I am starting a new thread – the old one on Egyptology is just too convoluted for a newbie to follow. A lot of history there between personalities and entrenched positions.
We have a glove thrown down between the non-expert ‘fringe’ believers on the one hand and calcified dogmatic Egyptology on the other and I do not see an immediate break in that logjam. Someone like Sun Tzu would tell us never go head to head with the opponent. So another approach.
Can ‘common sense’ legitimately critique science at all? I think this is a core question and exactly what GH is attempting. The egos of academia will jump to a ‘no’ (thus GH is pseudo – guilty until proven innocent) without due consideration so we need to reject that too out of hand given their investment in the outcome. Preservation of the narrative for its own sake is not science.
Stating this as a ‘common sense’ approach should clue Thanos and others we are attempting to make another category that excludes that awful cesspool called ‘fringe’. if we cannot do this we will never get anywhere. And then there were three: non-expert speculation without careful thought; non-expert speculation / critique of the experts with careful thought; and expert opinion (hopefully that implies ‘with careful thought’).
I will be so bold as to say this middle category is not only possible but necessary. As voting citizens we have a duty really to vote rationally on subjects like global warming, abortion, genetic research, etc. The citizen with well considered opinions is the backbone of democracy and I’ll leave to the forum to consider how far from that we are and which direction we are going. Querying college students about basic facts of things is not promising. Aristotle’s claim that common opinion (an ‘average’ I suppose of everyday beliefs) as one source of knowledge has lost validity.
So by common sense I do not mean infatuation with any number of romantic ideas and I do not mean some kind of statistical average of belief. What I mean is non-expert critical thinking. So, a definition. I will suggest that if we all learn to do this out of habit our lives will be better and communities in general will head in a more sane directions.
An aside to Thanos who appears to be the leader in defense of science between attacked by quackery (which, of course, is also true): ‘common sense’ by definition excludes any claim to ‘expert’ opinion and will not have the resources usually to put together a body of evidence to overturn entrenched expert opinion on its own. That will require other expert opinion and funding to do research (which GH calls for time an again).
Now applying ‘common sense’ to GH’s work in general I would like to offer up a short list off the top of my head of some repeating tidbits that might fall in this category (not guaranteed to be true but examples I think of what I mean):
1. Stone cannot be directly dated. Dating relies on other materials in close proximity.
2. Why is myth rejected outright as a source of info to point us at interesting leads? It seems this goes beyond simply ‘not taking myth at face value’.
3. Where are the intermediate steps? In the evolution of anything we ought to be able to find evidence of a graduated process over time.
4. Evidence that potentially contradicts the grand prehistory narrative gets short shrift – from neglect to ‘disappearing’
Now please note none of the above requires wild speculation and I think it is a fallacious move to try to sweep such ‘common sense’ questions under the rug by associated them with speculative replacement theories by the same person. But let’s venture there for a second (with the risk of triggering a ‘prove it’ response);
The almost universal fact of world wide flood myths coupled with the rapid sea level rise at the end of the last ice age ought to raise our eyebrows a bit – it ought to stir some professional interest. The fact that this is treated like the plague or a cardinal sin by academics tells us more about them and their investment in their narrative that is does about the validity of this new hypothesis. There is a house of cards problem here unfortunately – an inter locking accepted pre-history storyline. So if one group of scientists in one country decides to investigate this (say by diving in southern India) and they find stuff it will be received negatively by the rest of the prehistory expert community and that negative hump is what we are up against – this is far beyond mere peer review. That is not due to the scientific method or good hypothesis creation, this is due to authority resisting common sense . it is a social problem. So, as citizens who want rational policy and a rational life I think we need to not go quietly.
Now, in all fairness, it seem that GH did in fact get a lot of cooperation form various experts all over the planet for the most part. What this tells us is his approach is not seen as quackery by many, even the experts, and they do not feel threatened by what he is trying to do.
