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It usually is prudent to assume that professionals in foreign fields aren't idiots; that includes archeology and their knowledge of the existance of bonfires. J
by atwrk 3y ago
It usually is prudent to assume that professionals in foreign fields aren't idiots; that includes archeology and their knowledge of the existance of bonfires. Just skimming the paper for a few seconds makes the reasoning of the researchers pretty clear.
- caleb-allen 3y agoYes, but I'm a programmer.
- EliRivers 3y agoIndeed; the simple thinking you apply to sort some numbers, or to understand a brutally simple logic such as a programming language spec, gives you incredible insight into all fields of human endeavour, past and present.
- Kye 3y agoMaking a linked list is a lot like processing a lidar scan of a jungle canopy for signs of ruins, if you think about it. Am I being serious? I have no idea.
- datameta 3y agoOn a somewhat related note - I highly recommend visiting the Mayan ruins at the Coba archaelogical site. It has the tallest Mayan pyramid on the Yucatan peninsula, with half of it (the inaccessible rear) still inundated by dense jungle. A few tips: if you don't want to opt for a guided tour, prepare to turn down several pointed offers at the entrance. Also, there are small rickshaws for transportation - they will inflate the distances involved to get you to hire one - if you can take a few hours total of walking including breaks you don't need their services. Quite a place! Less squeaky clean than Chichen Itza.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- poulpy123 3y agoto be fair, programmers are experts in logs
- zaat 3y agoThe number of programmer problems I by reading logs make me skeptical of that
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 3y agoEspecially endeavours like wrestling. Try it sometime.
- mannyv 3y agoThe fact you think programming is about numbers shows you have no idea what programming is. The fact is, programming at a high level means analyzing thousands of dimensions of information and flattening them out into something executable by a dumb machine. We are literally expert at becoming experts. For any given data set there are a number of possible interpretations. Is that notch natural? They say yes, but I'm sure others in the field disagree as well.
- EliRivers 3y agoPerhaps I should reword my original comment. Here's the same meaning, expressed differently: "Software engineers often have an unjustified belief that they are intuitive experts in fields in which they have no training or experience." Including, very frequently, understanding written text.
- philipswood 3y agoHe didn't say programming is about numbers. His claim was that programming is a simple kind of thinking. He gives two representative examples: * The consideration of sorting algorithms (which in all fairness _is_ a staple in teaching algorithms), and * The use of simple logic - such is representative of programming language specs. I'd say that this is a fair summary - real life tends to be a lot more complicated that the problems faced by most programmers. Even more brutally: he is aiming quite high, a lot of programming is the minor stitching together of APIs without making too big of a mess. Few programmers ever seriously actually need to analyse thousands of dimensions of information - and I'd say that it is a safe bet that the ones who do are probably using numbers. To "We are literally expert at becoming experts.", I'd reply with https://xkcd.com/1112/ https://xkcd.com/1112/
- alex_lav 3y agoThe arrogance of this statement is wild.
- zaat 3y agoSurely you refer to this: https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/
- pmontra 3y agoProgrammer's hubris?
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoPrudent yes, but also, since it's science, challenging should always be an option. A lot research on e.g. female burials were done by male researchers who had male point-of-views, so they interpreted someone buried with a load of weaponry as male, while the actual science showed - later on - it was a woman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birka_grave_Bj_581 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birka_grave_Bj_581)
- liquidpele 3y ago> challenging should always be an option. By someone else in the field, not by some jackass online.
- InCityDreams 3y agoOh, the irony.
- liquidpele 3y agoI may be a jackass, but I’m not making claims about things I don’t know about.
- Hikikomori 3y agoBut did the professionals consider that it might be aliens?
- pvaldes 3y ago[flagged]
- woodruffw 3y agoThis is a discussion forum. It’s not “obvious” to everyone, including people who correctly identify their non-expertise. (This comment continues the trend of abusing the “appeal to authority.” Humanity collects and specializes knowledge because we recognize the general impossibility of knowing everything ourselves.)
