tardis-scooter replied to your post: my favorite part about the fly-by so f…
“…Always seeing patterns in things that aren’t there.
ok but HONESTLY one definition of intelligence is that it’s pattern recognition and humans are ridiculous at it
at least half a dozen cultures from all over the world (babylonians, maori, chinese, aztecs, native australians, chinook) independently looked up at the sky and went “yeah that clump of dots, that looks like a significant clump of dots, we’re gonna give it a name”
like constellations are such a strange thing, we not only had to look up at the stars, but we had to find significance in them, and their positioning, and decide to play connect-the-dots with them, and then either make up stories to go with our drawings or make up drawings to go with our stories
we see patterns in literally everything, that’s where conspiracy theories come from, that’s where superstition comes from, one argument (that i don’t hold to, but it has some validity) is that that’s where religion comes from
we like patterns and we like stories, if there’s one thing that even more cultures have than constellations, it’s stories, there’s an argument to be made that it’s storytelling that differentiates us from chimpanzees and bonobos
“we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee” thank u pterry
and what’s a better story than “we spent decades and billions of dollars trying to send a probe to this tiny space rock and when we get there it’s so happy to see us it has our symbol of love and affection on it”
like honestly