3 ms·

> There are catastrophes and setbacks, but there is no case of entire civilization going down the drain. Indus Valley and Minoan cultures are but only the most

> There are catastrophes and setbacks, but there is no case of entire civilization going down the drain. Indus Valley and Minoan cultures are but only the most well-known ones. Teotihuacan is an interesting "maybe"--the dynamics at the end of Mesoamerican Classical period are less well-known than the Bronze Age collapse (which itself is pretty enigmatic). > The more advanced knowledge that is nascent in the teaching of the sciences does not seem to have propagated itself to how science is applied at the largest scale, less, how the science explains things to the public. The problem isn't the scientists. Popular anthropology and history, as fielded to the public, makes the goal of telling people the truth subordinate to a particular narrative. The cultural elite of today are the ones that are pushing this narrative, and shamefully, the things in the history books in primary and secondary education are part of this (witness the extreme political backlash today towards the teaching of the idea that our ancestors once did bad things). Scientists have been pushing back against this for literal decades--longer than you or I have been alive, most likely. People like Hancock aren't helping. Instead, they seem to prefer things like, well this statement: > As said, this is just scientific conservatism that exists due to the scholastic roots of modern scientific establishment. I've explained multiple times already how it's not the scientists who believe this, and you're still coming back telling me that this is the rot in the field of science that needs to be exterminated. One gets the feeling that it's not about trying to uncover the truth, but participating in a crusade against "the establishment." (I'd respond to the other points, but quite frankly, I don't see the point. It's clear that you're invested in the narrative, given that you're completely ignoring the points I'm making that there are alternative explanations which explain the same fact, so providing more facts seems unlikely to do anything.)

zozbot234 4y ago
> I've explained multiple times already how it's not the scientists who believe this Scientists might acknowlege isolated facts, but they're very bad at trying to reach the most parsimonious explanation by putting two and two together. The enduring conservatism mostly shows up wrt. what explanations are considered out-of-the-ordinary and not acceptable without overwhelming evidence, which by definition is hard to come by in the best of cases. For some reason, complex societies in the very far past are considered too outlandish even though they're a natural consequence of (1) human behavioral modernity, and (2) some places having enough resources to generate large surpluses and sustain activities other than bare survival.
unity1001 4y ago
> Indus Valley and Minoan cultures are but only the most well-known ones. Teotihuacan is an interesting "maybe"--the dynamics at the end of Mesoamerican Classical period are less well-known than the Bronze Age collapse (which itself is pretty enigmatic). I didnt say 'an entire civilization'. I said 'entire civilization'. Those are all localized catastrophes, affecting at most multiple localized civilizations. While Indus, Minoan collapses totally local. Whereas Bronze Age collapse is larger, it still affected multiple civilizations while leaving a lot of others intact. Egypt for one. Mesopotamians. Chinese civilizations, Indian civilizations. None of them are cases of entire civilization or 80-90% of all civilization going down the drain. Younger dryas event would be the collapse of entire human civilization as it existed then. > The problem isn't the scientists. Popular anthropology and history, as fielded to the public, makes the goal of telling people the truth subordinate to a particular narrative. The cultural elite of today are the ones that are pushing this narrative Not at all. What is known as public knowledge, what is taught at schools, and what is 'acceptable' in mainstream are all defined by the authority and advocacy of prominent scientists of the time. Today's science is no less conservative than the time of Champollion when he dechiphered the Rosetta Stone and entire scientific establishment lashed out against him because he contradicted the established 'knowledge'. If the prominent scientists change their approach and advocacy, entire society eventually changes. Just like it happened after the Rosetta Stone, but only gradually. > People like Hancock aren't helping. Instead, they seem to prefer things like, well this statement: > As said, this is just scientific conservatism that exists due to the scholastic roots of modern scientific establishment. It wasn't different with Champollion. The scientific conservatism hampers science greatly. And its not only social sciences. It even plagues more objective sciences. http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html > I've explained multiple times already how it's not the scientists who believe this, and you're still coming back telling me that this is the rot in the field of science that needs to be exterminated.... Say all of that after you read the above reference.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  > Say all of that after you read the above reference. I'm more than willing to do so. That's not a very good reference, because if you're going to do any in-depth study of how and why barriers to new ideas crop up repeatedly in the history of science, you need to spend more than a paragraph explaining stuff. (Also, where in hell is Lavoisier? The debunking of phlogiston makes such a wonderful addition to these kinds of lists!) And when you study in depth, "they were persecuted for being right" turns out to actually be at strong odds with the historical data. But hey, where have we heard narrative being more important than facts before... Take the most recent example: Schechtman and quasicrystals. It turns out, if you're not familiar with the field, that there's a mathematical theorem that proves that quasicrystals can't exist. And also it's a field that is notorious for being finicky in experimentation--you need good crystals, which are hard to get. So it's only natural that saying "here's this thing that we know can't exist" is going to get him pilloried for saying so... but that's not really what happened. A lot of people had seen similar things before, so the initial reaction was, while controversial, still had a lot of "hmm, that's funny" reaction rather than outright rejection (note that the paper was accepted without much fuss). Around the same time, Penrose tilings were discovered, which provided clues as to why the mathematical theorem was in fact wrong (it had an assumption that crystals could only be periodic, whereas quasicrystals are aperiodic), and the main organization of crystallographers explicitly changes its mandate to include quasicrystals within 7 years of the original publication--extraordinarily rapid. Sure, Linus Pauling was a very loud and vocal opponent of quasicrystals, and spent the rest of his life trying to prove Schechtman wrong. But the field moved on despite this opposition. There is another point that is often made here: if someone is resorting to citing "Galileo was persecuted for being right!" as a defense for their new scientific theory, they are almost certainly a crank. (See, e.g., https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html).

