My great aunt explained to me as a child in the 70s that the moon was round because gravity pulled it into a sphere. This woman was born around 1890, educated in a one-room schoolhouse and lived on a Civil War-era farm in bumfuck West Virginia.
And then ya got what we have here today.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 1 week ago
May I suggest reading Carl Sagan’s Cosmos? Or watch one of the TV shows.
While your average human is about as smart as a brick, there are so many minds throughout history that were able to pull humanity out of our dark caves and into space.
What we need, to survive as a species, is to nurture people, give them (proper) education, and more will come up.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I grew up on Sagan. I’m not saying we should accept anything the way it is or not take inspiration from our achievements, just that we should not be prideful or expect any greatness from anyone.
We’re currently smarter than we’ve ever been in a lot of ways, but I find the smarter you are it only changes the kinds of mistakes you make.
I do agree that humans increase in value the more you value them, and vice-versa. Society should be structured around maximising “human capital”, so to speak.