Actual Freedom ~ Commonly Raised Objections

RESPONDENT: I would like to ask you something about the universe and our world and our instinctual passions. Humans have survived and are beginning to flourish. In our world. But what about other planets, if there are other civilizations. If people would leave in a utopia without instinctual passions, in peace, and an alien powerful instinct-driven race would attack our planet, we won’t have any military to defend ourselves as a first defence.

Thanks for your time.

RICHARD: The nearest star (Proxima Centauri) is over forty trillion kilometres away and the US space shuttle, which travels at about eight kilometres per second, would take a hundred and sixty thousand years to reach it. The fastest spacecraft to date (Helios II), which set a speed record of seventy kilometres per second, would take eighteen thousand years to travel that distance ... far, far beyond the lifespan of both the crew and the craft.

Also, if there were to be a planet hospitable to life-forms orbiting that star, and if an alien species were to be inhabiting that hypothetical planet, and if that hypothetical species inhabiting that hypothetical planet were to be of the opinion that planet earth was worth attacking, then the ‘alien condition’ (to coin a phrase) would render any such interstellar voyage of aggression and domination untenable as they would be at each other’s hypothetical throats long before they arrived.

Indeed, one of the biggest stumbling blocks to long-distance human space travel is the human condition itself (as is evidenced by wintering over in the Antarctica for instance).

As for the intergalactic voyages so ubiquitous in the sci-fi genre: the nearest major galaxy (the Andromeda galaxy) is located at a distance of two million light-years away and, as a light-year is about nine and a half trillion kilometres in length, one does not even have to do the maths in order to gain sufficient comprehension of the sheer impracticability of any voyage of that magnitude.

Incidentally, if there were to be an alien species sufficiently advanced technologically to have developed a super-fast means of transport then their weaponry would be so far in advance of the current human arsenal anyway that it is pointless to even contemplate any such scenario as needing to continue being a [quote] ‘raging species’ [endquote] in order to defend planet earth from any such hypothetical attack.

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P.S.: You may find the following helpful.

• [Mr. Donald Scott]: ‘It is very difficult, if not impossible, for us to relate conceptually to how far something is from us when we are told its distance is, say 14 light years. We know that is a long way – but HOW long?

In his ‘Celestial Handbook’, Robert Burnham, Jr. presents a model that offers us a way to get an intuitive feel for some of these tremendous distances. The distance from the Sun to Earth is called an Astronomical Unit (AU); it is approximately 93 million miles. The model is based on the coincidental fact that the number of inches in a statute mile is approximately equal to the number of astronomical units in one light year. So, in our model, we sketch the orbit of the Earth around the Sun as a circle, two inches in diameter. That sets the scale of the model. One light year is one mile in the model.

The Sun is approximately 880,000 miles in diameter. In the model that scales to 880,000/93,000,000 = 0.009 inches; (Approximately 1/100 of an inch in diameter). A very fine pencil point is needed to place it at the centre of the (one inch radius) circle that represents the Earth’s orbit.

In this model, Pluto is an invisibly small speck approximately three and a half feet from the Sun. All the other planets follow almost circular paths inside of this 3.5 foot orbit. If a person is quite tall, he or she may just be able to spread their hands far enough apart to encompass the orbit of this outer planet. That is the size of our model of our solar system. We can just about hold it in our extended arms.

The nearest star to us is over four light-years away.

In our model, a light year is scaled down to one mile. So the nearest star to us is four and a half MILES away in our model. So when we model our Sun and the nearest star to us, we have two specks of dust, each 1/100 inch in diameter, four and a half miles apart from one another. And this is in a moderately densely packed arm of our galaxy!

To quote Burnham, ‘All the stars are, on the average, as far from each other as the nearest ones are from us. Imagine, then, several hundred billion stars scattered throughout space, each one another Sun, each one separated by a distance of several light years (several miles in our model) from its nearest neighbour. Comprehend, if you can, the almost terrifying isolation of any one star in space’ because each star is the size of a speck of dust, about 1/100 inch in diameter – and is miles from its nearest neighbour.

When viewing a photographic image of a galaxy or globular star cluster, we must remember that the stars that make up those objects are not as close together as they appear. A bright star will ‘bloom’ on a photographic plate or CCD chip. Remember the two specks of dust, miles apart.

