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> and that therefore wink and nudge something something aliens. You had me till this. The conspiracy theorists actually make very good points. They’ve been vi

> and that therefore wink and nudge something something aliens. You had me till this. The conspiracy theorists actually make very good points. They’ve been vindicated by discoveries at Gobekli Tepi and others that basically demolish the strongest argument the Egyptologists had against a significantly older Sphinx - that no other megalithic structure had been found till then. This is one of those situations where the conspiracy theorists make a far more convincing argument than mainstream, and entertainingly, all the recent discoveries in archeology have only strengthened the positions of the conspiracy theorists. I would look at them again with fresh eyes. The younger dryas impact hypothesis looks especially convincing.

GolfPopper 3y ago
The conspiracy theorists look more convincing on an initial read because they cherry pick evidence and often misrepresent it, too. The one I ran into in college is the TIGHAR group, who have some unique theories about where Amelia Earhart's plane was lost. They sound very convincing... until you realize every piece of evidence is only examined from the perspective of how it proves their theory, and any other views are ignored or dismissed. The folks who actually care about the truth, on the other hand, tend to qualify their evidence and admit to uncertainties.
- mcv 3y ago
  There's plenty of room for speculation, and it can be a lot of fun to do so, but it's important to remember that it's speculation. The moment you insist that it absolutely must be true and all evidence to the contrary is proof of a conspiracy to cover it up, is the moment you're abandoning reality.
cedilla 3y ago
Conspiracy theorists make dozens of points, most of them contradictory. They are bound to be right by accident sometimes. They are usually hilariously wrong though. Especially when it comes to Egyptology.
- tazjin 3y ago
  > They are usually hilariously wrong though Of course you put in the qualifier "usually" here to be able to reject any arguments against you, but just in case: What's your theory on how the extremely precisely manufactured granite vases found in Egypt were made?
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Why do you think it is a problem to make very precise things with effectively basic mechanical tools? Also, keep in mind, the ones that didn't pan out might have been discarded etc., so you are seeing the good ones.
- Fervicus 3y ago
  Imagine if all the great minds of the past stopped asking questions just because someone thought they were hilariously wrong.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Conspiracy theorists are not usually great minds.
    - notahacker 3y ago
      But then again, most of them are perfectly adequate minds that could have got a lot more right if they'd ever questioned themselves rather than assuming other people's disagreements merely proved how great they were...
    - seanw444 3y ago
      Those that accept that everything is as they're told are also usually not great minds.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        The same can be said of those that reject everything they're told.
Simon_ORourke 3y ago
So their argument is that since Gobekli Tepi is old (by sediment layer analysis), therefore the pyramids at Giza are older yet again? That's just bluster and whataboutery.
- snovv_crash 3y ago
  No, just the sphinx. Based on erosion analysis of the head vs. the rest of the body, the indications are that the sphinx is much older the latest work which was done on the head.
- tmn 3y ago
  It’s the counter. One of the rebuttals to the conjecture that the sphinx is older use to be that if it was, other older structures would exist (and at the time they did not)
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Older man made structures. Plenty of older structures exist and it doesn't prove much of anything, that older man made structures exist is always a possibility and even today there may well be older structures still hidden. But the argument that something hasn't been found yet is a weak one anyway and the local conditions vary enough that that alone might be sufficient explanation. Being buried underground versus sitting exposed in the desert could well explain why most if not all but less than a handful of older structures have disappeared.
fsckboy 3y ago
I find it cleans up "conspiracy theory" analysis to clean up the language. "Conspiracy hypotheses" are worthy of consideration, but not belief. Have a stack of evidence? you might have a conspiracy theory, but have you ruled out the other hypotheses? People are just used to using the term "conspiracy theory" to trash inconvenient ideas that might be true. Wuhan lab funding, leak, and coverup was a conspiracy hypothesis worth consideration.
- Tor3 3y ago
  That's not why that stuff is labelled "conspiracy theory". What's labelled like that are theories about conspiracies, e.g. that all 400000 who worked on the Apollo program was in it together to fake a moon landing, or that all the world's archaeologists are "in it together" to suppress information (one which Mr. Hancock subscribes to). Theories that are just claimed wacky and requiring no conspiracy "to suppress the truth" are called fringe theories, not conspiracy theories. So, yes, "Fringe hypotheses" may be worthy of consideration, sometimes.. but conspiracy hypotheses are not worthy of consideration, because for those to turn out true would actually need a real huge conspiracy of people who knows it's true but agree to suppress said truth. If anything you hear needs a conspiracy in order to not be accepted then you can safely dismiss it. If it's just fringe then feel free to pursue it.
  - suoduandao3 3y ago
    Why dismiss conspiracy hypotheses out of hand? Conspiracies happen all the time. As Data becomes a more important resource, asymmetric access to data will become an ever more prominent feature of those in power. I would say the important thing is to recognize that our pattern recognition overfits for malicious actors with hidden knowledge, probably for evolutionary reasons. The fact we evolved to have more false positives than negatives in this field is emphatically not a reason to dismiss all such hypotheses out of hand.
    - the_af 3y ago
