141 réponses à ce sujet

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

AwesomeName wrote...
it's not as if we've been around for billions of years.

****** sapiens, Neanderthal or Beijing Human? we are here maximal 200,000 years

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

Swordfishtrombone wrote...
Science isn't done by some small group working alone in an ivory tower.

Egyptian and Babylonian priests were keeping important sciences in their temples, outside the temples there was only knowledge for routine affairs.
- Edit: I feel tired. I need to rest!-

Modifié par Garbage Master, 04 décembre 2010 - 02:40 .

[Swordfishtrombone]

Garbage Master wrote...

AwesomeName wrote...
it's not as if we've been around for billions of years.

****** sapiens, Neanderthal or Beijing Human? we are here maximal 200,000 years

According to the best estimates, Archaic ****** Sapiens evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago - and modern ****** Sapiens evolved around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.

The archeological record shows that generally, the earlier you go, the simpler the tools, and cruder the items discovered. Nowhere is there good evidence of a highly advanced - in the sense of being anywhere close to modern society - cultures.

[Ecaiki]

@Swordfish

Fun fact; everything you've said can also be applied to the information you're defending.

You're right, how foolish of me to imply that a large group could have an agenda that results in information control. I mean nothing like that has ever happened in our history...

@Awesome

I'm sorry, I don't think I've been clear at all that I'm not just talking about alien intervention. I've been referring to people just having discovered these things either way in most of my posts. As for the Antikythera Mechanism I'd suggest looking up just what's required from math, engineering and astronomy to create such a device.

P.S. The Mayans were capable of recording a calender that measures 5,200 years of time, accurately. They also had the ability to plot the planets comparable to our computer programs, and yet they're said to have done all this with the naked eye. Don't you find that at least a little odd?

Modifié par Ecaiki, 04 décembre 2010 - 02:43 .

[grregg]

Ecaiki wrote...

grregg wrote...

I would recommend reading some more about archeology. As hard as it might be to believe, archeology is not another word for "pulling things out of one's behind".

And actually Hello Kitty shirt tells you a lot about the sophistication of culture that produced it. No, you cannot deduce Hubble telescope out of the shirt, but you would know that it wasn't ancient Greeks that made the shirt.

Never said it was, though I'm amused that not agreeing with their interpretation apparently means that.

Sure it tells you that, but it doesn't even hint that we have a large chunk of metal and glass in orbit that allows us to see distant stars.  Which is the point I'm trying to make, just because the things we've found don't hint at PCs and nuclear bombs doesn't mean they never had comparable.

If you want to talk insulting, it's more insulting to assume they didn't have such things then they had help from aliens.

Hmm... perhaps I was a bit hasty, although I thought I was defending archeology, not offending you. Do keep in mind that you do publicly accuse archeologists of hiding data, participating in conspiracy, etc. These are charges that will get you hauled in front on an academic integrity panel (or some such), so they are not to be thrown lightly.

Now, to explain the differences between what one might find in a modern trash dump and an ancient trash dump. One of the key differences is that if I dig through a modern one I will likely find a lot of identical things. Does not sound like much, but believe it or not, throughout most of its existence humanity could not produce series of identical objects. Even in 19th century, you would likely have trouble swapping parts between, say, two rifles made by the same manufacturer. So if I find, for example, a number of identical Coke bottles, that is an indicator of an advanced manufacturing technology. Even though the bottle itself is fairly simple.

That was just one example, but hopefully it illustrates how much our culture and technology and science is stamped even on our trash. Can I deduce a specific technology out of it? No, I cannot. I cannot say "I found 500 Coke bottles therefore they must have known computer RPG games." But it will be fairly obvious that the tech level is way above what ancients had.

And vice versa, if you want to posit an advanced technology, you better produce some evidence, or explain why it isn't there. It's not like a culture applies its advanced tech to spaceships while still making clothes/pottery/tools/building the way great-great-great-grandfather did.

[Ecaiki]

grregg wrote...

Hmm... perhaps I was a bit hasty, although I thought I was defending archeology, not offending you. Do keep in mind that you do publicly accuse archeologists of hiding data, participating in conspiracy, etc. These are charges that will get you hauled in front on an academic integrity panel (or some such), so they are not to be thrown lightly.

No offence taken, I just happen to disagree with mainstream interpretation on some things.