Even in our model, the collection of stars that makes up our Milky Way galaxy is about one hundred thousand miles in diameter. This is surrounded by many hundreds of thousand of miles of empty space, before we get to the next galaxy. And on a larger scale, we find that galaxies seem to be found in groups – galaxy clusters. On this gigantic scale even our model fails to give us an intuitive feeling for the vastness of those distances’. (https://web.archive.org/web/20050206042450/http://electric-cosmos.org/localspace.htm).

RESPONDENT (to Vineeto): Was wondering if it is possible to have a comment from Richard on a correspondence he had on the site.

VINEETO: I passed it on to Richard but as far as I understand, his writing days are over. One decade and roughly 4 million words of answering questions about and objections to an Actual Freedom is plenty to go on, I should say.

RESPONDENT: I’m certainly not interested in starting a long discussion about things have been discussed through and through on the site. All in all, from the 4 million words that contain discussions on what’s it like to be a human being in the universe, life, humanity, and that are also contain questions and objections, this is something that hasn’t been discussed at all, and I don’t see how it is something to be neglected. I’ve started discussing this with Richard, but he had just answered once, and not to the question I have asked, and hadn’t continued the discussion since then ... For what it worth, I’ll just leave it here, maybe he’ll find a time and an interest to further discuss it, or at least to be precise and to correct his correspondence. To me it looks like something very important to discuss ...

The above correspondence was about the future, like 300-1000-5000-1,000,000 years ahead or so, not the current times.

RICHARD: Here is how dictionaries define the word which prefaces that ancillary paragraph of mine (above) which you have isolated:

• ‘incidentally: as a minor or subordinate matter; apart from the main subject; parenthetically’. (American Heritage® Dictionary).
• ‘incidentally: in an incidental manner, as a casual or subordinate circumstance; (introducing a remark not strictly relevant) as a further thought’. (Oxford Dictionary).
• ‘incidentally: used to introduce additional information such as something that the speaker has just thought of’. (Encarta Dictionary).

Why you snipped out the main part of my response – the part wherein I did indeed answer to the futuristic question you asked – so as to make it look as if I am some kind of idiot whose correspondence needs correcting simply defies sensibility.

RESPONDENT: As there is such a possibility ...

RICHARD: As you appear to have fallen under the spell of the ultra-cautious canon ‘always decide in favour of safety’ (nowadays known as the ‘precautionary principle’) it would be to your advantage to become cognisant of the fact that just because something – anything – is envisaged to be a possibility it does not necessarily mean it is a probability.

I have written about this elsewhere ... for instance:

• [Richard]: ‘The entire thrust of your argument conveniently ignores what has sometimes been called ‘the law of probability’ (or ‘the probabilist theory’) upon which 99% – if not 100% – of all human endeavour is sensibly based ...’. 

Further to the point: what you are insistently proposing is, in effect, an interstellar/intergalactic arms race which is wholly dependent upon second-guessing the type of weaponry an hypothetical species (postulated as existing in some indeterminable future on a conjectural planet circling a theoretical star situated at a distance so vast it is measured in light-years) may or may not develop.

Put bluntly: it being such a fantastical supposition it is no wonder that it be [quote] ‘something that haven’t been discussed at all’ [endquote].

RICHARD: Why you snipped out the main part of my response – the part wherein I did indeed answer to the futuristic question you asked – so as to make it look as if I am some kind of idiot whose correspondence needs correcting simply defies sensibility.

RESPONDENT: Nope ... It’s not my thing to make it look like you’re some kind of idiot whose correspondence need to be correcting.

RICHARD: As the action of snipping out the main part of my response (leaving only an ancillary sentence of mine as support for your allegation that my response was about the current times and not the future) had that effect then, were it ever to be your thing, it would be quite a doddle for you as you are still insisting in this e-mail (a mere two sentences below) that, whilst you were asking about a future scenario, I had answered by referring you to a present day scenario.

RESPONDENT: The main part of your response that I snipped out was about that the scenario is improbable because of the vast distances between planets in universe and because of the troubles of the interstellar journey that will be because of ‘alien condition’.

