Favorite Conspiracy theory

[ThreeName]

<youtube=_c6HsiixFS8>
dumb people make the best conspiracy theories.

I have been broken.

In response, you may have this:


This is exactly how physics works. It might as well be a conspiracy theory.

 

[RJ Dalton]

The usefull adaptations are exactly not easier paths to go down. Like wings from no wings. Feathers to fly with. New stuff. And you are also implying, that if an animal is in the million year long process of changing in one aspect, it is set and static in another. That the brain don't change because everything else is changing.

And yet here is the brain, all have it, and mutations happen there too. A mutation that increases the amount of dendrites on a nervecell? Bingo, it works you're smarter. Just one random mutation.

Another one that makes your cells smaller, so there can be more of them in same space? That's what Einstein had. Bingo, one mutation makes something better!

Now how you get from no wing, to a feathered wing, with all intermediates being better than the one before, and better than not changing at all. That's for the cartoonists to explain.

No, it's not that simple. There are dozens of different parts in the brain that all relate to different aspects of intelligence. Parts that relate to drawing logical connections, parts that relate to coordination and manual dexterity (definitely necessary if you want to build tools), parts control emotional responses (and allow more complex emotional responses), parts that help work out a balance between curiosity and the flight/fight response in a way that allows you to test new experience without getting killed. Each of these require a series of steps in order to bring them to the level of development present in the human brain. And you still need to survive while these elements are all developing. The process of developing intelligent life really is quite complicated.
And feathers developed before wings. Recent paleontological studies have shown that a surprisingly large number of dinosaurs had feathers. Even the T-Rex shows signs of having feathers. I haven't looked into this specifically, but with the study I've done in biology, my guess would be that feathers were an alternative to fur, used to protect animals from the elements, like heat and cold and later developed into flight.

Like I said, for any given environmental stimulus that requires an adaptation, there are thousands of paths to take and intelligence isn't automatically easier than others.

Of course, there are weird ways around it. The octopus doesn't have any of the kind of brains capable of many of the things we think of as necessary to produce what we think of as "intelligent behavior," and yet they manage surprisingly complex and surprisingly intelligent behaviors without going through any of the kinds of neural activities that humans and animals with similar brains do. When you get right down to it, we really don't know exactly what develops intelligence in the first place, much less what factors make it happen.

It is, if you'll pardon the pun, mind-blowing.

 

[Clowndoe]

Which is, if life has existed for so many millions of years, why did intelligence as we know it, only show up in homo sapiens after such a long time.

Well, you could ask this question about a lot of traits. Why didn't more animals evolve to be dinosaur-sized? Why didn't more fish evolve into shark-like species? Why haven't we discovered any reptilian-monkeys? These are all pretty neat things. Sharks eat pretty much any non-shark, isn't that an advantage? And when you think about it, intelligence isn't all that helpful to an animal. What's a few points of I.Q. going to do for a zebra in a herd? Is it really going to prevent him from being picked off like any other member of his species? If evolution were really working on min/maxing itself, wouldn't zebras be faster than lions?

Besides, there are so many "one in a million" scenarios necessary to develop the way we did. Intelligence really doesn't help without, say, opposable thumbs. Sapience isn't much use to you if you can't grasp the objects you intend to utilize. Opposable thumbs on the other hand have only developed in monkeys and lemurs off the top of my head, so there's that. And then there's the fact that weren't all that smart until the discovery of fire. Homo Erectus could care for the injured, coordinated hunting, and crafted tools, but that's hardly unheard of among the apes. The discovery of fire is a large part of what prompted our further development - increasing the value of consumed meat and providing more protein to the brain - and its mastery is another very unlikely event.

I really don't believe we need a reason for sapience to have not appeared elsewhere, since there was never a reason for to appear in the first place.

 

[GladiatorUA]

My favorite theory is that bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories are more widespread to obscure and discredit theories about real and legit conspiracies.

 

[Abomination]

My favorite theory is that bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories are more widespread to obscure and discredit theories about real and legit conspiracies.

That's some serious meta we've got going on.

The conspiricy theory that's really crazy was made by those who want to hide the facts of my slightly less crazy conspiricy theory!

