Two of my coworkers frequently mention shows like “Encounters” or “Ancient apocalypse” or whatever. I’m not the best at debating or forming arguments against these though I do feel strongly that bold claims require better evidence than a blurry photo and an eyewitness account. How do you all go about this?
Today I clumsily stumbled through conversation and said “I’ll need some evidence” and was hit with “there’s plenty of evidence in the episode ‘Lights over Fukushima’”. I didn’t have an answer because I haven’t watched it. I’m 99% sure that if I watch it it’s gonna be dramatized, designed to scare/freak you out a little and consist of eyewitness accounts and blurry photos set to eerie music. But I’m afraid I just sound like a haughty know-it-all if I do assert this before watching.
These are good people and I want to remain on good terms and not come across as a cynical asshole.
(Sorry if language is too formal or stilted. Not my native tongue)
Yeah. Also it’s not my place to raise adults. But a part of me wishes to plant a seed of skepticism. I have a hard time nodding and going along with it. I feel compelled to question it rather than going along with this kind of small talk.
I’ve watched some of the shows because they do actually lead to some interesting archeological digs I hadn’t heard of before… However there’s one thing that always nags me when watching this stuff – why do they always think ancient humans were so stupid? It is believed that the human brain has not changed for around 100,000 years, which means that no matter how far back you go in our observable history, those people had the same capacity for rational thought as we do. Sure, we have a huge advantage through the knowledge of written history, but even a cave man had the same ability as we do to accomplish a task with the materials at hand.
You’ll also note they always ask a modern engineer how they would accomplish tasks such as moving large stones, and the answer is always something like “I would use modern machinery” because of course we’ve come to rely on them and nobody today ever tries to think of any other way to perform the same task. How were the great pyramids built? They always claim it can’t be done today, while conveniently ignoring all of the theories of how they did probably move those blocks.
So I guess my skepticism on those types of shows is that they intentionally leave out significant details to make everything sound more woo-woo (every big claim they make probably already has a wikipedia page providing legitimate answers or at least giving factual details). Sure there are some things that still aren’t understood but just because you see some glowing lights doesn’t immediately mean aliens are involved. Even though I do believe there is other life out there, I haven’t seen any evidence yet on these shows that I would consider “proof” of visitations, but rather just a whole lot of “this is how we interpret the data to fit our conspiracy theory.”
why do they always think ancient humans were so stupid?
Because they (and by extension their audience) are not that bright.
If they cannot think of how it was done and they must be smart because they live with all this modern technology (which they didn’t create and don’t really understand) then there is no way for people in the past to have done it.
Therefore…aliens. Well, that is the modern thought. In the past it you just replace aliens with God or Gods or Demons etc.
Yeah replacing “god” with “aliens” pretty much sums up the mentality here.
One that really gets me (and I can’t think offhand of where exactly it is at), is an artificial cave network that appears to date back to the last big ice age, around 10,000 years ago. “But they didn’t have anything other than stone tools, so it couldn’t have been created by humans!” You’re telling me that if the only thing you know about is stone, that you wouldn’t have some understanding that some types of stone are harder than others? We’re talking about people living in one place for millennia with nothing to do except go out hunting for food and sitting in the cave, and in all that time they couldn’t have slowly cut out more caves to make their homes larger? Seems like such a simple idea to me, and yet it seems to go right over the heads of all these people discussing those caves. “Mommy I’m bored!” “Grab a rock and start grinding, dear.”
You don’t have to convince them but you also don’t have to listen either.
You just have to decide that any issues with cutting them off when they start talking about it is worth the effort or if it may cause problems at work.
