Poll: 7 billion people, one opinion.
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Yeah, it was, I felt a little ashamed for you. It depends on what the topic is, if everyone, say thought that Creed was the best band ever it would be a much worse place.zajohnson said:There needs to be different opinions, because humans are imperfect. Only by working together do we reach our goals.
Man, that was cheezy.
If everyone thinks the same way nobody will ever want to change things. That would be so boring.
Conflict is the basis of change. Having different opinions is essential to human development, just look at the amount of technology that's been created because of war. diversity of anything is a good thing.
I literally skimmed the rest of the thread just to see if anyone else has addressed this yet, and nobody has, so I guess I'll be the first to point out that the Earth was proven to be spherical by the 3rd century BCE, and that by the Medieval period, essentially every scholar acknowledged that the Earth was spherical - the story that Columbus couldn't get support for his voyages because everyone believed the world was flat was complete and utter bullshit, and a misinterpretation of a work done by Washington Irving during the early 1830s. The real story actually portrays Columbus in a much more negative light, seeing as how he miscalculated the circumference of the Earth significantly, and that his voyage would have easily starved out at sea had they not discovered Hispaniola.emeraldrafael said:
And as for the comment on leeches, you act like they're a bad thing. People in the past actually recognized the effectiveness of leeches when it came to blood coagulation, and leeches are still used today. The problem wasn't leeches, but rather our lack of knowledge of anatomy during the time - for a long time, people believed in the 4 humours, and often chose to drain blood to balance the human body out.
As for the OP, though, it would suck. We like arguing with each other, at least trying out different viewpoints. To reach a consensus on anything is essentially abandoning all other possibilities, and we like at least having them.
Scholar being the key word there. Compare that to the Unscholar population, and its popularity pales in comparison by popular believe. Since the world is going to go by one opinion, and the easiest way to do that is to choose the most popular opinion, scholars would be in the loss.Kryzantine said:
As to leeches, sure, they have limited uses, but in the modern world you get laughed at saying leeches are the way to go, and most doctors probably wont let you leave the roomw ithout some serious argumentative thought. leeches were the go to, and if that didnt work and a blessing didnt work, you were more or less essentially fucked.
Except the scholarly opinion, in this case, was the only voice of power - I'm fairly certain that a majority of the population would not believe the world was flat, for it was certainly not preached to them. And certainly, no major decisions were made on that notion that the world was flat. There is no historical evidence of anyone refusing Columbus because they believed the world was flat. I imagine that there were people who believed it and may have preached it, popular citizens, the Sarah Palins in history, but when it came to serious discussion, it wasn't an issue.emeraldrafael said:
And as I mentioned, the leech issue was more a general lack of knowledge of our anatomy as opposed to the uses of leeches themselves. You were downplaying their usefulness, something which I corrected. It's also not as if ancient medical practices are useless now - look at trepanation, the oldest form of surgery in our history, and it's still being practiced today. We call it barbaric, but it works. Don't hate on leeches.
"Variety is the spice of life" as it was once so eloquently put by a "potty mouthed" former brit games developer.RatRace123 said:
If everyone had the same opinion on everything forever, there would be no discussion, there would be no debate, there would be no evolution of ideas. The fact that people don't have the same opinions on everything is what makes the world vary so much, that's what makes it possible for new ideas to come to the surface.
Well, here's the rub. What if it's the WRONG point of view?
A large amount of humankind's progress has come from people with differing ideas working out compromises and finding the best way forward that wasn't necessarily the one they thought was.
A large amount of humankind's progress has come from people with differing ideas working out compromises and finding the best way forward that wasn't necessarily the one they thought was.
Think of it this way, does a company work better if all the subordinates are just Yes Men that agree with the boss? Of course not.
Exchange of different opinions and ideas is what makes us strong as a species. That's actually why areas like Europe developed their technology faster than other parts of the world. They weren't smarter; there was just more collaboration between a larger number of individuals than, say, segregated island populations.
Basically, humanity evolves its technology, academics, and society by bouncing ideas off of each other. If we all had the same line of thinking, nothing would ever progress or change. Someone has to think outside the box and be radical sometimes; that's how innovation works.
Exchange of different opinions and ideas is what makes us strong as a species. That's actually why areas like Europe developed their technology faster than other parts of the world. They weren't smarter; there was just more collaboration between a larger number of individuals than, say, segregated island populations.
Basically, humanity evolves its technology, academics, and society by bouncing ideas off of each other. If we all had the same line of thinking, nothing would ever progress or change. Someone has to think outside the box and be radical sometimes; that's how innovation works.
