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[Max White]

I used to, then I found alcohol and all the bad things went away, soon I found myself playing games that use ascii and hanging out in cafes a lot more with people who think that the acustic version is always better.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

I used to, then I found alcohol and all the bad things went away, soon I found myself playing games that use ascii and hanging out in cafes a lot more with people who think that the acustic version is always better.

Beer is the mind-killer. Beer is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my beer. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see it's path. When the beer has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

[The Willow Wisp]

Everything is insignifigant to the universe. It is an uncaring entity of pure neutrality. A being's signifigance is to the being's fellows and its realm of existance. Humans matter only to other humans and to the Earth. One's signifigance is everchanging and never constant.

But to actually answer the original question, yes. That does happen every once in a while. I usually get over it within a minute though.

[nbonaparte]

I've gotten that feeling before, when looking at the stars. For some reason, seeing them up in the night sky as tiny pinpricks, and knowing that each pinprick has taken countless years to centuries to reach my eyes...it's a strangely intimidating thought. It's even stranger to think that though there may very well be life out there in other stars and other galaxies, in all likelihood we'll never come into contact because of the wide expanse of space.

Is there a word for this kind of emotion? Even saudade seems to fall short.

awestruck?

[Megaman]

Normal humans are only useful in bulk. One person is totally insignificant. Even if you make a large discovery to help man kind, you're just one of many great people.

[Darvi]

Normal humans are only useful in bulk. One person is totally insignificant. Even if you make a large discovery to help man kind, you're just one of many great people.

Useful, perhaps. Insignificant... not so much. We're not ants after all. No hive mind and all that. Yet.

[Max White]

Normal humans are only useful in bulk. One person is totally insignificant. Even if you make a large discovery to help man kind, you're just one of many great people.

Useful to whom? A single human is useful to themselves, and is even more useful to two people. Beleive it or not, but the effect scales.

Once, long ago, a man thought to use 0 as a place holder in out number system, and that one person made modern mathamatics possible. Did he just get catalogued under 'great person'? No! We arn't even sure who it was, but he was darn useful!

[Vector]

Once, long ago, a man thought to use 0 as a place holder in out number system, and that one person made modern mathematics possible. Did he just get catalogued under 'great person'? No! We arn't even sure who it was, but he was darn useful!

... Because this falls under the wide umbrella of "things that have been pissing me off recently," I'm going to correct you.

1. There are in fact a good number of female mathematicians.  If you want one from the ancient era, go with Hypatia.  More recently, and more famously, Amalie Noether and Sonya Kabalevskaya.  "Once, long ago, someone thought to use 0..."

2.  It wasn't "one person."  A number of ancient civilizations came up with the concept of zero.  Plus, as you may or may not know, concepts like that usually take a large number of individuals to come up with, because you don't get mathematicians in vacuums.

3.  Zero is nothing (hurr hurr) compared to the discoveries of people like Cauchy, Newton/Leibniz (thrown in because his notation is better) and Godel.  In the range of concepts "making modern mathematics possible," zero is about equivalent to Russel's Paradox in terms of significance.  The inventor would never be known to the main public, anyway, because if all they did of importance was figure out 0... well, frankly, no one really gives a damn about something like that.

If you meant "modern mathematics" in terms of "what we teach elementary school students," I'll have to say that whoever/whichever group came up with 1 and/or moved us to the decimal system was probably more fundamental.

[Pnx]

If you meant "modern mathematics" in terms of "what we teach elementary school students," I'll have to say that whoever/whichever group came up with 1 and/or moved us to the decimal system was probably more fundamental.

My turn!
You should have said "Positional notation" not decimal system. There is no advantage of base 10 that cannot be conveyed in another form... In fact mathmatics as a whole would probably be more efficient if we moved up to base 12, which would be a bit larger, but also still allow people to deal with numbers easily.

[Darvi]

Base 14 might've been even better considering every digit can be expressed as x*2^n.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That ^number is in base twelve, by the way.

[Vector]

My turn!
You should have said "Positional notation" not decimal system. There is no advantage of base 10 that cannot be conveyed in another form... In fact mathmatics as a whole would probably be more efficient if we moved up to base 12, which would be a bit larger, but also still allow people to deal with numbers easily.

No, I specifically meant base 10/decimal because it allows little kids to a. count on their fingers easily and b. use the multiplication-by-9 trick, which I always thought was all kinds of awesome.  It's not very easy to count on your 10 fingers by 12s, unless you have some special extra-digit powers I don't know about.

Of course, base 2 is good for that, too... and so easy to multiply in, with lots of interesting applications!  But little kids aren't very good at computing powers, most of the time.

Actually, I think we should learn base 10 in elementary school, 12 + hex/16 in middle school, and 2 in high school :I  But that's assuming a more muscled-up education system than we'll probably ever have >_>

[Sir Pseudonymous]

No, I specifically meant base 10/decimal because it allows little kids to a. count on their fingers easily and b. use the multiplication-by-9 trick, which I always thought was all kinds of awesome.  It's not very easy to count on your 10 fingers by 12s, unless you have some special extra-digit powers I don't know about.

You can count to twelve on your knuckles. I recall a discussion about this between some linguists/anthropologists, on whether anything but base five or a multiple thereof was found naturally in human societies, and I could swear that at least one actually did use base twelve, counting on their knuckles. Or else they were talking about a fictional culture that used it, I can't remember.

It's possible, in any case, and every bit as easy as counting on your fingers.

[Vector]

Ohh, okay.  Well then, I'll cede my argument =)

[Max White]

Vector, if your going to get annoyed every time you hear man kind rather then human kind, your going to get annoyed a lot in life. Man can refer to both male, or human. English is a context based language, it's not that hard.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I can count to 1,023 on my fingers.