As for the trash stuff, well keep in mind we're talking very long periods of time.  It's asking a bit much that something like a wrist watch just happens to get buried, and then stays that way for the next 6,000 years, and then gets dug up by some lucky archeologist who digs in exactly the right spot.  I'm sure I don't need to tell you the odds of all those events occurring.

AwesomeName wrote...

Absolutely not!  It's not odd in the slightest!  You do realise you can
plot planets without computers right?  It's not actually that
difficult.  They taught us how when I used to study astrophysics (don't
ask me to explain it to you, I changed courses after my 1st year).

Their writings have also been said to mention stars that we didn't even know about until Hubble and the like.  Things not visibile with the naked eye.  Of course that's if you're willing to believe a non-mainstream interpretation.

Modifié par Ecaiki, 04 décembre 2010 - 02:51 .

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

AwesomeName wrote...

Garbage Master wrote...

Swordfishtrombone wrote...
Science isn't done by some small group working alone in an ivory tower.

Egyptian and Babylonian priests were keeping important sciences in their temples, outside the temples there was only knowledge for routine affairs.
- Edit: I feel tired. I need to rest!-

He said science.  Science is a pretty modern thing really.

let me rest
No, without Geometry and Mathematics those great Temples couldn't be built. so there was sciences (and enough of this academic ).

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

AwesomeName wrote...

Ecaiki wrote...

P.S. The Mayans were capable of recording a calender that measures 5,200 years of time, accurately. They also had the ability to plot the planets comparable to our computer programs, and yet they're said to have done all this with the naked eye. Don't you find that at least a little odd?

Absolutely not!  It's not odd in the slightest!  You do realise you can plot planets without computers right?  It's not actually that difficult.  They taught us how when I used to study astrophysics (don't ask me to explain it to you, I changed courses after my 1st year).

Tracking Saturn, Uranus and Neptune is impossible with bare eyes, and Mayans were aware of those 3 planets.

[Swordfishtrombone]

Garbage Master wrote...

Swordfishtrombone wrote...
Science isn't done by some small group working alone in an ivory tower.

Egyptian and Babylonian priests were keeping important sciences in their temples, outside the temples there was only knowledge for routine affairs.
- Edit: I feel tired. I need to rest!-

It is not practically possible for science to advance very far without it being driven by the society - nor would there be any real reason for a ruling class to keep highly advanced technology to themselves, hidden from the population. Such highly advanced technology would, for one thing, most certainly be used in wars against neighboring states. A state with such technology would never have lost a war against another ancient civilization, nor faced any serious competition worth giving much attention to from a "lesser" civilization.

Invention and technological development is only really useful when it is disseminated and used across a culture, to feed commerce, and make the civilization wealthy.

The scant, cherry picked evidence in support of some secret knowledge of a significant technological nature is not really credible.

One of the most interesting ancient Egyptian items is the "Baghdad Battery", which may have been used for the purposes of electro-plating (something you might have done in a high school chemistry class). But again, the claims built on this by the paranormal/alien archeology crowd go well beyond what the evidence warrants.

There's a good, balanced take on this item here.

Again, this find goes against the notion that advanced technology would not survive - it absolutely would, especially when it is as ubiquotous as it is in modern society. This particular find, if it indeed was used for producing current, is impressive, but not very advanced, by our standards - it doesn't demonstrate any understanding of electricity or electro-magnetic theory, but electro plating is something one can fairly easily stumble into and think of as a neat trick, without understanding the principles involved. There certainly is no indication that this technology - if it was realized as technology - was developed or built upon to make something more intricate and advanced.

It is fascinating archeology, and history, but is better when it's treated without attaching fanciful notions to it that aren't grounded in evidence.

[grregg]

Ecaiki wrote...

(...)

No offence taken, I just happen to disagree with mainstream interpretation on some things.

As for the trash stuff, well keep in mind we're talking very long periods of time.  It's asking a bit much that something like a wrist watch just happens to get buried, and then stays that way for the next 6,000 years, and then gets dug up by some lucky archeologist who digs in exactly the right spot.  I'm sure I don't need to tell you the odds of all those events occurring.

First, I am going to say that in science if you want to disagree, you are most welcome, but you better back it up with a really, really solid argument. Just saying 'I disagree with the mainstream' does not cut it. Not by a long shot.

