Articulate a shocking truth.

[Lazy Kitty]

Spoiler

also believing that there are no aliens out in space because they havent come to us is also very vain - maybe we are the least advanced creatures in the universe and they take pity on us or treat us like intergalactic pets

More likely:Homo sapiens have only been around for roughly 200,000 years, and haven't been doing very much for most of that time. In fact, only within the last century have we advanced technologically to the point of contacting said Aliens with radio waves.

Now, the main thing here is that space is monstrously fucking huge. What you're asking is for there to be a hugely advanced civilisation, capable of interstellar travel, who would take off at the mere sight of human evolution. Except with light (and any subsequent information) taking so long to get there, it could take millions of years for that information to travel far enough for such a civilisation to see it.

And lets say they do. They see some monkeys standing upright drawing shit on walls.
Are they going to up and leave their planet, and travel untold vast distances, you know, for the hell of it? What would they possibly gain? What could they do instead? Send radio waves.

We've already done that. They haven't gotten very far yet.

I'm assuming that untold millions of years from now we'll pick up a return radio wave that says "hi" in their language.

And we won't know what to fucking make of it.

Edit: removed spoiler tags because it fucks with the formatting.

Or by the time their response arrives we'll have gone extinct a long time ago.
Or they're extinct before our message arrives...

 

[PurplePlatypus]

For time travel to work you would also have to move through space due the movement of the galaxy. Even to move forward one second while staying in the same space could put you outside the limits of this solar system.

Also, there is a snake that flies. I?m not even kidding there is a flying snake. Ok when I say it flies I mean it ?flies?, which means it?s actually gliding, but never the less there is a snake that exists that can stay aloft for a significant amount of time. Fortunately we aren?t all doomed by death from above because it?s only mildly venomous at best.

 

[SheleKnights]

Spoiler: Here we go

Whenever you use a computer, you are simply observing a pattern of lights and sounds. When you use a keyboard, you are just pushing buttons to make the pattern of lights and sounds more favorable. Now think about how much time you've spent on your computer.

Spoiler: Is that so?

You now realize that books are simply dried pulp laid into sheets, with generic, repeating characters printed on them using fluids. How many hours have you spent reading books?

 

[C95J]

Spoiler: Here we go

Whenever you use a computer, you are simply observing a pattern of lights and sounds. When you use a keyboard, you are just pushing buttons to make the pattern of lights and sounds more favorable. Now think about how much time you've spent on your computer.

Spoiler: Is that so?

You now realize that books are simply dried pulp laid into sheets, with generic, repeating characters printed on them using fluids. How many hours have you spent reading books?

Spoiler: They call me the bamboozler

Its not just the patterns, fluids, lights or character, its what those characters mean when placed in a certain order, the human brain takes note of this and gives out messages explaining what they mean through pictures that you have seen or other words you have learnt throughout your life.

These words that once meant nothing to you, but strangely can be imprinted in your mind due to what you have learnt over the years of your young life. If you got taught these words, or different words in a completely different order, with completely different associations, only then would they mean nothing and be jumbled.

This also applies to everything we see, hear, touch, smell and taste.

 

[ExileNZ]

You are now manually breathing.

<link=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view>This... thing makes everyone mad the instant they see it.

People who don't understand HTML wizardry all hate me now.

Everyone who clicks <link=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0>this link will instantly regret it.

To be honest I was expecting 2 Girls 1 Cup, so actually no, I was kinda glad when I clicked thru to something so benign.

 

[GeorgW]

You, and everyone you have ever loved will die.
Okay, so that wasn't really that shocking... How about this one?
I will be the one that kills you >

 

[Outright Villainy]

Spoiler

also believing that there are no aliens out in space because they havent come to us is also very vain - maybe we are the least advanced creatures in the universe and they take pity on us or treat us like intergalactic pets

More likely:Homo sapiens have only been around for roughly 200,000 years, and haven't been doing very much for most of that time. In fact, only within the last century have we advanced technologically to the point of contacting said Aliens with radio waves.

Now, the main thing here is that space is monstrously fucking huge. What you're asking is for there to be a hugely advanced civilisation, capable of interstellar travel, who would take off at the mere sight of human evolution. Except with light (and any subsequent information) taking so long to get there, it could take millions of years for that information to travel far enough for such a civilisation to see it.

