True, but at the same time we don't know that much about what happened before the last ice age. And faced with that ignorance you have to keep an open mind, that's what HN people should do, or not have much trouble doing!
Put it another way, if we had a 3000 year ice age start tomorrow, that was ended with a comet impact that melted the ice in a couple of months with biblical flooding (or any of a host of other possible apocalypses), how confident would you be that remnants of our civilization would be traceable 15,000 years hence?
I'm sure there'd be traces but how confident would we be interpreting them correctly? If we were being intellectually honest about such interpretations. I'd say there'd be quite a lot of error bars.
If you don't already, just assume there's other civilizations out there, for a minute. If they'd utilized the Earth in the past as a way station, outpost, refugee spot, or even holiday home or whatever, and built some (relative to the total land area of all human dwellings on Earth now) small scale installations here, but were not "humans" at all, and this happened at multiple points in the last 250 million years, how well do you feel you'd interpret that evidence, today?
I think it's likely that people look at it, look at the seeming absence of non-humans just walking around, and think "We did this. It was us, in the past." But Earth's history is long, and we're a tiny part of it. Why project our present level of knowledge, impressive tho it is, onto a fantasy of insight into the One True Story of the entirety of Earth's history? I don't think we can say that if we're being intellectually honest, and HN people should aspire to that, I think.
Even from this position of ignorance it's entirely possible that other civilizations built structures on Earth in the distant past, and that only their megalithic foundations or buildings survived, owing to Earth's "active" surface geology, and the passage of time. You cannot say how probable it is from a position of ignorance, but you must admit that it's possible.
Heck, maybe some of those dudes flying around the sky are just coming back to check, "Hey, didn't we have a house here half a million years ago? With a nice view of the ocean. Man, those were the days!" haha :)
All those things are indeed possible, and keeping an open mind is generally positive. That said in the specific case of the formations in Bosnia, reputable geologists have investigated them, and have said that they are well-understood natural formations. The flatirons in Bosnia are no more human structures than the ones in Colorado or Texas.
A smart person once said: if you open your mind too much your brain will fall out, and another smart person wrote a song with that name.
Sure, I wasn't referring specifically to Bosnia mentioned here: I don't know much about that case really, I haven't deeply looked at it, at least recently, and I don't know.
I'm glad to see you are in favor of keeping an open mind, but saddened to see you would want to put limits on your intellectual exploration! I generally think that's a poor idea.
Many reasons, here's two: 1) what better adventure is there? How fun it is to explore curiously some out there possibilities outside of what we know! You might just discover something incredible, and true. It may even be useful! Onward! Haha :)
2) It's kind of arrogant to think, 'well I can't be "too open" otherwise I might consider some things that are wrong.' To me that reeks of orthodoxy and this idea that humans can proscribe what is possible for the universe, rather than standing in awe of it and in humility at our ignorance of all the things we don't know.
I think that humility, ignorance and awe is ultimately liberating, and the intellectually honest thing to do, and not just honest, but the most useful position to take, the scientifically ignorant one.
I see your "smart person", and I raise you one, haha! :) One smart person recently said: "Science is nothing more than the invention of ignorance."
I encourage you to meditate deeply upon that. I'll go watch your youtube video now! :)
edit: Oh Tim Minchin is often very funny, but I find him off here. Out of touch and a little flat. I also like George Carlin, I recommend you check him out if you haven't.
I think comedians can offer us insights, but in general they should not be used as guides as to what's possible, nor as proscribers of your intellectual curiosity.
If you let them do that, you're basically subscribing to a kind of orthodoxy that many comedians are by definition against, being free, lateral thinkers in many (but perhaps not all!) ways.
The sad thing about Minchin's stance above is he couches it in this irrefutable way, when it's really not. A lot of the things he tries to make out, as unsubstantiated are in fact very substantiated. But sadly it feels as if you would only seek to mock those things, as Minchin tries to, so perhaps you're not the best one to have that discussion with now, I guess? Haha :)
I also wonder if Minchin is not subtly lampooning the stance he merely pretends to embody there? It would be in character for him. And the way he rapid-fires the overly formal verbiage, seems to suggest satire, even mockery of it. At least I think we should remain open to the possibility that's what he's doing! Or at the very least perhaps not make much of the stance of someone whose job it is as court jester to basically satirize everything! :) hahahaha
But thank you for reminding me of him. I'm a fan of that duet he did with Missy Higgins. You should check that out!
I think describing my view as putting limits on intellectual exploration is unfair. Intellectual exploration has been done, they went and looked at the formations in Bosnia and were like "yeah those are flatirons, just like the ones in the USA and other places".
What you're arguing for is for me to ignore the results of the intellectual exploration after it has been done.
No, no no, I'm speaking not of Bosnia here but in general. Your view may very well be different in general, I'm glad if it is. It just seemed that way here. Did I misunderstand you? I'm sorry if I misunderstood you. I think you could be clearer about how you feel, tho.
The way I feel is that being open minded and intellectually free is great, its very interesting and you can learn many cool things. However once you've learned those things its also important to be clear about them.
Lets take something like evolution as an example. There isn't really anything to be gained by trying to straight up falsify evolution any more, we're very very confident that it happens. The "right" approach is to stop being "open" to the idea that evolution doesn't happen, but instead be "open" to exploring interesting and cool stuff based one evolution (how does it happen, what drives it, what are the mechanisms etc). Being "open", in the sense of thinking about evolution not being a real thing, actually closes you to exploring these cool ideas based on evolution.
I totally agree! Like using what you've already learned as a scaffold that you can then climb higher on. I don't think you should limit stuff with that, but that you can then go further is great!