About the trash, that's the thing. If there was an advanced culture it would not produce one wrist watch. Or a single computer. It would produce a billion of them and yes, we would likely find some of them. Not to mention that in order to produce a wrist watch, you need tools, materials, etc. and they would also likely be found. Archeology has little chance of discovering a single genius inventor that toiled in obscurity, but the general level of technology is easily discerned from the trash dumps, waste dumps, etc. How many bronze or stone tools do you think you'll find in a modern trash? You actually might find some, but they'll be drowned by the remnants of computers, machine parts, modern tools, etc. See the difference?

Ecaiki wrote...

(...)

Their writings have also been said to mention stars that we didn't even know about until Hubble and the like.  Things not visibile with the naked eye.  Of course that's if you're willing to believe a non-mainstream interpretation.

For that I'm going to have to ask for the source. 'have been said' is one of the weasel words. I need citations from the original work.

[Swordfishtrombone]

Ecaiki wrote...

@Swordfish

Fun fact; everything you've said can also be applied to the information you're defending.

You're right, how foolish of me to imply that a large group could have an agenda that results in information control. I mean nothing like that has ever happened in our history...

There are differences between REAL proven conspiracies, and conspiracy-theories that are not founded in reality. One is that of scale - the larger the conspiracy, the more people it must involve, the less plausible it is that it would survive for long without exposure. People gossip, people leak information, and people have their own agendas. It is not easy to control a conspiracy involving many people, especially when those people are separated by large distances, come from different backgrounds, and enter the field where this grand conspiracy is supposed to be playing out, with innocent notions and enthusiasm for scientific discovery.

No conspiracy of this kind is remotely plausible, given simple human psychology.

Attempts at big conspiracies tend to come crashing down fast - take for example the secret prisons in Bush's presidency. They required many people to be "in the know" - not only in the US government, but other participating governments. How long did that remain a secret? Weeks? A month?

I Highly recommend for anyone flirting with conspiracy theories to read the recent, excellent book by David Aaronovitch titled "Voodoo Histories - How Conspiracy Theory Has Shaped Modern History".

If you are going to form an opinion, do the favor to yourself of exposing yourself to differing views, and not limiting yourself to the conspiracy-alien-archeology-paranormal sources. The book I recommend is a real eye-opener, when it comes to how conspiracy theories are formed, and how they spread, what makes them so attractive.

Modifié par Swordfishtrombone, 04 décembre 2010 - 03:05 .

[Ecaiki]

grregg wrote...

First, I am going to say that in science if you want to disagree, you are most welcome, but you better back it up with a really, really solid argument. Just saying 'I disagree with the mainstream' does not cut it. Not by a long shot.

About the trash, that's the thing. If there was an advanced culture it would not produce one wrist watch. Or a single computer. It would produce a billion of them and yes, we would likely find some of them. Not to mention that in order to produce a wrist watch, you need tools, materials, etc. and they would also likely be found. Archeology has little chance of discovering a single genius inventor that toiled in obscurity, but the general level of technology is easily discerned from the trash dumps, waste dumps, etc. How many bronze or stone tools do you think you'll find in a modern trash? You actually might find some, but they'll be drowned by the remnants of computers, machine parts, modern tools, etc. See the difference?

This is where we hit a problem.  Just what can I present as evidence that won't be dismissed just because it's felt to be "pesudoscience"?

I do get what you're saying, but you're dismissing what I'm saying about time.  After about a 1,000 years (unless you're lucky) most of the evidence has decayed, and if not completely then to a point where it's useless as evidence.  Take the Baghdad battery, if it weren't for it being kept safe from the elements all its materials would have decayed long ago.

For that I'm going to have to ask for the source. 'have been said' is one of the weasel words. I need citations from the original work.

Sadly I saw the documentary with said information 6 months ago, and I don't remember the name.  Yeah sounds like a cheap excuse, but it is what it is.

Edit: Reposted below.

Modifié par Ecaiki, 04 décembre 2010 - 03:28 .

[Swordfishtrombone]

Garbage Master wrote...

Tracking Saturn, Uranus and Neptune is impossible with bare eyes, and Mayans were aware of those 3 planets.