RICHARD: What I actually wrote about was the vast distances between stars (and not planets) because, whilst some astronomers claim to have found over two hundred exoplanets (aka ‘extra-solar planets’) through indirect methods (via astrometry, radial velocity, pulsar timing, gravitational micro-lensing, and the transit method), no exoplanet has yet been confirmed to exist by direct imaging ... although two astronomical objects detected by infrared imaging, and known as 2M1207b (about 200 light-years distant) and GQ Lupi b (about 400 light-years distant), are thought by some astronomers to be planetary bodies.

Assuming, just for the sake of your argument, that those two astronomical bodies are indeed exoplanets (some astronomers are of the opinion they are dwarf stars) then the import of the part of my response you snipped should become startlingly obvious as 200 light-years is more than 1,900 trillion kilometres and 400 light-years is over 3,800 trillion kilometres.

RESPONDENT: I was asking about a future scenario and you have answered me referring to a present day scenario.

RICHARD: As you have just stated (immediately above) that the main part of my response which you snipped out was about [quote] ‘the vast distances between planets in universe’ [endquote] and the [quote] ‘troubles of the interstellar journey that will be because of the ‘alien condition’’ [endquote] you do yourself no favour by continuing to insist that, whilst you were asking about a future scenario, I had answered by referring you to a present day scenario.

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RICHARD: What you are insistently proposing is, in effect, an interstellar/intergalactic arms race which is wholly dependent upon second-guessing the type of weaponry an hypothetical species (postulated as existing in some indeterminable future on a conjectural planet circling a theoretical star situated at a distance so vast it is measured in light-years) may or may not develop. Put bluntly: it being such a fantastical supposition it is no wonder that it be [quote] ‘something that haven’t been discussed at all’ [endquote].

RESPONDENT: It haven’t been asked on the actual freedom site, however this issue is something that is on many human minds, as you can see in modern movies, culture, and internet talk.

RICHARD: Although I do not watch sci-fi movies, participate in the sci-fi culture, or interact on sci-fi talk sites, I have no reason to suppose that fanciful issues such as this are not on many human minds.

RESPONDENT: It is not something that just I thought about ...

RICHARD: Oh? Yet here is what you wrote to me (on Thursday, 18/01/2007, AEDST):

• [Respondent to Richard]: ‘Gladly, all the scientific-spiritual concepts loose their intensity and need here without denying them. All that is necessary is to just look around, and see how am I when looking. Than it becomes clear to me that they are imaginary and not the actuality (...) When coming to a major part of my social identity, I’ve been digging deeper into what holds ‘me’ . I see vaguely but it’s clear that’s it is so, that’s it’s survival of the human species. *A futuristic thought from our last conversation came on*: ‘Who knows what the future holds for human species? Maybe this raging ability would give us the super-travel ability as the hypothetical aliens would have, because we race between us, and thus it will give us a whole new surviving dimension through all the galaxy and further.’ I know it may sound sci-fi, but ...’. [emphasis added].

Be that as it may ... it would appear that, whilst it has become clear to you that all the scientific-spiritual concepts are imaginary and not the actuality, those ubiquitous sci-fi concepts are yet to lose their [quote] ‘intensity and need’ [endquote] in you, eh?

RESPONDENT: ... [It is not something that just I thought about] or a few others. Also, I cannot see how this is so improbable taking into account the many possibilities that the universe has.

RICHARD: No matter what those many possibilities are, which you may or may not imagine the universe as having, there is no way that the vast distances will all-of-a-sudden cease being vast distances ... plus there is no way that an alien condition will all-of-a-sudden cease being an alien condition, either.

Indeed, your entire futuristic scenario is dependent upon those hypothetical aliens of yours being a [quote] ‘raging species’ [endquote].

RESPONDENT: Ignoring this scenario not only I cannot but so are many other ...

RICHARD: You are not being asked to ignore it ... in the same way it became clear to you (by looking around and seeing how you are when looking) that all the scientific-spiritual concepts are imaginary, and not the actuality, so too can all those sci-fi concepts so ubiquitous in that genre lose their [quote] ‘intensity and need’ [endquote] in you.

RESPONDENT: ... what I’m interested most in discussing is, whether humanity in actual freedom are better capable of handling such a scenario than humanity that is in human condition ...

RICHARD: If you had read what I had to say with both eyes open you would have found out first-hand that a person actually free from the human condition is indeed better capable of handling such a scenario ... demonstrably much better than at least one person who is still in the human condition and, presumably, also much better than those [quote] ‘many human minds’ [endquote] you referred to further above.

