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The way they keep pushing things back such neat round numbers makes it feel like when tech evangelists say "Oh yeah we'll have everyone in self driving cars / B
by aprilthird2021 2y ago
The way they keep pushing things back such neat round numbers makes it feel like when tech evangelists say "Oh yeah we'll have everyone in self driving cars / BTC at $1M / safe AGI in 5 years / 10 years / 20 years / etc."
I know there's science behind the dating of these artifacts, but it just feels that way to me.
- kergonath 2y agoThe tidy round numbers come from the uncertainty of the datation method. It makes no sense to say, e.g. that they are 32049 years old when the dates are accurate to, say, 2000 years. The fact that uncertainty is usually not properly reported is a tragedy in the scientific literature, and unfortunate in vulgarisation.
- pikseladam 2y agoradiocarbon is mostly just guess and most of the headlines are just there for clicks. radiocarbon dating is shows a range like 2000 to 50000 years. headlines takes 50K. radiocarbon date is also acknowledged to be the age of the material, not the date of the manufacture of an item. if item is a rock, mostly they don't know when the art is manufactured. probably they asked how old is the art and somebody said "it could bew oldest ever found" hence the headline.
- jdthedisciple 2y agoThis is exactly what everyone must keep in mind when reading any pop-science article ever.