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Comment by blacksmithgu | Hacker News Reader

I have a family member who is quite into "ancient aliens" and who has read all of von Danikens books. The main thing I realized from arguing about it with them was that rigor and science did not really matter and would not convince them of anything. It's an emotional and spiritual belief for them - a way for them to rationalize how humans went from mud to computers. They don't believe in human creativity being powerful enough to lead to modern society and think an external force was required. Ancient aliens is a convenient and fun theory for how it could have happened.

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I’ve known a few people like that, and it had a darker undercurrent: they didn’t disbelieve that, say, the Greek or Roman monuments were built by those civilizations because they viewed those as predecessors of their own, but they considered the pacific or Central/South American cultures inferior and didn’t want to believe they were capable of great engineering.

Beyond the strong whiff of racism, I think there was also this idea that civilization went on a single path (grain, the wheel and domesticated horses/oxen/mules, bronze, iron, guns, steam, etc.) and so anyone which didn’t follow that path was basically developmentally challenged. This definitely did not consider the possibility that not every region had the prerequisites to follow the same path.

My own favorite example of this is how the pyramids (and all the advanced trigonometry required) were built by the Egyptians prior to their discovery of the wheel

> advanced trigonometry

There's a ratio involving pi between the base lengths of the pyramid and its height. This is been interpreted by enthusiasts that the Egyptians knew about pi.

But, consider a measuring wheel, where you can mark off distances very accurately by counting revolutions of the wheel, say, 1 cubit in diameter (I know, I know, what's a cubit?). Then, if the height is laid out in cubits, the ratio of pi is there while being completely ignorant of it.

But that doesn't explain things if it's true that they hadn't discovered the wheel!

It is as far as I understand only wheeled transportation that was late in Ancient Egypt. They used wheels for pottery before they had wagons.

Most civilizations discovered. No one care about a wheel. The wheel itself is useless. Not everyone discovered the axle though, and even less created roads.

I have responded to a sibling comment with more information or examples. I hate this because I don't care about pyramids or Egypt, but I feel myself compelled to respond, I'm so sorry it's not against you, It's a recent pet peeve.

The pi ratio is strong evidence that a wheel is used somewhere in their surveying tools.

When I was a boy, I asked my mom how the Egyptians made their pyramid foundations straight. Without looking up from her book, she replied "pull a string tight". Then I thought I'd trip her up with how they made the foundation level. Without hesitation she said "dig a trench and fill it with water."

She shoulda been an engineer!

> This is been interpreted by enthusiasts that the Egyptians knew about pi.

Well if you want to calculate the circumference of earth and know the distance between Alexandria and Syene, where the sun casts no shadow at noon during the summer solstice, you also need to know pi.

No need for pi.

If you know the angle and the distance between the two cities, you can just multiply the distance by [full circle divided by the angle], and that's the circumference.

Even if that were true, it wouldn't disprove the link to racism: Eratosthenes was Hellene, not native Egyptian. He "counts as white"; ancient Egyptians may or may not.

> what's a cubit?

What's an ark?

Discovery of the axles and roads.

The 'wheel' itself was discovered everywhere. Round things are easier to move, but you need an axle to make it useful. And roads or flat terrain to make use of that. Incas had pulley systems, which indicates they could probably have built an axle quite easily too, but had no use for it, because, well, no flat roads.

And even then Northern Manchurians knew about the wheel for sure, and knew about roads, but still used sleds until at least the Russian conquest.

Sorry, I'm quite boring about this, but it bothers me when people talk about 'inventing the wheel' like it was something special. The wheel itself is meh. The axles are what makes it usable, and the roads make it useful.

Roads were also innvented everywhere. There were cultures with flat roads and no wagons. I would say the axle and then the spoked wheel were likely the big deals.

I've heard this claim many times, and yet I remember VD books (and similar ones like Kolosimo's) discussing Prehistoric Europe including cave art and megaliths. The Ancient Aliens TV series does have episodes on Ireland, the Norse and Graeco-Roman mythology.

Even today, these types bring up Baalbek's massive triliths on a regular basis, and state they could not have been built by such classical civilisations.

There you go trying use logic on racism. Of course it's not going to work.