And lets say they do. They see some monkeys standing upright drawing shit on walls.
Are they going to up and leave their planet, and travel untold vast distances, you know, for the hell of it? What would they possibly gain? What could they do instead? Send radio waves.

We've already done that. They haven't gotten very far yet.

I'm assuming that untold millions of years from now we'll pick up a return radio wave that says "hi" in their language.

And we won't know what to fucking make of it.

Edit: removed spoiler tags because it fucks with the formatting.

Or by the time their response arrives we'll have gone extinct a long time ago.
Or they're extinct before our message arrives...

Or we're extinct before the message arrives, which is extremely likely.

Also, only for a couple of decades on this planet have we had the capacity to transmit such messages.
A couple of decades out of 4.5 billion years. The window for sentient, and on top of that, intelligent life, is very small.

Or alternatively, they could get the message, but who's to say they'd even care? They might not have any intellectual curiosity for something so insignificant.

 

[AngryFrenchCanadian]

Spoiler

also believing that there are no aliens out in space because they havent come to us is also very vain - maybe we are the least advanced creatures in the universe and they take pity on us or treat us like intergalactic pets

It's much more likely that no sentient species that could possibly exist in the universe has invented Faster-Than-Light space travel. Even if they emitted radio signals or other wavelengths, it could take millions, if not billions of years before they reach us.

Spoiler: The truth.

All life on earth is doomed. "When" is the question, and it might be as short as a few hundred thousand years. Viable habited space travel beyond our solar system's borders is very unlikely, at least for the next few hundred years, and even then it's unlikely that we would be able to get a space colony to be self sufficient for a few hundred years (minimum). Actual chances of meeting aliens are slim to none, even if it's likely that there exist other sentient species in the universe...

Basically, we're trapped in our little corner of the galaxy, with no hope of getting out or no hope of anything getting in. We can only observe the past unfolding in the rest of the universe.

 

[lacktheknack]

You are now manually breathing.

<link=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view>This... thing makes everyone mad the instant they see it.

People who don't understand HTML wizardry all hate me now.

Everyone who clicks <link=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0>this link will instantly regret it.

To be honest I was expecting 2 Girls 1 Cup, so actually no, I was kinda glad when I clicked thru to something so benign.

I don't wanna be banned!

 

[wagglelance]

Make sure you spoiler it, here is mine.

Spoiler

If time travel were possible someone would have stopped Hitler from coming to power. Also, time travel results in contradictions. If someone goes back in time to stop Hitler from rising to power, the time traveler would never have heard of Hitler so he would have never gone back in time to stop him from rising to power. So then Hitler would rise to power so the time traveler would go back in time to stop him. So Hitler both would and would not rise to power, and the time traveler both would and would not have prevented him from coming to power, which is absurd.

Edit: Swollen Goat said I needed to edit my post, so I edited it.

Not possible to time travel. Because you would be creating an alternate universe in so doing just by even sending an apple back in time. This would mean that you are creating matter, and as my science teacher told me, you can not create nor destroy matter. So in a science-fiction reality then yea it's "possible". However like I said before Time traveling would have to create a similar universe for any of it to be possible, and any action that is taken in that universe then spawns countless numbers of similar universes all unique but yet slightly different.

 

[Nyaliva]

Spoiler

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff.

...I love and hate you at the same time...
Seriously, the alternate universes theory is the only one I can really get after one of my tutors presented this shocking truth to me:

Spoiler

If you were to say break a table, in order to reverse time and return that table to its constructed form you would have to decrease entropy which is impossible.

To Doctor Who fans, I've accounted for the Doctor's ability to travel through time:
The Time Vortex is a wormhole which passes through all, what we'll call "current" events in time. When you travel through it to an earlier point in time and change the future, you move the path of the wormhole at that point and rejoin it to an alternate Time Vortex which then links to the events which would naturally happen from then on. The reason travel to parallel universes is difficult to impossible for the TARDIS is that you can't reach them without changing history, however, because all the alternate universes lie in a ball of timey-wimey stuff, you simply need to somehow move outside of the Time Vortex and pass into another, alternate Time Vortex.


Also, as a personal truth...

Spoiler

Longcat is long!!!