So lets please add this third category – I really do not see myself in either of the other two camps.
We have a glove thrown down between the non-expert ‘fringe’ believers on the one hand and calcified dogmatic Egyptology on the other and I do not see an immediate break in that logjam. Someone like Sun Tzu would tell us never go head to head with the opponent. So another approach.
Can ‘common sense’ legitimately critique science at all? I think this is a core question and exactly what GH is attempting. The egos of academia will jump to a ‘no’ (thus GH is pseudo – guilty until proven innocent) without due consideration so we need to reject that too out of hand given their investment in the outcome. Preservation of the narrative for its own sake is not science.
Stating this as a ‘common sense’ approach should clue Thanos and others we are attempting to make another category that excludes that awful cesspool called ‘fringe’. if we cannot do this we will never get anywhere. And then there were three: non-expert speculation without careful thought; non-expert speculation / critique of the experts with careful thought; and expert opinion (hopefully that implies ‘with careful thought’).
I will be so bold as to say this middle category is not only possible but necessary. As voting citizens we have a duty really to vote rationally on subjects like global warming, abortion, genetic research, etc. The citizen with well considered opinions is the backbone of democracy and I’ll leave to the forum to consider how far from that we are and which direction we are going. Querying college students about basic facts of things is not promising. Aristotle’s claim that common opinion (an ‘average’ I suppose of everyday beliefs) as one source of knowledge has lost validity.
So by common sense I do not mean infatuation with any number of romantic ideas and I do not mean some kind of statistical average of belief. What I mean is non-expert critical thinking. So, a definition. I will suggest that if we all learn to do this out of habit our lives will be better and communities in general will head in a more sane directions.
An aside to Thanos who appears to be the leader in defense of science between attacked by quackery (which, of course, is also true): ‘common sense’ by definition excludes any claim to ‘expert’ opinion and will not have the resources usually to put together a body of evidence to overturn entrenched expert opinion on its own. That will require other expert opinion and funding to do research (which GH calls for time an again).
Now applying ‘common sense’ to GH’s work in general I would like to offer up a short list off the top of my head of some repeating tidbits that might fall in this category (not guaranteed to be true but examples I think of what I mean):
1. Stone cannot be directly dated. Dating relies on other materials in close proximity.
2. Why is myth rejected outright as a source of info to point us at interesting leads? It seems this goes beyond simply ‘not taking myth at face value’.
3. Where are the intermediate steps? In the evolution of anything we ought to be able to find evidence of a graduated process over time.
4. Evidence that potentially contradicts the grand prehistory narrative gets short shrift – from neglect to ‘disappearing’
Now please note none of the above requires wild speculation and I think it is a fallacious move to try to sweep such ‘common sense’ questions under the rug by associated them with speculative replacement theories by the same person. But let’s venture there for a second (with the risk of triggering a ‘prove it’ response);
The almost universal fact of world wide flood myths coupled with the rapid sea level rise at the end of the last ice age ought to raise our eyebrows a bit – it ought to stir some professional interest. The fact that this is treated like the plague or a cardinal sin by academics tells us more about them and their investment in their narrative that is does about the validity of this new hypothesis. There is a house of cards problem here unfortunately – an inter locking accepted pre-history storyline. So if one group of scientists in one country decides to investigate this (say by diving in southern India) and they find stuff it will be received negatively by the rest of the prehistory expert community and that negative hump is what we are up against – this is far beyond mere peer review. That is not due to the scientific method or good hypothesis creation, this is due to authority resisting common sense . it is a social problem. So, as citizens who want rational policy and a rational life I think we need to not go quietly.
Now, in all fairness, it seem that GH did in fact get a lot of cooperation form various experts all over the planet for the most part. What this tells us is his approach is not seen as quackery by many, even the experts, and they do not feel threatened by what he is trying to do.
So lets please add this third category – I really do not see myself in either of the other two camps.