Talking outside the echo chamber
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
Recently I have been finding that discussions with old-timer sannyasins who still believe that Bhagwan was enlightened and could do no wrong take a turn towards “do you still use the name Bhagwan gave you” or “do you still feel gratitude towards Bhagwan”. To answer these questions honestly then creates a certain conflict in worldviews, but I think it’s fair to give an indication of where my truth lies. If on the other hand I am not asked, then I tend not to open this discussion.
It’s kind of a parallel to discussing Buddhism with people of other faiths. Any discussion of faith between friends tends to turn around tolerance and mutual respect, if you go down the route of trying to convince the other that your faith is better you may well end up with a serious disagreement. So how you approach this requires some sensitivity.
But it’s with people who you used to have much in common with that difficulties tend to surface the quickest, because you were once closely aligned. It reminds me of this joke by Emo Phillips…
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
”Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
The thing is, with other followers of Osho you tend to have a lot in common — many shared experiences and a shared set of beliefs. But as a renegade you have said, certain things have caused you to break with that belief. That inevitably leads to a difficult discussion, do your listeners believe you were right, or do they believe you were wrong? It has a certain stake attached to it.
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It is difficult to have productive, civil conversations outside of one's affinity group. My working theory is that its gotten more difficult since the rise of the internet. Society used to have more of a shared social space. On the one hand it is nice to more easily find like minded people, especially when you're in the minority or isolated. On the other hand it means we can spend our whole lives around like minded people and our cross affinity social skills atrophy. I'll post this again as a sort of ideal for having those sorts of conversations.
A podcast on the old Soviet dissidents like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and in particular Vaclav Havel came up in my feed today. They are extreme examples, but it can be scary and takes some courage to stay true to yourself when in the company of "bridge pushers" or people who sound like bridge pushers and could potentially cause you pain, social or more serious.
I probably have a bit of an outlier personality, since I was young I would often say the true thing rather than the social thing. If you do get pushed, know that others have been pushed too and you won't be alone in your new reality. Know also that its quite possible to find yourself in the echo chamber of those who have been pushed off the bridge.
I think that’s true. In England at the time of my university days, which would be the start of the 1990’s, so before the internet, you had the “big four” broadsheet newspapers, The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian and I think it was The Independent, and public discourse would be based around what was in those papers. The Letters and Opinions pieces were broadly read.
Of course one didn’t read the tabloids, those were for the hoi polloi, don’t you agree.
Certainly in the internet age it is easier to find likeminded folks. But even if you have been pushed, you can keep up a public discourse. Take Graham Hancock, he is what you call an alternative archaeologist, who believes in civilisation 10.000 years ago, which a lot of standard archaeologists have difficulty with. Yet Graham’s ideas have proved persuasive and popular with the public. He carries on the public discourse in podcasts, interviews and television programmes.
I'll try to avoid derailing the thread and keep it on topic regarding Graham. To the extent that he is treated like a heretic, I'm not on board with that attitude. To the extent that he is disagreed with and the flaws in his claims are pointed out, I think that is the essence of the scientific process.
Like I said it is possible to find yourself in a new echo chamber of those who have been pushed off the bridge.
The clip grabbed my interest, so I listened to the whole interview. Really good stuff on prehistoric Americas.
What I often like to do with things like this is to listen to one point of view and then get another differing one. Seeing where they converge and disagree, I think, really sheds a lot of light on the subject. So I then listened to the one with Graham Hancock.
My cousin believes this clown archaeologist, considers him a friend.
But then she believes in crop circles from aliens.
This is David Icke type science evidence. Facts mixed with an interpretation that seems plausible (to some).
Too harsh or just reality in a non-echoing hologram of our own creation?
I like Graham Hancock… he has a lot of respect for evidence and facts, although he doesn’t follow the establishment line of thinking about the past. I also think he is right, in that there was a lot more to early human culture than simple hunter-gatherer tribes.
This IS the establishment line. The thing that isn't the establishment line is that the early human culture we know about was seeded from a single advanced society that was wiped out without a trace and spread throughout the globe.
There's no such thing as an "Alternative Archaeologist". He doesn't have the academic standing to be called an archaeologist. At best, he is an amateur historian pedaling pseudoscience.
