Well... the last few days have been intense. I guess that's the nature of the bussiness.
I hope we can get to the unanimous consensus that 'ad hominem' attacks are not within the boundaries of 'free speech'. We want to avoid throwing ourselves again in a wild spiral of fight-clubs. The book is written, the movie is already made, no need for sequels.
Separately, given the realized need that our forum needed an space to discuss <<unrelated non-nonsense>>, we had decided to create the sub thread:
42: The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.
We hope this title help us remember the most important advise:
Lastly, we have been talking about E.T.s, and other lost civilizations. I guess the knowledge and fear to understand that intelligence is out there to be found: AI, organic, and otherwise, will always be a powerful motivation, as well. On that direction I will dare cite Douglas Adams again, and leave it for others to comment:
Douglas Adams wrote:It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much. The wheel, New York, Wars and so on. Whilst all the Dolphins had ever done was play around on the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed that they were more intelligent than man, for precisely the same reasons.
Curiously enough, the dolphins always had long known of the impending demolition of earth, and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger, but much of these communication were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs, or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means, shortly before the folgons arrived. The last ever dolphin's message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backward somersault through a hoop while whistling the "Star-Spangled banner'', but in fact the message was this: "SO LONG...... AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH'".
In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they expend a lot of time in behavioral research laboratories conducting frightening, elegant and subtle experiments on men. The fact that men, once again, completely misinterpreted this relationship, was entirely according to these creatures plans, as Arthur Dent will shortly discover.