A very VERY detailed Hypothetical

[The Salty Vulcan]

Ok hypothetical:

You are the captain of the space ship U.N.S Promethea (think along the lines of thes of the U.S.S Enterprise from Star Trek). You have been assigned the task of finding a ship, the U.N.S Athena, that has failed to re-establish communication in the last XX months and continue its mission should anything have happened. During the first leg of your voyage, everything is going to plan: you have passed the point of no return and you are leaving a trail of communication relayers along your way.

Out of the blue one day, you make an odd discovery: the U.N.S Athena, heavily damaged and drifting aimlessly through space. After attempts to communicate with her fail, you decide to board her. All the crew are dead. The death of some is easy to figure out: some violence, a few suicides etc but the rest are puzzling. It appears as if they all just keeled over. You have your engineers check out the ship and aside from some heavy exterior meteor and asteroid damage, the computers are fine. Your Science crew discover that some of the minerals on the hull are not common to this sector of space (something about the combination of zinc and the low sodium levels, you dont get it). You ultimately decide not to report the discovery back to homebase (you would rather know the full details before you tell the crews loved ones that one day they just died). Anyways your able to pick up the Athena's communication relayer trail and decide follow it.

After years in space, your flying around until suddenly a larger-than-life pillar of light appears out of nowhere, it expands and expands until you can see whats past it...and your mind just can't comprehend it. Before you is a godlike window and behind the pane are two colossal men in lab coats. As you and your (as you now realise) nanoscopic crew stand in silent awe, the tak for a while. One says a joke and the other laughs before turning their attention to the side of the window your on. They bring up holographic screens that show infinate number of star charts within star charts. You realise exactly what has happened. You know now why the crew Athena died the way they did and whats happening before you.

Its a science experiment.Everything that you have seen out in space, even back on Earth has been one giant science experiment. Everything you have done, you ever done, that has ever happened on earth, has all been for nothing. You and everyone that has ever existed has been an accident. A fluke of science. The crew of the Athena couldn't take it. Some killed each other. Some saved the others the trouble and the rest couldn't see the point.

I ask you. What would you do? How would you react?

 

[delet]

Sounds almost exactly like the plot of Star Ocean 3, just a little different...

Obviously, like in that game, I'm going to jump out into the real world and kill 'god'.

 

[godofallu]

I would just keep living, who cares if your existence is a joke to some other entity? I don't care about ants yet they seem to be living fine without my consent.

 

[The Salty Vulcan]

Sounds almost exactly like the plot of Star Ocean 3, just a little different...

Obviously, like in that game, I'm going to jump out into the real world and kill 'god'.

Really? Hmm...thats kinda of a downer. Was it at least a good game?

 

[delet]

Sounds almost exactly like the plot of Star Ocean 3, just a little different...

Obviously, like in that game, I'm going to jump out into the real world and kill 'god'.

Really? Hmm...thats kinda of a downer. Was it at least a good game?

I enjoyed it, though a lot of long time fans of the series found it to be a rather big 'Fuck you' to them. I didn't have that since it was my first game from the series and I enjoyed it fully.

It's just the bonus boss "Gabriel Celeste" that pissed me off...

 

[thenoblitt]

i would ask what was the purpose of this scientific experiment then tell them they fucked up bad

 

[ajemas]

Note, the following section is a bit tldr, so don't be afraid to skip to the commentary part.

There are several flaws with your hypothetical situation. First of all, the humanoid shape cannot be made extremely small or extremely tall. It's called the square/cube law. The mass of the humanoid figure would go up by the cube of it's size (2x2x2=8). Problem is, the factors that support that said humanoid, like the surface area (used for heat dissipation) and bones and muscle, (for weight support) go up by the square of its size (2x2=4). So if you had a giant that was 10 times larger than a normal human, it would be 1000 times as heavy. Problem is, it's muscle and bone structure is only 100 times as strong, meaning that the giant would collapse into a bloody broken mess if it even tried to stand up. So either the scientists in the lab coats would have their bones buckle under their own mass and would have their hearts rupture in trying to pump blood throughout their entire body, or the space explorers would be so small that their brains would not be able to handle any higher brain functions and their muscles would be so weak that it would be a miracle if they could even move a finger. Also, the story could me made far shorter for what a simple existential question.
*Ahem*


Sorry about that.
Getting back to the original topic, I honestly don't know what I would do. Logically, I think that I would resign myself to my fate. I mean, if the entire Earth is an experiment, having people pass on the knowledge that our entire lives are meaningless would mess up the data, so I assume that we would be shortly exterminated by the researchers for fear of contaminating the experiment. Emotionally, however, I can't predict how I would act. I would probably go into shock, or maybe lapse into an extreme deppression. Most likely, I would simply denounce the whole thing as an elaborate hallucination, because the magnitude of what I had just seen would be too much to bear.

