Churchill's views on the possibility of life on other planets | Hacker News Reader

Churchill's views on the possibility of life on other planets

bbc.co.uk

57 pointssjcsjc27 comments

Let's also not forget that that Churchill had to beg the Americans for quite some time to come and help him out. And they didn't. He even attacked and sank a French naval fleet, just to proof he was serious, to them.

And that in the meantime, the Nazis were very much into the occult business.

I'm just saying that one shouldn't be surprised that Churchil was looking at all possible options out there.

Here is the intro video, that gets you up to speed: https://youtube.com/watch?v=p_37IU4n834

You referring to when he had the French Vichy fleet sunk? Was that aimed at the US?

Churchill's fun. Probably saved the West by rallying the Brits, foresaw the Cold War. On the other hand incredibly bumbling at Gallipoli and completely wrong about Gandhi.

Back on the topic of aliens, Reagan has one of the more interesting references:

I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag44dRO8LEA

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/reagan-and-gorbache...

Yes that's correct. According to the documentary, "Secrets of the Dead: Churchill's Deadly Decision", as a last desperate attempt to get some support from the Americans. Who had been promising reinforcements for quite some time, but eventually did very little until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Churchill's fun. And Reagan is also just fun.

Even for his quotes, which are called "Reaganisms".

It wasn't quite as 'desperate' and unique an action against the Vichy as is often portrayed, bearing in mind that two years later British forces invaded Vichy-ruled Madagascar with no-holds-barred battles against the French forces there.

https://www.combinedops.com/MADAGASCAR.htm

There were also extensive operations by the British against the Vichy in Syria and Lebanon, and there again both sides were ruthless.

> completely wrong about Gandhi.

Was he?

I've always thought his worst error was in shipping the Cossacks back to Stalin's machine guns.

I feel like it. Didn't he have a patronizing view of Indians, being much more concerned with the glory of the Empire than the happiness of Asians? He at least disrespected Gandhi.

I've always thought his worst error was in shipping the Cossacks back to Stalin's machine guns.

I thought that was just a sub-plot of Goleneye. Guess some googling is in order...

>I thought that was just a sub-plot of Goleneye. Guess some googling is in order...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Cossacks_after...

> Didn't he have a patronizing view of Indians, being much more concerned with the glory of the Empire than the happiness of Asians? He at least disrespected Gandhi.

I rather think he thought (or at least told himself) that the Empire would lead to greater happiness for them in the long run. And I'm unconvinced that Gandhi deserves all the respect he gets — he was a man, not a perfect saint. The Brits weren't certainly not saints in India either, of course.

> Guess some googling is in order...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Cossacks_after...

Churchill is a figure that always puzzled me. The image I have of him was that of a non-intelectual politician who had very deep understanding of human nature and lack of charisma. Some of his quotes are incredibly catchy (e.g. "I will be sober tomorrow, but you'll still be ugly", " best argument against democracy is a 5-min conversation with your average citizen", etc.) ... He managed to win a war, sit at the same table with Stalin and Roosevelt at the end of WW2 and after all that he managed to lose 2 IIRC elections!!! How is this possible? I don't known.

He is by far and large the most famous British figure of his era, but he came in power mostly because of the situation not because voters.

I wonder how others see him...

The guy was a throwback to Victorian Britain basically.

He was still fighting for the empire when the public was tired of everything but friends and family.

And frankly i am not sure how much "he" won it and how much he basically survived it.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

-- Churchill (1943)

> And frankly i am not sure how much "he" won it and how much he basically survived it.

He was very active in creating a military build up long before the war started, Britain could have fallen had it not been for his planning.

Frankly they were on the brink of falling even with said buildup.

Except that Hitler got vindictive and impatient, first he redirected the Luftwaffe to bomb cities, giving the RAF time to recover and reorganize, and then Barbarossa started.

The WWII is kinda complex... Don't you think that saying that Hitler didn't win the war because of one decision a bit stretched?

