I low-key love the fact that sci-fi has so conditioned us to expect to be hanging out with a bunch of cool space aliens, that legitimate, actual scientists keep proposing the most bizarre, three-blunts-into-the-rotation "theories" to explain the fact we're not.
Some of my favourites include:
Zoo Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they're not talking to us because of the Prime Directive from Star Trek? (Or because they're doing experiments on us???)
Dark Forest Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they all hate us and each other so they're all just waiting with a shotgun pointed at the door, ready to open fire on anything that moves?
Planetarium Theory: What if there's at least one alien with mastery over light and matter that's just making it seem to us that the universe is empty to us as, like, a joke?
Berserker Theory: What if there were loads of aliens, but one of them made infinite killer robots that murdered everyone and are coming for us next?!!
Like, the universe is at least 13,700,000,000 years old and 46,000,000,000 light years big. We have had the ability to transmit and receive signals for, what, 100 years, and our signals have so far travelled 200 light years?
The fact is biological life almost certainly has, does, or will develop elsewhere in the universe, and it's not impossible that a tiny amount of it has, does, or will develop in a way that we would understand as "intelligent". But, like, we're realistically never going to know because of the scale of the things involved.
So I'm proposing my own hypothesis. I call it the "Fool in a Field" hypothesis. It goes like this:
Humanity is a guy standing in the middle of a field at midnight. It's pitch black, he can't move, and he's been standing there for ages. He's just had the thought to swing his arms. He swings one of his arms, once, and does not hit another person. "Oh no!" He says. "Robots have killed them all!"
I spent the first half of my life being told to just Be The Bigger Person in every situation and therefore I have now completely burned out on that, so fuck you it's now goblin hours forever
Socializing as someone who is extremely strange has gotten a lot easier for me when I realized that the people who's opinions really matter to me aren't going to leave me or be mad at me just because I used the wrong phrasing or didn't have the right expression on my face when I said something and whatever other stuff like that. The people that really matter will stick around and celebrate the way we exist together, goblin noises and all
How to feel loved tutorial
people will see a fandom thing and be like "why isn't this a fanfic" "why is there no fanfic about this" my brother in christ, because you're not writing it
Sometimes being a system is coming out of hyperfocus and finding someone had doodled all over the body in pen
I think one of the goals of society should be that someone who requires expensive medicine and a lot of care can live an amazing life, the longest life they possibly can, with dignity, even if they have no friends or family or anyone who cares enough about them to help. the goals of a society should be to make life better than if we are alone, society should want life to be as good as possible for as many people as possible, and those goals should account for people not having social support networks.
I would love to see a fantasy novel where the lore that the reader / protagonist learns at first is not true
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