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> Netflix Docu I’m assuming you are referring to Graham Hancock? In which case, I wouldn’t put too much stock into it. He’s been hawking conspiracy theories fo

by gnz11 4y ago

> Netflix Docu I’m assuming you are referring to Graham Hancock? In which case, I wouldn’t put too much stock into it. He’s been hawking conspiracy theories for a long time. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient-apocalypse-is-the-most-dangerous-show-on-netflix https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient...

HPsquared 4y ago
Not a great critique, limited to matters of personal taste rather than the actual content, while calling it "dangerous". Isn't there a better critique which covers the actual claims made in the series?
- RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
  I think certain classes of claims one should be cautious about engaging with. The fact that so many have with so little scrutiny has had a seriously negative effect on our society. Having an opinion does not make it worth scrutinizing. My cat has an opinion on whether she should go to the vet or not. I don't take it into consideration.
  - xattt 4y ago
    To add to this, the grandparent post wants to hear the critiques about the content rather than the messenger. I think about the story of he discovery of H. pylori as contributing to peptic ulcer disease. The theory was widely rejected but ultimately proven. The mitigating factor in accepting the theory was that the researcher did not have a reputation of peddling quack theories. Past behaviour predicts future behaviour.
    - meheleventyone 4y ago
      The mitigating factor was surely the extremely detailed evidence provided which is what is always lacking in conspiracy theories. The latter hide in the gaps in evidence and insinuation. The Hancock ‘documentary’ is basically an Atlantian of the gaps.
  - susodapop 4y ago
    Failing to engage with ideas you find distasteful just creates a vacuum of good information; which is the environment where conspiracy theories thrive. I've followed Graham Hancock for twenty years and have yet to see anyone properly dismantle his positions. I don't believe everything he says: but dogmatically dismissing him only fuels his narrative that mainstream archaeologists are trying to suppress him in order to save their jobs (and grants). Given the highly falsifiable nature of his claims it should easy enough to disprove them. That nobody chooses to do so is quite curious. I can watch a hundred spirited debates and proofs on both sides of flat-earth, fake moon landing, essential oils curing cancer, and evolution vs young-earth creationism. What is so special about archaeology that it needn't mount a similar, vigorous defense?
    - daveguy 4y ago
      > Given the highly falsifiable nature of his claims it should easy enough to disprove them. I'm not sure how a fever dream about something that happened 12,000 years ago is falsifiable. What evidence would you propose falsifies his theories? If you believe you can watch a hundred proofs on both sides of flat-earth, you may want to reconsider your understanding of the word "proof". Proof is the burden of the claimant. If he had presented a plausible proof, there would probably be a spirited debate. It is curious that ignoring someone is considered "suppression" by those ignored.
    - teh_klev 4y ago
      > Given the highly falsifiable nature of his claims it should easy enough to disprove them. That nobody chooses to do so is quite curious. Because it isn't worth anyone's precious time and effort in academia to respond to such obvious bunkum?
- imiric 4y ago
  I agree that the article is not a good critique. I liked this one[1] better. He makes some good points, particularly that there is no genetic trace of Hancock's advanced civilization in our DNA. And that if a global seafaring civilization existed around the last ice age, then we would've seen a mixing of agriculture well before Columbus. Worth a watch. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTkDkSbO-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTkDkSbO-4
snidane 4y ago
They said the same about Galileo. 99% of the time you'll be correct labeling people as conspiracy theorists with the blanket rule - any time they are not mainstream approved. You'll end up being horribly wrong on that 1% that actually matters.
imiric 4y ago
I'm in the middle of watching Ancient Apocalypse, and, as a lifelong skeptic, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Hancock isn't a scientist, and has never claimed to be. He presents himself as an investigative journalist. What he explores in his work are a series of "what if" questions that science either can't disprove, or hasn't been actively researching, for whatever reason. The show is beautifully shot and produced, and provokes some interesting thought experiments. Besides "free thinkers" making an appearance, there are also "mainstream" scientists from renowned institutions around the world, who seem to side with Hancock in many ways. If the show does nothing but raise more public awareness about these topics, it might lead to funding actual scientific research in some of these sites, which would be a good thing. So far from being a "dangerous show", it's actually an interesting and well-shot documentary. People who see it as proof of anything factual are likely already conspiracy theorists, and are a lost cause for logical thinking anyway.
- 8note 4y ago
  I don't know if sites getting studies funded is unequivocally good. It could mean some other promising research doesn't get funded
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  It’s really sad that you need to explain yourself like this. Some people have the perspective that anyone who’s ever been on the Joe rogan podcast is a conspiracy theorist, yet anyone who they’ve ever read about on the NYT is a fully responsible authentic scientist. This is clearly not the case, as you’ve just laid out about Hancock, not to mention there’s plenty of misinformation on the NYT as well.
- Lorkki 4y ago
  > that science either can't disprove, or hasn't been actively researching, for whatever reason Most often the reason is lack of evidence in proportion to the claims.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
jsemrau 4y ago
