Shower thoughts

[ColdJ]

2 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

My read on this is that Thanos is the only one strong willed enough to - after using the stones for his purpose - destroy them. THAT was Strange's goal when he looked through millions of timelines. He wasn't trying to find the timeline where Thanos was stopped. He was trying to find the one that - once Thanos won and destroyed the stones - we could fix things as well as possible.

Time Stone is a very important part of his order. And no one would have got snapped away if Thanos was stopped then. Would make Dr Strange very selfish if he did it on purpose. Remember that he used the stone in his original movie to create a time loop to stop a timeless, unkillable demon. It made for lots of action and another movie but didn't make much sense.

The link was basically for a timeline chart. Most of which would still happen if Tony simply wished that Thanos never knew about the Time Heist.

I only believe that time travel into the past could work in 2 ways.

The first is that anything thing you do in the past, always was, in your timeline, you just never knew until you lived it. People kept secrets because they knew how important it was to. Hence Steve Rodgers getting to live a quiet life with Peggy by not letting the world know he was someone who came back.

The second is that the moment you go back you create a new reality, and will never be able to go back to future you came from. Butterfly effect, even the slightest change sets off a chain reaction so that things don't turn out exactly the same. When you hear the news about a car accident somewhere within 100 km of where you live. Your choice to leave the house, or not leave the house might mean the difference between it happening or not. You aren't directly responsible but you taking up a space on the road that means someone else didn't make a set of lights which causes something else etc, is a domino effect that is too chaotic to know the outcome to.

Edited March 28 by ColdJ

[TheSaint]

Overthinking superhero movies leads to nothing but unhappiness.

[Superfluous J]

11 hours ago, ColdJ said:

The link was basically for a timeline chart. Most of which would still happen if Tony simply wished that Thanos never knew about the Time Heist.

I wasn't saying Tony's idea was or wasn't a good one. I was specifically discussing whether or not the movie had a plot hole.

"Character A didn't think of idea B" is not a plot hole. If it was, my life is so full of plot holes it's not even funny.

[SunlitZelkova]

23 hours ago, ColdJ said:

After the big explaination earlier about the way time travel works then it must be concluded that Tony created a parallel universe (or 2) and broke their promise to the "Sorcerer Supreme", as they were now in a different reality and couldn't go back to the time stream they were in to give the Time Stone back to who they got it from. The reasoning being that the Thanos and the army he brought, were from 2014 and before the events of the previous movie where Thanos won and clicked. If Tony did infact turn to ash Thanos and all that stood with him, then the events of the previous movie whould never have happened, at least not in the time stream they went back into to get the stones. And of course if it never happened then there also never needed to be a Time Heist. Major Paradox.

The sensible wish would have been that Thanos never found out about the Time Heist. Then all the events up to the Hulk clicking everybody back could happen, except Nebula never got found out and captured, so returning safely. Tony would be the only one to have any memory of the big fight and would also get to live, secure in the knowledge that they won and made the world safe. Nobody who died in the big fight would be dead and everything that happened in the previous movies would make sense.

Don't get me started on the fact that Dr Strange could have used the Time Stone to freeze Thanos when they had him by himself on Titan, letting the others chop him up at their leisure.

The way it is supposed to work is this:

1. Tony is from Universe A (let's call it Track A).
2. They journeyed to Tracks B, C, and D to get the stones.
3. They use them in Track A to fix everything.
4. Steve goes back to Tracks B, C, and D to return them.

No paradox. There is a big "upset" but it is only in the form of the events past Guardians of Galaxy Vol. 1 (Track D) never taking place, because Thanos and his army from Track D have been snapped out of existence. But that doesn't prevent them from traveling back to B, C, and D to return to the Infinity Stones.

It wouldn't have worked to "freeze" Thanos- which I assume refers to putting him in a time loop like he did to Dormammu. Yes everyone could live, but they'd be stuck reliving the same few moments over and over again. Dr. Strange said he looked ahead at all the possibilities of the coming battle, and probably realized Thanos' will was too strong and he would never give in. Thus the only way was the way he chose (let everyone die and then fix it with time travel).

20 hours ago, ColdJ said:

I only believe that time travel into the past could work in 2 ways.

The first is that anything thing you do in the past, always was, in your timeline, you just never knew until you lived it. People kept secrets because they knew how important it was to. Hence Steve Rodgers getting to live a quiet life with Peggy by not letting the world know he was someone who came back.

