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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

Thank you.

I see the pictures of fish etc on the provided link. Again, I don't understand how this could be preserved on the surface of a rock, or on mud, etc.

In your experience, have ever seen some biological matter rest somewhere, without decaying? Have you ever dug into the ground or mud and found a bone there? The closest I come to that is when I step in mud, and a stick is underneath... but this would be frail and degraded. In all my experience biological matter is broken down very quickly.

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“ These formations may have resulted from carcass burial in an anoxic environment with minimal bacteria, thus delaying the decomposition of both gross and fine biological features until long after a durable impression was created in the surrounding matrix.”

From the linked Wikipedia page.

In many places, it is indeed impossible for fossils to form (for example, rainforests) due to various environmental factors. But in some places, fossils do in fact form, as evidenced by the fact that we have fossils.

> But in some places, fossils do in fact form, as evidenced by the fact that we have fossils.

Yes :) But you realise you are accepting what you are told to say that?

Are there any other possibilities though, to explain what we see as fossils? Is it possible that these photos are faked, or that the fossils themselves are faked? Or that they are real skeletons, but the story around them is wrong? Eg perhaps the fish was placed on the wall last year, and that is the mark it left.

I think it is clear that there are other possibilities. I think I can also make a case for them being more plausible than the story.

Regardless, we will not gain knowledge by accepting what we are told unconditionally - we should be personally verifying. Unless we have personally verified something, we cannot say "I know". We can I can say "I read" or "I believe" or "it is my hypothesis that". But it is not possible to truthfully say "I know".

This sort of skepticism is called "Last Thursdayism." - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism

> Under Last Thursdayism, books, fossils, light already on the way from distant stars, and literally everything (including your memories of the time before last Thursday) were all formed at the time of creation (last Thursday) in a state such that they appear much older.

> Last Thursdayism functions both as a philosophical point on how our observations may not match with "reality" and a reductio ad absurdum of the young-Earth creationist idea of the omphalos hypothesis: if the world was created 6,000 years ago with the appearance of being made billions of years ago, what is there to stop us from claiming it was made Last Thursday?

It's boring.

Yes, there are other possibilities - the universe could have been created Last Thursday.

> I think I can also make a case for them being more plausible than the story.

And Last Thursdayists make the case that Last Thursdayism is more plausible than the usual cosmology.

So, go ahead and do it.

> Unless we have personally verified something, we cannot say "I know".

Have you personally verified that North Dakota exists? That New Zealand exists?

If you want a discussion about solipsism, go bother some philosophers.

Just Asking Questions - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions - is a form of intellectual dishonesty.

> It's boring.

I understand your point - but there is a real point to what I'm saying. The fact is that no one is actually checking anything. Its all based on trust.

I know. Its dull, but you need to verify information before you actively promote or parrot it. Its the scientific method, and it should be applied personally. You cannot "know" unless you verify personally. You can trust, believe, etc but not know. If you say 'I know' without having verified whatever-it-is, you are in fact (unintentionally, perhaps) lying.

> It's boring.

Another way of responding is that the truth may in fact be boring. It might not be possible to say anything meaningful about stuff, especially when that stuff relates to events that may (or may not) have happened 66 million years ago.

Just because its boring, and there is not much to know, should we accept any old story that purports to explain things? Is that reason? Is it religious/magical thinking? Would it better to say 'I don't know'?

> The fact is that no one is actually checking anything. Its all based on trust.

I don't trust your statement.

I don't trust your statement because everything I've done to actually check on thing shows it to be correct.

Again, does North Dakota exist? Does New Zealand exist? Was the universe created last Thursday?

> but you need to verify information before you actively promote or parrot it.

I have verified it to my satisfaction. Just because you are not satisfied does not mean I am parroting thing.

I have never been to New Zealand. I am satisfied that it exists.

> should we accept any old story that purports to explain things?

Absolutely not. Which is why I don't accept your story that "It's all based on trust.

