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Instead of wasting time on petty stuff, how about a nice website with responses to his claims? Who, how and why built Göbekli Tepe so early? Let the facts spea

Instead of wasting time on petty stuff, how about a nice website with responses to his claims? Who, how and why built Göbekli Tepe so early? Let the facts speak for themselves.

1attice 4y ago
Because facts do not speak for themselves. Because what happens instead is that you repeat your interlocutor's claims, you validate the existence of a discourse at all -- and discourses necessarily have two sides. Consider the following imagined conversation: -- Alice: The Earth is hollow. Bob: The Earth isn't hollow; here are some facts about the Earth that speak against this claim. Carol: [to David, attempting neutrality] Disagreements about the hollowness of the planet continue David [to Bob]: Experts disagree on whether or not the Earth is hollow; why are you not taking Alice's concerns seriously? -- Generalizing, it's impossible to debunk an obviously false claim without subtly reinforcing the feeling that there must be some valid point being made. After all, would anyone be talking if there weren't facts on both sides? Because engaging with a batshit idea effectively helps promote it, the best thing to do with such an idea is to hustle the 'bat' out of the conversation as quickly as possible, before you find that the conversation is now entertaining angels, square circles, and multiple Atlantii. Yes, the need to downregulate dangerously absurd voices is in tension with free speech. Yes, it is still a necessary practice. Yet, ultimately, one must also make peace with entropy. Over the long term, no conversation can withstand batshit. Sooner or later, the convo will turn. Sooner or later, Alice will be celebrated.
- kodyo 4y ago
  What part was batshit? I mean, the evidence has only been moving toward Hancock’s theories over the last 30 years, not away from it.
  - defrost 4y ago
    They finally found a turd from Atlantis ??!! > “Why is there no evidence for this Ice Age civilization when we have plentiful evidence for hunter-gatherers all over the world at this time?” Dibble asked. “The truth is in the trash.” Every living being leaves something behind, but no refuse at all has turned up from Atlantis. “You’re going to clean up all your trash and vaporize it?”
    - kodyo 4y ago
      OK, well, attacking the fringiest speculations doesn't do the establishment any favors. The nut of the whole thing seems to be that humans were doing sophisticated things about 8000 years earlier than academia were telling us even 10 years ago. Speculating on what was happening doesn't seem like something beyond the pale of reasonable discourse.
      - posterboy 4y ago
        But that's not news. It's known in academia, you are just not in academia, not at any level where it would matter. > Speculating on what was happening doesn't seem like something beyond the pale of reasonable discourse. No, yes it is entirely unreasonable in a world wide publicity stunt if all you have is a napkin calculation and no hard evidence of your own.
        kodyo 4y ago
        Do academics feel like it's important to bring the normies up to speed on what they know or don't know? It seems like a good opportunity for an enterprising establishment figure to step up and explain why the Hancock idea is wrong. Preferably with an argument that's better than "he's not an archaeologist plus he's probably racist because that's what I'm afraid of being called so that's what I'll call him." I'd watch that.
        jcranmer 4y ago
        Actually, yes they do, in large part. The problem is that the people who produce the documentaries don't want to make "let's talk about modern archaeology" documentaries--they think lay audiences won't lap it up, and so instead want to shift everything to "crusader against orthodox archaeology" (which usually means something akin to Hancock or Ancient Aliens) instead.
        AlotOfReading 4y ago
        They have on many, many occasions. Here's an example: the Nov 2019 special edition of the SAA magazine [1] is dedicated almost entirely to debunking some of Hancock's claims in a recent book and explaining why they're so problematic in context. The reason you're probably not aware of things like this is that public awareness of the discussion is very one-sided. People like Hancock are fantastic at getting their narrative into the public consciousness. Good academics (almost inherently) are not. [1] http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?i=634462 http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?i=634462
  - cpleppert 4y ago
    >> I mean, the evidence has only been moving toward Hancock’s theories over the last 30 years, not away from it. I'm sorry. What? More raw research has been conducted in the last 30 years than in the entire history of archeology up to that point. Absolutely none of it provides even the slimmest speck of confirmation for this guy's nonsense.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      He predicted that monumental construction dating to the end of the younger Dryas would be found. It was. He predicted that a comet strike at the onset of the Younger Dryas would be demonstrated. It was. 30+ genera suddenly vanished from North America, along with any hint of Clovis toolmaking. He does better than anybody with his qualifications has any right to. His wacky speculations trace back to unaccounted evidence.
