Hypothetical question. If you learned a world changing secret.

[Wolfnox]

What would it be and would you tell or not?

And yes I know a few.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

The secret that I understand is that from the distance of Saturn, we are merely a pale blue dot. I wish more would recognize that we are so tiny in the vastness of the Cosmos and that, ultimately, all we have is each other.

 

[SpiltPaint]

I don't know what you mean by what would it be? If I 'learnt a world changing secret' how did I learn it? Through study and discovering? or via somebody else?

Would I tell, well yes. But depending on said secret would depend on how to best do that. Is it controversial and would cause lots of dispute? Is it something that needs scientific data to accurately represent what you're trying to tell?

I feel the question is far too broad.

 

[Gerontius]

I have to agree with SpiltPaint.

Yet we have world-changing truths going routinely ignored. There is a war in Ukraine ignored in favor of Depp trial coverage, climate change ignored because people want more, more more, and at least in the USA a rising tolerance for fascist sympathizers that goes ignored because people think fascism is cute as long as it is not overrunning and consuming small countries. If I knew something world-changing I'd trade it in on 300 acres of rural land and start living off of that.

 

[Knower of nothing]

A few? Maybe the requirement to be world changing isn't very big. Any consequence will eventually ripple through the world after all, sometimes just barely noticable for us.
Anyway it made me think of this poem:

"For all practical purposes almost no one is concerned with the big news. They have other things, more urgent matters, inscribed within their skulls, and all kinds of business to carry out. Their heads are just too heavy with so many plans and schemes, thousands of tasks that will not allow them to focus on anything that is so strange, anything that is so uncertain. They have no time to confront some ultimate revelation. They have no desire to find out so incredibly big news. Such a thing would take everything they know and arrange it in another way altogether, telling a story so different from the one that is already familiar to them.

Yet the big news is always there. Like a tiny voice on a radio it chatters away through heavy static in a darkened room where people are trying to sleep, filling their heads with plans and schemes, inscribing thousands of tasks and urgent matters inside of their skulls, all kinds of business to carry out - little errands, oddjobs, atrocities both great and small - all of which, when taken together, arrange things a different way that compose a secret story that no one cares to make their concern, yet the big news is always there.

And so few will ever seek to discover, and none of them will ever be allowed to tell, that we ourselves are the dark language in which the big news is forever being written."

 

[Judge]

Depends on what is considered "world-changing". Also depends on the nature of a particular "secret". Some secrets are secrets for some very profound reasons. Contrary to anyone discussing them in an open forum- for better or worse.

Then again, some secrets remain in plain sight, but cannot be comprehensively identified as they appear a complex puzzle to assemble.

Or is this actually just an exercise in assessing one's character, in determining whether or not they can keep a secret ?

 

[Alaric593]

Every secret is world changing and there are no actions or inactions by any individual person which do not have an affect on the alteration of the world. We are a part of Nature. Not separate from it.

At its core, this is why proper behavior is so important and why Nihilism is a delusion.

Something simple does matter like if someone throws a cigarette butt on the ground because five order of consequences down the line that we don't see that butt makes a seagull or another bird ill. That I can't see past the immediate doesn't mean it doesn't have consequence. Every action and inaction has an immediate and an untold number of order of consequences on changing the world. As in the quantum realm, all equally good and bad consequence at the same time until they each happen.

But that there are infinite orders of consequences for action and inaction that are far enough down the line that are real, doesn't mean we can predict them to a degree in which a Collectivist ideology can be rational to use force to make them happen. Like Nihilism, Collectivism is a delusion.

That the human mind can extrapolate potential future outcomes because cause and effect are always happening, doesn't mean the human mind is capable of knowing every variable required to actually predict the future beyond a handful of orders of consequences with reasonable certainty. When we're able to, it's luck. Not evidence of our mental superiority over Nature. Determinism is a mental virus.

 

[Tom]

I always have difficulty with this type of question. All I could come up with was finding a secret formula that lets you turn human brains to gummy candy, in living people without any noticable change in their behavior. I feel it's time we finally did something nice for zombies.