I wonder what your source is, and whether it is a credible institution or just some site written by some enthusiast. I can spot, off the top of my head one mistake there - Saturn IS observable with bare eyes. That whoever wrote the above does not know this, and hasn't bothered to check, makes me very skeptical of their claims.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Garbage Master wrote...

Tracking Saturn, Uranus and Neptune is impossible with bare eyes, and Mayans were aware of those 3 planets.

I'm not sure about this, Master. Saturn was the most distant planets known to the ancients. Uranus and Neptune are just too far and dim to be seen with the naked eye, even under ideal conditions. They weren't discovered until relatively recently (18th and 19th century, respectively), and only through telescopes.

[Ecaiki]

Swordfishtrombone wrote...

There are differences between REAL proven conspiracies, and conspiracy-theories
that are not founded in reality. One is that of scale - the larger the
conspiracy, the more people it must involve, the less plausible it is
that it would survive for long without exposure. People gossip, people
leak information, and people have their own agendas. It is not easy to
control a conspiracy involving many people, especially when those people
are separated by large distances, come from different backgrounds, and
enter the field where this grand conspiracy is supposed to be playing
out, with innocent notions and enthusiasm for scientific discovery.

No conspiracy of this kind is remotely plausible, given simple human psychology.

To say this shows a level of naivete bordering on dangerous.

We are raised to trust in authority, be that police, government, or any
other body that represents something.  If someone dressed as a police
officer tells you not to enter somewhere you'll do as they say.  If the
government tells you something is good most people take it at face
value.  All it takes is those in charge with an agenda to cause no end
of trouble.  Not saying that this is happening in the scientific
community, just trying to show that it's so easy to have it happen.

Attempts at big conspiracies tend to come crashing down fast - take for example
the secret prisons in Bush's presidency. They required many people to be
"in the know" - not only in the US government, but other participating
governments. How long did that remain a secret? Weeks? A month?

We live in an age where someone being murdered in Brazil can be filmed,
uploaded, and on every news site around the world before the body
cools.  To our knowledge there has never been a point in human history
when information flowed so freely or so quickly.  500 years ago however
it was much easier to control the flow, and to have people believe
whatever the ruling body wanted.

If you are going to form an opinion, do the favor to yourself of exposing yourself
to differing views, and not limiting yourself to the
conspiracy-alien-archeology-paranormal sources. The book I recommend is a
real eye-opener, when it comes to how conspiracy theories are formed,
and how they spread, what makes them so attractive.

The very fact that I think the way I do is because I exposed myself to differing views.  I just happen to agree with the alternative ones.

Also you never did answer my question; would you defend alien theory if it was the first and officially accepted version?

[Swordfishtrombone]

Ecaiki wrote...

Just what can I present as evidence that won't be dismissed just because it's felt to be "pesudoscience"?

Simple. When you find a claim that you find plausible, do your research on it. Find what those who disagree with the claim say about it and why. Ask yourself what the source is - is it some lone dude publishing a web site with no references to original research, or is it a proper research site, that is able to point to published, peer reviewed research?

What is helpful in recognizing pseudoscience is also if you learn the basic, and most common logical fallacies that pseudoscientists employ. A good place to learn would be, for example the Skeptic's Guide To The Universe 5x5 series that has podcasts titled "Skepticism 101" - they mostly deal with explaining logical fallacies, and each episode is condenced to 5 minutes, so they are pretty consise.

Also, there are various guides to recognizing pseudoscience, like the one here.

On that site, if you scroll down, there's a table that compares the properties of real science, to those regularly encountered in pseudoscience.

If this all sounds like a lot of work... well, there's no way around it, and I've tried to give the easiest examples of where you can learn it above. In order to recognize pseudoscience, you have to familiarize yourself with the principles of good science, and good scientific investigation - and to learn to catch yourself falling for logical errors, and try to avoid that, for which you need to learn the logical errors, and why they are errors.

If you learn these things - and they aren't that arduous to learn, it's really useful information - you'll be better equipped to recognize good science from that which is merely masquarading as such.

I do get what you're saying, but you're dismissing what I'm saying about time.  After about a 1,000 years (unless you're lucky) most of the evidence has decayed, and if not completely then to a point where it's useless as evidence.  Take the Baghdad battery, if it weren't for it being kept safe from the elements all its materials would have decayed long ago.