That's because there's no real, solid, peer-reviewed evidence to prove what he says. He just says it and some people believe it. Like someone saying he'll lower the price of eggs and end the war in Ukraine in one day.
With uneducated and monumenta lly stupid people, yes, much like people who voted for Donald Trump.
I worked in the field of archaeology for years, during and after college. I was shoulder-to-shoulder with REAL archaeologists. Hancock does not qualify.
Listening to both Ed Barnhart and Graham Hancock. I think what is appealing about Hancock is that he talks about the cool, exciting stuff like ancient astronomy and the more mysterious stuff. Barnhart was really interesting too, but he stuck more to migration patterns and the social and political dynamics of the early Americas.
This is well-spotted @person, it’s one of the things both I and my father like about Hancock, that he looks at all these things that haven’t been explained about ancient structures and artifacts. We don’t know how all of them were made, there are signs there of an older science which may have had nothing to do with the kind of science we know today.
The thing is, a lot of archaeology is educated guesswork based on the small evidence that is there. We try to construct pictures of the ancient world. Hancock is willing to go across the boundaries of fields into areas like the origins of terra preta, the Amazonian dark earths, or local legends on Malta about giants who build stone temples in a single night, to form a more complex picture of the past than just bone fragments and pottery shards. It’s interesting, is all I am saying.
What are these "signs"?
For example, in Macchu Picchu there are granite stone blocks of many tons and irregular shapes so precisely shaped and fitted to each other that you can’t slide a piece of paper between them. Granite is really hard stone, difficult to work even with the tools we have today.
In the Museum of Cairo there is an oddly shaped artefact named the Sabu Disk, which is 5000 years old and made by an unknown technique. It too is made of stone, but it looks like a machine part.
There are other examples…
That seems to assume that Incas were incapable of working with stone, as accurately as we see. It's quite obvious that they did, as there is no other plausible explanation. There are plenty of other example of the ancients' skill in working with stone. Ancient Egyptians, made huge granite obelisks to precise dimensions, using stone, copper and bronze tools. You can see the signs in the quarries they used near Aswan. Not only that, but they figured out how to get those obelisks down to the river, into a boat of sufficient displacement, and then travel downstream to what is now Luxor.
Granite isn't all that difficult to work with. Egyptians were able to carve Granite very precisely, as evidenced by their obelisks and statues. It's not as easy to work as limestone, but well within their collective skill set.
I've always thought that if advanced science was used, why didn't it include iron tools instead of the softer alloys they did use. Why no wheels, including pulleys, as well as block and tackle. Then there's their inability to render hands and feet on statues that were otherwise anatomically correct.
I've seen it first-hand. It doesn't look like a machine part. It's made from schist, which has a similar mohs hardness as Marble. It could be easily worked with stone tools. What it was used for, I neither know nor care. If it was from a machine, it must not have been a very good one, as there is only one in existence and there are no records of its use.
What you site are not signs of advanced science. They're merely examples of culture we cannot explain at present.
Ed Barnhart speculated that the Macchu Picchu stones were shaped by acid. There are natural materials in the area that they would have used for other things that could be combined to make an acid powerful enough to weaken the stone and make them press together.
We've had plenty of examples of archeological things over the years that people had no idea how they were done only to have figured it out later. Its a sort of "Atlantis of the gaps" problem.
If someone added historical stories of fairies, vampires and giants to the story of history they could make it more complex and interesting, but that wouldn't make it true. I think its a question of how we know what we know. Speculation is good, many currently accepted Theories about the world were considered crack pot at one point. But for every plate techtonics and germ theory there are many more hollow and flat earths, planet Vulcans, or wilder ideas.
Maybe not every idea Hancock comes up with will be true, but most of them are reasonably sensible. There are things like mounds of Earth in a city like pattern in the US, it’s a question of just a few solid pieces of evidence being enough. You call it “Atlantis of the gaps” but that’s not wholly accurate, there is evidence in these gaps, otherwise Hancock would be entirely unbelievable. Anyway feel free to believe or not, you are welcome.
Its his main idea that I think I'm focused on and pointing out flaws.