 

[The Salty Vulcan]

Note, the following section is a bit tldr, so don't be afraid to skip to the commentary part.

There are several flaws with your hypothetical situation. First of all, the humanoid shape cannot be made extremely small or extremely tall. It's called the square/cube law. The mass of the humanoid figure would go up by the cube of it's size (2x2x2=8). Problem is, the factors that support that said humanoid, like the surface area (used for heat dissipation) and bones and muscle, (for weight support) go up by the square of its size (2x2=4). So if you had a giant that was 10 times larger than a normal human, it would be 1000 times as heavy. Problem is, it's muscle and bone structure is only 100 times as strong, meaning that the giant would collapse into a bloody broken mess if it even tried to stand up. So either the scientists in the lab coats would have their bones buckle under their own mass and would have their hearts rupture in trying to pump blood throughout their entire body, or the space explorers would be so small that their brains would not be able to handle any higher brain functions and their muscles would be so weak that it would be a miracle if they could even move a finger. Also, the story could me made far shorter for what a simple existential question.
*Ahem*


Sorry about that.
Getting back to the original topic, I honestly don't know what I would do. Logically, I think that I would resign myself to my fate. I mean, if the entire Earth is an experiment, having people pass on the knowledge that our entire lives are meaningless would mess up the data, so I assume that we would be shortly exterminated by the researchers for fear of contaminating the experiment. Emotionally, however, I can't predict how I would act. I would probably go into shock, or maybe lapse into an extreme deppression. Most likely, I would simply denounce the whole thing as an elaborate hallucination, because the magnitude of what I had just seen would be too much to bear.

i would ask what was the purpose of this scientific experiment then tell them they fucked up bad

The expriment was simply to create a universe in miniature and study cosmic phenomena close up. The fact that life evolved and devloped to the point of space travel is what the fluke is. The truth is, people like us are the scientists. you and the crew are simply pictoscopic specks upon a nanoscopic speck. Kinda like the marble within a marble at the end of Men In Black.

 

[SPCF]

Huh...
I HONESTLY wouldn't know...
All that I do is that I'll probably live life differently and see it in a whole new way :/

 

[thenoblitt]

Note, the following section is a bit tldr, so don't be afraid to skip to the commentary part.

There are several flaws with your hypothetical situation. First of all, the humanoid shape cannot be made extremely small or extremely tall. It's called the square/cube law. The mass of the humanoid figure would go up by the cube of it's size (2x2x2=8). Problem is, the factors that support that said humanoid, like the surface area (used for heat dissipation) and bones and muscle, (for weight support) go up by the square of its size (2x2=4). So if you had a giant that was 10 times larger than a normal human, it would be 1000 times as heavy. Problem is, it's muscle and bone structure is only 100 times as strong, meaning that the giant would collapse into a bloody broken mess if it even tried to stand up. So either the scientists in the lab coats would have their bones buckle under their own mass and would have their hearts rupture in trying to pump blood throughout their entire body, or the space explorers would be so small that their brains would not be able to handle any higher brain functions and their muscles would be so weak that it would be a miracle if they could even move a finger. Also, the story could me made far shorter for what a simple existential question.
*Ahem*


Sorry about that.
Getting back to the original topic, I honestly don't know what I would do. Logically, I think that I would resign myself to my fate. I mean, if the entire Earth is an experiment, having people pass on the knowledge that our entire lives are meaningless would mess up the data, so I assume that we would be shortly exterminated by the researchers for fear of contaminating the experiment. Emotionally, however, I can't predict how I would act. I would probably go into shock, or maybe lapse into an extreme deppression. Most likely, I would simply denounce the whole thing as an elaborate hallucination, because the magnitude of what I had just seen would be too much to bear.

i would ask what was the purpose of this scientific experiment then tell them they fucked up bad

The expriment was simply to create a universe in miniature and study cosmic phenomena close up. The fact that life evolved and devloped to the point of space travel is what the fluke is. The truth is, people like us are the scientists. you and the crew are simply pictoscopic specks upon a nanoscopic speck. Kinda like the marble within a marble at the end of Men In Black.