- nverno 4y ago
  > Yes, the need to downregulate dangerously absurd voices is in tension with free speech. Yes, it is still a necessary practice. What is dangerous about his theories? Every culture I've heard of has their own origin myths, what is so dangerous about this man creating one of his own? I don't see astronomers raging against flat-earthers. People having different beliefs might be cumbersome or annoying, but it's rarely dangerous.
  - 1attice 4y ago
    Astronomers can and do rage against flat-earthers; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8132700/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8132700/ What is dangerous is not that a harmless old man is tenuously attached to reality, but rather that a corporation with global reach has discovered how lucrative falsehood can be when slickly produced & released at scale. That is dangerous, because not only is it harmful in the immediate term, but because it strongly implies that they will do so again. Whatever checks-and-balances used to exist at Netflix on what they disingenously call "creative freedom" are simply no match for a contracting market.
    - SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
      I guess I'm not sure what you're demonstrating with this link. I watched Behind the Curve, and it generally treated flat-earth proponents as nice, well-meaning people who've just gotten themselves stuck in a rut where no evidence will convince them. That seems like the right attitude towards this kind of theory to me. Perhaps some of the scientists in the movie were exasperated by how obviously false flat earth is, but I can't imagine any of them writing a letter like the one in the source article, saying that flat earth theory is harmful and you're racist if you believe in it.
      - 1attice 4y ago
        Yes, the flat-earthers are indeed shown as relatable, flawed, silly human beings, but the show is still driven by scientists. Imagine how _Behind the Curve_ would have played if it had instead shown those astronomers as being part of a secretive conspiracy to conceal the real geometry of the world. That's what Netflix is playing now.
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_holism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_holism
- globalreset 4y ago
  > Because facts do not speak for themselves. That's just load of anti-science nonsense. The whole premise of scientific progress is our ability to convince people, backing our arguments with facts. Your attitude is of religious fundamentalist, where discussing truths about god can be done only by a carefully selected and prepared priest elite, and non-priest people are unworthy and can't be trusted with it, and would be best thrown into a lake for heresy if they have any opinions on their own.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  I really don’t understand what’s so batshit about the claim that anatomically modern human with similar brains as modern humans could have built up civilizations and structures a few thousand years before the currently accepted dates.
  - cpleppert 4y ago
    Because it essentially requires everything known about the recent past to be wrong. Human societies and civilizations are incredibly complex and don't just pop out of nowhere and then disappear without a trace. We have an overwhelming amount of evidence on the human development from genetics to radio-carbon dating, to deciphered languages to the spread of technological innovations. It is as nonsensical as claiming that the latest Ryzen is really from the 1990s. Of course, this guys 'theory' is not based on actual evidence; so there is no reason to even take it seriously.
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      > Human societies and civilizations are incredibly complex and don't just pop out of nowhere and then disappear without a trace. But they absolutely do. "Traces" of ancient societies are incredibly sparse, very little other than stone can survive for thousands of years. And what we call "civilization" rests on resource availability; when people only have enough resources for bare subsistence, social collapse is inevitable.
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      The disappear without a trace part is entirely possible if you assume they were largely centered around areas that are now underwater or covered under earth.
- npc12345 4y ago
oh_my_goodness 4y ago
"Who, how and why built Göbekli Tepe so early? " Nobody knows. Isn't that obvious? What am I missing?
- kodyo 4y ago
  Are people disallowed from speculating on what's happening until somebody in academia gets grant money to research it?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    I mean, kind of? Any speculation on what's up with a city thousands of years older than expected should be rooted in, you know, someone going and investigating the city in depth. That usually starts with a grant.
croes 4y ago
How many sites show the facts that earth isn't flat and still people believe it's flat? If even such provable facts aren't convincing then you don't stand a chance in the subject of history.