This is where I think he has it backwards. He's starting with a belief and working to find evidence of it by cherry picking, fuzzily interpreting (like the Sabu Disk), and ignoring contradicting evidence.
I get a bit bothered about this topic, because its about more than people's personal beliefs. Its about what we consider science and how we go about knowing what we know. If Ancient Apocalypse, or Ancient Aliens, or Curse of Oak Island get mainstreamed as "scientific" then I consider it a loss for science literacy, which impacts more important things like climate or vaccine science.
Like, which ones?
I suppose you're talking about Cahokia. There are more than a "few" solid pieces of evidence supporting, current thinking about it. There's a warehouse full of evidence in Milwaukee, from Melvin Fowler's excavations. I worked with several archaeologists who worked and studied under Fowler, and I met the man myself - he gave me a tour of that warehouse while I was visiting to check out possibilities for post-grad studies. But anyway, I digress ....
He is entirely unbelievable. He'll take something that's somewhat obscure to the public. He'll present a conclusion about it, then set up an argument to support it, which is ass-backwards science. People buy it, in large part because they don't know any better and have a high level of gullibility. He also shades modern history and archaeology, in order to erode confidence in them, and reinforce his own ideas. He's a kind of latter-day Erich von Däniken.
I think common sense is more important than scientific literacy. Hancock might just be right about some things, there is enough supporting evidence that it might be so. In the end it is not worth getting hot under the collar about.
Mentioning Ancient Apocalypse in the same breath as the other two is doing it a bit of a disservice. I’m not really interested in arguing about it, so I’ll just let you carry on.
I don’t see that that’s necessarily true. Why build a whole pyramid? Why not build a ramp with a steep drop at the end? That also gets you to a high place, with a lot less stone and a lot less effort. Why not build a platform? I think that text just speaks to cynicism and an unwillingness to consider an obvious change in worldview.
What basis is there to say all of these were seeded by an undiscovered advanced civilization other than "its possible"? The point of the above picture is that people see that and think they're so similar there must be a connection. Well, there is a connection, its a really good way to create a tall structure that won't fall down and stand the test of time, its possible there were other ancient tall structures that fell down over the centuries. If you propose another connection you should have some actual evidence of that connection. If you want to change people's worldview it should take more than, you can't rule it out completely. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and as the above points out there is a perfectly ordinary explanation for pyramids across the world.
As climate science deniers have shown us, there are often multiple explanations to fit the facts. I think to expect ancient civilisations to have such a long view that they would build structures just because they would last thousands of years is unreasonable, it makes no sense. That’s why I am more inclined to accept the explanation of a sea-travelling ancient culture.
They didn't do it to last that long, they survived til now because of how they're built. It feels like you're intentionally misunderstanding or misleading (just because, unreasonable, makes no sense). Yes, there are often multiple explanations, I suppose where I'm coming from is that the ordinary explanation is better than the extraordinary until the extraordinary has a decent amount of concrete evidence supporting it. I don't think it's a matter of you have your beliefs and I have mine, c'est la vie.
That’s right, you choose to believe they build pyramids “because it is the best structure” for a certain purpose. We have established that being tall or lasting long are not valid reasons to put in the effort. If that is so, why are there no modern pyramids? Why have our classical societies from Greek times onwards not found a reason to build pyramids? Instead we build churches or theaters or coliseums or stadiums, which seem to last pretty well and are more efficient for congregating a large group of people. There is no one driving factor moving building towards pyramids. There is no “ordinary explanation” why you would choose to build pyramids.
There are many ruins of a few thousand years old on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea of a number of different cultures that have come and gone, Greek, Roman, Phoenician, Carthaginian, Mycenaean and others. The ruins have lasted, and those people built no pyramids. It seems to me it is a clear societal preference, to build the occasional pyramid or not. Not recognising this to me seems like a matter of you have your beliefs and will not be swayed from them, even when the evidence is pointing at something else entirely.
Its a really good way for early civilizations to build tall structures that don't fall down. But why not any of the number of other possible explanations? There isn't a shred of direct evidence for it.
Better architecture, better materials knowledge? And societal preference, in recorded history there are examples of simultaneous discovery or adoption of certain knowledge, practices, etc.
Pot, meet kettle.
