this post was submitted on
631 points (72% like it)
1,011 up votes 380 down votes
shortlink:

funny

subscribe2,654,458 readers

7,653 users here now

Results of the facebook poll

Reminder: Political posts are not permitted in /r/funny. Try /r/PoliticalHumor instead!

NEW! No gore or porn (including sexually graphic images). Other NSFW content must be tagged as such

Welcome to r/Funny:

You may only post if you are funny.

Please No:

  • posts with their sole purpose being to communicate with another redditor. Click for an Example.

  • Screenshots of reddit comment threads. Post a link with context to /r/bestof or /r/defaultgems if from a default subreddit instead.

  • Posts for the specific point of it being your reddit birthday.

  • Politics - This includes the 2012 Presidential candidates or bills in congress. Try /r/politicalhumor instead.

  • Rage comics - Go to /r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu instead.

  • Memes - Go to /r/AdviceAnimals or /r/Memes instead.

  • Demotivational posters - Go to /r/Demotivational instead.

  • Pictures of just text - Make a self post instead.

  • DAE posts - Go to /r/doesanybodyelse

  • eCards - the poll result was 55.02% in favor of removal. Please submit eCards to /r/ecards

  • URL shorteners - No link shorteners (or HugeURL) in either post links or comments. They will be deleted regardless of intent.

Rehosted webcomics will be removed. Please submit a link to the original comic's site and preferably an imgur link in the comments. Do not post a link to the comic image, it must be linked to the page of the comic. (*) (*)

Need more? Check out:

Still need more? See Reddit's best / worst and offensive joke collections (warning: some of those jokes are offensive / nsfw!).

Please DO NOT post personal information. This includes anything hosted on Facebook's servers, as they can be traced to the original account holder.

If your submission appears to be banned, please don't just delete it as that makes the filter hate you! Instead please send us a message with a link to the post. We'll unban it and it should get better. Please allow 10 minutes for the post to appear before messaging moderators

The moderators of /r/funny reserve the right to moderate posts and comments at their discretion, with regard to their perception of the suitability of said posts and comments for this subreddit. Thank you for your understanding.

CSS - BritishEnglishPolice ©2011

a community for
to anything interesting: news article, blog entry, video, picture...
message the moderators

MODERATORS

reddit is a source for what's new and popular online. vote on links that you like or dislike and help decide what's popular, or submit your own! learn more ›

630
631

Carl Sagan trolls people who claim to have been abducted by aliens (imgur.com)

submitted ago by Sabird1

all 39 comments
sorted by:
best
best
top
new
hot
controversial
old

[–]ProperGentlemanDolan 31 points32 points ago

Man, I'd be pissed if I got abducted by aliens and they tried to teach me advanced physics.

[–]alienbringer 12 points13 points ago

I would love if an alien provided a short simple proof of Fermat's last theorem that is just a little to long to fit in the margins of a book, but not the current one that is over a hundred pages long.

[–]HeatherMarMal 22 points23 points ago

How is that trolling?

[–]Ehhhhhhhhhh 1 point2 points ago

How is this funny?

[–]PenguinPowaaa 0 points1 point ago

I laughed.

[–]Darqion 7 points8 points ago

Maybe they know a whole lot, but dont know the names we made up for these.. things

[–]Shampyon 21 points22 points ago

Yet they can speak our language perfectly in every other way? Seems a bit odd.

[–]Naturalrice -1 points0 points ago

Like I'm sure you are bilingual and feel saying, you are awesome equates to knowing the names of complex physics theorems in both languages

[–]HiImDan 7 points8 points ago

They can fly here from outer space, surely they're intelligent enough to ask for clarification, or ask where to look up information.

[–]blueboybob 4 points5 points ago

From "Demon Haunted World" written by Sagan if anyone is interested.

[–]pjwork -1 points0 points ago

This. I came here to find this and was not disappointed. Thank dude!

[–]netraven5000 -1 points0 points ago

Maybe the ones who actually got abducted couldn't communicate with them.

And who knows - maybe the person they abducted didn't understand what they were teaching him.

[–]flukz 0 points1 point ago

Maybe they should open more channels? Or maybe they could choose better. If they can communicate then why not tap into one of our current channels...I could go on.

[–]Immediately_Hostile 0 points1 point ago

So many good quotes in that book.

