what are the exact numbers for the next Powerball drawing, in winning order?
…don’t fuck with me, genie, I got problems.
The number is the same as that of a Chinese fortune cookie lotto number. 50 people win an and split a 5 million dollar jackpot, yourself included.
You get about $70k.
Shit man, I’d be happy with a 7k jackpot tbh. 70k would be hella worth it.
Ask for the lottery numbers instead, that would igve you like a million, sounds better to me…
Still I wonder if thats really worth it, probably not. You could have ANY question answered and you chose to get a couple lf dollars richer instead?
At least ask for one of ghe millinium questions, that way you at least find out somethinf useful while at the same time getting the multu-million dollar prize money
Where exactly is the closest alien civilization located?
What would be the scariest possible answer to this?
I feel like finding out either “disturbingly close” or “far enough away that we’d never reach it before the heat death of the universe” would both be pretty terrifying answers. Or even if the answer somehow turned out to be “there aren’t any”
I feel like the scariest answer is very close by, within a hundred light-years or so. This would imply that alien civilizations are extremely common (because the average distance between civilizations depends on how rare they are, it’s hypothetically possible I suppose for intelligent life to be very rare and yet have two examples very close by, but it’s very unlikely). That would have implications for the Fermi paradox (for those unfamiliar, this is basically the question of “given the universe is so old and huge, why haven’t we seen any aliens out there”). Namely, it would basically rule out the rare earth hypothesis, or versions of the great filter that occur before the development of civilization, and the next leading candidate for the answer would be versions of the great filter scenario that occur after civilization has developed, and before it gets space-fairing to a significant degree (because we’d probably be able to see signs of intelligence in a sufficiently developed solar system). That would imply that basically no civilization ever survives much past our current level, despite probably billions of tries (since civilizations are so incredibly common in this scenario).
Very far away implies the reverse, either life is very rare to begin with, or it rarely reaches civilization, in which case we’re probably already past the great filter if there is one, and so have less to worry about. It is a bit frustrating in that we’d basically never know anything about aliens beyond the extremely vague notion of what corner of the universe they exist in, but nothing particularly scary in my opinion. It also means we have no reason to worry about if these or any other aliens are hostile or not, because hostilities over that distance are presumably impossible unless we’re wrong about ftl travel not being possible.
None at all implies one of two things that I can think of: if the universe is finite (the question didn’t just limit the answer to aliens within the observable universe and somehow we just magically get the answer, so if there is more universe beyond the cosmological event horizon, and the closest aliens exist there, we should still know), then it’s basically the same as far away aliens, it just means civilizations are so incredibly rare that most universes don’t contain one at any given time. If the universe is infinite, though, and none of that infinite universe contains aliens anywhere, then that means that the probability of intelligent life existing is zero (because given infinite tries, anything with a finite chance of occuring eventually occurs). The problem of course is that we exist, so in that scenario, it would pretty much imply that we are not naturally occurring, and are created by something else (presumably something that exists outside the universe). This could be a religious sort of scenario, like having some sort of creator god who only creates life once, or something like the simulation hypothesis (in which case I guess aliens would exist, but asking where would be useless because they’d be outside of our universe and spacetime).
“There are four to seven alien civilizations equidistant to Earth, depending on the phase of orbit between the various star systems.”
Reminds me of that article a bit ago where some dude mathed out a probability that the Milky Way had about 4 different Imperium of Man tier hostile space faring civilizations
Honestly, I think the scariest answer would be the moon.
Think about it. It’s been this mythic symbol for different human civs over the eons. We’ve literally been there. To find out we had some shy neighbors just hanging out right there, somehow unobserved after all this time… brrr.
That’s what I was thinking too. I think at this point, we’re pretty darn sure there’s no alien civilization on the moon. For there to be one suggests very possibly it’s purposefully hiding from us. That’s the scariest idea, I think. If it’s just a little further away, we can assume that they aren’t trying to hide. But the moon is too close and too well studied for a civilization to be there without likely some advanced method of hiding.
Someone actually was once offered the opportunity to ask such a question. Here is the question that was asked:
- What is the content of the pair in which the first half is the best question I can ask, and the second half is the answer to that question?
Here is the answer received:
- The best question you can ask is the question you just asked, and the answer to that question is the one you are receiving now.
Yeah. A lower limit was never set in the wording of the question, so the answer would likely be “Perpetuate your species as long as possible”
You could easily modify that question to qualify “best” in a more useful way.
“most beneficial for my well being”
“most beneficial for humanity’s long term well being”
“maximally beneficial to human progress”
“maximally conducive to bring about the total destruction of reality by the Old Ones”
“best way to a smoothie”
Etc.
What is the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? Just so I can check Douglas Adams’ work. There’s just no other way.
Giving up wealth, fortune, and fame for cosmic knowledge? You’re a real frood dude, candelestine!
What happens to us (our consciousness, soul, whatever) when we die?
If it were so simple, you’d think we’d be able to put our thumb down on what consciousness “is” and “isn’t,” where it comes from, etc.
Why? What does OP’s answer have anything to do with what counscioness is or isn’t and where it comes from? You are committing a logical fallacy. There is no relation between these two.
That sounds like a possible answer though. And if some hypothetical entity gave you the answer to that question “with 100% certainty” you’d not be much smarter… still dont know why…
