Shower thoughts

[DDE]

The current crisis in Hollywood is going to get worse before it gets better.

Its initial cause is Hollywood's own success. Going global adds little to the fixed costs of production, and although the marketing costs (that are usually hidden) would be more proportional to geography, the earnings still skyrocketed.

This has caused the initial wave of costs bloat. No, the Rock is probably not worth $50 mln/movie. The leads now seem to walk away with half of a $200 mln production budget, or even more for smaller but star-studded films.

Then, there were flops. Someone more into the topic than me could probably identify when this became an industry trend, I only have more local observations (e.g. it's clear alarm bells sounded after the backlash to The Last Jedi, and also affected the two A Star Wars Story spinoffs). This caused increased management meddling to mitigate risks. However, this had two direct consequences for costs. One, on-set oversight in the form of various seconds and thirds and assistants also collects a paycheck*. Two, reshoots, reshoots, reshoots - for some reason these are all the rage, these cost a fortune, and they're much of the reason for shoddy, slapdash CGI all over the place, which really was made at the last minute.

* the seconds and thirds are also often needed to babysit the directors that were picked based on their trendiness and are completely out of their depth on a major production

So here's the problem: we're probably headed into leaner times (streaming + multiple box office bombs + general economic instability), and Hollywood doesn't have a good mechnism for cutting costs. In fact, as times get leaner, the meddling will increase, and so will risk mitigation through reliance on star power, and those guys and gals definitely aren't downshifting.

There's no real way for Hollywood as it currently is to avoid crashing and burning. Expect another few years of bombs. Worse yet, the streaming services are already largely entangled into the same production culture, so I don't see indies having a good platform to make bank.

[SunlitZelkova]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

So here's the problem: we're probably headed into leaner times (streaming + multiple box office bombs + general economic instability), and Hollywood doesn't have a good mechnism for cutting costs. In fact, as times get leaner, the meddling will increase, and so will risk mitigation through reliance on star power, and those guys and gals definitely aren't downshifting.

There's no real way for Hollywood as it currently is to avoid crashing and burning

Could it really ever collapse though?

There’s always gonna be millions going out and watching movies just to kill time or spend the day, even if it doesn’t look like a triple Oscar winner.

If there is something that’s going to die in the coming years, I’d expect it to be trilogies and reboots. The former due to the riskiness involved in committing to three movies in case one bombs, the latter because they have to run out of stuff to remake eventually, right?

Honestly it’s hard to see any industry or nation for that matter “crashing and burning” unless a movie mogul (or whatever) Gorbachev comes along. Everything just feels so monopolized and entrenched, from business models to the average person’s lifestyle and habits.

[Vanamonde]

There's a crisis? 

[kerbiloid]

They are looking at what they were doing for

Spoiler

food and kicks.

Clowns are overestimated.

[DDE]

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Could it really ever collapse though?

There’s always gonna be millions going out and watching movies just to kill time or spend the day

Millions aren't going to satisfy the earnings expectations.

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

the latter because they have to run out of stuff to remake eventually, right?

They've yet to scrape the bottom of the barrel there, I think. Back in the day 3D was the subject of hype, some people seemed to think it justified remaking absolutely everything, so any sort of new "technological leap" could excuse a wave of remakes of remakes.

1 hour ago, Vanamonde said:

There's a crisis? 

2023 has had abnormally many big budget bombs. There's plenty of evidence of discomfort in high places like Disney.

[ColdJ]

6 hours ago, DDE said:

2023 has had abnormally many big budget bombs. There's plenty of evidence of discomfort in high places like Disney.

Don't forget that this is in a system that considers a movie a flop if it doesn't make 3 times what it cost back in profits.

A movie can make profit these days and be considered a bomb.

Throw in studios spending enormous amounts on effects and marketing and it is high bar to have to get over.

[magnemoe]

58 minutes ago, ColdJ said:

Don't forget that this is in a system that considers a movie a flop if it doesn't make 3 times what it cost back in profits.

A movie can make profit these days and be considered a bomb.

Throw in studios spending enormous amounts on effects and marketing and it is high bar to have to get over.

To some degree, but remember the movie cost does not include advertising and movie theaters take an huge cut, so if movie cost 100 million and brings in 300 you not making an huge profit, might even loose on it. 
If it brings 150 million you will go in the red. 
 
Cost is to high and audience know the film will come on streaming soon. 

[kerbiloid]

The movie theatres.