Yes, and with highly technological culture, you would expect SOME of the items to end up in such environments that they would be preserved. It REALLY isn't that hard to preserve most hard-material items for some thousands of years, if they are kept in a dry environment.

For example, would our current civilization be lost, Dubai, for example, located in a dry desert environment would probably become an archeological treasure trove, with many structures burried in the sand and preserved.

The fact that we DO find small items that belonged to ancient cultures is clear evidence that small items CAN survive long times burried. It's not just some theoretical thing - it's an observable fact! That we don't find very advanced technology, or the remains of it - or advanced materials even, from ancient times is pretty damning for any notion that there was a highly advanced culture there at the time.

[grregg]

Ecaiki wrote...

(...)

This is where we hit a problem.  Just what can I present as evidence that won't be dismissed just because it's felt to be "pesudoscience"?

What evidence do you have?

Science is able to accept pretty much anything as long as it is backed up. To give an example: Up until little more than 10 years ago, we were firmly convinced that the Universe is expanding ever more slowly. The question was whether its expansion will stop and reverse itself, or whether it'll keep on expanding asymptotically slower into infinity.

Then new observations were published showing that the expansion is actually accelerating. The data were flying in the face of what we understood about the Universe. To this day we do not understand why the Universe is accelerating its expansion. 'Dark energy' is a convenient alias for 'we have no clue.'

And yet, no one was accused of pseudo-science.

Ecaiki wrote...

I do get what you're saying, but you're dismissing what I'm saying about time.  After about a 1,000 years (unless you're lucky) most of the evidence has decayed, and if not completely then to a point where it's useless as evidence.  Take the Baghdad battery, if it weren't for it being kept safe from the elements all its materials would have decayed long ago.

Of course most of stuff has decayed, but first, it does not decay without trace and the traces are very educational, second, given the amounts of stuff, there is always some lucky objects that survive. Heck, we find wine still in its bottles. So again, any civilization will produce a lot of stuff, an advanced civilization will produce a lot of advanced stuff. Some of it will survive, whether by luck, durability, accident. So where is it?

Again trash dumps and waste dumps are awesome sources. You can learn a lot by looking at them. You find a lot of broken stone tools, what does it mean? They they had computers and cars and for some reason only trashed obsidian forks? Believe me, our waste will last thousands of years and even after that period, it will look different that a trash dump from Bronze Age.

Ecaiki wrote...

For that I'm going to have to ask for the source. 'have been said' is one of the weasel words. I need citations from the original work.

Sadly I saw the documentary with said information 6 months ago, and I don't remember the name.  Yeah sounds like a cheap excuse, but it is what it is.

Sorry, hearsay is not admissible. 

Modifié par grregg, 04 décembre 2010 - 03:38 .

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

^ my misremember about Saturn.





If the centre line of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl was taken as the position of the sun, markers laid out northwards from it along the axis of the Avenue seemed to indicated the correct orbital distances of the inner planets, the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn (the Sun Pyramid), Uranus (the Moon Pyramid) and Neptune and Pluto, represented by two mounds further north. Harleston’s suggestion fuelled speculation of extra-terrestrial intervention in the Mayan civilisation, as the planet Uranus had only been discovered in 1787, Pluto as late as 1930. How did the Mayans have knowledge of this?

Hugh Harleston Jr. also concluded that the entire site was constructed according to a system of measurement that he named the STU, Standard Teotihuacan Unit, which is equals 1.059 meters. This unit features into the length of a side of the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon, as well as in the distance between the two pyramids...cont'd http://www.philipcop...orionimage.html

[Ecaiki]

@Swordfish

The table on that site made me giggle, as "real" scientists have been just as guilty of some of those pesudoscience behaviours in the past. Science is just as bad as religion in that regard, if something comes along to challenge accepted notions it can be met with intense hostility.

Well of course it's not hard to preserve materials... if you're actively trying to preserve them. Best example is Egyptian mummification, we still have examples because they went out of their way to make sure it lasted.

Now if you don't mind I'm going to bow out of this, as we're both firmly rooted in our stances and neither of us is going to budge. Well that and arguing on the internet, yada, yada, yada.

@grregg

Geez, had I known I'd be quizzed I'd have taken notes.

Perhaps I'll go rewatch some of these sometime, and jot down names of things and researchers.

Modifié par Ecaiki, 04 décembre 2010 - 03:52 .