Despite the misnomer of the video's title (which one can excuse I suppose given creative licence) the presentation was overall fairly decent, and the first five minutes brilliantly depicts our own experiences of observing the cosmos, sadly like several of philhellenes' videos its also a bit 'overly-dramatic', case in point, that unnecessary clip from Blade Runner. I also couldn't help but be irked by his egocentricity after his "Suns must die so that I can live" and "How lucky I am not to be religious" statements.

Also his response to the claim the universe may only support life for another 30 billion years as "30 billion years? Are you fucking kidding me?" then ends discussion by cutting to a music-video was disappointing since he wasn't even attempting to refute it or present a counterargument.


There's definitely room for improvement from him, and from IE for crashing and losing my damn original post that praised philhellenes' throughout for good content and structure. >:C

There wasn't anything to refute though. He accepts that the universe will only support life for another 30 billion years. The point of his "are you fucking kidding me?" was to argue that 30 billion years is a ridiculous amount of time, and that people shouldn't be depressed about it, since it won't affect them. 30 billion years is more than twice the time the universe has even been around, so yeah, in response to people who think it is sad that it won't support life for more than that...are you fucking kidding me?!?

(November 7, 2010 at 12:53 pm)Tiberius Wrote: There wasn't anything to refute though. He accepts that the universe will only support life for another 30 billion years. The point of his "are you fucking kidding me?" was to argue that 30 billion years is a ridiculous amount of time, and that people shouldn't be depressed about it, since it won't affect them. 30 billion years is more than twice the time the universe has even been around, so yeah, in response to people who think it is sad that it won't support life for more than that...are you fucking kidding me?!?

Granted I can't speak for philhellenes, my take or interpretation on his video's abrupt closing statement was that he presented a rhetorical question, and nothing more, not asserting the opposite is true, but that universe is actually infinite/transfinite therefore life existing within it will carry on indefinitely as well rather than just a "mere" thirty billion years.

And as for forecasting the age of the current universe it thought that White Dwarfs will still be around 100 quintillion years from now, far older than the cosmos is today, and eventually the stellar remnants will become hypothetical "black dwarfs" i.e. a dead stars, but none of this tells us anything about biological life still existing or not.

This is why I wished he had been a little more transparent from the get-go and gave a better explanation as to what his thoughts on the fate of the universe were.

Great video.

(November 7, 2010 at 12:53 pm)Tiberius Wrote: There wasn't anything to refute though. He accepts that the universe will only support life for another 30 billion years. The point of his "are you fucking kidding me?" was to argue that 30 billion years is a ridiculous amount of time, and that people shouldn't be depressed about it, since it won't affect them. 30 billion years is more than twice the time the universe has even been around, so yeah, in response to people who think it is sad that it won't support life for more than that...are you fucking kidding me?!?

But we are most likely going to live long enough to be part of the singularity when man merges with machines and will live on forever as some cybernetic hybrid like the Skaled race from Dr. Who. When you are a literal brain in a jar encased in a metal chasis, and have the potential to exist forever then you might find 30 billion years to be very limiting Mr. Hayter!