For me it is the fact that our blood contains iron. I earlier used to believe the word stood for some ‘organic element’ since I couldn’t accept we had metal flowing through our supposed carbon-based bodies, till I realized that is where the taste and smell of blood comes from.

  • Elon_Musk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The speed of advancement from the industrial revolution to present.

    The relatively short time humanity has been around

    The universe is finite but expanding

    The Monty Hall problem

    The absolute scale of devastation created by humanity

    • eXAt [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I may be wrong but I thought it was generally believed that the Universe is infinite (or at least that that was the most common belief among those that are qualified in the field)

      Edit: I mean infinite in Space, of course it hasn’t existed forever

      Edit2: I quickly read this article https://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/2021/08/Is-space-infinite-we-asked-5-experts/ where the 3 astronomers answered maybe, yes, and yes. Whereas the two non-astronomers answered no. Since this seems to agree with me I will believe that this is correct and not investigate further

    • rubpoll [she/her]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The speed of advancement from the industrial revolution to present.

      This one makes Fermi’s Paradox far more confusing and terrifying to me. The time it took to go from agriculture to the steam engine is nothing compared to the age of the universe, absolutely nothing, and from the steam engine to modern technology is fuck ton nothing.

      An intelligent species could go from stone age technology to nuclear weapons in the blink of an eye.

      And that’s just life as we understand it. We have no idea if we’re the equivalent of Flatland in a higher spatial dimension or something. There could be stars with entire civilizations of plasma-based intelligent life churning inside of them. There could be intelligent civilizations lurking in each and every single subatomic particle.

      It’s possible no matter how far out or far in we look, we just keep finding more universe, more space for something to inhabit, forever…

      As they said on chapo-boys , if we look everywhere and we’re the only intelligent species anywhere in this universe … well that would be weirder than if life is hiding all over the universe.