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Comment by nverno | Hacker News Reader

He starts off the series discussing his lack of scientific credentials, journalist background, etc., and presents the whole thing as his theory. How can that possible be construed as a 'deceptive cloak of veracity'? Let the man have his theories- I thought some of it was pretty interesting, although his raging against academia was exhausting enough to make it unwatchable after a point.

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> I thought some of it was pretty interesting

That's why. Laypeople lack almost all the tools necessarily to evaluate research and slick presentation, even when couched with "I'm not an expert - make up your own mind" can be quite effective and completely misleading people.

I think there is a big problem with people not not having any understanding of how much work it actually takes to become an expert. The narrative of "outsider dabbles in some field and makes a big breakthrough" feels reasonable. How hard could it really be to break into one of these fields? This sets them up to be misled.

You say this as if most TV isn't gross misrepresentations of reality. At least Hancock provides a disclaimer.

I really do hope you are ready to give up the right to theorize on any subject if you are not an expert. That includes: whether a job is bullshit or not, whether the calories you ate are good for you or not, and whether C++ is the right tool for the job or not. Sorry citizen, you are simply not a credential expert in these fields, enjoy your fine and labor camp.

My strategy in all fields where I am not an expert is to go talk to some experts and ask them to synthesize the expert consensus for me. For academic fields this is usually university faculty. For something like software design this would be a mentor with decades and decades of experience.

Yeah, I think this is the right way to do it. "I'm just explaining my weird theory" is not a good approach to fields that you know little about.

One man's "experts" are another's "spreaders of dangerous disinformation".

That's true, people are often wrong about evaluating expertise. This is why I seek out people at respected institutions who have a track record of respect from peers.

No system is perfect, but I'm way more likely to hold correct opinions using this approach than most other approaches.

They've been going after him pretty hard, calling him all kinds of names, so his defensiveness is somewhat understandable.

I understand why he's defensive, but I found the excessive discussion of it in the series to be petty and negative- detracting from the exciting, mystical vibe of the rest of it.

Hancock has been publishing since 1990s. If someone was publishing made-up theories in my professional field for thirty years (and becoming a globally known celebrity, sort of), then I'd also be pretty cranky about that.

All hypotheses are initially made up to an extent. Can you point out specific ways that Hancock's main hypotheses fail to match the available evidence? His claims are falsifiable, so people who care can go ahead and do the science to falsify them.

Whether Hancock is a celebrity is neither here nor there. Proper science is supposed to be above personal attacks.

You usually start with an observation, Hancock starts with the conclusion and works backwards.

That seems like a deflection. What specifically in Hancock's interpretation does not align with the known facts? I don't particularly care about him one way or another, but if you want to criticize him then please present some actual evidence.

That's a lie that sounds smart.

I’ve watched enough of Hancock to know that he starts with an observation: xyz physical structure doesn’t align with our accepted view of history, and then tries to find a conclusion.

You should be more angry if people within your professional field still claim the pyramids were built as tombs by people wearing sandals and loincloths with bronze and copper tools.

What were they built with then?

Some people think they were built by slaves, and were intended for storing grain.

If they were intended for storing grain they did a pretty bad job making space for it...

We don't know.

We absolutely know they were tombs. We can read Ancient Egyptian you know. There are texts on the walls dealing with how the person entombed there will deal with being judged in the afterlife. The idea that that the pyramids were mysterious in purpose only made sense prior to the mid 19th century before we could read the hieroglyphs.

There are, in fact, no such inscriptions in any of the Giza pyramids, and no remnant of funerary apparatus was found in any of them, never mind a mummy. (Other looted Egyptian crypts were found full of trash; looters don't clean up after themselves.) The only writing found inside was not funerary.

There are funerary temples lousy with inscriptions outside, but anybody can build those anytime. Crypts elsewhere are scribbled throughout.

We still know very little about the pyramids, so cannot contradict speculation. The official story / timeline is just one such.

The Giza pyramids are far from the only Egyptian pyramids though -- the reason the earliest descriptions of the Egyptian religion are referred to as the "Pyramid texts" is that they are found in other pyramids, some of which like the Pyramid of Unas are nearly as old as the Great Pyramids in Giza (but better preserved as so more informative from an archeological perspective). The Giza pyramids are impressively large but seem to have been entered/looted at various times in antiquity.

They certainly would have been looted, if there were something to loot. But as noted, looters never cart out the trash. (Or, anyway, until recently, in order to feel more like legitimate archaeologists.)

Anybody can co-opt a spare pyramid and scribble it up. There is even an absurdly sparely applied term: usurpation. Usurping one of the Giza constructions would raise eyebrows, but the others could tempt, if in good shape.

Once one's immediate predecessor is securely dead, actually expending on a fancy interment is not strictly necessary, given nobody can see inside anyway. Lots of crypts were left comically incomplete, later. Even Menkaure's pyramid was not clad as specified.

Later they must have got the idea of having supporters demand to tour the crypt before it was sealed, to make sure things were actually done. You probably can determine which successions were ... unfriendly by how incomplete the funeral chores are.

> his raging against academia was exhausting enough to make it unwatchable after a point.

For me, that point was somewhere in the first episode. Sorry, after watching Van Daniken (sp?) and the Ancient Aliens crew use misinformation and "asking the question" type fallacies to basically ruin widespread understanding of history all I can say is "fuck that guy in particular".

As long as he tried to base on fact he can do what academics not do, think … talk … . But is he?

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