Instead of wasting time on petty stuff, how about a nice website with responses to his claims? Who, how and why built Göbekli Tepe so early? Let the facts speak for themselves.

1attice 4y ago

Because facts do not speak for themselves. Because what happens instead is that you repeat your interlocutor's claims, you validate the existence of a discourse at all -- and discourses necessarily have two sides. Consider the following imagined conversation: -- Alice: The Earth is hollow. Bob: The Earth isn't hollow; here are some facts about the Earth that speak against this claim. Carol: [to David, attempting neutrality] Disagreements about the hollowness of the planet continue David [to Bob]: Experts disagree on whether or not the Earth is hollow; why are you not taking Alice's concerns seriously? -- Generalizing, it's impossible to debunk an obviously false claim without subtly reinforcing the feeling that there must be some valid point being made. After all, would anyone be talking if there weren't facts on both sides? Because engaging with a batshit idea effectively helps promote it, the best thing to do with such an idea is to hustle the 'bat' out of the conversation as quickly as possible, before you find that the conversation is now entertaining angels, square circles, and multiple Atlantii. Yes, the need to downregulate dangerously absurd voices is in tension with free speech. Yes, it is still a necessary practice. Yet, ultimately, one must also make peace with entropy. Over the long term, no conversation can withstand batshit. Sooner or later, the convo will turn. Sooner or later, Alice will be celebrated.