And why would you wish to do this, other than a culturally-bound justification? We build skyscrapers to live and work in them, but you can’t live and work in a pyramid, it’s a solid thing. Other civilisations seem to get along fine without mound-like artificial structures.
Cities like Mohenjo Daro in 2500 BCE demonstrated decent planning and building capacity comparable to the Maya, yet no pyramids. You seem to be grasping for any reason other than the obvious one, that it was a people with common cultural roots that built all the pyramids.
I'm sure the exact reasons are lost to history. Perhaps to be closer to the gods, the heavens? In the jungle, to see above the tree line? Why did the precursor civilization build pyramids? Why were the Egyptian pyramids used as burial tombs, but South American ones used ceremonially if they both originated from the same culture?
Obvious? You're the one that's really stretching here. Its like there are a thousand stories one could come up with, science works with what is provable rather than what is possible. Its fine if you like that story and want to believe it, there's just no tangible evidence, its all speculation and there's no compelling reason for anyone to be persuaded that it might be so, unlike stories with archeological support. What I've seen of Hancock is its all speculative guesswork based on the Atlantis of the gaps for discoveries we don't fully understand yet. This has been his idea for 30 years, before many of the discoveries he relies on, again he's totally backwards in his use of evidence.
Well, I’m certainly not going to pretend to have all the answers. I am merely inviting you to look a little further, beyond the clever wordplay, if you really want to pretend to be scientific about it. I like Hancock for the sense of wonder he adds to our idea of the past, but I’m not going to spend my days on this.
Well, I did listen to the interview with Graham Hancock and some of Ancient Apocalypse. Have you watched the interview with Ed Barnhart or perhaps one of the several videos pointing out the flaws in Graham's work?
IMO that's a valid reason for liking him, my response to listening to the interview with him was much the same, that the things about the past he talks about and the way he frames them is exciting and interesting. My point is that that doesn't make it true, possible and true are two different bars to pass. I also found Ed Barnhart to be pretty interesting.
I’ve listened to a good amount of the Ed Barnhart interview, and found him likeable and pretty knowledgeable. As to what he says about Hancock, they disagree on their interpretation of the facts, as Ed says. There is nothing wrong with that, the facts don’t seem to force the issue one way or the other. We may never truly know.
I'd like to let this go, but I don't think I want to cede the ground that its just down to a matter of equivalent interpretation. I'll bring up another important aspect of the scientific process, that of falsifiability, Graham seems to lack this. And from what I've seen many of his interpretations deliberately leave out obvious and important details of the "fact" to better fit his narrative.
I guess I'd ask what kind of evidence or discovery would it take to convince you that there wasn't an earlier advanced civilization that seeded the first civilizations that we're aware of?
I’m quite new to the idea that there was a globe-spanning civilisation in early times, and I’m very much still exploring the evidence. From what I’ve seen so far, it seems there might have been some form of cultural exchange, based on wanderers who did distant journeys over years of travel. I think that is likely true, and part of a view of a less densely populated Earth long ago.
Considering that doing the pilgrimage route Camino de Santiago has you walk 1000 kilometers in about 30 days, it seems very possible to walk across the continents on foot if you were willing to spend years doing that. Although of course you’d have to forage for food while travelling, which might slow you down.
Whether there was an advanced civilisation whose remaining members mentored the budding civilisations in times prior to agrarian society, I have yet to read about any real indications for that.
To illustrate something. A symbol. The connection between Heaven and Earth.
But no meaning.
In Egypt, they did. Nobles and royalty of the early dynasties of the Old Kingdom were buried under a stone or brick platform called a Mastaba. The first Pyramid was made of several mastaba substructures.
I don't see how you come to the conclusion of likely. Conceivable, sure. Interesting, preferable, sure. Why is that likely over the other possibilities? Have you done the due diligence of considering the evidence for the other possibilities to really be able to rule them less likely?
Let me tell you about something that happened to me. Some time ago, I noticed that reason and logic and the scientific method had become crutches for me, which limited me, and I decided to free my mind from the burden of always looking for evidence. This has led me to an increase in intuitive thinking, a sense of feeling the world.