      > Why dismiss conspiracy hypotheses out of hand? "Out of hand" is too harsh, but we should lean towards dismissing them unless/until the evidence is compelling. Why? Well, simply put, because doing otherwise wastes too much time and attention. Conspiracy theories are almost always created by people who are not subject matter experts (at best they are self-taught, but usually this means they watched lots of dodgy YouTube videos), bypassing or ignoring all procedures that exist for a good reason, propelled more by a "I want to believe" rather than a skeptical point of view, and are far easier to create than actual science. Doing a proper experiment based on clear assumptions is hard. Being skeptical, trying to rule out confounding variables, considering alternative explanations, all of that is hard. Anyone can create a conspiracy theory, and it requires no skill other than being passionate and having a platform -- like YouTube -- to disseminate your fringe opinion. And because conspiracy theorists seldom follow the scientific method, they can always "ad-hoc patch up" whatever gap you find in their "theory", so it's an uphill battle. It requires no effort to make wild assertions, but it takes a lot of effort to convincingly disprove them. So it makes sense to dismiss them as default. If one is true, it will gather compelling evidence with time regardless of the crackpot that is currently proposing the theory.
morsch 3y ago
I thought the Gobekli Tepi age thing was a fringe theory? Not aliens style inanity, but not widely believed in the archaeological mainstream. So maybe a bit early to call it vindicating evidence? Edit: sorry, I confused it with Gunung Padang, see below.
- klabb3 3y ago
  11500 years ago according to Wikipedia. I don’t think that’s disputed. There’s a lot still underground and also more sites in the area. “Turns out the hunter gatherers where more advanced than we thought”
  - mcv 3y ago
    Hunter gatherers were still humans. Theoretically capable of everything we're capable of. The idea that they would get together to build something big is not impossibly far-fetched, but the fact that it was abandoned shows that their society wasn't able to maintain it in the long term. That requires more complex social structures.
    - Maken 3y ago
      Göbekli Tepe was not abandoned but purposely buried. It is composed of several successive structures, built and then buried over the span more than a thousand years. That's a considerable long term commitment.
    - fiedzia 3y ago
      > the fact that it was abandoned shows that their society wasn't able to maintain it in the long term A flood, drought, climate change, war or better jobs elsewhere were common reasons for abandoning locations. We have many abandoned projects today, that doesn't have to say anything about social structures.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - morsch 3y ago
tazjin 3y ago
It's ridiculous that everyone with alternative ideas is labeled a "conspiracy theorist". For example, there's a bunch of people with experience in engineering, material science and so on who've been spending a lot of time doing extensive analysis (high-resolution 3D scans, material analysis with state of the art tools etc.)[0][1][2] of ... granite vases from Egypt. They're not coming up with theories saying "aliens made these vases!!!" or something, they're saying "we don't know how these were made, but with modern knowledge we believe it would not have been possible to make them by hand, and here's a list of arguments for why". Yet they're labeled as conspiracy theorists and ridiculed, by people who're convinced that whatever they learned in school 20 years ago is the immutable ground truth, or - worse - by people whose careers are based on this ground truth being correct. Maybe another factor is that a lot of people involved in these projects are not from academic career backgrounds, so they're excluded on the basis of elitism. [0]: https://unchartedx.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Danville-Summary-Results-2023-10-01.pdf https://unchartedx.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Danvi... [1]: https://unchartedx.com/site/vase-scan-resources/ https://unchartedx.com/site/vase-scan-resources/ [2]: https://unsigned.io/granite-artefact/ https://unsigned.io/granite-artefact/ EDIT: Added links for people who aren't aware of these things going on.
- billyoyo 3y ago
  https://www.metabunk.org/threads/claim-ancient-egyptians-could-not-work-granite-without-high-tech-diamond-tools.12963/#post-290360 https://www.metabunk.org/threads/claim-ancient-egyptians-cou... Here's a nice compilation of evidence showing it's completely explainable how they could have made them.
  - tazjin 3y ago
    That thread is all over the place, the only two vase-related things I found were: a) A woman in Russia hand-made a vase that looks similar to the Egyptian ones. b) Some guy said the vases are forged, and made in modern times, because their provenance is not proven. Neither of these strike me as particular interesting statements, and the rest of that thread is about completely unrelated topics. I closed it at the "Dudes Think They Can Prove Atlantis by Measuring a Vase" link, because that's exactly the kind of condescending crap I'm talking about.
the_af 3y ago
> The conspiracy theorists actually make very good points. Like what? Someone else mentioned there's a difference between "conspiracy theory" and "fringe theory". A fringe theory is one that is outside the mainstream (sometimes radically so) but need not involve a conspiracy; a "conspiracy theory" requires the addendum that "they" are suppressing the truth, "they" are out to get you, and this nebulous "they" is often large enough to be all-encompassing ("all scientists", "the world's governments", etc). Conspiracy theories may still be right ("the US government was hiding the truth about the Vietnam war") but often are simply psychotically wrong. Or maliciously wrong, since there is an industry for conspiracy theories, where it's more important to get your followers than to actually reach any sort of truth. That is, they are often knowingly a scam (like that thing about "alien corpses" that was recently in the news about the Mexican congress). There's a flaw with their non-scientific, non-methodical approach, too. We can reach the "truth" by randomly asserting things, but generally that's not the best way to go about it.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  My favourite conspiracy theory is that fringe conspiracy theories are a conspiracy to discredit conspiracy theories.
  - seanw444 3y ago
    And that one is just straight up not a theory. These are psyops that are openly admitted to by the world's various intelligence agencies.

