BBO Discussion Forums: what 3 events had most profound effect on history? - BBO Discussion Forums

The development of the bicameral mind.

The main problem with answering the OP is the somewhat ill-defined nature of 'event'.

....


Here's another one, and one that I find fascinating.

The development of the bicameral mind.

This idea argues that until about 3000 years ago homo sapiens was intelligent but lacked consciousness. I don't have time to set out my layman's understanding of this idea, but google the bicameral mind and you will find that the notion, although it sounds weird, cannot be (or at least has not yet been) shown to be incorrect, and it explains a very great deal about ancient literature and beliefs, as well as affording a possible explanation for such things as schizophrenia.

Now, even if true, it is far from clear that the development of consciousness, to the arguably limited extent that we are conscious, is an 'event' either, rather than a development.

what about the concept of trade or commerce?

what about the concept of trade or commerce?

Also, the jury may still be out on whether this is a good thing. Some years back I saw a fun play called Wrong Turn at Lungfish. You can probably guess the premise but to save you the effort the idea was that evolution made a serious error sometime back.

It's an interesting subject for sure, but unfortunately this subject is being sensationalized by the media and people are buying into it. The general consensus amongst the scientific community is that food from GM crops poses no greater risk than conventional food. I think it's far too soon to predict what the long term affects of GMO's will have on food production.

Fascinating. I was unaware of this. Like Dawkins, I'm skeptical, but i'm hedging my bets.

It does occur to me that if the development of consciousness is the result of a genetic mutation, the taxonomy of humans needs a little reworking - it would seem that the arrival of modern homo sapiens sapiens was not 50,000 years ago, but 3,000. That ought to stir up a few Catholics (not to mention others)!

Dustin I didn't answer your post directly as it is off topic but it has been bothering me that I let it pass. I will happilly discuss your conclusions as they are imo and with evidence, absolutely wrong. I'm not sure if anyone else is interested in this topic but if you want to start a thread on it I will certainly engage with you on it. I would be most interested to see exactly what you have to offer in terms of GMO's being established as safe and sustainable agriculture, as there is a whole lot of evidence to the contrary.

I won't post anymore about this as it's off the topic and really shouldn't even be a consideration as an answer to the OP's question.

Someday GMOs could turn out to have a big impact on human history, by providing the means to feed an ever-growing population on an ever-dwindling amount of arable land. Now, whether this is a good or a bad thing is not at all clear.

The question came up as a result of insomia but still...What events for which humans were responsible has had (is having, will have) the most profound effect on world history?

It started out as one event but that seemed to be impossible to decide so allowed for a couple more. I was wondering if anyone else would come up with the same events as I did.

Defeat of the Spanish Armada
Waterloo
Battle of Britain

The question came up as a result of insomia but still...What events for which humans were responsible has had (is having, will have) the most profound effect on world history? It started out as one event but that seemed to be impossible to decide so allowed for a couple more. I was wondering if anyone else would come up with the same events as I did.

IMO, however, the events that had the most profound effect on world-history (unleashing floods of information, gradually breaking the monopoly of kings/conquerors/media moguls) are:

• Writing.
• Printing-press.
• Internet (Historians owe an enormous debt to whistle-blowers).

(4, 5, 6 Film, Radio, Television)

Theory holds that this would have taken the infant Universe from something unimaginably small to something about the size of a marble. Space has continued to expand for the nearly 14 billion years since.

Inflation was first proposed in the early 1980s to explain some aspects of Big Bang Theory that appeared to not quite add up, such as why deep space looks broadly the same on all sides of the sky. The contention was that a very rapid expansion early on could have smoothed out any unevenness.

But inflation came with a very specific prediction - that it would be associated with waves of gravitational energy, and that these ripples in the fabric of space would leave an indelible mark on the oldest light in the sky - the famous Cosmic Microwave Background.

The BICEP2 team says it has now identified that signal. Scientists call it B-mode polarisation. It is a characteristic twist in the directional properties of the CMB. Only the gravitational waves moving through the Universe in its inflationary phase could have produced such a marker. It is a true "smoking gun".

"Detecting this signal is one of the most important goals in cosmology today. A lot of work by a lot of people has led up to this point," said Prof John Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a leader of the BICEP2 collaboration.

The sensational nature of the discovery means the BICEP2 data will be subjected to intense peer review.

It had been a long time since I didn't understand a word from a scientific text, but it happened again .

But this is another moment where I remind how amazing it is that our species is concious of this things, after all we are just little beings who have never left our tiny solar system (well, Voyager 1 just recently left the solar system), and we are just made of molecules because of a lot of luck.

It saddens me that sometime a meteor or whatever will end our existence, and these achievements will be lost forever.