Otaku: I couldn't care less if this thread was locked, but it seems you need to read this. And go down to E. Or if you need to, the whole page.

You're just lonely. Your options include:

A) Deal with it.

B) One or both of you moves.

C) Dump your girlfriend and find someone closer.

D) post in 4chan ronery threads

E) Join these guys.

Of course I have to deal with it, that is part of being Human. To deal with it and learn and move on. I don't truly want everyone to die, I'm stupidly just wishing for a fantasy world but I might as well keep dreaming. I'm not lonely by any means, I just as many others I'm sure don't really like falling asleep alone. I'm not an Emo kid by any means but if you think I am your entitled to your own opinion.

Besides, if everyone DID go away and someone had to repopulate the Earth....So much inbreeding. But that has already happen depending on what you believe in.

See, I tried not be mean to any of you even though you seem to want to come down on me kinda hard lately.

Otakon 08 Ikari wrote:See, I tried not be mean to any of you even though you seem to want to come down on me kinda hard lately.

If people are "coming down hard on you", it's because you have a 200-post history of introducing blog/MySpace-esque tangents into threads, and taking the resultant reactions with all the subtlety of a flesh wound.

As for this thread:

(A) Less emo and more topic
OR
(B) Lock.

Reichu wrote:taking the resultant reactions with all the subtlety of a flesh wound.

What do you mean, "a flesh wound"? One of the regular variety, or a Black Knight-level flesh wound?

On a side note, didn't someone once figure out who was floating in that poster and where, (and I mean everyone in that image)?

Among our animalistic behavior, our increased intelligence has allowed us to evolve in another way - society. It's purely of our creation, and because we swapped strong jaws for big brains some million or so years ago, it's what we're stuck with.

We're also stuck with hope. Yui-sama specifically talked about this in EoE. Because of hope, we are able to do many wonderful, terrible, and stupid things. Just ask the stem cell researcher, a devout person of religion, a video game player, a person who was just dumped by their boy/girlfriend, or a gambler at a casino. Hope gives us the ability to

KICK REASON TO THE CURB AND BREAK THROUGH THE IMPOSSIBLE-

sorta like that.

Couple hope with societal evolution, and you have where we stand right now: discarding pollutants, embracing green technology, yada yada. Obviously, we have a lot of work to do before everyone can live sustainably and in peace, but that's why we have hope. As Neo puts it simply.

Neo wrote:The problem is choice.

Because we can choose our options, societies exist. Civil strife exists. Wars and murders and rape and bombs exist. Our level of intelligence comes at a high price, but as subtly described in history, we as a species have displayed acts of conservation not shown in our textbooks yet. The following two claims come from an excerpt of the book 1491 by Charles C. Mann.

-The Amazon Rain Forest - the entire forest - was artificially created and maintained by the Aboriginals there, or was discovered and expanded/maintained by said Aboriginals.
-The American Prairie was maintained by Native Americans, whose self sustaining agricultural practices kept all of the Prairie in its grassland state until the advent of the colonial era.

These two feats were achieved thousands of years before the birth of the self-proclaimed "Green Revolution." Because of our (supposed) higher intelligence than the other organisms, we are able to shape the area around us for our means on a large scale. Whether or not we choose to keep the area around us suitable for the next generation is completely our choice. Thankfully, societal evolution has brought conservation back to the surface as we are about to go up in smoke. As long as we are ourselves, as long as we continue to evolve, there is hope.

See! The terrible power of evolution and the accelerating speed at which technologies become obsolete. We are but organisms - we live in the present. Today is where we stand, tomorrow is where we face, and yesterday remains in our minds.

BLACKANGEL32076 wrote:On a side note, didn't someone once figure out who was floating in that poster and where, (and I mean everyone in that image)?

Upper-left: Ritsuko
Upper-right: Rei
Center: Misato
Middle-right: Hikari
Lower-left (foreground): Maya
Lower-right: Asuka
Everyone else: Female Nerv employees

Why are some people so afraid of losing their humanity? What is so great about humanity that makes it worth keeping? Why not trade in your humanity for something better?

http://www.transhumanism.org
http://www.hedweb.com
http://singinst.org
http://www.asc-cybernetics.org

It's true that genetic and cybernetic enhancement won't eliminate the demons in our nature; however, posthuman intelligences will be more well-suited to solving that problem than we are in our current state.

chee wrote:

George Carlin wrote: You wanna know how the planet's doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet's doing. You wanna know if the planet's all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilowaia, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...assholes..

So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that's begun. Don't you think that's already started? I think, to be fair, the planet sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, the way a beehive or an ant colony can. A collective defense mechanism. The planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet? How would you defend yourself against this troublesome, pesky species? Let's see... Viruses. Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And, uh...viruses are tricky, always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps, this first virus could be one that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus, making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along. And maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.

Count A'ight wrote:Why are some people so afraid of losing their humanity? What is so great about humanity that makes it worth keeping? Why not trade in your humanity for something better?

Sounds like the script for a commercial you'd see in a sci-fi movie.

Well, I DID recently watch Robocop...

Count A'ight wrote:
It's true that genetic and cybernetic enhancement won't eliminate the demons in our nature; however, posthuman intelligences will be more well-suited to solving that problem than we are in our current state.

While there definitely exists the possibility that such things can better equip us to deal with our demons and social problems, how do you know the opposite won't end up being true? Blind faith in technology is just as bad as narrow-minded, technophobic rejection of it.

chee wrote:Blind faith in anything is just as bad as the narrow-minded, externally influenced rejection of anything.

fixed.

Infinite faith in the earth as a self correcting system is pretty naive. That said, I still don't think the earth gives a shit. As a resident of earth, I happen to give a shit.

The biosphere has recovered from several asteroid impacts that wiped out 90% of extant species at the time. What we're doing doesn't amount to shit compared to that.

Did those asteroids destroy the ozone layer?

Humans aren't giant rocks from outer space. They're a biological species. They also have the distinction of being the Terran species capable of generating the most ecological and geological damage per area per unit of time. Perhaps we should leave it at that......

Count A'ight wrote:The biosphere has recovered from several asteroid impacts that wiped out 90% of extant species at the time. What we're doing doesn't amount to shit compared to that.

Well, yes, on the scale of hundreds of millions of years. The biosphere corrects itself over very long periods of time but conditions fluctuate quite far. I was referring to people that believe that because the earth self corrects, small changes in the system (like atmospheric C02 rising 50 parts per billion) won't potentially cause rapid changes in environmental conditions.

TheAyanamiOtaku wrote:Did those asteroids destroy the ozone layer?

No, and neither did we. It's still there.

Reichu wrote:Humans aren't giant rocks from outer space.

Really? SAUCE PLZ.

slothen wrote:Well, yes, on the scale of hundreds of millions of years. The biosphere corrects itself over very long periods of time but conditions fluctuate quite far. I was referring to people that believe that because the earth self corrects, small changes in the system (like atmospheric C02 rising 50 parts per billion) won't potentially cause rapid changes in environmental conditions.

- It takes MUCH less time than hundreds of millions of years. It usually doesn't even take hundreds of thousands of years.
- When it comes to CO2, 50 PPB is nothing. I'm super serial.