[–]zenthor109 0 points1 point ago

There is only silence

[–]amazingmaximo 0 points1 point ago

Why would the Aliens know about some human's shitty theory? Of course they would be willing to weigh in on more vague things, because that's the kind of thing that crosses interspecies.

It would be like asking a human to recite the famous buzz clicking song of the great bee bards.

[–]Ric3rid3r -2 points-1 points ago

Except that advanced aliens would not know exactly how their spaceship works. I mean.. i drive a car.. but i don't have the foggiest clue how it works other that point and go.

[–]Metaphorazine 6 points7 points ago

I suggest to you that there are at least some humans in this world that DO know how a car works...

[–]flukz 0 points1 point ago

I don't mean to be rude, but I'm going to need some sort of citation on that. Do you think the astronauts up on the space station have the foggiest idea how the thing is constructed or works? I say no.

[–]bathtubbeers 1 point2 points ago

I don't mean to be rude, but I'm going to need some sort of citation on [that there are at least some humans in this world that DO know how a car works]

Are you joking?

[–]flukz 1 point2 points ago

No, I literally don't know how fuckin' cars work, but I don't wanna talk to no automotive engineers, ya'll lyin', and gettin' me pissed.

[–]bathtubbeers 1 point2 points ago

gibberish automotive engineers gibberish

I really don't understand your sense of humour.

[–]flukz 1 point2 points ago

It's a riff on the Insane Clown Posse lyric "magnets how the fuck do they work...".

You're not from the US I imagine.

[–]UrbanToiletShrimp -1 points0 points ago

Just because things are out of your realm of understanding, doesn't mean no one understands it, or that it is mindbogglingly complex. I can assure you professional astronauts onboard the space station have intimate knowledge of how it it was constructed and how all of the systems work.

But for the most part you are correct, the majority of people today are helplessly stupid.

[–]flukz 0 points1 point ago

Jesus... JOKES MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK THEM?

[–]flukz 1 point2 points ago

I should be more polite. In explanation, I was pointing out how this is all so ludicrous by using the space station as an example. I'm sure most of the *nauts have at least a running knowledge, and several of them a very high knowledge of exactly how the space station modules and systems are constructed and operate.

After all, who would repair them in orbit?

Come to think of it, the comments I was trolling were equally ludicrous, so perhaps we all just engaged in a troll circle jerk.

[–]flukz 0 points1 point ago

Well... that is uh... scary.

[–]jonnyohio 1 point2 points ago

Why does he assume an alien from another world knows who Pierre de Fermat was?

[–]rumnscurvy 5 points6 points ago

Presumably the person could simply pull up a wikipedia page for Fermat's last theorem. Beyond that, there are notational and conceptual issues to break through, in general, but number theory has some of the most complicated problems with the most simple setups (Fermat's last theorem, ABC conjecture, Riemann Zeta conjecture, etc.), so it's rather ideal to ask for a solution to these problems.

Sure, if you ask them about the Anti de Sitter / Conformal Field Theory correspondence, it's going to be a long way before hypothetical aliens understand what we're on about, not because it would be challenging to them (assume they have quantum computer brains, or something) but because of the amount of machinery and notation we employ to describe these things.

[–]Thinks_Too_Logically 2 points3 points ago

Giving it to them in the form of "prove that there are no integers a, b, and c that satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any n > 2" should be enough.

[–]Aeyrie -1 points0 points ago

Title is in the wrong tense, considering Sagan died in 1996.

[–]ilikehamburgers -4 points-3 points ago

fag reposter

[–]WildN0X -3 points-2 points ago

Saw Carl Sagan and thought I was on r/atheism

[–]DKN19 1 point2 points ago

How is this related to atheism? He's talking about little green men from Mars, not hippies from Judea.

[–]ibuildrockets -1 points0 points ago

You do know he's dead?

[–]DarkStar5758 0 points1 point ago

Irrelevant

[–]buddhaman001 -3 points-2 points ago

Perhaps it's because nearly every person who claims to have been abducted, isn't intelligent enough to ask those questions. Your move.

[–]blueboybob 9 points10 points ago

He didn't say "abducted," but in CURRENT contact. Like a medium channeling the aliens.

[–]buddhaman001 2 points3 points ago

Ah damn, touche, so it did.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. © 2012 reddit inc. All rights reserved.

REDDIT and the ALIEN Logo are registered trademarks of reddit inc.

π Rendered by PID 12789 on app-63 running 6bc746d.