1. There is a long record of fossils as they are quite common. The old Greeks found marine fossils on land and deduced that land was once under water. The ancient Chinese documented them to be dragon bones.

2. How wide do you expect the fossil-conspiracy to be? This specimen was found in China by Chinese, surely they don't care about western evolutionists?

3. Have you never ever seen or found a fossil yourself? If you use sedimentary rock as wall cover you will get a fossil sooner or later.

https://southlandstone.com/using-fossil-stone-in-the-house/

3. You could travel to Michigan and just wander the beach until you find a fossilized coral. They are easy to find:

https://www.michigan.org/article/trip-idea/where-find-petosk...

4. Or go treasure hunting other coasts. Here is a video of a guy collecting fossilized ammonites in Ireland. I link to the timestamp he is opening a rock. If this is fake how do you think it was done?

https://youtu.be/OVCH98aFSRY?t=591

And if you watch the whole video you see other fossils in the big stones themselves. To reiterate: You can visit these places! Fossils are quite common.

This is why fossils are rare.

But, surely you know about mummies, yes? Mummification has happened accidentally, including Ötzi.

Bodies are found in peat bogs which have been there for 2,000 years, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huldremose_Woman . See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bog_bodies .

And it isn't that the organic material doesn't decay, but that fossilization occurs before substantial decay. The first paragraph in the Lagerstätte page even says:

> These formations may have resulted from carcass burial in an anoxic environment with minimal bacteria, thus delaying the decomposition of both gross and fine biological features until long after a durable impression was created in the surrounding matrix.

so, no, they weren't "preserved on the surface of a rock", but buried, then fossilized.

In the fish image, the upper layer then forms its own layer of stone. In the Green River Formation, the split fish layer can "easily split along the layers to reveal the fossils" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_River_Formation

If you don't understand the topic, that's fine. But to reject a description under the guise of skepticism, without honestly engaging in the material, is not.

Well, apparently mummification has happened accidentally.

But have you ever heard about Piltdown Man? I was taught this as fact, when I was at school (and I'm not _that_ old): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man

It is now an admitted fake. Why would they fake it?

Anyway - it seems that sometimes this research is faked. Is it possible that in 30 years some of those examples are also admitted as fakes?

(you can also look into: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_Wars)

I actually think it is possible for a body to be buried in a bog, and perhaps be in reasonable condition after 100s of years.

Do you think an egg would last though? For 1000 years (as per another commentor), until it fossilises? And then not be assimilated into the rock that it is surrounded by? And then be found? And then be cracked open to reveal the skeleton inside?

Can I get some odds on that please!!

If a body, then why not an egg?

Did you see those bodies? Did they look deformed or not? Compressed, leathery?

Would you say you can deform an egg without destroying it?

Humans aren't covered in a hard external shell which has evolved to resist simple crushing.

Why must all or even most fossilized eggs be deformed?

Yep, someone 100+ years ago faked the record and therefore we can't trust anything at all ever. No-sir-ee Bob! The Young Earth Creationists are right, and I'll use the Bible as my sole source of truth. /s

Here's 2,500 year old eggs from a tomb. https://www.archaeology.org/news/7502-190327-china-ancient-e... .

Here's 500 year old eggs from another tomb. https://en.dahe.cn/2019/12-12/567243.html

> And then be cracked open

It was not cracked open. Strawman exaggeration for effect is how rhetoric got a bad name.

> Can I get some odds on that please

Yes, it's low. Shall I pull a number out of my ass and say 1 in a trillion?

Now, can I get an estimate on the number of eggs laid in a 100 million year period?

I'll pull another number of my ass and say a population of 10 billion egg-laying creatures, living 10 years, with 10% of eggs making it to adulthood. That's 10 billion eggs per year, I think. Times 100 million years = 1 quintillion eggs that might be fossilized.

Times 1 in a trillion gives 1 million fossilized eggs.

Of which only a small fraction are found.

So your problem with the odds are ... what exactly? That you're not used to thinking about rare events across geologic time?

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