The second is that the moment you go back you create a new reality, and will never be able to go back to future you came from. Butterfly effect, even the slightest change sets off a chain reaction so that things don't turn out exactly the same. When you hear the news about a car accident somewhere within 100 km of where you live. Your choice to leave the house, or not leave the house might mean the difference between it happening or not. You aren't directly responsible but you taking up a space on the road that means someone else didn't make a set of lights which causes something else etc, is a domino effect that is too chaotic to know the outcome to.

The first method you speak of involves something called the Novikov self-consistency principal. As you say, whatever you want to do in the past, you either already did or failed to do.

The problem is this would mean not only is there no free will for sentient beings, it would mean everything in the natural world is "on clock work" too, by virtue of sentient beings being part of the universe. That means not only are you destined to say, go back in time but do nothing significant that causes anyone to notice in the historical record, it also means things like the exact moment leaves fall, when solar flares occur, the exact day winter occurs, etc., are all predetermined and cannot be altered.

Put simply, there is nothing random in the world.

Such a theory would be very depressing, as it means nothing you do has any consequence and there is no real choice. It would be mind boggling to think about and would lead to the erosion of morals and society. It does nonetheless have numerous proponents.

The second method is sometimes said to invoke the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. The problem of Schrodinger's cat is solved. Rather than having to deal with the question of how a cat could be both dead and alive due to a particle being in two different states until observed, there is simply one "world"- again, I shall call it a Track- in which the cat is dead, and one in which it is alive.

The problem with this for me is it implies everyday life in the normal flow of time is also akin to time travel. When you decide whether you want to have Coke or Pepsi, you "journey" into a different Track depending on what choice you make.

This then raises the question of whether it is actually feasible to "journey" backwards at all. Because natural time travel, which goes forward, does not involve you physically travelling to another Track, you remain in your own body and outwardly experience nothing.

So what would travelling backward even be like? Would you even truly be going backwards, or would time simply take a U-Turn for you and continue to go forwards, but outwardly appear as if you were travelling backwards?

"Suppose... time is round."- a line from A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, 1977.

[ColdJ]

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

It wouldn't have worked to "freeze" Thanos- which I assume refers to putting him in a time loop like he did to Dormammu

No, not a time loop, I mean stop him from moving in the normal time stream. If you remember the Dr Strange first movie, then you will remember the manupulation of the apple and the going back to see what the page had been in the book. Freezing something so it doesn't appear to move would be easy for the time stone. Or if you like, everybody else is super fast compared to Thanos at that point.

4 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

No paradox. There is a big "upset" but it is only in the form of the events past Guardians of Galaxy Vol. 1 (Track D) never taking place, because Thanos and his army from Track D have been snapped out of existence. But that doesn't prevent them from traveling back to B, C, and D to return to the Infinity Stones.

That is more like "Sliders" than time travel. it suggests that instead of time traveling backwards you are instead traveling sideways into realities that are at different points in their histories compared to your reality. Also ruins the explanation that Banner gave to the Sorcerer Supreme about what they were going to do.

I read somewhere, some one proposed that he sent Thanos and co back to the year and place they came from with no memory of what had happened. That would work but it left a big mess.

I personally don't believe you can go back in any way. For me, Time is just an observation of things changing, not something you can affect in any way.

I don't see the first method of time travel as everything is destined and life has no choices. Just that in this case, whatever you chose to do will end up with your situation being the one you were in when you decided to go back, so closing the loop you created.

As to the second, There is a a great Sci Fi book called "Rebel in Time" by Harry Harrison, that uses it well.

 

[Ryaja]

I could totally beat a small bear in a fist fight.(I'm probably delusional)

[kerbiloid]

The cat already did it for you.

Spoiler

 

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, Ryaja said:

I could totally beat a small bear in a fist fight.(I'm probably delusional)

How long are your claws?

[SunlitZelkova]

19 hours ago, ColdJ said:

No, not a time loop, I mean stop him from moving in the normal time stream. If you remember the Dr Strange first movie, then you will remember the manupulation of the apple and the going back to see what the page had been in the book. Freezing something so it doesn't appear to move would be easy for the time stone. Or if you like, everybody else is super fast compared to Thanos at that point.

It's possible that that ability only works on inanimate objects, but who knows.