- pr0zac 3y agoJesus christ the number of people that learned a list of fallacies but never understood them or their applications and now mindlessly accuse people online of them in ways that aren't at all applicable while thinking they're so much smarter than everyone else cause they memorized this list of gotchas that aren't actually gotchas regularly astounds me. Please learn what the fallacies actually mean and maybe read actual organized debate rules. I promise you, in one of those "the researcher has years of experience in the field and you're a programmer, they are more likely to be correct" is valid support for an argument and not some how negated by "I cast 'appeal to authority' fallacy" without an actual argument that indicates why the authority does not have weight.
- exoverito 3y agoAs Feynman once remarked, "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." Archaeology is a soft science at best and highly dependent on interpretation. Given the replication crises afflicting even hard sciences like medicine, we should be skeptical about the claims of any given researcher. And while a domain expert may be more likely to be correct than a layman, their overall probability of being correct may be less than chance, as in the case of pre-industrial doctors.
- AlotOfReading 3y agoI assure you that there's no replication crisis in archaeology. Why? Because almost nothing in archaeology uses replication. You can't excavate the same sections twice, you can't test the same samples twice, and you can't replicate the same historical events to test theories of formation processes. Archaeology is a historical science like evolutionary biology and geology.
- saalweachter 3y agoAs an outsider, you're best off waiting to hear the consensus of a field, rather than grabbing an arbitrary study and trying to evaluate its quality. It's hard to spot the difference between a good paper and a charlatan who carefully paints a picture that supports his claim or even outright fabricates data, unless you've read dozens or hundreds of papers in the field and know the lay of the land on who tends to be reliable and who are the well known cranks who have been publishing academic fan fiction for decades.
- oldpersonintx 3y agook, by what consensus was the "bonfire" conclusion reached? if the original claim is assumed bogus, why is the HN dismissal assumed true?
- saalweachter 3y agoI'm not assuming either claim is bogus or legit. I'm saying trying to divine the legitimacy of a study without much context beyond a handful of "Alice says X but Bob says Y" is a fool's errand. On any "X/not X" topic one side is probably going to be correct, but not necessarily for any good reason.
- pvaldes 3y agowe have an overcomplicated, never seen before, explanation involving a short structure of two short logs joined together for an unknown purpose that nobody could explain. Too short to be a building, too big to be a tool (Is this a 1mx1m house, a prehistoric walmart? a doll house? the earliest proof of a christian cross in the planet?) The structure somehow managed to survive for an awful lot of time, and was dated by a strange indirect method. If the sand is old, the wood is old (and the people sunbathing in the beach is also old). This is explanation 1. I proposed a much more simple explanation, that explains the notches, and also the position of the pieces, and also why the logs didn't root; and also a reasonable purpose for this structure that does not depend on extraordinary claims. This particular structure can be also easily replicated today This is explanation 2 One of this explanations can be published on Nature. One is more probable than the other. One, or none, of this explanations are correct I keep seeing people claiming that explanation 1 is correct "because experts are right, because they are experts (and know better)". A circular reasoning known in logic as fallacy of appeal to authority. Check the definition if you think that is used here incorrectly. Nope, this is not an acceptable proof of anything "You can't be right because, who do you think that you are, jackass?" is also an equally ludicrous response. Sorry If I broke your little Indiana Jones heart. Who do you assume that I am is not relevant. (LOL, you don't even know me). I see the experts proposing that as there is a notch, it must be an imaginary rope, glue or whatever to join the logs, to support their narrative. My explanation does not rely on hypothetical proofs like an imaginary rope (that lets admit it, nobody has found) Chop marks on firewood are expected, but don't imply necessarily "Tell Nature that they were trying to build a boudoir".
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago> It usually is prudent to assume that professionals in foreign fields aren't idiots No ones presuming idiocy, more dishonesty. What makes a better paper? Bonfire or "Earliest carpenters"
- poulpy123 3y agoto be fair, having such a giant jump between this discovery and the previous earliest log structure discovered incite to be cautious. There was a similar case with superconductivity few weeks ago, where the cautious were right against the researchers.
- riscy 3y agoThere is a lot more money to be made if you claim to have the secret formula for superconductivity, than discovering some evidence of ancient wooden tools/structure.
- Gibbon1 3y agoOff topic but I've been thinking about the difference in how logic works for programmers, engineers, and lawyers. A programmer can build a complicated logical thing and it'll work reliably. An engine can do that too but it takes a lot of effort to make it reliable. If a lawyer tries that it won't work. Because legal facts are to uncertain and the law conflicts with itself.