Mine's a toss up between the Moon Landing being fake and 9/11 being an inside job. Both just give the American government too much credit in their ability to fool people and their ability to keep highly paid professionals quiet. A relatively small thing can get busted open easily by Snowden - how did they manage to keep the Moon Landing or 9/11 internal?

 

[Do4600]

The most hopeless one I've heard really is the moon landing hoax, it's just unthinkable that somebody could be so thick. This is my favorite debunk video on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU

My favourite is david ike's, for several reasons, mainly because its so batshit insane but makes a lot of sense if you dont take it literally. For those unfamiliar, david ike believes the queen and world leaders such a george bush to be shapeshifting lizard aliens. I think it tells you a lot about politics and that, most politicians seem to be slimy, blowing in the wind of prevailing popular view and you could see them as lizard like in quite a few ways. Mostly self serving, like lizards, no disrespect to lizards but I doubt any lizard is thinking of the bigger picture, rather MUST SURVIVE, MUST CONSUME INSECTS, MUST COME OUT FIRST IN THE APPROVAL POLLS, MUST SURVIVE EVEN IF I HAVE TO FUCK OVER MY LIZARD BROTHERS.

Now I'm not going to jump on his wagon. But even though this theory seems to be the most crazy of them all, it does touch upon a big question.

Which is, if life has existed for so many millions of years, why did intelligence as we know it, only show up in homo sapiens after such a long time.

If you think about it, survival of the fittest, being smart is a huge asset. And the mutations to make a brain smarter, is much easier to imagine being perpetually introduced as opposed to for example evolution of wings.

So the question goes, why didn't intelligence show up as soon as it could. In dinosaurs for example. Smart lizards.

And so the conspiracy theory reaches back to the earliest forms of life, and imagine that they did actually become intelligent, somewhere in space/time whatever.

But it's a good question infact, why they didn't become intelligent. What in Darwins theory is preventing intelligence? It's only happened once, in man, and that's 150.000 years ago in a 65 million year long span. Which seems absurd.

Other intelligent species did evolve. Neanderthals were intelligent for example. Mankind simply murdered all the competition.

First of, Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals are the same genus, their precursor was homo erectus IIRC. So it's the same one intelligence we are dealing with.

Secondly, if Homo Sapiens murdered Neanderthals, how? Neanderthals were bigger and stronger, but Homo Sapiens was smarter. And so won.

Essentially adding evidence to the idea that Smart is evolutionary good.

Thirdly, if 65 million years was a big sausage, then slicing a single thin slice of would remove any intelligence that ever showed up, and so intelligence never happened.

Evolution doesn't favor intelligence, evolution only favors survivability. If an animal is intelligent, but that intelligence doesn't favor it's survivability it won't do the animal any good.

Human intelligence only came about because a very specific set of environmental pressures presented itself to a very specific animal that had the very specific brain structures necessary for intelligence to be a trait that made survival more likely.

Think of a snail. Snails have been around for about 480 million years, they've never to our knowledge developed intelligence. Why? because they have no environmental pressure to develop intelligence, a more complex brain to a snail would be a liability, it would have to eat even more than it can now. If there is no pressure on an animal to adapt it won't, that's why snails have barely changed in 480 million years. Same thing with nautiloids, no pressure, no need to change; and there's no reason to assume that intelligence is the best way to make a creature more successful. The most successful life forms on this planet are bacteria and they have no abstract intelligence.

We just happen to be in the right place at the right time with the right brain for our beastly neuroticisms to slowly grow and turn into a functional planning and abstract reasoning organ.

 

[Idon'tcareanymore]

Well, theres this:

<youtube=uAm-kbzT7xw>

If you've got an hour to spare and some brain cells to kill, you have to watch this.

I-I don't even... WHAT THE HELL? What did I just watch? Please, for the love of God... This has to be a joke, right? I mean, this can't possibly be someone's actual opinions on life. And, if this is really what these people believe... I loose all faith in humanity.

Edit:
I found their youtube account... It gets WORSE... So much worse.

 

[Saelune]

Recently read up about the "Flat Earth Society" while researching theoretical phsyics of such a world for DnD purposes. Thats a fun classic one. Thomas Dolby is a member (member .00001 or something of the newest incarnation) but I dont know if he believes it or if he just wanted to "FIRST" the group.