Yes this one. I think it resonates because he is challenging a status quo and at the same time provides an explanation that works (at least for me). Is it fully proven? Surely not. This is science. New ideas and theories come up all the time.
theteapot 4y ago
Younger Dryas hypothesis is not Graham Hancock's. Not even close. He is just a proponent journalist. You can't wave aside an entire scientific evidence base just because an eccentric journalist or two endorsed a theory. Lazy, random links to Guardian opinion pieces aren't helping convince anyone either.
- teh_klev 4y ago
  I think you've misinterpreted the parent commenter (gnz11). They were referring specifically to the Hancock Netflix documentary mention hence the "> Netflix Docu" quoting from GP's comment, and not at all suggesting that the Younger Dryas is Hancock's theory. The "random link" to the Guardian article is about the Hancock documentary and reasonably valid to mention, even if it is an opinion piece. The article does not conflate the Younger Dryas theory with Hancocks pseudoscience, in fact there's no mention of the theory. Also if you read the Guardian article to the end it has an interesting observation: "If you don’t like Hancock’s story about the super-intelligent advanced civilisation being wiped off the face of the planet, here’s another that might explain how Netflix gave the greenlight to Ancient Apocalypse: the platform’s senior manager of unscripted originals happens to be Hancock’s son. Honestly, what are the chances?"
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
The problem is not Hancock, he is who he is and honestly he produces entertainment not different from the alien series on HC or the endless stream of pseudohistory or pseudo science, that can be fun taken with a grain of salt. The real problem with Hancock are the kinda white supremacists books. The problem is that we have a real problem: we teach kids things we don't know for sure. I swear I am not 300 hundreds years old and they thaught me in school - science unequivocally says that - the Neanderthal men were the ancestors of the Sapiens, we have proof, we simply miss the link between Lucy and the Homo erectus and we're done, we explained everything! Turns out there were 12, no wait 14, no wait 15, no wait 21 different species of hominids and many of them were contemporary to the sapiens and 90% of the humans bear Neanderthal DNA. Just like there were no baby dinosaurs because we thought the smaller ones were different species. Archeologist and historians need to go out and say loud: we don't know anything about human history, but we have many good theories! please help! According to mainstream, Göbekli Tepe should not exist. I was thaught in school that there were no settlements at the time, absolutely impossible, scientific truth (tm)
- meheleventyone 4y ago
  Any investigatory process must necessarily go through periods of updating understanding in light of new evidence. As such it’s not unexpected that older things thought to be correct turn out to be wrong. That’s part of learning and refining knowledge. Sorry you had shit school teachers that didn’t help you understand that. I can understand the feeling of being betrayed when something you thought was an irrefutable fact turned out to be wrong by advances in the same field.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > As such it’s not unexpected that older things thought to be correct turn out to be wrong. That’s part of learning and refining knowledge. Of course. Now imagine me at 8 learning one thing "said to be taken for granted because <<science>>!" and me at 20 wondering how was it possible that everything was completely wrong and ancient history as we knew it wasn't much different from reading Nostradamus. It all literally radically changed in 15 years, we got it completely backwards, it wasn't simply "a period of understanding", everything was simply wrong. Everything, not just something. One example among too many: we thought and we were taught and students at university were taught that the size of the brain mattered and was unequivocally linked to intelligence (we know now it's simply a correlation), so Sapiens obviously had the biggest brain among humans and hominids. That was false too! Neanderthal had bigger brains. Does it mean they were more intelligent? *we don't know!* Another example: many dinosaurs had feathers, when we discovered it, I was already a young adult. And not just some of them, but hypothesis (is) that many, if not all non-avian dinosaur species also possessed feathers in some shape or form. Stonehenge and all the other cromlechs were believed to be built by the druids until the 60s of 20th century! There are 3 thousands years difference between the construction of Stonehenge and the first records of the druids, still the knowledge of them being "magical places" is still the most common among people. > Sorry you had shit school teachers that didn’t help you understand that Don't be so dismissive, if you read papers from the 80s, when I was a kid (I-m actually from the 70s), you'll see it wasn't my teachers, it was scientifically accepted, you could read about that in every book you could lend your hands on. No one contested that knowledge in public, it was "the truth". The only ones contesting those theories were the religious people, my city hosts the Vatican, you can imagine they were quite vocal about it. It wasn't so easy to shed some light on the topic even putting some effort into it. We were simply sitting on bogus knowledge, everything prior to 6-7 thousand years ago is obscure and cloudy, everything could either be and not be, except maybe aliens. We don't know, Hancock is obviously not a scientist and his theories are laughable, but could a civilization have existed before the ice age and have survived it? We don't know! We even miss a billion years of Earth geological history, it's almost a quarter of its entire existence. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02450-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02450-5 It's easy to understand why people can believe to crook theories about Atlantis and the saviour from the sea, it's actually interesting and if mainstream theories can be proven utterly wrong every 2 decades, who can say they are not true? It's the reason why religion still goes so strong, we need to be upfront and say that we don't know anything and the things we know are probably mostly wrong or we risk that history in the future will be taught by the Hancocks.