Diversity in ideas and ideologies breeds progress.
edit ninjad
Basically what you propose is a vacuum and there is a reason the borg assimilated cultures it's because they couldn't develop those things on their own.
edit ninjad
Basically what you propose is a vacuum and there is a reason the borg assimilated cultures it's because they couldn't develop those things on their own.
Well, we would no longer be human, tahts for sure. But whatever we became, all of us, dedicated to the advancement of the entire race. No power in the verse could stop us.
I don't see that as part of his question. In terms of happiness, when people agree on something, and everyone is doing what is agreed is best, everyone is happy. Basic stuff. It doesn't matter if everyone just agreed to kill a puppy on the 3rd of every month.blaqknoise said:
No, as scientific progress would be nonexistent. Science is based almost entirely on people standing up and saying "I believe you are incorrect, and I intend to prove it"; if we all agreed that the earth was flat, you'd be looking at pancake-shaped globes everywhere you went, because nobody would have had the presence of mind to say "bear with me, but I believe that idea may be mildly retarded". Sure, there's a lot of objectively stupid opinions in the world, and therefore a lot of baseless opposition to objectively good opinions and ideas, but the fact that we have such diversity allows us to have the range of good-to-bad in the first place; if we were all stuck in a monotone "mediocre", we wouldn't have any good ideas springing forth.
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that we were all unanimously agreed on objectively good ideas, instead of being locked into a psychological dead-end. We all agree that science is good, that knowledge is power, killing is wrong, selflessness is admirable, honesty is golden, and sentimentality is never an excuse to hold up progress. What then? Call me crazy, but I still believe we wouldn't go anywhere, for the same reasons I previously went over. The evolution of a species is caused by favorable mutations replacing less-useful traits with superior ones, and in a world without such mutations, we'd all be single-celled organisms. The same principle applies to academia, as our pool of knowledge cannot be expanded without being able to tell right from wrong. Nowadays, it's common sense that an attempt to cure a fever by using leeches to remove a witch from an afflicted person's stomach is, y'know, fucking stupid, but there was a time where everybody was on board with that because that's the best we could do; if nobody between then and now said "that's fucking stupid" and set to work on research for cures that didn't make the affliction worse, you'd have a faceful of parasites every time you developed a sneeze. Even if we could all adjust our beliefs unanimously to accept a new piece of information, we'd be waiting for that information to fall out of the sky, because vast amounts of research and inquiry are primarily inspired by dissent.
Outliers for the win.
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that we were all unanimously agreed on objectively good ideas, instead of being locked into a psychological dead-end. We all agree that science is good, that knowledge is power, killing is wrong, selflessness is admirable, honesty is golden, and sentimentality is never an excuse to hold up progress. What then? Call me crazy, but I still believe we wouldn't go anywhere, for the same reasons I previously went over. The evolution of a species is caused by favorable mutations replacing less-useful traits with superior ones, and in a world without such mutations, we'd all be single-celled organisms. The same principle applies to academia, as our pool of knowledge cannot be expanded without being able to tell right from wrong. Nowadays, it's common sense that an attempt to cure a fever by using leeches to remove a witch from an afflicted person's stomach is, y'know, fucking stupid, but there was a time where everybody was on board with that because that's the best we could do; if nobody between then and now said "that's fucking stupid" and set to work on research for cures that didn't make the affliction worse, you'd have a faceful of parasites every time you developed a sneeze. Even if we could all adjust our beliefs unanimously to accept a new piece of information, we'd be waiting for that information to fall out of the sky, because vast amounts of research and inquiry are primarily inspired by dissent.
Outliers for the win.
A positive would there would be no wars or conflict of any kind.
Negative. There would be absolutely no variety. No new expansions in marketing. I think f it happened I would kill myself out of sheer unrelenting, madness inducing boredom. Thing is though everyone else would have the same opinion so the human race would end.
Negative. There would be absolutely no variety. No new expansions in marketing. I think f it happened I would kill myself out of sheer unrelenting, madness inducing boredom. Thing is though everyone else would have the same opinion so the human race would end.
No, I'm afraid not. It would be the end of humanity as an intelligent species. The proof is in the pudding we call philosophy. This subject promotes the growth of ideas, the postulation of theories, and the creation of interesting lines of thought. It also points out the glaring fact that man does not know everything, and would cease to function if we did. Without something to drive us on in thought, we would merely exist...and then the stagnation would set in because we stop thinking. Before long, we're dead because there's nothing else to chase after.RatRace123 said:
The same can be said for sameness in thought because we would never really be thinking there, either. Maybe no arguments, but no discussions either. No innovation or originality, no difference of opinion to really make you wonder, no point in actually talking. We'd stagnate just as quickly.