The question isn't whether the ancient aliens framework logically supports racism, since it's false anyway and racists don't care about logic (otherwise etc etc). The question for racists is which frameworks most conveniently provide tidbits for them to distort for their own purposes. No logic, pure association and confirmation bias.

It’s a group of idiosyncratic people so there are not hard guidelines but there’s definitely a hierarchy of who they are more likely to describe as advance civilizations and who they question were capable of major engineering projects. This can bring out really weird stereotypes: I’ve heard people make arguments where they positively describe American Indians as living in harmony with nature, etc. but question the estimated populations, trade networks, etc. for e.g. the Mississippi tribes from what appears to be a mix of “noble savage” mythology and sort of mentally having slotted them into a larger model which made it easier to doubt one detail than reconsider their larger intellectual framework. The “aliens did it” people are far out on that spectrum but less extreme versions aren’t uncommon.

An interesting observation, that racism link. Fills a glaring gap in a sad part of my own family history.

> The main thing I realized from arguing about it with them was that <my beliefs> did not really matter and would not convince them of anything

> It's an emotional and spiritual belief for them - a way for them to rationalize...

And for you, too.

Science the method is pretty damn great. Science the institution is closer to any other agenda-driven information source. If you’re doing first-hand, first-principles science, great. But if you’re doing the “here’s a study...” game, you’re relying on external authority you aren’t equipped to interpret, which, in practice, isn’t so much different from the people who think CNN or Fox News or Ancient Aliens is gospel.

Put another way, a real practitioner of science would seek to understand the phenomenon of why your family member believes what they believe. I guarantee you, it makes sense, once you know enough information (it always does, even if they’re actually insane, that helps it make sense). But to say, ”this person won’t even accept science” and hand wave it off as a “them” problem, emotional religion etc, are the words of a politician, not a scientist.

Asking for evidence isnt a "belief system" its a coming to know things system. Equating a request for scientific rigor, to contrarian ancient aliens is nonsensical.

If someone wants to hold something up as true, its correct to disbelieve it until evidence is provided.

These people don't provide evidence, what they do is show you something cool and then beg the question. "Look at this cool rock in this place it might be hard to get a rock to, really makes you wonder who put it there huh". Literally any dumb science "content producer" is going to be able to get you closer to truth than listening to that bunk.

Not to mention that:

>It's an emotional and spiritual belief for them - a way for them to rationalize

>Put another way, a real practitioner of science would seek to understand the phenomenon of why your family member believes what they believe.

Seems like you quoted them having investigated it.

But having done so you call them a politician.

I think the problems with alternate theories such as Ancient Aliens is that they seize upon some examples of evidence (which are typically not great evidence anyway) and build a whole story on top of that. However, they then don't consider the ramifications of that - if ancient aliens did exist, then we should expect to find other sorts of evidence and thus make predictions about them. Of course, without predictions, theories are non-falsifiable and thus worse than useless.

> Asking for evidence isnt a "belief system"

> If someone wants to hold something up as true, its correct to disbelieve it until evidence is provided.

So, a belief system.

> Seems like you quoted them having investigated it.

Asking for evidence isn’t investigating. It’s zero cost to ask for evidence.

Evidence alone doesn’t produce wisdom. It produces cleverness. Feelings and emotion are faster and vaster in terms of information processing, but provides a very low bandwidth output, basically a gut feeling of “good” or “bad”. Emotion isn’t irrational, it’s pre-verbal compression that contains real insight once it’s unpacked. Most people never unpack it, so an outside observer makes the (incorrect) leap from emotional -> irrational.

If you can marry evidence with that unpacked pre-verbal compression, that will be gold. But that requires a bunch of work and soft skills to have a good faith dialectic over time with someone you disagree with.

>So, a belief system.

Nope

>Evidence alone doesn’t produce wisdom. It produces cleverness. Feelings and emotion are faster and vaster in terms of information processing, but provides a very low bandwidth output, basically a gut feeling of “good” or “bad”. Emotion isn’t irrational, it’s pre-verbal compression that contains real insight once it’s unpacked. Most people never unpack it, so an outside observer makes the (incorrect) leap from emotional -> irrational.

Thats a lot of unsubstantiated feels.

The ancient aliens line of thinking is:

Is it possible that Adam and Eve were aliens?

If so, then that means [blah blah blah as if this is now an accepted fact]

No wonder your fam has no critical thinking

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