What is our greatest achievement?

[exploited]

I saw a Reddit thread about this, thought it was interesting. What do you think the greatest achievement of the human race is?

My suggestions: space flight, the eradication of small pox and (soon) polio, computers, our total domination of the food chain.

Space flight is just cool. The idea that a bunch of apes got together, settled a planet, raped it, and will one day travel millions or billions of miles to do it again someplace else... It's just amazing.

One of the guys posting at Reddit suggested the eradication of small pox and polio. I didn't think it was such a big deal until he gave his reasoning: we are so badass that we not only conquered a planet, but we are able to annihilate macroscopic diseases in under a hundred years, diseases that claimed millions of lives.

Computers. Transistors are 20nm wide. They will soon be 10nm wide. We have managed to put thousands of these things together, and control them to such a degree that we can do calculations of enormous complexity as a matter of course. We don't even think about it, but that cellphone has more computing power than existed for most of human history. When quantum computing is mastered, we will be limited only by our imaginations.

Lastly, being apex predators. Human beings have been hunting for thousands of years. Despite being small, weak and vulnerable, we have managed to use our brains to design weapons of destruction so powerful that no other animal species will ever threaten us again. I mean, shit, people were hunting elephants thousands of years ago. That is incredible.

Your thoughts and suggestions?

[Mr.Bill]

Electricity..

[Philly]

Baseball

[gla22]

Computing, the moon landing, Pink Floyd, the conquests of Caesar

[exploited]

[exploited]

[Dobby]

Going way back, the wheel. I was also gonna say farming but I guess that's part of dominating the food chain. Sewerage systems.

Running water on tap in nearly every home (aside from some poorer countries). Irrigation.

[Professor]

Standing upright. It freed the hands to do all manner of other things. But, this wasn't "homo sapien", so technically not "human".

For that, I'd say development of a large brain. Without it, none of our other achievements would be possible. But, this wasn't a choice that we made, but evolution, so it might not be the intent of the question.

To answer the intent . . . I'd say "writing". By learning to write down our experiences, humans are able to stand upon the shoulders of giants, and not have to rely upon the spoken word (highly subjective) or learn things for ourselves.

[Dobby]

Also architecture. To think we can build towers hundreds of metres into the sky is pretty incredible.

[Philly]