In the age of portable and on-wall hi-res devices, they are obsolete archaic mastodons, which make less PR'ed movies be outsiders, and make the movie makers be jumping out of pants to make any movie be enough expensive to show it in a theatre.

This is an abnormal aberration.

It's like a live-show theatre (opera, plays, etc), but for the prols. Just showing off, not watching a film.
A mark of status, a potlatch.

Edited May 13 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

7 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Don't forget that this is in a system that considers a movie a flop if it doesn't make 3 times what it cost back in profits

That's because 2x is the normal ratio for marketing expenses. A 50% profit margin is a lot for something material, but for intellectual property? Not really.

[magnemoe]

9 hours ago, DDE said:

That's because 2x is the normal ratio for marketing expenses. A 50% profit margin is a lot for something material, but for intellectual property? Not really.

Remember that the theater take around half the ticket price too.  A bit less for blockbusters I think. 

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Remember that the theater take around half the ticket price too.

And as the main purpose of the theater is to sale cola, chips, popcorn, and souvenirs, actually the cinema theaters are parasites, trashing almost up to half of the money.

All of that could be delivered by a courier, giving to students some money.

Or to courier robots.

Workers Students and robots of the world, unite!

Edited May 14 by kerbiloid

[ColdJ]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

And as the main purpose of the theater is to sale cola, chips, popcorn, and souvenirs, actually the cinema theaters are parasites, trashing almost up to half of the money

Shouldn't this be in the "One sentence you can say to annoy an entire fanbase" thread?

[kerbiloid]

35 minutes ago, ColdJ said:

Shouldn't this be in the "One sentence you can say to annoy an entire fanbase" thread?

Most of people I know watch movies o their TV sets and smartphones. Watching cinema in cinema theater is an event.

It's just a socially forced model of behavior, to move there and buy unhealthy food.
The unhealthy food is available right at home.

Also, almost all cinema theaters since last two decades are cinema halls in trading centers. The standalone cinemas have gone long ago.
So, it's also the way to make buying useless things.

Though, maybe in other countries there is still historically a lot of orphan cinema theaters outside of trading centers.

[magnemoe]

22 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The movie theatres.

In the age of portable and on-wall hi-res devices, they are obsolete archaic mastodons, which make less PR'ed movies be outsiders, and make the movie makers be jumping out of pants to make any movie be enough expensive to show it in a theatre.

This is an abnormal aberration.

It's like a live-show theatre (opera, plays, etc), but for the prols. Just showing off, not watching a film.
A mark of status, a potlatch.

I don't agree, but you have some points. If you are teen / young adult hanging out with friends they are a thing. 
And IMax is nice, but having an good TV the option to pause because bio or getting beer is nicer I say. Movie theaters will never recover to before the pandemic I estimate.  
It broke habits not only for consumers but the studios now have streaming services who they has to feed. 
Family with kids, wait a month or two and its on streaming 

And the quality issue and originality  is the elephant in the room, an lack to try new content, Barbie and Oppenheimer did well, Avatar 2 in franchise who is fresh today with endless rehashes, until you splat it with the cost Blue whale. 
Add the strike and this year will be bleak. 

[kerbiloid]

(On the Tolkien topic)

When the hobbits had reached the great Fangorn forest, they met the ent boss, Treebeard aka Fangorn.

Quote

Treebeard is described along with Tom Bombadil as the oldest being in Middle-earth. By the later Third Age, he lived in Fangorn Forest, which was named after him.

Quote

He was with his beloved Fimbrethil, but as with all of the other Entwives, she left for the gardens of the Entwives, and had been missing ever since

wiki says:

Quote

He is described as being about 14 feet (4.5 m) in height, and in appearance similar to a beech or an oak.^{[T 1]}
_{Tolkien 1954, book 3, ch. 4 "Treebeard"}

So, Fangorn Treebeard is of oak kind, which oaks are kind of beech.

And he is missing his girlfriend Fimbrethil.

This is very romantic, but there is a problem...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beech#Description

Quote

Beeches are monoecious, bearing both male and female flowers on the same plant.

There are no entwives based on beech, and Treebeard was not able to have an entwive.

Actually, the lost Fimbrethil was a part of the very Treebeard itself.
Literally. As a monoecious plant, it was both Fangorn and Fimbrethil 2-in-1.

***

But were his memories false?
No. Or at least not necessary so.