by gnz11 4y ago

HPsquared 4y ago

Not a great critique, limited to matters of personal taste rather than the actual content, while calling it "dangerous". Isn't there a better critique which covers the actual claims made in the series?

RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
I think certain classes of claims one should be cautious about engaging with. The fact that so many have with so little scrutiny has had a seriously negative effect on our society. Having an opinion does not make it worth scrutinizing. My cat has an opinion on whether she should go to the vet or not. I don't take it into consideration.
- xattt 4y ago
  To add to this, the grandparent post wants to hear the critiques about the content rather than the messenger. I think about the story of he discovery of H. pylori as contributing to peptic ulcer disease. The theory was widely rejected but ultimately proven. The mitigating factor in accepting the theory was that the researcher did not have a reputation of peddling quack theories. Past behaviour predicts future behaviour.
  - meheleventyone 4y ago
    The mitigating factor was surely the extremely detailed evidence provided which is what is always lacking in conspiracy theories. The latter hide in the gaps in evidence and insinuation. The Hancock ‘documentary’ is basically an Atlantian of the gaps.
- susodapop 4y ago
  Failing to engage with ideas you find distasteful just creates a vacuum of good information; which is the environment where conspiracy theories thrive. I've followed Graham Hancock for twenty years and have yet to see anyone properly dismantle his positions. I don't believe everything he says: but dogmatically dismissing him only fuels his narrative that mainstream archaeologists are trying to suppress him in order to save their jobs (and grants). Given the highly falsifiable nature of his claims it should easy enough to disprove them. That nobody chooses to do so is quite curious. I can watch a hundred spirited debates and proofs on both sides of flat-earth, fake moon landing, essential oils curing cancer, and evolution vs young-earth creationism. What is so special about archaeology that it needn't mount a similar, vigorous defense?
  - daveguy 4y ago
    > Given the highly falsifiable nature of his claims it should easy enough to disprove them. I'm not sure how a fever dream about something that happened 12,000 years ago is falsifiable. What evidence would you propose falsifies his theories? If you believe you can watch a hundred proofs on both sides of flat-earth, you may want to reconsider your understanding of the word "proof". Proof is the burden of the claimant. If he had presented a plausible proof, there would probably be a spirited debate. It is curious that ignoring someone is considered "suppression" by those ignored.
  - teh_klev 4y ago
    > Given the highly falsifiable nature of his claims it should easy enough to disprove them. That nobody chooses to do so is quite curious. Because it isn't worth anyone's precious time and effort in academia to respond to such obvious bunkum?
imiric 4y ago
I agree that the article is not a good critique. I liked this one[1] better. He makes some good points, particularly that there is no genetic trace of Hancock's advanced civilization in our DNA. And that if a global seafaring civilization existed around the last ice age, then we would've seen a mixing of agriculture well before Columbus. Worth a watch. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTkDkSbO-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTkDkSbO-4

