We do light magic on the flat rock to teach it how to think, and what it's first think is every time it alives.
We've all got magic boxes that can talk to each other and contain the sum total of all current human knowledge
We use it for cats and porn
Just wait until our devices can materialize any food we want from just electricity. Imagine how lazy and fat we'll all be.
I mean we basically can. I press some buttons and whatever meal I want shows up at my house.
It's not quite Star Trek replicators, but as far as millions of years of humans would be concerned, it might as well be.
Shit’s literal magic. We dug rocks out of the earth, broke them down, built them back up again in a very specific way, etched them with conductive runes, taught those runes how to use electricity to do math, and now I can shitpost by telling the runes in my phone to scream 1’s and 0’s at other runes across my house.
Yes "we" because you know millions of people were collectively exploited for the labor, development, knowledge, and skills used to arrive where we are.
It’s kinda nice we can take credit for other people’s stuff. As long as we’re doing our part.
If nobody put out fires, we’d elect new officials to fix fire departments n stuff. We don’t need to know how to drive a firetruck or use a Halligan to pry open a door, just pay our taxes. So if a new firefighting technique is developed even though you or I only clock in at our offices and never think about firefighting, we’re still part of society and we can socialize the win a bit.
And if we figure out how to improve CPU speeds, firefighters can say “WE figured out how to get computers to boot in <1 second” even though they just did their own jobs. (Or at least “we know how to …” b/c they can pay someone or buy something that accomplishes the task, even if they don’t know the inner workings.)
But we needed them to feel safe and maybe not die. They couldn’t do it all and neither could we. Collective win.
::: spoiler :)
There are problems with this view so lemme have it!
:::
I would say its better to take credit for what you have done, rather than collectivize everything. If a politician happened to win an election and start a war in Iraq for example- do you say "we invaded Iraq and killed innocent civilians"? Should you be held responsible for that? If you're a nurse and you save the life of someone who goes on to murder 10 people- did "we murder 10 people"? No. I believe you are only responsible for what you directly did.
I do say we invaded Iraq as an American, unfortunately, and we committed genocide against American Indians… maybe I should say our government did that… but kinda wanna own up to what elected officials did.
As far as murder goes, I’d rather not collectivize that. Any big problem with humanity sharing in the good humanity does?
I do say we invaded Iraq as an American, unfortunately, and we committed genocide against American Indians…
I did not. If you believe you did, then you should be punished for it. And terrorist acts against you would be more defensible.
maybe I should say our government did that… but kinda wanna own up to what elected officials did.
Why? You're not responsible for their actions, you are oppressed by them too.
As far as murder goes, I’d rather not collectivize that. Any big problem with humanity sharing in the good humanity does?
Well why's it different?
I'm not a particularly accomplished person, but to the extent I have "accomplished" anything, it has been built on the backs of many giants, but also hindered by many others- who honestly, don't deserve credit for it. And I deserve no credit for what others have done even if what I have done has aided them in it- I deserve credit only for what I have done, and the parts I specifically have contributed.
Thanks to the comments here If I ever unexpectedly travel through time I'll be able to teach them about computers. Now I just have to learn advanced chemistry and learn how to create everything else.
This is not a natural landscape. You don't get fields of grass like this without human intervention. This started in the bronze age, so just because your local human-made landscape is green, make no mistakes.
Bit by-the-by, though, because obviously computers are completely awesome, but real nature is not this placid homogeneous scene
By harnessing that thing which is all over this natural place - electromagnetism. It is a quantum leap in the human experience, like harnessing fire, or agriculture.