RESPONDENT: ... [what I’m interested most in discussing is, whether humanity in actual freedom are better capable of handling such a scenario than humanity that is in human condition] in the future.

RICHARD: While I obviously cannot speak for those hypothetical peoples, who are not even born yet, there is no reason why they would handle such a scenario all that much differently than I did when you first sent it to me ... the vast distances and/or the alien condition still existing then would render any such futuristic scenario so highly unlikely as to be nothing but a classic example of rampant imagination in its ages-old doomsday mode.

RESPONDENT: Because, if not, then, how exactly can I wish the best for other humans by heading to an actual freedom from the human condition?

RICHARD: Here is what a dictionary has to say about that little two-letter word which opens up all manner of doom and gloom possibilities for you:

• ‘if: (1) introducing a condition where the question of fulfilment or non-fulfilment is left open: given the hypothesis or proviso that, in the event that; (2) in the hope that, on the off chance that’. (Oxford Dictionary).

Somehow I am reminded of an old (circa 1670) nursery-rhyme doggerel from England:

• ‘If wishes were horses then beggars would ride,
If turnips were swords I’d have one by my side.
If ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ were pots and pans
There would be no need for tinkers hands!’ (First published in ‘Nursery Rhymes of England’, by James Halliwell, in 1844).

As a suggestion only: the next time you feel a doomster ‘if’ coming on simply lie back, close your eyes, and think of England.

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P.S.: Vineeto was quite right in her understanding inasmuch as I gave a decade of my life (from 1996 to 2006) to sharing my discovery with my fellow human being via a keyboard – spending something like eight-ten hours a day, six-seven days a week, responding in meticulous detail to all manner of queries and objections – and currently have no intention of being drawn, either now or in the foreseeable future, into more of the same.

Consequently, I will leave you with a reminder of what I wrote to you five months ago:

• [Richard to Respondent]: ‘(...) more than a few of my correspondences involves getting the other to see that their entire argument is an elaborate edifice resting upon an invalid premise – somewhat akin to a pyramid teetering (upside-down) on its cap-stone – and that had they examined same for themselves they would not have needed to write to me in the first place.
In other words, more often than not my communications are all about having my fellow human being think for themselves’. (‘Re: Some Other Question’; Thursday, 26/10/2006, 7:29 AM AEDST).

Just so that there is no misunderstanding: your futuristic scenario rests upon several invalid premises and many and various unsupported assumptions and suppositions ... for instance (not necessarily an exhaustive list):

1. That there are, as a fact, exoplanets.
2. That there are, as a fact, exoplanets which are conducive to life-forms developing.
3. That there is or will be, as a fact, a developed life-form which is a [quote] ‘raging species’ [endquote].
4. That such a species has or will have, as a reality, the desire to embark on long voyages of aggression and domination.
5. That they have or will have, as a reality, the technological capacity to design and build space vehicles capable of travelling vast distances.
6. That they have or will have, as a reality, the logistical capability essential to successfully travelling vast distances.
7. That they have or will have, as a reality, the ability to amicably coexist in confined spaces for an extended period despite being a [quote] ‘raging species’ [endquote].
8. That no other planet is more suitable to colonise (closer-by, uninhabited, resource-rich, and so on).
9. That they know or will know that planet earth, being as it is a relatively tiny astronomical object, actually exists.
10. That they know or will know that the conditions on planet earth are similar enough to their planet (atmosphere, pressure, temperature, and so on) so as to be a feasible enterprise.
11. That they are of the opinion that planet earth is worth colonising (2M1207b and GQ Lupi b, by way of example, are many times larger than planet earth).
12. That an armed response by human beings still run by the instinctual passions, to an alien species with the technological capacity and logistical ability to successfully undertake long voyages of extended duration, is the wisest course of action (that the disadvantages of invasion and occupation far outweigh the benefits to be gained).
13. That human beings still run by the instinctual passions have, or will have, sufficient or superior weaponry to successfully defend planet earth.
14. That human beings still run by the instinctual passions have, or will have, the capability of putting aside their congenital separatist agendas so as to be able to unitedly co-ordinate defensive strategies and tactical manoeuvres.
15. That a highly imaginative sci-fi scenario inspired by [quote] ‘modern movies, culture, and internet talk’ [endquote] is worth considering for more than just a moment or two (let alone be worthy of discussion).

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