snidane 4y ago

They said the same about Galileo. 99% of the time you'll be correct labeling people as conspiracy theorists with the blanket rule - any time they are not mainstream approved. You'll end up being horribly wrong on that 1% that actually matters.

imiric 4y ago

I'm in the middle of watching Ancient Apocalypse, and, as a lifelong skeptic, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Hancock isn't a scientist, and has never claimed to be. He presents himself as an investigative journalist. What he explores in his work are a series of "what if" questions that science either can't disprove, or hasn't been actively researching, for whatever reason. The show is beautifully shot and produced, and provokes some interesting thought experiments. Besides "free thinkers" making an appearance, there are also "mainstream" scientists from renowned institutions around the world, who seem to side with Hancock in many ways. If the show does nothing but raise more public awareness about these topics, it might lead to funding actual scientific research in some of these sites, which would be a good thing. So far from being a "dangerous show", it's actually an interesting and well-shot documentary. People who see it as proof of anything factual are likely already conspiracy theorists, and are a lost cause for logical thinking anyway.

8note 4y ago
I don't know if sites getting studies funded is unequivocally good. It could mean some other promising research doesn't get funded
cloutchaser 4y ago
It’s really sad that you need to explain yourself like this. Some people have the perspective that anyone who’s ever been on the Joe rogan podcast is a conspiracy theorist, yet anyone who they’ve ever read about on the NYT is a fully responsible authentic scientist. This is clearly not the case, as you’ve just laid out about Hancock, not to mention there’s plenty of misinformation on the NYT as well.
Lorkki 4y ago
> that science either can't disprove, or hasn't been actively researching, for whatever reason Most often the reason is lack of evidence in proportion to the claims.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

jsemrau 4y ago

Yes this one. I think it resonates because he is challenging a status quo and at the same time provides an explanation that works (at least for me). Is it fully proven? Surely not. This is science. New ideas and theories come up all the time.

theteapot 4y ago

Younger Dryas hypothesis is not Graham Hancock's. Not even close. He is just a proponent journalist. You can't wave aside an entire scientific evidence base just because an eccentric journalist or two endorsed a theory. Lazy, random links to Guardian opinion pieces aren't helping convince anyone either.

teh_klev 4y ago
I think you've misinterpreted the parent commenter (gnz11). They were referring specifically to the Hancock Netflix documentary mention hence the "> Netflix Docu" quoting from GP's comment, and not at all suggesting that the Younger Dryas is Hancock's theory. The "random link" to the Guardian article is about the Hancock documentary and reasonably valid to mention, even if it is an opinion piece. The article does not conflate the Younger Dryas theory with Hancocks pseudoscience, in fact there's no mention of the theory. Also if you read the Guardian article to the end it has an interesting observation: "If you don’t like Hancock’s story about the super-intelligent advanced civilisation being wiped off the face of the planet, here’s another that might explain how Netflix gave the greenlight to Ancient Apocalypse: the platform’s senior manager of unscripted originals happens to be Hancock’s son. Honestly, what are the chances?"