zozbot234 4y ago

> I've explained multiple times already how it's not the scientists who believe this Scientists might acknowlege isolated facts, but they're very bad at trying to reach the most parsimonious explanation by putting two and two together. The enduring conservatism mostly shows up wrt. what explanations are considered out-of-the-ordinary and not acceptable without overwhelming evidence, which by definition is hard to come by in the best of cases. For some reason, complex societies in the very far past are considered too outlandish even though they're a natural consequence of (1) human behavioral modernity, and (2) some places having enough resources to generate large surpluses and sustain activities other than bare survival.

unity1001 4y ago

> Indus Valley and Minoan cultures are but only the most well-known ones. Teotihuacan is an interesting "maybe"--the dynamics at the end of Mesoamerican Classical period are less well-known than the Bronze Age collapse (which itself is pretty enigmatic). I didnt say 'an entire civilization'. I said 'entire civilization'. Those are all localized catastrophes, affecting at most multiple localized civilizations. While Indus, Minoan collapses totally local. Whereas Bronze Age collapse is larger, it still affected multiple civilizations while leaving a lot of others intact. Egypt for one. Mesopotamians. Chinese civilizations, Indian civilizations. None of them are cases of entire civilization or 80-90% of all civilization going down the drain. Younger dryas event would be the collapse of entire human civilization as it existed then. > The problem isn't the scientists. Popular anthropology and history, as fielded to the public, makes the goal of telling people the truth subordinate to a particular narrative. The cultural elite of today are the ones that are pushing this narrative Not at all. What is known as public knowledge, what is taught at schools, and what is 'acceptable' in mainstream are all defined by the authority and advocacy of prominent scientists of the time. Today's science is no less conservative than the time of Champollion when he dechiphered the Rosetta Stone and entire scientific establishment lashed out against him because he contradicted the established 'knowledge'. If the prominent scientists change their approach and advocacy, entire society eventually changes. Just like it happened after the Rosetta Stone, but only gradually. > People like Hancock aren't helping. Instead, they seem to prefer things like, well this statement: > As said, this is just scientific conservatism that exists due to the scholastic roots of modern scientific establishment. It wasn't different with Champollion. The scientific conservatism hampers science greatly. And its not only social sciences. It even plagues more objective sciences. http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html > I've explained multiple times already how it's not the scientists who believe this, and you're still coming back telling me that this is the rot in the field of science that needs to be exterminated.... Say all of that after you read the above reference.

jcranmer 4y ago
> Say all of that after you read the above reference. I'm more than willing to do so. That's not a very good reference, because if you're going to do any in-depth study of how and why barriers to new ideas crop up repeatedly in the history of science, you need to spend more than a paragraph explaining stuff. (Also, where in hell is Lavoisier? The debunking of phlogiston makes such a wonderful addition to these kinds of lists!) And when you study in depth, "they were persecuted for being right" turns out to actually be at strong odds with the historical data. But hey, where have we heard narrative being more important than facts before... Take the most recent example: Schechtman and quasicrystals. It turns out, if you're not familiar with the field, that there's a mathematical theorem that proves that quasicrystals can't exist. And also it's a field that is notorious for being finicky in experimentation--you need good crystals, which are hard to get. So it's only natural that saying "here's this thing that we know can't exist" is going to get him pilloried for saying so... but that's not really what happened. A lot of people had seen similar things before, so the initial reaction was, while controversial, still had a lot of "hmm, that's funny" reaction rather than outright rejection (note that the paper was accepted without much fuss). Around the same time, Penrose tilings were discovered, which provided clues as to why the mathematical theorem was in fact wrong (it had an assumption that crystals could only be periodic, whereas quasicrystals are aperiodic), and the main organization of crystallographers explicitly changes its mandate to include quasicrystals within 7 years of the original publication--extraordinarily rapid. Sure, Linus Pauling was a very loud and vocal opponent of quasicrystals, and spent the rest of his life trying to prove Schechtman wrong. But the field moved on despite this opposition. There is another point that is often made here: if someone is resorting to citing "Galileo was persecuted for being right!" as a defense for their new scientific theory, they are almost certainly a crank. (See, e.g., https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html).