Let's remember, that just nearby there was another forest, another remain of the great forest of the early Middle-Earth.
The forest where Tom Bombadil lives.

We see that Bombadil knows Fangorn very well, and probably Fangorn knows him, too.
But just like other creatures of the Middle-Earth, Fangorn didn't say even a word about Tom.

Very, very familiar was Tom Bombadil to the Middle-Earth primordial beings.
And they knew quite well that it is much better to avoid mentioning his ominous figure for any price.

Quote

Tom Bombadil was an enigmatic figure that lived throughout the history of Arda. Living a short distance east of the Old Forest, he seemed to possess unequaled power in the land around his dwelling. Although seemingly benevolent, he took no stance against the Dark Lords.

Quote

The origins and nature of Tom Bombadil are unknown. He claims to have existed when the Dark Lord came "from the Outside",[2]:131 perhaps meaning he was alive at least as far back as the Spring of Arda.[7]
Bombadil calls himself the "Eldest", Glorfindel calls him the "First", and his Sindarin name Iarwain Ben-adar means "Oldest and fatherless."

 The real portrait of Tom Bombadil from the Fifth Epoch:

Spoiler

After whose name, do you think, had the elves renamed Laurelindorenan into Lorien?

Why, do you think, were both elves and orcs running a mile from the Bombadil's forest?
Just because they knew very well, what happens to the too inquisitive or carefree ones.

Quote

But of those hapless who were snared by Melkor little is known of a certainty. [...] Yet this is held true by the wise of Eressëa: that all those of the Quendi that came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty and wickedness were corrupted and enslaved. Thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orkor in envy and mockery of the Eldar, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes.

Spoiler

As the virtually first being in the Middle-Earth, Tom Bombadil was very well known to Valar including Melkor.
But we can read absolutely nothing about him in the whole Silmarillion.

It makes obvious that Bombadil was employed by Melkor, and was working full-time as his gardener in Utumno, and later in Angband.
The gardener, the selectioner, and the genetic engineer, even before they could knew all these words.
Bombie was very fond of his work.

The orcs were elves, modified for better performance as soldiers and workers.
Later this helped them to develop the Th/U-233 nuclear industry of Mordor, based on the local mona'zite deposits.

 

So, and what about Treebeard and Fimbrethil, you ask?

It was just one of the Bombadil's little jokes.

Originally, Fangorn and Fimbrethil were two different beings of same dioecious species, a loving pair male and a female.

But Goldberry was so much touched by their romantic love, that Bombadil decided to make a gift for her, and merged them into a single specimen of new monoecious species, to let them stay together forever.

That's how Treebeard was born.

Btw, weren't you wondering, how did he know so quickly, that the hobbits are captured in the Barrow-downs?
He just received a signal from his Barrow-downs alarm system, that somebody trespassed the dungeon perimeter, and moved there to see what's happening.

This also explains the origins and the antagonism of the Vorlons (Vorlondor) and the Shadows (Shad-Urghsh).

Edited May 14 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

Noldor.

Quote

According to legend, the clan was founded by Tata, the second Elf to awake at Cuiviénen. With him were his spouse Tatië and their 54 companions, and this clan became known as the Tatyar. Finwë, the first Ñoldo to come to Valinor with Oromë, became their King, and led most of them to Valinor. Out of the original 56 Tatyar who awoke at Cuiviénen, 28 remained at the place of their awakening, becoming Avari, while the other original 28 and their offspring continued on their Great Journey.

The Noldor were accounted the greatest of the Elves and all the peoples in Middle-earth in lore and crafts. In Valinor, their knowledge and skill became great, and they had always a strong desire for more knowledge and skill in art, surpassing even their teachers in many things. The Noldor had also a love for words, and were changeful in speech, endeavouring to find suitable names for all things. They were beloved of Aulë the Smith, and were the first to discover and carve gems. Their chief dwelling-place was the city of Tirion upon Túna.[2] Among the wisest of the Noldor was Rúmil, creator of the first writing system and author of many books of lore.[3] Fëanor, son of Finwë and Míriel, was the greatest of their craftsmen, "mightiest in skill of word and of hand",[2] and creator of the Silmarils.[4]

The Noldor, who were blessed by Valinor, were called Valinorean Noldor, or briefly  - Valinoldor.
In colloquial speech it became briefer Val'Noldor, and then the humans changed it into Vorlondor, or just "those Vorlons".