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

The problem is not Hancock, he is who he is and honestly he produces entertainment not different from the alien series on HC or the endless stream of pseudohistory or pseudo science, that can be fun taken with a grain of salt. The real problem with Hancock are the kinda white supremacists books. The problem is that we have a real problem: we teach kids things we don't know for sure. I swear I am not 300 hundreds years old and they thaught me in school - science unequivocally says that - the Neanderthal men were the ancestors of the Sapiens, we have proof, we simply miss the link between Lucy and the Homo erectus and we're done, we explained everything! Turns out there were 12, no wait 14, no wait 15, no wait 21 different species of hominids and many of them were contemporary to the sapiens and 90% of the humans bear Neanderthal DNA. Just like there were no baby dinosaurs because we thought the smaller ones were different species. Archeologist and historians need to go out and say loud: we don't know anything about human history, but we have many good theories! please help! According to mainstream, Göbekli Tepe should not exist. I was thaught in school that there were no settlements at the time, absolutely impossible, scientific truth (tm)

meheleventyone 4y ago
Any investigatory process must necessarily go through periods of updating understanding in light of new evidence. As such it’s not unexpected that older things thought to be correct turn out to be wrong. That’s part of learning and refining knowledge. Sorry you had shit school teachers that didn’t help you understand that. I can understand the feeling of being betrayed when something you thought was an irrefutable fact turned out to be wrong by advances in the same field.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > As such it’s not unexpected that older things thought to be correct turn out to be wrong. That’s part of learning and refining knowledge. Of course. Now imagine me at 8 learning one thing "said to be taken for granted because <<science>>!" and me at 20 wondering how was it possible that everything was completely wrong and ancient history as we knew it wasn't much different from reading Nostradamus. It all literally radically changed in 15 years, we got it completely backwards, it wasn't simply "a period of understanding", everything was simply wrong. Everything, not just something. One example among too many: we thought and we were taught and students at university were taught that the size of the brain mattered and was unequivocally linked to intelligence (we know now it's simply a correlation), so Sapiens obviously had the biggest brain among humans and hominids. That was false too! Neanderthal had bigger brains. Does it mean they were more intelligent? *we don't know!* Another example: many dinosaurs had feathers, when we discovered it, I was already a young adult. And not just some of them, but hypothesis (is) that many, if not all non-avian dinosaur species also possessed feathers in some shape or form. Stonehenge and all the other cromlechs were believed to be built by the druids until the 60s of 20th century! There are 3 thousands years difference between the construction of Stonehenge and the first records of the druids, still the knowledge of them being "magical places" is still the most common among people. > Sorry you had shit school teachers that didn’t help you understand that Don't be so dismissive, if you read papers from the 80s, when I was a kid (I-m actually from the 70s), you'll see it wasn't my teachers, it was scientifically accepted, you could read about that in every book you could lend your hands on. No one contested that knowledge in public, it was "the truth". The only ones contesting those theories were the religious people, my city hosts the Vatican, you can imagine they were quite vocal about it. It wasn't so easy to shed some light on the topic even putting some effort into it. We were simply sitting on bogus knowledge, everything prior to 6-7 thousand years ago is obscure and cloudy, everything could either be and not be, except maybe aliens. We don't know, Hancock is obviously not a scientist and his theories are laughable, but could a civilization have existed before the ice age and have survived it? We don't know! We even miss a billion years of Earth geological history, it's almost a quarter of its entire existence. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02450-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02450-5 It's easy to understand why people can believe to crook theories about Atlantis and the saviour from the sea, it's actually interesting and if mainstream theories can be proven utterly wrong every 2 decades, who can say they are not true? It's the reason why religion still goes so strong, we need to be upfront and say that we don't know anything and the things we know are probably mostly wrong or we risk that history in the future will be taught by the Hancocks.