GolfPopper 3y ago

The conspiracy theorists look more convincing on an initial read because they cherry pick evidence and often misrepresent it, too. The one I ran into in college is the TIGHAR group, who have some unique theories about where Amelia Earhart's plane was lost. They sound very convincing... until you realize every piece of evidence is only examined from the perspective of how it proves their theory, and any other views are ignored or dismissed. The folks who actually care about the truth, on the other hand, tend to qualify their evidence and admit to uncertainties.

mcv 3y ago
There's plenty of room for speculation, and it can be a lot of fun to do so, but it's important to remember that it's speculation. The moment you insist that it absolutely must be true and all evidence to the contrary is proof of a conspiracy to cover it up, is the moment you're abandoning reality.

cedilla 3y ago

Conspiracy theorists make dozens of points, most of them contradictory. They are bound to be right by accident sometimes. They are usually hilariously wrong though. Especially when it comes to Egyptology.

tazjin 3y ago
> They are usually hilariously wrong though Of course you put in the qualifier "usually" here to be able to reject any arguments against you, but just in case: What's your theory on how the extremely precisely manufactured granite vases found in Egypt were made?
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Why do you think it is a problem to make very precise things with effectively basic mechanical tools? Also, keep in mind, the ones that didn't pan out might have been discarded etc., so you are seeing the good ones.
Fervicus 3y ago
Imagine if all the great minds of the past stopped asking questions just because someone thought they were hilariously wrong.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Conspiracy theorists are not usually great minds.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    But then again, most of them are perfectly adequate minds that could have got a lot more right if they'd ever questioned themselves rather than assuming other people's disagreements merely proved how great they were...
  - seanw444 3y ago
    Those that accept that everything is as they're told are also usually not great minds.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      The same can be said of those that reject everything they're told.

Simon_ORourke 3y ago

So their argument is that since Gobekli Tepi is old (by sediment layer analysis), therefore the pyramids at Giza are older yet again? That's just bluster and whataboutery.

snovv_crash 3y ago
No, just the sphinx. Based on erosion analysis of the head vs. the rest of the body, the indications are that the sphinx is much older the latest work which was done on the head.
tmn 3y ago
It’s the counter. One of the rebuttals to the conjecture that the sphinx is older use to be that if it was, other older structures would exist (and at the time they did not)
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Older man made structures. Plenty of older structures exist and it doesn't prove much of anything, that older man made structures exist is always a possibility and even today there may well be older structures still hidden. But the argument that something hasn't been found yet is a weak one anyway and the local conditions vary enough that that alone might be sufficient explanation. Being buried underground versus sitting exposed in the desert could well explain why most if not all but less than a handful of older structures have disappeared.

fsckboy 3y ago

I find it cleans up "conspiracy theory" analysis to clean up the language. "Conspiracy hypotheses" are worthy of consideration, but not belief. Have a stack of evidence? you might have a conspiracy theory, but have you ruled out the other hypotheses? People are just used to using the term "conspiracy theory" to trash inconvenient ideas that might be true. Wuhan lab funding, leak, and coverup was a conspiracy hypothesis worth consideration.

Tor3 3y ago
That's not why that stuff is labelled "conspiracy theory". What's labelled like that are theories about conspiracies, e.g. that all 400000 who worked on the Apollo program was in it together to fake a moon landing, or that all the world's archaeologists are "in it together" to suppress information (one which Mr. Hancock subscribes to). Theories that are just claimed wacky and requiring no conspiracy "to suppress the truth" are called fringe theories, not conspiracy theories. So, yes, "Fringe hypotheses" may be worthy of consideration, sometimes.. but conspiracy hypotheses are not worthy of consideration, because for those to turn out true would actually need a real huge conspiracy of people who knows it's true but agree to suppress said truth. If anything you hear needs a conspiracy in order to not be accepted then you can safely dismiss it. If it's just fringe then feel free to pursue it.
- suoduandao3 3y ago
  Why dismiss conspiracy hypotheses out of hand? Conspiracies happen all the time. As Data becomes a more important resource, asymmetric access to data will become an ever more prominent feature of those in power. I would say the important thing is to recognize that our pattern recognition overfits for malicious actors with hidden knowledge, probably for evolutionary reasons. The fact we evolved to have more false positives than negatives in this field is emphatically not a reason to dismiss all such hypotheses out of hand.
  - the_af 3y ago
    > Why dismiss conspiracy hypotheses out of hand? "Out of hand" is too harsh, but we should lean towards dismissing them unless/until the evidence is compelling. Why? Well, simply put, because doing otherwise wastes too much time and attention. Conspiracy theories are almost always created by people who are not subject matter experts (at best they are self-taught, but usually this means they watched lots of dodgy YouTube videos), bypassing or ignoring all procedures that exist for a good reason, propelled more by a "I want to believe" rather than a skeptical point of view, and are far easier to create than actual science. Doing a proper experiment based on clear assumptions is hard. Being skeptical, trying to rule out confounding variables, considering alternative explanations, all of that is hard. Anyone can create a conspiracy theory, and it requires no skill other than being passionate and having a platform -- like YouTube -- to disseminate your fringe opinion. And because conspiracy theorists seldom follow the scientific method, they can always "ad-hoc patch up" whatever gap you find in their "theory", so it's an uphill battle. It requires no effort to make wild assertions, but it takes a lot of effort to convincingly disprove them. So it makes sense to dismiss them as default. If one is true, it will gather compelling evidence with time regardless of the crackpot that is currently proposing the theory.

morsch 3y ago

I thought the Gobekli Tepi age thing was a fringe theory? Not aliens style inanity, but not widely believed in the archaeological mainstream. So maybe a bit early to call it vindicating evidence? Edit: sorry, I confused it with Gunung Padang, see below.

