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Comment by jjoe | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that 400 years later, especially in this day and age of freedoms and lesser stigmatization, we still have this dissonance. People are unwilling to listen to their inner instincts that maybe not everything we believe in must be a published paper in a reputable journal.

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I couldn't disagree more. The democratisation of (the idea of) science had a strong role to play in the proliferation of conspiracy theories and anti-science sentiment in general. I think many people are doing exactly what you say and listening to their instincts. That's a negative development, not a positive one.

I was also just about to post about how there's still a ton of stigma around alternative theories of history. In particular, the ones about how the pyramids were built by ancient civilizations. The end result is that it's tough to find the real work being done because most credible people are driven underground. We're left with the conspiracy theorists.

Here is my bone with these 'alternative' theories, a lot contain a lot of snake oil (of course I didnt look at much) and are disingenious. Let me give you an example. (I think it was a video by Däniken). He takes a ancient egyptian metal-vessel (probaly copper amphore) and then says:'the amazing thing is, if you just add a little acid and a wire to this amazing device it will act like a battery. So did the egyptians have electricity?' Or something like that. Of course that will happen, and it will happen to any metal cup, it does not show anything about having the knowledge about electricity of a society, but people who do not know much physics will then lead astray to 'so how do you explain this'. If they would have found the wire (of a different metal) inside the jar, in some device... ok... but this is like finding a rock of uranium and saying:'they could have made nuclear power plants from this'.

When I saw they had to go this low, I was pretty sure they have nothing.

Your post is seriously meta:

To demonstrate how snake-oil people leap to conclusions and paint with a broad brush based on flimsy evidence…

…you leap to conclusions and paint with a broad brush based on anecdata.

> When I saw they had to go this low, I was pretty sure they have nothing.

Well, I remember it was one of the 'big-guys' of this alternative theories. So I believe if 'they' had something he would have used it. But please go ahead, point me to the best piece of evidence (no goal-post shifting later, please)

Possibly relevant (Baghdad Battery):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery

>"In March 2012, Professor Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University, an expert on Iraqi archaeology, returning from the first archaeological expedition in Iraq after 20 years, stated that she does not know a single archaeologist who believed that these were batteries."

Sounds great!

OK. What are you goal posts though? :)

Here's my (hopefully charitable) reading of your argument:

1. Alternative theories of history are disingenious (sic) snake oil, because they're based on weak circumstantial evidence. They use flawed reasoning to support strawman interpretations of the data.

2. To support this theory, you mention a video you saw (well, maybe saw…) of one guy X (Däniken) claiming something about Y (vessel batteries?).

Don't you find the irony delicious?

All theories were "alternative" at some point. Some stood the test of time and evidence; some didn't (Gobekli Tepe embarrassed quite a few "mainstream" scientists in its time); some are in the academic weighing right now (the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis).

No. I do not see the irony. I am not posting a researched theory here. Also since this is a forum, anybody can point out the smoking gun/honest interpretation whatever. A little burden of proof is on the alternative theories (and I do not go that far to say 'extraordinary claims need extraodinary evidence', I am fine with normal evidence).

Well, that is my experience, too. I'm very open so I examined several so-called proofs of alternative history. Unfortunately, in all cases they can be explained in more traditional ways, or were a fabrication like the crystal skulls. This doesn't mean that we haven't been visited by alien civilizations, but as far as I can tell we don't really have any definitive proof. Unless we equate aliens with gods - but even then the only artifacts we have are just scriptures.

[ I guess you mean "high technology" ancient civilisations? ]

The problem is that wrong/inadequate/inferior theories will tend to be neglected, professionals will be stay clear of them, and "if only we had better theorists" could be a rallying call in those cases as well.

"If only there wasn't such a bias against phlogistonism we'd have higher-quality phlogiston research."

Weirdly enough I don't think I've heard this argument much in the crackpot science world, where I have more experience, but it is not uncommon for people to imprint on obsolete theories that modern working scientists can't really discuss because they don't know them in detail or maybe even in broad strokes (epicycles or the like).

I'm happy to leave it to the professionals. History is a quite high-evidence high-rigour domain, with many converging sources that confirm earlier theories (genetics/linguistics/carbon dating/etc.).

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