Are we alone in the universe?

Have we ever been?

Frank Drake 1930-2022

We may be living within their simulation, Mr. Fermi.

Addendum to :nerd:

part one

part two


https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/760115

I think Kubrick was also trying to say, 'yeah you lot wish you could get some useful supernatural advice written on stone tablets but the best you are ever going to get is sci fi stories like this one. The rest is on you, it's your burden to figure it all out, including all the mysteries. There are no gods to help you!' — universeness

Well said, and now, let me segue into saying, "The monolith is a MacGuffin." Tricky Kubrick knows how to stir the public imagination visually with that sleek, black slab of commercial mysteriousness. Keep cogitating on it folks, and while you're at it, keep ringing those turnstiles with repeat, paid viewings.

Is a rectangular, black, 10 feet tall monilith in any way something that would be familiar to pre-sapiens? Very unllikely, and to that extent it's a bad idea. — Agent Smith

:up:

Or current sapiens? (Sex and) mystery sells, especially when hawked by the cognoscenti.

There has always been a deep debate on the significance of the monolith which appears in the beginning of the movie. — javi2541997

To me, the monolith represented an artifact, which would only be apparent to rational beings. Presumably, ordinary apes would treat it a useless black rock. But a few began to realize that the monolith was not natural, so someone must have created it. Thus began the ontological quest to understand why anything exists. Which eventually led to the ever-evolving god concept.

So the space odyssey was merely the continuation of that eons-old search for the Ultimate Source of Being. In the movie, we never see any divine beings, only symbols & metaphors of omnipotence & omniscience. That ambiguous presentation left open the nature of the Creator : advanced aliens or introverted deity? :smile: