Conspiracies

[billybunter]

You nor I cannot say who built the pyramids. I don't know who built my house. I don't even know where I am in this universe. If it is one. All arguments can be ended like this.

[palo5]

Originally Posted by squigg58

...
"Ancient texts speak of flying cats...

Clearly a conspiracy

[squigg58]

Originally Posted by palo5

Clearly a conspiracy

Okay ... I fell for that one! I actually went back and checked to see if I had written "flying cats"!

[billybunter]

I have seen flying fish. But when I was in deep DTs I never saw a pink elephant. But I did see some scary stuff.

[MrInBetween]

Originally Posted by billybunter

Perhaps the answer for man is to rebuild the pyramids with the methods used back then. No one has any right to deny a conspiracy, unless you have proof to put it to bed.

Originally Posted by squigg58

So, what we get is "There must be a God because nobody can prove there isn't", or "An alien dug a hole in my back garden. Now prove that's not what happened!"

The principle of Occam's Razor has been mentioned before in this thread. One way of looking at it is to say that if you were drawing a graph and trying to connect two points, there's an infinite number of lines you could use that would do so, but the simplest one would be a straight line (when you start connecting more than two points, a curve may be simpler). And there are a multitude of explanations that could be applied to any phenomenon, but you should choose the simplest one, unless you have reason to think otherwise - like another data point. And the definition of 'simplest' includes being compatible with what is accepted knowledge. If you don't do this, how do you start to choose between them? There's always another explanation possible and they never become exhausted (unlike the people reading this thread).

So the assumption is that, as the pyramids have been built, and people were around to do it, they were built by people, unless you have reason to think otherwise. This is not being closed-minded, because anyone is welcome to try and prove that there is a reason to think otherwise; it's just to say that until that is done, there isn't a case for science to answer - why should we rebuild the pyramids? Why don't we rebuild everything else, just in case?

I'd like to know what it is about the pyramids that is thought to be inexplicable. Is is just that they were large and built by people long ago? When I was a teenager I read a comic - possibly Superman - with a story involving some sort of alien skull that had the power to produce weird visions, and it was suggested that this had previously been found by Edgar Alan Poe, causing him to come up with his horror stories. It struck me then that this was a very typical idea in these comics, to attribute anything out of the ordinary to aliens or other outside agencies rather than to human creativity and resourcefulness - though obviously that wouldn't have been so suitable for a visual medium. This perennial theory about the pyramid's alien origin seems to spring from just the same sort of underestimation of what's actually possible for human beings.

[Estreeter]

Originally Posted by palo5

Clearly a conspiracy

I'll tell ya what a conspiracy is, this thread, now 1969 posts in and nobody has as yet answered the most important question asked in it's very first post

Originally Posted by Estreeter

What happened to the left over pizza I was gonna have for breakfast?

[squigg58]

Originally Posted by Estreeter

I'll tell ya what a conspiracy is, this thread, now 1969 posts in and nobody has as yet answered the most important question asked in it's very first post

Well, that's the thing about a lot of conspiracy theories. There's usually a perfectly rational explanation which doesn't involve secret government agencies and aliens!

[billybunter]

Personally I don't believe aliens built the pyramids. But it is a remarkable engineering feat. The one thing that baffles people is how they were able to cut the stones so precisely. And moving they up to a height is astonishing. I'm sure 1000s died building them. I would like to see if modern man could achieve this feat.

[billybunter]

Originally Posted by squigg58

Well, that's the thing about a lot of conspiracy theories. There's usually a perfectly rational explanation which doesn't involve secret government agencies and aliens!

That's an alien cat squiggs, look at its eyes.

[billybunter]

Cheesy muzac sorry. But interesting program on the pyramids. The Japanese tried to build on in the 70s and couldn't without cranes etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjh2UOaoXfE