Much later, visiting Babylon-5, the evolved Valinoldor were using this colloquial nickname "Vorlons" to be clear to the weak humans.

Interesting fact. Their ambassador introduced himself as Kosh.
The next ambassador also called himself Kosh, and added "All of us are Kosh".
The word "kosh" doesn't sound elvish, on the first glance.
But it's usual for the Quenya words to start with "qu-".
So, it looks like originally "kosh" was "qosh", derived from the Quenya "qu" + some vowel.
There is no "sh" in Quenya, but there is a lot of "ss" and its derivative "st".
So, Kosh is probably derived from the Quenya  "qu(vowel)s(s/t)"
From the vocabulary:

Quote

quessë n. “feather”
quessetéma n. “kw-series”
#questa n. “speech, language”

we can presume that Kosh is either erroneously pronounced by humans "quessë “feather”" or "questa “speech, language”".
So, probably the "Vorlons" of the "Babylon-5" clan were addressing themselves as "Quessë", i.e "People of Feather", which looks reasonable if remember their poetic background.

The Five of the First Ones, who were talking to Commander Ivanova, were obviously Mayar.
They were angry at both elvish and orcish kinds, so the "Vorlons" and the "Shadows" avoided opposing them and got lost.

Minbari, Narn, Centaurians, and so on, all of them were Lorien/Bombadil GMO, a genetic mixture of the Middle-Earth humans with other life forms, like molluscs, lizardz, and (who knows, maybe punks).
That's why they are basically humanoids, and all of them recognize the superiority of true humans, Lesser Children of Eru.

***

But what was the origin of the ents?

It was not as enigmatic as it seems.

When Melkor was building Utumno, he had spent a lot of wood, and it became clear that further construction efforts will need even more.
For example, he needed a lot of wood to build an invasion fleet to Valinor, consisting of much bigger ships than the elvish boats.

So, he asked his gardener, known in the 3rd epoch as Tom Bombadil, to develop a new kind of trees, much bigger than the existing ones, straight, with good wood, seeding around, and growing fast.

The result of the Bombadil's efforts were mallorn.
These trees were almost perfect to produce logs for building dungeons or ships.

Spoiler

Bombadil has planted a whole forest of them, originally named by the elves as Laurelindorenan, but quickly renamed after another name, under which he is known in the Babylon Epoch, Lorien.

It happened, when they let the hidden elvish kingdom exist, because the elves were quite good overseers for any kind of trees.

Thus, while their queen Galadriel was not serving to Melkor and his descendants directly, she and her elves were guarding and servicing the Bombadil's wood plantation.
It was satisfying everyone, and was kept unchanged for centuries.

In the 3rd epoch, when the whole Middle-Earth was an arena of two opposing forces, the former System Engineer of Utumno, Sauron, and the former Utumno Senior Gardener, Bombadil, Galadriel was balancing between the two forces.
She was avoiding any thing powered by Sauron, that's why she rejected the Ring. Otherwise she could face the consequences from Bombadil.
Though, it was leading her to the Dark Side of Force, as we know from her demonstration.

***

The mallorn were perfect, but their advantage was their disadvantage.
They were really huge, and it was incredibly hard to cut them and bring across the Middle Earth.

To solve this problem, Bombadil decided to make them self-propelled.
"Walking trees!", said he. "Walking trees are what we need. They will dig out themselves, walk themselves, and lay down in the sawmill also themselves. We need the walking trees".

Then he developed the so-called Huorns.

Quote

Huorns were creatures much like Ents, although they do not appear to have been truly sentient.
The origin of the Huorns is unknown. It is not clear if Huorns were Ents that had become tree-like, or trees that had become Entish.

It was clear, just not for the hobbits.
The Huorns were a test prototype of the walking tree. In further plans their ability would be applied to the mallorn, to make them walk.

The Huorns were walking good, but were too stupid to manage them properly.
Bombadil was not find appropriate the risk of having stupid walking mallorn.

That's why he decided to upgrade some huorns and turned them into more sapient ents.

Quote

The Ents were sentient, humanoid beings created at the request of Yavanna to protect the trees from other creatures, particularly Dwarves,[4] and thus were called "Shepherds of the Trees".

The ents were indeed Shepherds of the Trees.
Their only purpose was to drive the walking mallorn to the Utumno, or Angband, or whatever else sawmill.

The ents were relatively small (tiny, if compare them to the mallorn), so they would be controllable more easily.