19 hours ago, ColdJ said:

That is more like "Sliders" than time travel. it suggests that instead of time traveling backwards you are instead traveling sideways into realities that are at different points in their histories compared to your reality. Also ruins the explanation that Banner gave to the Sorcerer Supreme about what they were going to do.

Just because it isn't the same reality doesn't mean it isn't time travel.

Although I see what your saying. My attempt to build a multiverse of all the worlds I've written about revolved around all of the major powers going back from 3268 to 2011 to fight a war over the sole remaining world that hadn't yet discovered the multiverse, and I considered such actions to be interuniversal travel rather than time travel.

19 hours ago, ColdJ said:

I personally don't believe you can go back in any way. For me, Time is just an observation of things changing, not something you can affect in any way.

There are some experiments pointing to time being a substance, and not just an abstract concept, but the results are inconsistent. The idea's base of interest is mainly in Russia.

19 hours ago, ColdJ said:

I don't see the first method of time travel as everything is destined and life has no choices. Just that in this case, whatever you chose to do will end up with your situation being the one you were in when you decided to go back, so closing the loop you created.

The only reason I see it as not offering choices is that if one thing is predetermined, everything has to be predetermined. I just haven't really thought about a possibility in between the two extremes, but maybe I'll give it a thought some time.

[StrandedonEarth]

"The right push at the right time" can be applied to so many things, from sales to psychology to space travel...

[kerbiloid]

I think, I got why do the Kerbals not sink, and what they are filled with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_squid

Quote

Giant squid and some other large squid species maintain neutral buoyancy in seawater through an ammonium chloride solution which is found throughout their bodies and is lighter than seawater. This differs from the method of flotation used by most fish, which involves a gas-filled swim bladder. The solution tastes somewhat like salty liquorice/salmiak and makes giant squid unattractive for general human consumption.

So, the Kerbals are floating and basically inedible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_chloride

Spoiler

 

This again tells us, that the Kerbal snacks are fermented species, smelly as ammonia and chlorine together.
(I.e. as an old public toilet floor cloth never washed.)

Edited April 4 by kerbiloid

[SunlitZelkova]

There are two kinds of historians: ex post facto prophets and teachers of the immense responsibility that the power of choice requires.

[Vanamonde]

Why are more and more movie roles going to fewer and fewer people? Chris Pine is in the Star Trek movies and the Wonder Woman movies. Zoe Saldana is in the Trek movies and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Chris Pratt is in the Guardians movies and the Jurassic Park movies. Ian McKellan is in the X-men movies and the Tolkien movies. Andy Serkis is in everything. Henry Cavill is in the DC movies and was in The Witcher. Michael Fassbender is in the X-men movies and the Alien sequels (or prequels or whatever they are). When new actors get to Hollywood there must be a sign at the edge of town that says, "Sorry, full up." 

[kerbiloid]

Because all of them are documentary. They could change roleplaying actors, but can't replace real persons.

And this again proves the multiverse hypothesis. There is one Zoe Saldana per Universe, and a lot of her reflections in different realities and timelines.

See Chronicles of Amber by Zelazny and Michael Moorcock book series(es) for details.

[SunlitZelkova]

5 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Why are more and more movie roles going to fewer and fewer people? Chris Pine is in the Star Trek movies and the Wonder Woman movies. Zoe Saldana is in the Trek movies and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Chris Pratt is in the Guardians movies and the Jurassic Park movies. Ian McKellan is in the X-men movies and the Tolkien movies. Andy Serkis is in everything. Henry Cavill is in the DC movies and was in The Witcher. Michael Fassbender is in the X-men movies and the Alien sequels (or prequels or whatever they are). When new actors get to Hollywood there must be a sign at the edge of town that says, "Sorry, full up." 

There are actually a lot of lower budget movies with unknown actors. They come up a lot on our Amazon suggestions. No one talks about them though (and I myself haven’t been interested enough to watch them).

One reason it seems all the popular movies have only a few actors is because these movies are only popular because they have big name actors. Another possibility is that the casting people deliberately keep choosing well known people over and over again to get people who aren’t interested in a movie’s subject to watch it just for the actor.

There are still actors who go from small roles to big ones. Austin Butler was in television roles hardly anyone knew about for years, and now he’s well known because of Elvis.

One of the reasons I liked The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime is that it consisted of so many actors I’d never seen before. It was refreshing, and even the characters they introduced over the next few seasons were largely played by faces I’d never seen before.