kodyo 4y ago
What part was batshit? I mean, the evidence has only been moving toward Hancock’s theories over the last 30 years, not away from it.
- defrost 4y ago
  They finally found a turd from Atlantis ??!! > “Why is there no evidence for this Ice Age civilization when we have plentiful evidence for hunter-gatherers all over the world at this time?” Dibble asked. “The truth is in the trash.” Every living being leaves something behind, but no refuse at all has turned up from Atlantis. “You’re going to clean up all your trash and vaporize it?”
  - kodyo 4y ago
    OK, well, attacking the fringiest speculations doesn't do the establishment any favors. The nut of the whole thing seems to be that humans were doing sophisticated things about 8000 years earlier than academia were telling us even 10 years ago. Speculating on what was happening doesn't seem like something beyond the pale of reasonable discourse.
    - posterboy 4y ago
      But that's not news. It's known in academia, you are just not in academia, not at any level where it would matter. > Speculating on what was happening doesn't seem like something beyond the pale of reasonable discourse. No, yes it is entirely unreasonable in a world wide publicity stunt if all you have is a napkin calculation and no hard evidence of your own.
      - kodyo 4y ago
        Do academics feel like it's important to bring the normies up to speed on what they know or don't know? It seems like a good opportunity for an enterprising establishment figure to step up and explain why the Hancock idea is wrong. Preferably with an argument that's better than "he's not an archaeologist plus he's probably racist because that's what I'm afraid of being called so that's what I'll call him." I'd watch that.
        jcranmer 4y ago
        Actually, yes they do, in large part. The problem is that the people who produce the documentaries don't want to make "let's talk about modern archaeology" documentaries--they think lay audiences won't lap it up, and so instead want to shift everything to "crusader against orthodox archaeology" (which usually means something akin to Hancock or Ancient Aliens) instead.
        AlotOfReading 4y ago
        They have on many, many occasions. Here's an example: the Nov 2019 special edition of the SAA magazine [1] is dedicated almost entirely to debunking some of Hancock's claims in a recent book and explaining why they're so problematic in context. The reason you're probably not aware of things like this is that public awareness of the discussion is very one-sided. People like Hancock are fantastic at getting their narrative into the public consciousness. Good academics (almost inherently) are not. [1] http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?i=634462 http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?i=634462
- cpleppert 4y ago
  >> I mean, the evidence has only been moving toward Hancock’s theories over the last 30 years, not away from it. I'm sorry. What? More raw research has been conducted in the last 30 years than in the entire history of archeology up to that point. Absolutely none of it provides even the slimmest speck of confirmation for this guy's nonsense.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    He predicted that monumental construction dating to the end of the younger Dryas would be found. It was. He predicted that a comet strike at the onset of the Younger Dryas would be demonstrated. It was. 30+ genera suddenly vanished from North America, along with any hint of Clovis toolmaking. He does better than anybody with his qualifications has any right to. His wacky speculations trace back to unaccounted evidence.
nverno 4y ago
> Yes, the need to downregulate dangerously absurd voices is in tension with free speech. Yes, it is still a necessary practice. What is dangerous about his theories? Every culture I've heard of has their own origin myths, what is so dangerous about this man creating one of his own? I don't see astronomers raging against flat-earthers. People having different beliefs might be cumbersome or annoying, but it's rarely dangerous.
- 1attice 4y ago
  Astronomers can and do rage against flat-earthers; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8132700/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8132700/ What is dangerous is not that a harmless old man is tenuously attached to reality, but rather that a corporation with global reach has discovered how lucrative falsehood can be when slickly produced & released at scale. That is dangerous, because not only is it harmful in the immediate term, but because it strongly implies that they will do so again. Whatever checks-and-balances used to exist at Netflix on what they disingenously call "creative freedom" are simply no match for a contracting market.
  - SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
    I guess I'm not sure what you're demonstrating with this link. I watched Behind the Curve, and it generally treated flat-earth proponents as nice, well-meaning people who've just gotten themselves stuck in a rut where no evidence will convince them. That seems like the right attitude towards this kind of theory to me. Perhaps some of the scientists in the movie were exasperated by how obviously false flat earth is, but I can't imagine any of them writing a letter like the one in the source article, saying that flat earth theory is harmful and you're racist if you believe in it.
    - 1attice 4y ago
      Yes, the flat-earthers are indeed shown as relatable, flawed, silly human beings, but the show is still driven by scientists. Imagine how _Behind the Curve_ would have played if it had instead shown those astronomers as being part of a secretive conspiracy to conceal the real geometry of the world. That's what Netflix is playing now.
pyinstallwoes 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_holism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_holism
globalreset 4y ago
> Because facts do not speak for themselves. That's just load of anti-science nonsense. The whole premise of scientific progress is our ability to convince people, backing our arguments with facts. Your attitude is of religious fundamentalist, where discussing truths about god can be done only by a carefully selected and prepared priest elite, and non-priest people are unworthy and can't be trusted with it, and would be best thrown into a lake for heresy if they have any opinions on their own.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
I really don’t understand what’s so batshit about the claim that anatomically modern human with similar brains as modern humans could have built up civilizations and structures a few thousand years before the currently accepted dates.
- cpleppert 4y ago
  Because it essentially requires everything known about the recent past to be wrong. Human societies and civilizations are incredibly complex and don't just pop out of nowhere and then disappear without a trace. We have an overwhelming amount of evidence on the human development from genetics to radio-carbon dating, to deciphered languages to the spread of technological innovations. It is as nonsensical as claiming that the latest Ryzen is really from the 1990s. Of course, this guys 'theory' is not based on actual evidence; so there is no reason to even take it seriously.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    > Human societies and civilizations are incredibly complex and don't just pop out of nowhere and then disappear without a trace. But they absolutely do. "Traces" of ancient societies are incredibly sparse, very little other than stone can survive for thousands of years. And what we call "civilization" rests on resource availability; when people only have enough resources for bare subsistence, social collapse is inevitable.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    The disappear without a trace part is entirely possible if you assume they were largely centered around areas that are now underwater or covered under earth.
npc12345 4y ago

oh_my_goodness 4y ago

"Who, how and why built Göbekli Tepe so early? " Nobody knows. Isn't that obvious? What am I missing?

kodyo 4y ago
Are people disallowed from speculating on what's happening until somebody in academia gets grant money to research it?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- saalweachter 4y ago
  I mean, kind of? Any speculation on what's up with a city thousands of years older than expected should be rooted in, you know, someone going and investigating the city in depth. That usually starts with a grant.

croes 4y ago

How many sites show the facts that earth isn't flat and still people believe it's flat? If even such provable facts aren't convincing then you don't stand a chance in the subject of history.