The events, which happened later in the Middle-Earth, delayed the project, but this doesn't mean "cancelled".

Edited May 15 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

Just watched this and the caption at 13:43 makes it. Now this is an real thing Soviet got to the nuke fast because they know it works and had lots of spies.
Now it was one sci-fi short then they rebuild after an catastrophe, captain held an speech saying they was up to the ancestors tech level and then activate warp drive  

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now this is an real thing Soviet got to the nuke fast because they know it works and had lots of spies.

It's a little bit oversimplified.

Spoiler

Actually, the S*cret Gl*bal G*ver_nment was dissatisfied with the American monopoly on the n*kes, and forced them to transfer the n*ke tech to the Soviets, to stop the US national G*vernment from becoming 2unlimited power in the world, competing with the named S.G.G., and replacing it, like it happened later, in 1990s; and some early XXI events were their Their attempt to restore the balance.

Could you recall any other case of such irrational love of various Western scientists and other actors to the Soviets?
Having flashed in the night and immediately disappeared, once the post-WWII balance had been reached.

But psss, nobody should know this.

Edited May 20 by kerbiloid

[SunlitZelkova]

So TIL about Edgar Mitchell’s interest in consciousness studies, quantum theory, and… UFOs.

It really has me wondering if science can truly be called “science” or if it is just an extension of human reasoning and senses, which, perhaps inevitably, will lead to non-impartial interpretations of observations, perhaps leading to new systems of belief. And systems of belief are vulnerable to abuse, and thus science may end up destroying itself.

The way Mitchell talks of the universe being made out of information is jarringly similar to Philip K. Dick’s Gnostic inspired ruminations, in which he arrived at the same conclusion independently, without scientific observation, after having a mystical experience in 1974.

Mitchell claims all six lunar module pilots had the same mystical experience he did at some point during their flight, and were changed by it in their own unique way. It makes me wonder what sorts of wild ideas might be birthed from more regular flights to the Moon in the coming years, especially due to the heavy influence of pop culture involving aliens and mystical forces (like the sorcerers in Doctor Strange) compared to the types of media Mitchell and his fellow Apollo astronauts consumed as kids.

Everybody knew lightning existed, just one day someone came along and claimed it came from Zeus’ fingers.

Charles Fort was on to something when he felt that science was just as vulnerable to dogmas as systems of belief, IMO. Quantum physicists may be on the forefront of creative theorization right now, but will they be in 1000 or 2000 years? I’d hate to see a time come when people are burned at the stake for daring to question the sacredness of the Quantum One.

Ironically I think the solution to this is to let people come to their own conclusions. It’s okay to think the universe is cold and unthinking or that intelligent chi/ki surrounds us in the form of the energies that make up the universe. But let people decide that for themselves.

Mitchell is wrong, when in the NASA oral history in which he is interviewed he states that science needs to help craft “a new story” to help “have a better value system that’s in tune with the processes of the universe.”

Arthur C. Clarke’s quote… “Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic,” has some disturbing consequences. If one day all of the problems are solved, and ideas become more and more complex, and sufficient time passes that the early discoveries become almost mythical in nature, that history will be easily distortable. Just look at how more or less… human… humans of 10000 years ago were recast as dumb savages by Thomas Hobbes.

I guess what I’m saying is… humans gradually learned through experimentation how to cultivate crops. But the memory of exactly when a certain group first did it was so distant no one remembered. So it was mythologized. The lesson of agriculture was given by gods. Today, very few people know how to grow food on a scale necessary to sustain a decent population. It’s a relatively rare art.

So what if we forget who the Wright Brothers were, and who Einstein was, and we attribute these successes to supernatural forces. Not in the same way the first farmers were forgotten and replaced by gods, but rather by turning them into “supermen” and assuming they had “help” from… oh, I don’t know, Martians. That idea already exists now.

But then the names of the people get less important. Because all technology was given by the Martians, so it doesn’t matter what the humans’ names were. Eventually they are then forgotten.

And then we have a sort of zombie civilization, which doesn’t remember where it came from and likely doesn’t have much of an idea of where it wants to go- not unlike how the majority of people in the 21st century are focused on the present rather than future.

Maybe people aren’t interested in making new things because they’re infatuated with existing technology. Or maybe those who claim to have their own ideas without the help of Martians are accused of blasphemy and burned at the stake.