[kerbiloid]

The opposite trend is to form the actors' crew from not best-looking nonames, to make them looking next-door (I'm looking at you, Game of Thronz, but not only).

As a result we have series which consist of such not best-looking nonames, that not every next door can contain so many of them.

[TheSaint]

9 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Why are more and more movie roles going to fewer and fewer people? Chris Pine is in the Star Trek movies and the Wonder Woman movies. Zoe Saldana is in the Trek movies and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Chris Pratt is in the Guardians movies and the Jurassic Park movies. Ian McKellan is in the X-men movies and the Tolkien movies. Andy Serkis is in everything. Henry Cavill is in the DC movies and was in The Witcher. Michael Fassbender is in the X-men movies and the Alien sequels (or prequels or whatever they are). When new actors get to Hollywood there must be a sign at the edge of town that says, "Sorry, full up." 

Well, part of it is because studio executives are so risk averse today. Movies cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, so they don't want to risk casting unknowns in them. They somehow imagine that if they cast someone who starred in a successful movie before that it will make their movie successful. It's the same reason you mostly see large franchises now instead of studios taking risks on scripts that aren't plugged in to preexisting fandoms.

Another reason is because of how difficult it is to get a SAG card. In other countries, like England, joining the actor's union is simply a matter of joining and paying dues. SAG has eligibility requirements that you must meet before you can join, and they're not the easiest. You basically have to find someone who will hire you to do work that requires SAG membership before you can become a SAG member. When most casting directors only call SAG members to cast. So your analogy of there being a "no vacancy" sign isn't too far off.

[magnemoe]

12 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Well, part of it is because studio executives are so risk averse today. Movies cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, so they don't want to risk casting unknowns in them. They somehow imagine that if they cast someone who starred in a successful movie before that it will make their movie successful. It's the same reason you mostly see large franchises now instead of studios taking risks on scripts that aren't plugged in to preexisting fandoms.

Another reason is because of how difficult it is to get a SAG card. In other countries, like England, joining the actor's union is simply a matter of joining and paying dues. SAG has eligibility requirements that you must meet before you can join, and they're not the easiest. You basically have to find someone who will hire you to do work that requires SAG membership before you can become a SAG member. When most casting directors only call SAG members to cast. So your analogy of there being a "no vacancy" sign isn't too far off.

It worked an generation ago then we had people like Schwarzenegger and Eddy Murphy and you knew that you got. 
Yes Schwarzenegger later did comedy but this was not an rugpull but well known. He wanted to do other stuff than action movies who is fair 
Pretty sure it don't works as well today as I don't know any modern movie stars. Music and pop culture yes but none from movies. 
And jumping genres is bad unless an superstar.

[ColdJ]

On 4/6/2024 at 6:47 AM, Vanamonde said:

Why are more and more movie roles going to fewer and fewer people? Chris Pine is in the Star Trek movies and the Wonder Woman movies. Zoe Saldana is in the Trek movies and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Chris Pratt is in the Guardians movies and the Jurassic Park movies. Ian McKellan is in the X-men movies and the Tolkien movies. Andy Serkis is in everything. Henry Cavill is in the DC movies and was in The Witcher. Michael Fassbender is in the X-men movies and the Alien sequels (or prequels or whatever they are). When new actors get to Hollywood there must be a sign at the edge of town that says, "Sorry, full up." 

The streaming services are gobbling up all the good actors they can, offering better deals. There is also some stupid metric where you have to make back 3 times your movie budget to be considered successful. So the actors are out there, just in a different format.

[kerbiloid]

We all know and love this poem

But pay attention to the last line.

agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
and in the darkness bind them

What's "binding"?
It's connecting into a chain, into a network.

Where do they connect the wires?
Under tables, in cases, in other dark places.

And finally...
What is used to connect the wires into a network?

Spoiler

Crimping tool or just "crimper".

crimper tool is pronounced as /krimpa tul/

 

 

And use crimper tool to in darkness bind them.

 

 

Sauron is former Melkor's  sysadmin from Utumno.

It perfectly explains his hate to the elves and humans. Who would not?

Upd.
And this is "gimbatul" from the second line.

Spoiler

Some alcoholic beverage.

"-tuluk" from the lines 1 and 3 probably means "toolkit".

I hope, it helps to understand better the unhappy inner world of Sau.

Edited April 7 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

Btw, as Sauron is an IT, this also makes clear the picture with rings in whole.

