Humanity's Greatest Achievement

[LACE]

Simply because man would have eventually found out about the use and advantages, doesn't make it any less significant. Man will eventually land on Mars..shit acheivement I guess? Fire could well be considered one of our greatest,in view of the sheer opus of contraptions, conceptions and inventions which capitalizes on it's existence and ours. Unlike the splitting of the atom which I agree is also a monumental achievement, fire is not only essential, but it has that component of being immensly useful-more then an atom bomb or 10,000,000 tons of TNT have ever been. The latter being humanitys' greater achievement in intellect..while the former being our greatest achievement in survival.

[cityzen]

Romans had commonplace areas for acquisition of flame... and even found ways with sulfur/lime to make flame submergeable in water for periods without being extinguished.

Point being, shortly after fire was created it was learned to be harnessed. Harnessing flame could have still occurred without manual creation of flame.

Cool, got any links?

no, I'm just familiar with how a torch works

It is a great advancement for mankind, but our greatest achievement, no.

I never said it was. All of my points still stand.

[ahier]

Romans had commonplace areas for acquisition of flame... and even found ways with sulfur/lime to make flame submergeable in water for periods without being extinguished.

Point being, shortly after fire was created it was learned to be harnessed. Harnessing flame could have still occurred without manual creation of flame.

Cool, got any links?

no, I'm just familiar with how a torch works

It is a great advancement for mankind, but our greatest achievement, no.

I never said it was. All of my points still stand.

but the question is what is humanitys greatest achievement

[noam]

i'm going to go ahead and say that language is the biggest (tiniest?) prison we know.

language doesn't limit you in any way.

any thought or feeling can be expressed or connoted using language.

any inability to do so is a failure on behalf of the person not the tool...

[Mr Hyde]

Language I reckon is the greatest achievement.

Use of tools and managing the environment for farming/sanitation/fire etc have to be up there as the main things that have got us to where we are now but guess it wouldn't have happened without language to communicate all of the different ideas.

Although human things like being in groups and wanting to communicate with each other and empathy and love and fun are pretty cool things to have happened if you count them as achievements.

[noam]

still dont see how 'language' is an achievement though...

[Mr Hyde]

still dont see how 'language' is an achievement though...

How isn't it? Humans aren't born being able to speak- its a skill we have developed, I'd say that's an achievement of humanity.

[ahier]

still dont see how 'language' is an achievement though...

does something have to be a conscious act to be an achievement?

[cityzen]

Romans had commonplace areas for acquisition of flame... and even found ways with sulfur/lime to make flame submergeable in water for periods without being extinguished.

Point being, shortly after fire was created it was learned to be harnessed. Harnessing flame could have still occurred without manual creation of flame.

Cool, got any links?

no, I'm just familiar with how a torch works

It is a great advancement for mankind, but our greatest achievement, no.

I never said it was. All of my points still stand.

but the question is what is humanitys greatest achievement

And I gave my opinion on page 2, second post down.

[cityzen]

i'm going to go ahead and say that language is the biggest (tiniest?) prison we know.

language doesn't limit you in any way.

any thought or feeling can be expressed or connoted using language.

any inability to do so is a failure on behalf of the person not the tool...

Can you explain the ineffable?

[ahier]

And I gave my opinion on page 2, second post down.

oh yeah, so it is

[monte-m]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet

[noam]

still dont see how 'language' is an achievement though...

How isn't it? Humans aren't born being able to speak- its a skill we have developed, I'd say that's an achievement of humanity.

we dont learn language consciously though, its not a skill

Language is actually one of the few things we are born with a natural, innate ability to learn

[christophera]

i'm going to go ahead and say that language is the biggest (tiniest?) prison we know.

is this meant to be some sort of profound statement because ppl have been theorising about this for a long time.

people in this thread agreed over and over that language is the greatest achievement. i hold with those who say language is the greatest barrier to achievement.

do you think you're smart for recognizing that i'm not the first to say that?

[noam]

why such an extreme stance on it??

i dont think language is the greatest achievement human kind has done because i dont think its an achievement at all...

you're claiming that language is the biggest barrier to human achievement?? seems very extreme...

[clifford_-]

still think its the wheel...

[christophera]

language is a prison. it is insufficient. it only works for the first 4 circuits, and effectively keeps us trapped there.

the higher realms of consciousness transcend what we know of as our language.

until it is recognized that our means of communication is insufficient, there can be no motivation to move past it.

[noam]

hasn't language adapted to include every new paradigm we've encountered though?

got some reading on this, im not saying you're wrong, i've just never actually read into this argument before

[christophera]

no it has not at all.

language quits being useful at circuit 5. there's 8 circuits. we don't even know how to talk about the latter 4 because our language is dumb

[64hz]

buts it pretty useful when hunting buffalo (or ordering a mocha)