It was a learning curve, I fall back on reason and logic to check myself from time to time, and of course this means that one should also develop a finely tuned bullshit detector. Ultimately you arrive at a better understanding of the average man and woman, and the main outliers of those averages. The world still has the capacity to surprise you, but you have a deeper capacity for wisdom that way.
So when I say it is likely, that is just my personal judgment, based on an understanding of human nature. If you look at the world today, there are enough people who go wandering and exploring to say this answers a deep seated need. The capacity for cultural exchange comes from this.
I think my hang up might be that I'm coming from the other direction. My inclination was a more intuitive sense of things. This though led me to have many beliefs that turned out to be wrong, I got tired of having conviction in things that I later found out weren't so. it led me to uncritically accept ways of thinking that, led me in bad directions. So now I have a higher bar for what I take on as true. I still tend to operate on a fairly intuitive level, but I'm always checking my work.
I think why that word, likely, and others you've used in the thread seem to trigger me is they don't read as being your opinion but more as a statement of truth.
Here's a shorter one that focuses on the second season.
I watched the video, and it just seems to be this guy saying “it’s bonkers, I’m sure Graham doesn’t believe this”. It’s anti-Graham Hancock meme programming mostly, and while he makes a few worthwhile points I feel he disregards other evidence unnecessarily. Take the point of the Australasian dna in South American populations, but not North American. I was unaware of this, but would see it as solid evidence of a seafaring culture between Asia and South America along the island chains.
I’m not a big believer in the Atlantis theories, but some sort of shared culture I think is quite possible, even likely.
Going back to emptying my cup…
You probably missed that part, he said he thought it was amazing that South Pacific islanders could have made it across the Pacific sometime before the 1500s. I think this goes back to what counts as evidence and the distinction between a lawyerly pursuit and a scientific one. A good lawyer will take whatever evidence fits their case and ignore or refute any evidence that counters it. A good scientist will take all the evidence and try to tell a story about what it all means.
I feel like this is a motte and bailey type of point, meaning when your more controversial argument gets pushed back on you retreat to a more modest, defensible one.
I don't know is a great answer to a great many things.
Well, I’ve always said that I wasn’t a great believer in Atlantis-style theories. It’s a possibility, there are indications like the ‘handbag’ carvings on ancient walls and the legends of giants raising temples in Malta, but it’s rather thin on the ground.
I'm reminded ....
North American archaeology agree that the first humans came to the Western Hemisphere during the Wisconsonian glacial period. Much of what is now Alaska and Canada was covered is thick ice. Traveling over that bare ice would be impossible.
A midwestern Archaeologist I knew proposed that it wasn't bare ice, but that the surface was more like tundra. His reasoning was that the climate was dry and dusty because the glaciers were sucking up all the moisture. Made things really dusty, especially with silts at the bottom of what used to be lakes and ocean. This dust settled on the glacier, which built up for centuries, eventually forming a layer of fertile topsoil. Over time, plants, and then animals, populated the region.
This was the land that the first peoples followed into North America, and it likely took hundreds of years. The followed the food and water. That's what they were there for.
This idea was met with derision, but since has gained a steady following, even though one crucial thing is absent - proof. No one uses words such as "likely".
That's an interesting idea. Proof of migration will be hard to come by as they would have migrated along the coast, or perhaps on top of glaciers and all that evidence is now under the ocean. Maybe some future tech will allow for easier underwater archeology?
There I was in another echo chamber WHEN:
Just imagine if I listened to others echoing and could burst their bubbles and talk to them. I have a theory that this might be possible.
I knew there was a plan
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2113246-how-can-facebook-and-its-users-burst-the-filter-bubble/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-are-the-chances/202503/resisting-fake-news-does-it-depend-on-memory
I’ve noticed that selling advertising on FB seems to be an effort to categorise people’s echo chambers and give them those ads that are likely to bring a reaction. It is a mechanism, paid of course, outside the echo chamber.
Nothing new. The tech has been in the field since the late 90s. Facebook? Twitter? Reddit? They're all collecting data, that you provide free of charge. Amazon is a data gold mine.
I no longer subscribe to Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram. I have never used Twitter (Now 'X'). I do not, nor ever have, used TikTok. It's certainly cut me off from many people. Yet here I am, still upright, breathing, and above ground...