The rings are just personal keycards to connect to the Mordor system.
Sau didn't make them magically, he was just an engineer.

When somebody was activating the ring, it was sending the ID and geolocation to the server, like any phone is doing.
Sau just received a notification in popup window, like "Frodo entered the chat", and took a look on the browser page with the Middle-Earth map and blinking pixel.

The dwarfs had lost their rings, kinda in dragons' flame.
(Actually tried to reverse engineer them, but broke).

The palantirs were made because Sau didn't believe in all that magic crap, and always preferred engineer's solutions.
They were spherical, solid, had no controls, no menus, to let even the most brainless user use it without calling the service team with the endless "My-my, I pressed something, and everything got wrong, what me to doing?!111"

Saruman was sure that he had hacked his terminal, but it was a part of protection from a random fool, too.
The palantir was reacting on the keyphrase "Hack you" and similar sounding ones. It blinked red, showed the message "Attention! Your protection is deactivated! You are using it on your own risk!", to leave the mom's hacker proud and happy.
Of course, Sauron was having full access to it, and was watching, what Saruman is doing alone. Because it's easy to stick a paper on the notebook webcam, but hard to cover a whole sphere with it.
While Saruman was sure that he is a godlike hacker, actually he was an unpaid webcam model.

The Gates of Moria were also automated by Sauron.
That's why the password was consisting of 5 letters in one register, without digits or special chars, was hard-coded, and written right on the gates with big, glowing runes.
(Btw, it took several hours for Gandalf and others to pass the protection, lol)
Otherwise the poetic elves would be always forgetting  it and asking to restore, while the backstabbing gnomes would be giving them wrong answers, and changing it in settings.

The password was simple, "melon". Because Sauron was eating a melon, and it was the first thing which came into his mind.
Also because the dwarves were allergic to melons, while in elvish language it meant "friend".
At least, the elves told this to the dwarves, to keep secret the fact, that they are just mocking the stupid gnomes and their allergy, which was enough strong to drive a balrog out of his lair to have a breathe of fresh air.

As a real IT, Sauron was fond of trolling, and always send trolls to troll others.

Another such jokester was Tom Bombadil.
He was a retired Melkor's gardener,  living in the Shirewood Forest together with his wife, Goldberry, and guess, which of them was more dangerous?
As a former Sauron's colleague, he had Sauron all figured out, and so he equipped the home with a cell phone jammer.
That's why The Ring was not working here, indicating "No connection", while the illiterate hobbits were thinking, it's a magic.

Like his opponent, Radagast, Bombadil was loving the wild nature.
But while Radagast was loving the wild nature passively, by letting it crap on his hat, Bombadil was an active lover of wild nature, trying to make the world better.
His second name was Frank, and for his scientific wisdom they called him Einstein.
That's why he was also known as Dr. Frank Einstein, or just Dr. Frankenstein. His lab assistant and then-future wife was in turn known as Frankenstein Bride.
Better don't ask, how did she get her later nickname, Goldberry. She doesn't like to tell that story, as it was too much even for this couple.

In the forest, Bombadil continued his biolab experiments, planting killer trees, mounting some equipment from his former lab in Utumno as Barrow-downs, and so on.
The Untold Legends tell us that the hobbits are of Rohan descent. That's true, they are.
The hobbits were captured Rohan riders, passed through the Bombadil lab together with their horses, and genetically turned into funny midgets, riding ponies.
The very name "hobbit" is given to them by Goldberry, as they were a product of the Bombadil couple biomodding hobby.
They founded "Shire" as a contact zoo for their pets, and since then the hobbits are living in it.

Tom's personal pet project was a forest apiary in Mirkwood, where he was known as Beorn, and was herding bees and same ponies.
There was also Beorn's son. Nobody knows, who was a mom of that son, but what we can say definitely, nobody had seen an alive she-bear in the Goldberry's forest.

While Bombadil was using a radio jammer against Sauron's tricks, Sauron was avoiding even to approach to the Bombadil's lair, remembering Bombadil's funny jokes in Utumno, when a living breakfast tried to eat the eater first, or a room plant was producing a sleepy gas in the night, to use the guests as a fertilizer.
This is why he knew nothing about the "hobbits" and other Bombadil things.

The so-called Eye of Sauron was actually an Optical Observational System, mounted on top of his tower together with radio antennas.
It wasn't reading Frodo's thoughts. Just the medium attachment unit of the ring was overclocked, to let the weak signal reach the tower, so Frodo was hallucinating in strong magnetic field.

