[ExI] everything will be "ok" was: RE: Do you still think I'm paranoid?

Wed May 8 01:50:44 UTC 2019

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki
Subject: Re: [ExI] Do you still think I'm paranoid?

On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 9:05 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com <mailto:johnkclark at gmail.com> > wrote:

On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 1:54 AM Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com <mailto:rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> > wrote:

> It's insane stuff like this that keeps me off Exi.

I'm curious Rafal… John K Clark 

### …Everything will be OK, at least for some values of OK. He is just a blip on the graph…Rafal 

Ok?  OK he says?   Rafal, the sheer magnitude of understatement rivals observing that Apple has made money.

Things will be so OK, so extremely beyond OK, words fail me, which seldom happens.  

Look at the astonishing discovery in just the last three years: we detected a gravity wave.  I shall never forget the mind-boggling awesome feeling, February 2016, of sitting in a packed auditorium at Stanford Linear Accelerator, 600 seats filled, people standing in the aisles everywhere, straining to hear as Professor Reitze laid out all the evidence that the signal detected on 14 September 2015 was the real deal.  His evidence convinced me of something I had flatly refused to allow myself to believe, for fear it was all a mistake.  But it was no mistake.

Then the professor explained that they had expressed the gravity wave as a sound:

https://www.livescience.com/53694-sound-of-merging-black-holes.html

The collectively feeling of awe and wonder at that bwip sound in that auditorium was so thick, one could practically scoop it up with net.

Since then, we have learned that the 14 Sept 2015 event wasn’t some crazy fluke.  We have learned the universe is awash in gravity waves.  And we… a most fortunate species… have figured out how to detect them.

Of all of this remarkably fortunate species, there is a small subset of humanity fortunate enough to have had access to the right educational opportunities, the right contacts, the right everything… to get to experience and deeply appreciate the astonishing breakthrough.

John, you and I are among that lucky few.  There are a few others, the usual suspects who really dig this kind of thing, Stuart, Adrian, the others.  Of all the lifeforms, we are among that most fortunate species and of all those, we are here where we can do cool stuff like attend science lectures any time we want, and of all those who attend science lectures, we are among the lucky few who get the whole gravity wave thing, WOWsers!

Now, considering all that… how how how… even if one works at it… can one possibly be pessimistic?  We aren’t going to nuke ourselves.  We aren’t experiencing societal chaos.  We are not starving, we are not sick.  We are those lucky lifeforms who are living in the right place and time where we can come to a new and profound mind-blowing understanding of what happened way back when it all started.

Think about it.

spike

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