members are identical clones, may have no concept of love or beauty.
But again, these differences between species, races, and individuals is what makes everything interesting.
There's a book: Where good ideas come from.
The thesis is that most of nature is fractral and in it The author draws parallels to innovation.
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-From/dp/1594487...
Meanwhile, the people who lack personal agency moan and thrash about wondering why we're still so ignorant, even though we're in the middle of the Great Peace, prosperity on a global level is rising rapidly, and our ability to explore the stars is just beginning.
They're all small fish trying to reduce the size of the pond they're in so they seem bigger.
With the environment changing so do the evolutionary advantages that come with the environment. In that regard, an evolutionary trait that is considered disadvantageous in one environment might be actually advantageous in a different environment.
Case in point: Humans fighting over rocks.
When there were only a few humans around but lots of "good rocks" to fight over, being competitive for the few humans might have been an advantage. Because there had been enough "good rocks" around so everybody could get their own piece of rock if they compete and some can even get more than just one rock.
Now change the ratio between humans and "good rocks", whether that be because there are a lot more humans than there used to be or because there are far fewer "good rocks" around to compete for or simply a combination of both.
In such a scenario competition for the sole ownership these few remaining "good rocks" between big numbers of humans, might be a massive resource waste compared to a more cooperative approach that doesn't pit everybody against each other for a scarce resource.
But this results in kinda a chicken&egg problem: If nobody cooperates then we are wasting resources and effort, but if only some people cooperate they put themselves in a disadvantageous position, compared to the remaining competitors, and will have a hard time pulling trough.
This is not an insurmountable problem by any means. Group competition occurs on a variety of levels. Nations compete. Ethnic groups compete. Political parties compete. Businesses compete. Individuals compete. When competing as groups, there just need to be benefits shared among the group (i.e. a reason for people to be a part of the group) and ways to punish free-riding (i.e. ways to prevent people from receiving the benefits of the group while not contributing to the group).
The point I'm making, though, is that if any of those entities chooses not to compete with other like entities, it will dwindle into irrelevance or die out. That entity will not be making the world a better place by choosing not to compete. Instead it will simply be replaced by other such entities which are more inclined to put their own interests first, as has happened to countless other nations, ethnic groups, political factions, businesses, and individuals that did not compete successfully for whatever reason.
You know what I'm afraid of? Some country's leader will go up there, see their bit, and think "All the rest of that should be mine."
I agree with your sentiment, but writing it is based on the assumption that all people are like you (or us) in our sense of goals and community. It's not true.
But I still like the idea that people can be cured from megalomania by a quick trip to the moon, the space station, or by just driving up and down one of our space elevators.
When space tourism becomes a thing, then I guess we'll see...
Most critical? Maybe not. But it is undoubtedly very much a significant and underrecognized factor.
The Overview Effect is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
At its best, it inspires calls to environmentalism (the fragility of the Earth), but at its worst, and it's usually at its worst, it inspires nihilistic Carl Saganisms like the Pale Blue Dot.
But then again, you already acknowledged this out in your previous comment, and I get that here you were just trying to explain what you thought the alternative was.
To me, at least, it's less of "how could anything here matter when Saturn is so big?" and more of "does it really seem plausible that this vast universe was created for the benefit of some creatures on the surface of this little speck? Do you really think we're that special?"
Certainly it's possible to ride the Overview Effect all the way to nihilism, but it seems clear to me that unexamined anthropocentrism is at least as incorrect.
One is a short-lasting altered state of consciousness.
The other is an idea, a change of perspective that can inspire action and positive lifestyle change. Or perhaps a descent into nihilism, depending on circumstance.
You say this because you already have a perspective on things.
I just picture me as one of trillions of rocks going around at an extreme velocity around the Saturn ring. Each rock represents a violent pass of this galaxy. We also know there's a black hole in the center of this galaxy, let alone we have many mores across the whole galaxy. What's even more void is this universe is so big, so big, so big we can't even know what's out there. What's with this tiny dot in this universe doing? So much life so much memory so much humanity, yet, we are so tiny. Indeed, we are so insignificant.
Turn our attention back on Earth. Every step we take every air we breathe, every rock we see, has a history. Our ancestors walked on our lands, all sorts of amusing creatures once lived on this planet. What's beneath us are the remaining and the history of planet Earth. Our petroleum oil is the product of the past living organisms. Years from now, our decedents will walk on this land like we do today, wondering about their ancestors' past, what they did, how they lived, amused at our modern fashion taste and our modern technology.
Are we the only intelligent organism out there? Is there another universe? As the universe expands, what does it mean? What's actually space and time without all the mathematics? Can we even picture what it is like for the universe to stretch, like a force field / shield expanding? Could we rewind to the past like in sci-fi movies? Can you imagine what it is like to have hundreds of billions of galaxies around us? Going to M31 would probably take at least 10M years at 60mph.
As I am writing this, new stars are borning, some other stars are about to explode, some stars and planetary objects are ripping apart by black holes, galaxies are ripping each other apart as they collide crossing each other's path, our space explorers out there are watching and analyzing the space out there, and other people whom I may not know are dying on this planet Earth. Mysterious forces are every where. Most importantly, our Sun is heading to a dying state like all of us, eventually the Sun will burn out and as it burns out, the temperature will rise to the point we can't survive on this planet. Eventually we will have total darkness and total coldness here, some billion years from now. Oh, and our planet is four billions old, and this modern human civilization is only roughly 5,000 years ago and "humans" probably around 3-5M years. Our legacy our human world may collapse due to human conflicts or due to cosmetic events, and then maybe we will turn into natural resources too. M31 is approaching and billion years from now we will be in another galaxy collision event. Perhaps the cycle will repeat.
We think everything in this natural world has one order: there's a beginning and there's an end state. But this perception isn't true at all. Our chemical compositions never lost, they just become other things, over time. Some of our human ancestors think when people die they become a star and at night they will shine and look after the livings. Those who died before us are already decomposing and becoming part of everything we experience every day. It isn't far stretch to say those stars out there, trillion miles away from us, perhaps did make up of other living creatures before us, and trillion years from now, our photon, might escape and able to travel to other stars.
This is depressing.
There is something about ancient texts and mythology that when put in a juxtaposition with modern advancements truly makes me appreciate humanity and how far we've come. It adds a completely new emotional layer to it, dare I say spiritual?
I hope one day I'll have the time to read the Bible, purely out of intellectual curiosity and historical appreciation.
I blame the Civilization series.
This is a drastic underestimate. Going to M31 would take about 10M years at one-fifth the speed of light (since M31 is about 2M light years away). One-fifth the speed of light is 37,256 miles per second, or about 134 million miles per hour. So at 60 mph, it would take about 2 million times longer, or about 20 trillion years.
All the world leaders should be spent to space to understand how insignificant we are and how petty and insignificant our disagreements are.