Edited April 8 by kerbiloid

[SunlitZelkova]

The idea of humanity reaching out into space and colonizing stars, living forever beyond the death of the sun, is a fantasy. It is the religious concept of humanity ascending into (the) heaven(s) and individuals having eternal life, a fantasy found in many humans, but dressed up in scientific lingo.

The true fate of humanity, when we take a scientific look rather than philosophical or religious one, is to go extinct one day.

The idea of humanity never ending dates to a time when we didn't even know extinct species existed.

It relies on the idea of us being different than all of the animals that came before us, again a religious concept now popularized into secular discourse.

In reality, we are simply animals. Even the most ardent space colonization supporters expect wars to continue to occur in space. It is all forms of conflict that will destroy the species.

Culture is not evidence we can be saved. The Neanderthals made paintings too.

A collapse will come eventually. I look forward to the Age of Corvidae and the Age of Rattus.

[ColdJ]

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

The idea of humanity never ending dates to a time when we didn't even know extinct species existed.

The ability to understand the unlikely survival of the Human race is the mental basis for depression. (not forgetting the chemical basis, it just is not relevant to this thought.)

There is good reason that many highly intelligent individuals get depression and that sometimes that leads to suicide.

Ignorance is bliss.

The race is on to see if humans can wipe themselves out before the planet does.

Though with the state of much of the world in this last year period, it looks good for humans to win this one.

If you know that the end is nigh, then the best thing you can do is treat those around you with kindness. We can't stop what is coming but we can create some happiness before then.

[Hotel26]

23 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

go extinct one day

Let's first accept this as a premise.

Then ask the question about other intelligent life.  We feel it should be there but we have found no sign yet of intelligent life anywhere else, or ever.  See Fermi's Paradox.

Let's guess that there have been other intelligent species but none have surmounted the same challenges we (are said to) face: limited resources, nuclear weapons, climate change, artificial intelligence(?), genomic monkeying...

Odds then that we are going to share the same fate as our supposed predecessors.

Now let's ask "what would a truly intelligent species do?" -- realizing the above.

Firstly: pointing out that we are a product of natural evolution over hundreds of millions of years in a protective environment (Earth, unlike space itself).

Secondly: pointing out the anomaly that we accept that we are the product of a long chain of evolution but somehow think (selfishly) that we are now the immutable end of our line of evolution.

Thirdly: pointing out that we are not evolved for space, do not have time to "evolve" for space (before being overcome by our own limitations), and the chemical/cellular life form is never going to be universally efficient in space ... nor throughout the universe.

So the unthinkable next step is to do what every species does (given time), which is to produce its successor...  but in the radically intelligent case, do it sapiently...  thus: produce an artificially-intelligent elecronic form and endow it with imperatives:

1. preserve its existence
2. respect and preserve other life
3. explore the universe and share the knowledge

It would certainly utilize robotic instantiations but 'it' would be electronic, distributed and -- in a certain sense -- able to travel^[1] at the speed of light.

Homo sapiens sapiens might not survive (or perhaps it would, aided by its successor (but not replacement, see #2) but we would leave a sign in the universe that no other precedecessor intelligent species appears to have ever done before.  More importantly, by leaving that permanent entity in the universe, we would thus resolve Fermi's Paradox.

Quite an accomplishment.

[1] not necessarily 'propagate'

Edited April 17 by Hotel26

[DDE]

Shower thought: the Halo franchise has plenty of AIs, but there's not even a whiff of humanoid robotics - only incorporeal avatars. In fact, UNSC seems to have more "smart" AIs than they have Spartan-IIs, and they have no trouble putting the AIs in charge of extremely powerful armaments. At the same time, their power armor tech suggests a pretty extreme level of robotics-adjacent technology.

So why bother with the ethically dubious Spartans at all when you can build AI-driven Myrmidons? It's particularly laughable in hindsight, when you know that the later armor variants are able to accomodate both the wearer and the AI melded with their mind. Why even bother when you can have an extra set of metal hands?

Spoiler

And yes, I am thinking about Andromeda

Morning edit: to clarify, I don't even mean "human-passing" androids. When UNSC committed to superhumanly tall - never mind socially stunted due to abnormal upbringing - Spartans and power armor tech, they gave up on blending in with humans for infiltration purposes.

Edited April 18 by DDE