What is humanity's greatest achievement?

Elon Musk says it's going to the moon. But is it?

What are your three nominations?

@fmf said
Elon Musk says it's going to the moon. But is it?

What are your three nominations?

In order of time:
Language - sharing and developing and progressing ideas
The wheel - power and motion and communication
Health - sanitation, antibiotics, improving human lives.

Certainly not going to the moon - that's just a child's dream.

@fmf said
Elon Musk says it's going to the moon. But is it?

What are your three nominations?

Difficult to state with first defining “greatest” in this context, I.e. as differentiated from “important”. Also to perhaps separate those achievements which we generally share with other species.

For example communication wether it be by sound, sign or chemical is a phenomena shared by all species. So I would rule out communication. Another one we share with some species is farming. Whilst contemporary human farming is very sophisticated, there are other species who practice forms of husbandry. Another cross-species achievement is art; some animals have demonstrated artistic abilities. Another is social communities, collective cooperation, leadership and even basic eccomics such as trading. Animals create weapons, they organise themselves to go to war and they practices rudimentary self-medication.

I therefore think humanity’s “greatest” achievements exist within the scientific arena focused through self determined (as opposed to evolutionary) breakthroughs and for my taste these would be:

1) leaving our own planet and travelling to another world. So, the moon landings.
2) unleashing and harnessing the power of the atom. So, nuclear fission energy.
3) discovery and control of electricity, without which we would have virtually none of the technologies we enjoy as a species. Including 1) and 2) above.

@fmf said
Elon Musk says it's going to the moon. But is it?

What are your three nominations?

1 Indoor plumbing
2 electricity
3 motorized transportation

1) Sense of humor
2) Starting with the printing press, the ability to preserve large amounts of knowledge for future generations to build on
3) Science and the ideal that any proposition can be questioned, regardless of which authority figure said it

3. Moon landing

2. the Internet

1. AI
------------

alternative set:

3. Suzie Pope

2. beer

1. cheeze doodles

Formula baby milk
Vaccinations
The Olympic Games

Education that made possible:
-Vaccine
- Electricity
- Telephone

Certainly not moon trips.

@torunn said

Certainly not moon trips.

“Certainly” not moon trips?

You don’t regard our determination and realisation of the ambition to leave our own planet, travel in space close to a total of a million miles, decelerate and land on another world, explore, lift off again, return through the vacuum, renter the earths atmosphere at over 24,000 mph and splash down safely as being a tremendous achievement of human endeavour…in fact “certainly” not?

@divegeester said
“Certainly” not moon trips?

You don’t regard our determination and realisation of the ambition to leave our own planet, travel in space close to a total of a million miles, decelerate and land on another world, explore, lift off again, return through the vacuum, renter the earths atmosphere at over 24,000 mph and splash down safely as being a tremendous achievement of human endeavour…in fact “certainly” not?

Not one of humanity's greatest achievements in my opinion.

@divegeester said
discovery and control of electricity, without which we would have virtually none of the technologies we enjoy as a species.

This

@kewpie said
antibiotics

This

@bigdogg said
the printing press

And this.

@torunn said
Not one of humanity's greatest achievements in my opinion.

But “certainly” not…?

@torunn said
Not one of humanity's greatest achievements in my opinion.

I agree, I think the whole space travel thing is a waste of resources. Lets work on finding a better way to improve this planet first.