Science becomes a lost art, practiced by a few or none at all. Doctors become indistinguishable from medicine men. Quantum physicists become virtually identical to shamans.

People start talking of “bad” and “good” magic. There are good sorcerers and evil sorcerers. To some extent this conflict already exists in the form of debate on ethical and unethical science experiments.

Science and philosophy complement each other in some ways, but trying to integrate them is flawed, IMO. The police and fire department are more effective as independent branches than a single institution.

But I wonder… is science truly unique? The present is the past and also the future. But it’s only the present until it’s history.

Today’s objective truth and facts may be the myths of tomorrow.

I think that’s alright, but I just really wish for people to decide what they think on their own. Not have the meaning of life shoved down their throats through indoctrination into the dogma. It would be a terrible mistake to utilize science to try to answer those sorts of questions.

[DDE]

41 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Arthur C. Clarke’s quote… “Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic,” has some disturbing consequences. If one day all of the problems are solved, and ideas become more and more complex, and sufficient time passes that the early discoveries become almost mythical in nature, that history will be easily distortable.

We are arguably already at this point due to the sheer expansion of science and the complexity of the technology involved - the era of Big Science. Before the semi-conductor, perhaps even in the early Atomic Age, most of the science we relied on could be demonstrated over the course of classroom physics and chemistry experiments and field trips. Today, much of the science we rely on in daily lives has to be accepted as dogma because it realistically cannot be tested when in doubt - much of it will be just appeals to authority all the way down.

[ColdJ]

If more advanced beings hadn't visited thousands of years ago (human populations called them Gods) and put humans on the path to more advanced practices, would we and the planet actually be better off?

 

If the latest generations are more interested in abusing new technologies rather than learning how they are manufactured and repaired, how long till the population turns into the "Eloi" as written about in the novel "The Time Machine", unable to think and fend for themselves?

[DDE]

42 minutes ago, ColdJ said:

If the latest generations are more interested in abusing new technologies rather than learning how they are manufactured and repaired, how long till the population turns into the "Eloi" as written about in the novel "The Time Machine", unable to think and fend for themselves?

It's either an impossibility - such a civilization would be cannibalized by more "grass-touching" neighbors - or it's already happened in industrial and early post-industrial societies, because the basic skills for subsistence survival have already been lost, and the ability to fend for oneself is almost counterproductive because what's needed is a reliable cog in the machine.

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Quantum physicists become virtually identical to shamans.

Much worse.
The shamans at least are driven by mushrooms.
The qhysicists do on their own.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

all six lunar module pilots had the same mystical experience he did at some point during their flight, and were changed by it in their own unique way.

Pure oxygen and TV preachers do their deeds.

The Soviet cosmonauts were feeling communist enthusiasm instead.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

what sorts of wild ideas might be birthed from more regular flights to the Moon in the coming years, especially due to the heavy influence of pop culture involving aliens and mystical forces (like the sorcerers in Doctor Strange) compared to the types of media Mitchell and his fellow Apollo astronauts consumed as kids.

They are waiting...

Spoiler

 

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Today, very few people know how to grow food on a scale necessary to sustain a decent population. It’s a relatively rare art.

Almost any Soviet/Russian family had its kitchen-garden, some  were feeding from it in 1990s.

Useful info about local agriculture is in magazines, and basically occupies from zero to a copybook (to be a local professor of agronomy).

Even when I hate doing agriculture myself (except in Minecraft), I have visual memories about how it was organized at several places of our family.

Not a rocket science.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

But then the names of the people get less important. Because all technology was given by the Martians, so it doesn’t matter what the humans’ names were. Eventually they are then forgotten.

It's not that dramatic.
Nobody even cares, where it came from. Martians, schmartians, or Etrurian gods.

So, high uncertainty is multiplied by zero significance, giving zero importance.

The best illustration are the pathetic futile attempts of all religions of driving the peasants from rural magic.
The peasant needs harvest, and it's the only what's important.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

So what if we forget who the Wright Brothers were

Those two guys, competing to Santos-Dumont.
Or were they Montgolfier?
No, unlikely, the Montgolians drive horses, while the Wright bros were making balloons...
Anyway, did you check the oil in your Cessna? It's more important.

As a Soviet pupil, I was vaguely aware who are the Wright brothers, just some early American aviators.
While as everyone knows, the first airplane was built by Mozhaysky, had strange rectangular wing(s) and was powered by steam engine.