 

[LadyS]

Only secret I'm interested in: Can the aliens just come out of the woodwork already so we can stop all this nonsense? We know you're there, stop hiding behind that bush and come grab a drink with us (or a DQ blizzard)! I've got lots of questions.

 

[Judge]

Only secret I'm interested in: Can the aliens just come out of the woodwork already so we can stop all this nonsense? We know you're there, stop hiding behind that bush and come grab a drink with us (or a DQ blizzard)! I've got lots of questions.

Would you make contact with our species as extra terrestrials? I wouldn't.

Humans. Best kept at more than an arm's length. No bots about it.

 

[LadyS]

Would you make contact with our species as extra terrestrials? I wouldn't.

Humans. Best kept at more than an arm's length. No bots about it.

Well definitely no one who works in overdramatic, profiteering Hollywood that's for sure.

Even as a human I'd know which ones to start with...

 

[Judge]

Well definitely no one who works in overdramatic, profiteering Hollywood that's for sure.

Even as a human I'd know which ones to start with...

"Trust No One". - "The X-Files.

 

[LadyS]

"Trust No One". - "The X-Files.

Yep, that's what the humans want you to think ...

 

[Judge]

Yep, that's what the humans want you to think ...

For good reason.

Art imitating life? We are "the danger". Different context, but still the same species.

Whether or not we are technologically primitive or superior to other forms of life.

And again to a full circle over the arguments of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. But then this is no "secret" either...especially to other species who are closely observing us, yet careful enough to do so from a distance.

Though I could also see personalities like Travis Walton and Whitley Strieber arguing the merits of such things. Where in their cases that distance was closed, and in a most invasive manner. Or so they claim.

 

[LadyS]

For good reason.

Art imitating life? We are "the danger". Different context, but still the same species.

Whether or not we are technologically primitive or superior to other forms of life.

And again to a full circle over the arguments of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. But then this is no "secret" either...especially to other species who are closely observing us, yet careful enough to do so from a distance.

Though I could also see personalities like Travis Walton and Whitley Strieber arguing the merits of such things. Where in their cases that distance was closed, and in a most invasive manner. Or so they claim. [/

Not really going to hijack this thread to defend my original post, but okay...cool

 

[Judge]

Not really going to hijack this thread to defend my original post, but okay...cool

Sorry, I just find it amusing to ponder...whether in terms of one species or the other. Where hostility seems manifested by both of them. Making "first contact" a precarious notion for either of them.

With government more often than not running a peculiar form of interference as to whether such things happen or not. Let's see just how transparent NASA is willing to go based on some recent policy shifts in such issues. And that if they have any "secrets", whether they are now prepared to share what they may already know.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

What would it be and would you tell or not?

And yes I know a few.

For one, I don't think any human being is capable of coming up with a truly "world changing secret",...seriously,...and even if they did, few people would embrace it even if broadcasted throughout the world. As a population, we lack the level of intelligence to incorporate these "visionary" thoughts into our heads. World changing thoughts, by their definition, are extraordinary,...and different,...and humans have a very difficult time with "different".

I am thinking it would have to come from some intelligence, either from an intelligent communicating visitor from another realm or planet,...or,...more likely,...an AI supercomputer.

 

[Tom]

If the aliens ever do out themselves, I'm gonna have to insist they lay down their probes before we go to the table.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

If the aliens ever do out themselves, I'm gonna have to insist they lay down their probes before we go to the table.

The first ever case of an encounter with alien life,...

 

[Wolfnox]

For one, I don't think any human being is capable of coming up with a truly "world changing secret",...seriously,...and even if they did, few people would embrace it even if broadcasted throughout the world. As a population, we lack the level of intelligence to incorporate these "visionary" thoughts into our heads. World changing thoughts, by their definition, are extraordinary,...and different,...and humans have a very difficult time with "different".

I am thinking it would have to come from some intelligence, either from an intelligent communicating visitor from another realm or planet,...or,...more likely,...an AI supercomputer.

My thoughts exactly. You pretty much hit all the key points.