Yes, but I also think your example, is unintentionally more nuanced than intended perhaps--in that evolution being a thing does not preclude intelligent design. The simple counter is we are already intelligently designing new organisms which themselves were developed at least in part, and continue to develop, at least in part, through the contribution of evolution.
I think that's also a nuanced point: once you learn one thing, and it has good explanatory power, it doesn't have to be the only thing in operation.
We can take that further and say, it's possible that humans are the product of intelligent design to some extent. One way to phrase that is: ETs manipulated DNA in already evolving primates to create homo sapiens sapiens
> Put it another way, if we had a 3000 year ice age start tomorrow, that was ended with a comet impact that melted the ice in a couple of months with biblical flooding (or any of a host of other possible apocalypses), how confident would you be that remnants of our civilization would be traceable 15,000 years hence?
Very. We found paintings and cut flints from the tiny number of humans living during the last Ice Age; the foundations of London and NY and Beijing and Sydney are a bit harder to miss!
More to the point, I don't think HNers need to keep an open mind over whether someone whose
most basic claims about the site (perfect compass orientation) can be refuted with a casual glance at a contour map (and who also writes books about Hitler living in an Antarctica base!) might have some great understanding about the cosmic significance of the site everyone else has missed. Except him whilst appealing for government funding excavations that would "break a cloud of negative energy"
It's the difference between believing that extraterrestrial intelligence plausibly exists and is possibly even likely, and believing that ET is a documentary
I agree with you, we would find stuff. Especially large foundations. And that's what I think some of these megalithic sites are. The large foundations of buildings or previous small-scale civilizations on Earth, human or not. From way back in time, much longer than just 15,000 years.
Also, as these megalithic foundations could conceivably last 100,000s of years we don't really know from how far back they could originate.
I'm not sure what you're referring to with your references to 'compass navigation', 'Hitler in antartica', 'cosmic significance' and 'negative energy'--do you have sources for these claims?--but in any case it's never wise to judge someone's work by their other work (if such ad hominem is what you are suggesting).
A simple example that we could all probably relate to: on Monday you made a series of very poor commits, but that was the best you could do at the time. But on Wednesday you did stellar work, representing the best of your capabilities at any time. It's incorrect and unfair of me to doubt your Wednesday work because of your Monday failure, and unfair and incorrect of me to judge you a poor programmer because of Monday. I can see you are a good programmer, who is human! :)
Perhaps a more pertinent example: think of Newton. Would you be so bold as to disagree with his physics and discount his laws because he was also passionate about alchemy? Or would you expand yourself to also admit alchemy could be as valid as Newton through it could be? Or would you pick and choose, selecting only those ideas which you deemed to have merit, or not, based on how they stand on their own, rather than against generalities you may be inclined to make across the body of work as a whole, or, in an ad hominem sense, about the person whose work it was?
I think it's clear which is the most sensible course there, but I also understand that you could differ, and that's fine, and interesting! I look forward to knowing your perspective, if you'd like to share it! :)
I like your simple analogy, between accepting the ET reality, but not the film ET as reality. I think it captures quite a lot of stuff well! Indeed, perhaps more than you intend, as I think often, all disciplines and theories are want to become captive to the narratives we tell ourselves--and obsessed as we get with those narratives, we may miss out on the truth! :)
So, I think, judicious and critical consideration of the facts, and the narratives, and open minded exploration, is essential to finding the truth (as hard as that is), and is a good way forward.
Finally, regarding finding more evidence of prior civilizations--consider that during/before the last ice age sea levels were 120 meters lower and that often, civilizations form around rivers and deltas which are typically in low lying regions. These regions are most likely to be the first to be flooded.
So, evidence of other cultures may be there, it just may be located under the ocean. Even so, very distant civilizations may not leave many traces at all, besides their very durable megalithic foundations.
True, but at the same time we don't know that much about what happened before the last ice age. And faced with that ignorance you have to keep an open mind, that's what HN people should do, or not have much trouble doing!
Put it another way, if we had a 3000 year ice age start tomorrow, that was ended with a comet impact that melted the ice in a couple of months with biblical flooding (or any of a host of other possible apocalypses), how confident would you be that remnants of our civilization would be traceable 15,000 years hence?
I'm sure there'd be traces but how confident would we be interpreting them correctly? If we were being intellectually honest about such interpretations. I'd say there'd be quite a lot of error bars.
If you don't already, just assume there's other civilizations out there, for a minute. If they'd utilized the Earth in the past as a way station, outpost, refugee spot, or even holiday home or whatever, and built some (relative to the total land area of all human dwellings on Earth now) small scale installations here, but were not "humans" at all, and this happened at multiple points in the last 250 million years, how well do you feel you'd interpret that evidence, today?
I think it's likely that people look at it, look at the seeming absence of non-humans just walking around, and think "We did this. It was us, in the past." But Earth's history is long, and we're a tiny part of it. Why project our present level of knowledge, impressive tho it is, onto a fantasy of insight into the One True Story of the entirety of Earth's history? I don't think we can say that if we're being intellectually honest, and HN people should aspire to that, I think.
Even from this position of ignorance it's entirely possible that other civilizations built structures on Earth in the distant past, and that only their megalithic foundations or buildings survived, owing to Earth's "active" surface geology, and the passage of time. You cannot say how probable it is from a position of ignorance, but you must admit that it's possible.
Heck, maybe some of those dudes flying around the sky are just coming back to check, "Hey, didn't we have a house here half a million years ago? With a nice view of the ocean. Man, those were the days!" haha :)