Churchill was wrong about many things. But we must credit him with one towering achievement. In May & June 1940 the whole of Europe lay at Hitler's feet. Many in Britain wanted to reach an accommodation with the Third Reich, fearing that fighting on would lose all [1]. Churchill refused to consider any compromise and insisted on a fight to the end. If Britain had acceeded to a Nazi dominated Europe in 1940, where would the world be now?

[1] Lukacs, Five days in London, May 1940

> and after all that he managed to lose 2 IIRC elections!!! How is this possible?

Churchill was very much a "war leader".

After a period in the political wilderness, Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty at the outbreak of WW2 and soon became Prime Minister. The British people may have disliked [1] some of his personal opinions but he clearly embodied the "bulldog spirit" which the British were keen to rally around.

Once the war was won Churchill was quickly dispensed with, having essentially served his purpose. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

[1] Today, many of Churchill's non-war opinions are controversial to say the least. However, he was a product of his time.

Churchill was also a prolific author - the vast majority of his earned income came from books, newspaper articles, and paid speeches.

He had terrible financial habits and constantly flirted with personal bankruptcy. Fortunately for all of us, his trusty typewriter (and the marketability of his name...) saved him every time.

Non-intellectual might be a bit of a stretch. He won a well-deserved Nobel prize in literature.

Churchill is right up there with Einstein for mis-attributed quotes. For example, there is no record of Churchill ever saying the "you'll still be ugly" quote. Not to say that he didn't actually have a good few zingers.

FTA: "Dr Livio told BBC News that there were no firm plans to publish the article because of issues surrounding the copyright."

facepalm

If you like far-sighted Churchill reading, I highly recommend reading his 1931 essay "Fifty Years Hence". He predicts cultured meat, cellphones, genetically modified food, among other things.

http://rolandanderson.se/Winston_Churchill/Fifty_Years_Hence...

Churchill College, Cambridge University is Britain's monument to Churchill, and houses his archives. Churchill himself turned the first spade in the early 60s. 70% Churchill undergrads are science and maths. The man himself wanted it to be the UK's answer to MIT. Disclosure: I was a Churchill undergrad 86-89.

Can't help but wonder if we knew more about Roosevelt by now with another US president.

(Referring here to the Clintons' openness to the subject:

[1] Bill Clinton "Wouldn't Be Surprised" If Aliens Existed: http://time.com/48132/bill-clinton-wouldnt-be-surprised-if-a..., and

[2] Hillary Clinton (jokingly) pledges UFO probe: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/04/politics/hillary-clinton-a...

Can't we simply extrapolate how many livable planets there are? There are 10^24 planets in the observable universe. Figure out the percentage chance of any one planet being livable and multiply it out. Eg how far you have to be from the sun, correct size for gravity, likelihood of any planet having water, and so on.

I read once that it worked out to be 1 in 10^70 planets would be inhabitable after calculating all the known criteria for a livable planet though. If that's accurate, it begs the question, why are we here? A combination of the anthropic principle and multiverses and quantum probabilities?

It's easy to go down a rabbithole on this one :)

> Can't we simply extrapolate how many livable planets there are?

Yes, and beyond that you can ultimately estimate how many civilizations there are Out There that might have the capacity to contact us, commonly referred to as the Drake equation.[1]

As Wikipedia notes, YMMV based on assumptions. :^)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

That's fantastic! Thanks for the link. Learn something new every day.

To add to that, along with my comment in the thread:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

One of the biggest unknowns is the time variable. Recall that it took approximately 3 billion years to go from single-cellular life to multi-cellular life, and another 600 million to get to our level of intelligence.

We have no idea how long our civilization will last on a geologic time scale and no idea how long it could take another form of life to evolve in the same manner.

Perhaps there was a planet where life existed, but intelligence did not evolve quickly enough before the fusion death of the star. Say it took 6-7 billion to go from single-cellular life to multi-cellular life. By then, the planet might have heated up just enough to become uninhabitable, or the star may have gone out entirely. A star only 30% more massive than the Sun will have ~50% of its longevity, so a 5 billion timeframe might be insufficient to develop life.

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