Then i would retract my statement then tell them that maybe they are just experiments to an even larger form of existence and they should think about it cause we had no clue that it was even possible so they should look into their own existence and hopefully they wont destroy us cause we've advanced to far (if that even is the case)

 

[firedfns13]

FIRE THE PHOTON TORPEDOES!
we must kill the god(s)!

 

[ethan22122]

Probably try to escape into the "real" world.

 

[The Geek Lord]

My response? Ask them what happens to us tiny people. If the answer is, "You all die," my response is to channel spiral energy via my immense fanwhoreism of Gurren Lagann, and then turn into Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. And then fight them epically.

If the answer is, "Nothing really," then I say, "Awright, coo'," and move on with life. Anyone who goes insane over something like this seriously needs to calm the fuck down, you know?

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Well it'd never get that far, as whoever made the decision NOT to report back after finding the ship should have been relieved of command for direct violation of orders.

Anyway, hypothetically following the scenario, who cares? We don't know why we exist as we are, so being flukes of science shouldn't be that big a deal.

 

[BonsaiK]

You could have just made the thread a lot simpler by asking the simple question "you've discovered you're a science experiment, how do you react?" without the big ol' backstory.

I'd just go 'meh' and get on with life, given that the conclusion is pretty much what I suspected anyway.

 

[bluewax]

I'd turn around, report the HQ, then call the Pope. One way or another, religion just got a lot more interesting.

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

Obviously, we bring Arnold Schwarzenegger to them and have him ask them to help us, and if they do not, to hell with them!

Or we bring our top scientists, philosophers, theologians, politicians, negotiators, etc. to what I guess we could call the edge of space, and have them attempt to communicate with our "Gods," which I suppose would be better referred to as unknown lifeforms. For discussion purposes, we cannot enter into our conversations with a position of submission- rather, we should assert our prowess as a species (or, if we have joined up with Alien life, representatives of a "universe"). Assuming we can get their attention, we, very rationally, then proceed to question them about topic after topic until we get to our main point- integration. We would want them to release us, tiny though we are, into the World as a whole, rather than letting us remain in a synthetic universe. Imagine what would await us!

 

[WolfThomas]

FIRE THE PHOTON TORPEDOES!
we must kill the god(s)!

Now here's a captain I can follow to the very gates of hell.

 

[molesgallus]

Note, the following section is a bit tldr, so don't be afraid to skip to the commentary part.

There are several flaws with your hypothetical situation. First of all, the humanoid shape cannot be made extremely small or extremely tall. It's called the square/cube law. The mass of the humanoid figure would go up by the cube of it's size (2x2x2=8). Problem is, the factors that support that said humanoid, like the surface area (used for heat dissipation) and bones and muscle, (for weight support) go up by the square of its size (2x2=4). So if you had a giant that was 10 times larger than a normal human, it would be 1000 times as heavy. Problem is, it's muscle and bone structure is only 100 times as strong, meaning that the giant would collapse into a bloody broken mess if it even tried to stand up. So either the scientists in the lab coats would have their bones buckle under their own mass and would have their hearts rupture in trying to pump blood throughout their entire body, or the space explorers would be so small that their brains would not be able to handle any higher brain functions and their muscles would be so weak that it would be a miracle if they could even move a finger. Also, the story could me made far shorter for what a simple existential question.
*Ahem*


Sorry about that.
Getting back to the original topic, I honestly don't know what I would do. Logically, I think that I would resign myself to my fate. I mean, if the entire Earth is an experiment, having people pass on the knowledge that our entire lives are meaningless would mess up the data, so I assume that we would be shortly exterminated by the researchers for fear of contaminating the experiment. Emotionally, however, I can't predict how I would act. I would probably go into shock, or maybe lapse into an extreme deppression. Most likely, I would simply denounce the whole thing as an elaborate hallucination, because the magnitude of what I had just seen would be too much to bear.

Why, would it change your life in any way?