Spoiler

Santos-Dumont was some French aviator from the postage stamp.
Otto Lilienthal and others were familiar from the magazine article with pictures.

I even don't know the name of the guy, who was assembling this notebook fifteen years ago in probably China.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Science becomes a lost art, practiced by a few or none at all.

300 years ago even reading was a privilige of minority.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Today’s objective truth and facts may be the myths of tomorrow.

The progress is iterative process, it's normal.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

he felt that science was just as vulnerable to dogmas as systems of belief

The entire mathematics is based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_property, and then is step by step developed into its horrible magnificence.
It takes four best years of life in the university.

The entire theoretical physics is derived from the Hamiltonian mechanics, pure math.

Only the experimental physics is volatile to some extent.

And various paraphysics are, like chemistry.

And the parachemistry, called biology.

So, the science building just looks like a circus, but is a concrete barrack inside.

[SunlitZelkova]

7 hours ago, ColdJ said:

If more advanced beings hadn't visited thousands of years ago (human populations called them Gods) and put humans on the path to more advanced practices, would we and the planet actually be better off?

I think the issue here is characterizing what constitutes "advanced." Is a 1300s Tualatin Kalapuya man who lives until 40 but is happy and roams free and contributes to the community throughout his life more "advanced" than the 80 year old from 2024 who has been on anti-depressants half his life and sits in a retirement home watching TV?

The problem is there are people well off in every era of history and people worse off. It's hard to gauge what really constitutes more advanced or not if every generation has its own problems.

I'm unaware of the extent to which early scientific innovations were driven by religious people, although I can list examples (but they may be anecdotal). Newton and Copernicus were Christians, Pythagoras and his followers were Pythagoreans. Tsiolkovsky believed in ethereal beings that transferred knowledge to humans, while a lot of the impetus for the Space Race came from communism vs. capitalism, which entailed atheism vs. religion in the eyes of the American politicians who funded NASA. Perhaps these achievements wouldn't have happened without the religious backgrounds involved (although IMO, the type of "religiousness" present in the four I namedropped is more akin to some sort of spiritualism: being touched by mystical curiosity almost constantly throughout daily life, than the average "religiousness": go to the place of worship once every week but otherwise not think about it too much).

Now of course there are atheists and agnostics who make discoveries too. I think I would guess that the answer to the question "was religion required to get science going" is more likely to be revealed by statistical analysis as being that there is no apparent prerequisite of either atheism or religiosity to be capable of making scientific discoveries. If that is the case I would say that the current world we live in was not precipitated by tales of gods but would look like this either way.

I also think there is a degree of "temporal entrapment" one has to examine when asking that question. People may appear to be worse off in all sorts of ways, but what about 200 or 400 years from now? If it's all peachy, won't that make the problems we sometimes wish never got brought up (like nuclear weapons and the Internet) worth it?

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Almost any Soviet/Russian family had its kitchen-garden, some  were feeding from it in 1990s.

Useful info about local agriculture is in magazines, and basically occupies from zero to a copybook (to be a local professor of agronomy).

Even when I hate doing agriculture myself (except in Minecraft), I have visual memories about how it was organized at several places of our family.

Not a rocket science.

I was gonna say "Russia is ahead of the US in that regard" but it seems 1 in 3 households grow their own produce in the US. I guess it just wasn't/isn't that popular in the two communities I've lived in (one cookie cutter neighborhood full of Intel employees, one an upscale neighborhood in the shadow of Microsoft HQ with a lot of rich, old retirees).

[DDE]

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I'm unaware of the extent to which early scientific innovations were driven by religious people, although I can list examples (but they may be anecdotal). Newton and Copernicus were Christians, Pythagoras and his followers were Pythagoreans. Tsiolkovsky believed in ethereal beings that transferred knowledge to humans, while a lot of the impetus for the Space Race came from communism vs. capitalism, which entailed atheism vs. religion in the eyes of the American politicians who funded NASA. Perhaps these achievements wouldn't have happened without the religious backgrounds involved (although IMO, the type of "religiousness" present in the four I namedropped is more akin to some sort of spiritualism: being touched by mystical curiosity almost constantly throughout daily life, than the average "religiousness": go to the place of worship once every week but otherwise not think about it too much).

There's also the anecdotal overrepresentation of Mormons at NASA and in sci-fi. Some have argued that the Space Race was basically cosmists vs Mormons, but I doubt they've cared to include a certain von Braun.