No but seriously, if I was to put all my shocking truths here, most would consist of XKCD comics. So I chose just this one:

Spoiler

Go to a mirror and pull your bottom eyelids down and look at the skin which is usually touching the eyeball. If you look close to your nose you should see little pin-prick size holes in the skin. These...are your tear-ducts.

And I suppose this one:

Spoiler

People are naturally inclined to take a black/white approach to any serious question they face. For example, most people have decided whether they are theist are atheist. The rest don't want to get into it because they realise there are arguments for or against and they don't feel like they can sit on the fence but they don't want to be one or the other either. This is why people will take in all arguiments which agree with their view and ignore all others, because they can't handle the fact that they might be wrong and don't consider that there might be some middle ground. Also, people often make the assumption that if you believe something, especially if you went to uni or something on the subject, then if you can't answer something, your entire concept is false.

Not a shocking truth but an accurate and useful observation surely?

I may come up with some more later but many would only be interesting to mathematicians.

 

[TimbukTurnip]

I don't know if this has already been said but

Spoiler: At the risk of annoying thiests

If god is omnipotent, he should be able to make an object he is incapable of lifting. But if he can't lift it, how can he be omnipotent?

Paradoxical Cheese.

 

[Naheal]

Spoiler: the truth. maybe.

I have a 92 foot long shlong

Oh this is not about you? "whoops"

... Yet another reason to keep you away from that girl!

OT:

Spoiler: SUPER AMAZING TRUTH

English is a stupid language. No second person plurals? What were they thinking?

Spoiler: Along those lines

English is more tonal than Japanese. In English, a tone can completely change the meaning of a single sentence. In Japanese, it's all buried in the language itself.

More Japanese language TRUTH!!!

Spoiler: kore wa totemo taihen-na shinjitsu da yo!!!

Not even the average Japanese person can read the majority of the kanji (Chinese-style characters) in their language. In school, they learn around 2000 of about 20,000 that have been adopted or created. There are tests that Japanese people take to see if they can master beyond that, which are similar in idea to foreign language tests. There are plenty of foreigners out there who can read kanji more proficiently than some Japanese (partly because the Japanese language test makes us learn them all better than they know them in order to earn the higher levels.)

I don't feel quite as bad about the lack of kanji that I can read right now. Only been at it for a few months, but kanji's still kicking my ass.

 

[Sewblon]

I don't know if this has already been said but

Spoiler: At the risk of annoying thiests

If god is omnipotent, he should be able to make an object he is incapable of lifting. But if he can't lift it, how can he be omnipotent?

Paradoxical Cheese.

Spoiler

In the eighties we decided that "omnipotence" doesn't include the ability to violate the laws of logic itself. You see, the words, "a stone to heavy for someone who can lift anything to lift" describe nothing at all since they imply a contradiction. The short answer is that God cannot make a stone too heavy for him to lift, and neither can anyone or anything else.

 

[GenericAmerican]

The truth is, this statement is a lie.

 

[BreakfastMan]

My ultimate truth:

Spoiler

Not all people who are religious are idiots who believe that science and logic is bad. Also, not everyone who is Republican is a raging moron who wants to destroy the country.

Shocking, I know!

 

[Axeli]

Spoiler

People are naturally inclined to take a black/white approach to any serious question they face. For example, most people have decided whether they are theist are atheist. The rest don't want to get into it because they realise there are arguments for or against and they don't feel like they can sit on the fence but they don't want to be one or the other either. This is why people will take in all arguiments which agree with their view and ignore all others, because they can't handle the fact that they might be wrong and don't consider that there might be some middle ground. Also, people often make the assumption that if you believe something, especially if you went to uni or something on the subject, then if you can't answer something, your entire concept is false.

Spoiler

The notion that the middle-road is by default the correct one is actually a logical fallacy (as is the idea that there being two possible options means the odds are 50-50).

 

[Arctodus_Simus]

You are now manually breathing.

<link=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view>This... thing makes everyone mad the instant they see it.

People who don't understand HTML wizardry all hate me now.

Everyone who clicks <link=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0>this link will instantly regret it.

Goddamn that top one gets me every time.

I never got round to completing Portal

 

[Hman121]

Probably been said before, but just saw this yesterday.
Mickey Mouse's ears are always facing the camera. Go to YouTube and watch a cartoon, I'll wait.