klabb3 3y ago
11500 years ago according to Wikipedia. I don’t think that’s disputed. There’s a lot still underground and also more sites in the area. “Turns out the hunter gatherers where more advanced than we thought”
- mcv 3y ago
  Hunter gatherers were still humans. Theoretically capable of everything we're capable of. The idea that they would get together to build something big is not impossibly far-fetched, but the fact that it was abandoned shows that their society wasn't able to maintain it in the long term. That requires more complex social structures.
  - Maken 3y ago
    Göbekli Tepe was not abandoned but purposely buried. It is composed of several successive structures, built and then buried over the span more than a thousand years. That's a considerable long term commitment.
  - fiedzia 3y ago
    > the fact that it was abandoned shows that their society wasn't able to maintain it in the long term A flood, drought, climate change, war or better jobs elsewhere were common reasons for abandoning locations. We have many abandoned projects today, that doesn't have to say anything about social structures.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- morsch 3y ago

tazjin 3y ago

It's ridiculous that everyone with alternative ideas is labeled a "conspiracy theorist". For example, there's a bunch of people with experience in engineering, material science and so on who've been spending a lot of time doing extensive analysis (high-resolution 3D scans, material analysis with state of the art tools etc.)[0][1][2] of ... granite vases from Egypt. They're not coming up with theories saying "aliens made these vases!!!" or something, they're saying "we don't know how these were made, but with modern knowledge we believe it would not have been possible to make them by hand, and here's a list of arguments for why". Yet they're labeled as conspiracy theorists and ridiculed, by people who're convinced that whatever they learned in school 20 years ago is the immutable ground truth, or - worse - by people whose careers are based on this ground truth being correct. Maybe another factor is that a lot of people involved in these projects are not from academic career backgrounds, so they're excluded on the basis of elitism. [0]: https://unchartedx.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Danville-Summary-Results-2023-10-01.pdf https://unchartedx.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Danvi... [1]: https://unchartedx.com/site/vase-scan-resources/ https://unchartedx.com/site/vase-scan-resources/ [2]: https://unsigned.io/granite-artefact/ https://unsigned.io/granite-artefact/ EDIT: Added links for people who aren't aware of these things going on.

billyoyo 3y ago
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/claim-ancient-egyptians-could-not-work-granite-without-high-tech-diamond-tools.12963/#post-290360 https://www.metabunk.org/threads/claim-ancient-egyptians-cou... Here's a nice compilation of evidence showing it's completely explainable how they could have made them.
- tazjin 3y ago
  That thread is all over the place, the only two vase-related things I found were: a) A woman in Russia hand-made a vase that looks similar to the Egyptian ones. b) Some guy said the vases are forged, and made in modern times, because their provenance is not proven. Neither of these strike me as particular interesting statements, and the rest of that thread is about completely unrelated topics. I closed it at the "Dudes Think They Can Prove Atlantis by Measuring a Vase" link, because that's exactly the kind of condescending crap I'm talking about.

the_af 3y ago

> The conspiracy theorists actually make very good points. Like what? Someone else mentioned there's a difference between "conspiracy theory" and "fringe theory". A fringe theory is one that is outside the mainstream (sometimes radically so) but need not involve a conspiracy; a "conspiracy theory" requires the addendum that "they" are suppressing the truth, "they" are out to get you, and this nebulous "they" is often large enough to be all-encompassing ("all scientists", "the world's governments", etc). Conspiracy theories may still be right ("the US government was hiding the truth about the Vietnam war") but often are simply psychotically wrong. Or maliciously wrong, since there is an industry for conspiracy theories, where it's more important to get your followers than to actually reach any sort of truth. That is, they are often knowingly a scam (like that thing about "alien corpses" that was recently in the news about the Mexican congress). There's a flaw with their non-scientific, non-methodical approach, too. We can reach the "truth" by randomly asserting things, but generally that's not the best way to go about it.

rightbyte 3y ago
My favourite conspiracy theory is that fringe conspiracy theories are a conspiracy to discredit conspiracy theories.
- seanw444 3y ago
  And that one is just straight up not a theory. These are psyops that are openly admitted to by the world's various intelligence agencies.