My pareidolia knows no bounds.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br />But there are no actual Ss in the white noise. No single image passes anyone's threshold of looking like an S. On Mars, many face images have a similar character that they are buried in noise and therefore not evident to most lookers. But some are detailed and apparent to everyone. And that is a very different case from the white noise study.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I'm not so sure that "no single image passes anyone's threshold of looking like an S". It may be that if we examine all the Yes pile, we might see some that upon extended "gazing" like I did with the Skullface scene, I can see the S.

But, granted, I don't hold this out to be the be-all and end-all of the debate. By no means. It stikes me more like the experimenters are looking at something under the microscope (the white noise study) and finding faint traces of an element of how the mind works, that goes counter to what we would normally think. It's "top-down" instead of "bottom-up". Without the top-down influences, the summed image would have been gray.

Also, if the subjects weren't told there was an S there, they wouldn't have found <b>any</b>, right? (or would they?) So, it's different from the Mars case in that sense also. But, it's similar, too, once one "knows" there are faces there.


<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
The Cydonia Face in particular is famous for being the only object of note in a featureless, flat, smooth background for several kilometers in most directions. And the top of the 500-meter-high Face mesa itself is low in noise. The eyebrows, irises, nostrils, and lips features are the only ones on the mesa that could possibly qualify as those features, and yet each had the correct size, shape, location, and orientation to be a deliberate attempt to portray a face. There was no hint of randomness.

And when it was first spotted, no one was looking for faces on Mars. But if Cydonia is one that is not of natural origin, there is likely to be more than one.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I think this is an important point. It all goes back to the original Cydonia face.

Assume we ignore the "proof of artificiality" for a second, isn't this face a classic example of pareidolia? The simplist kind.

I know that the notion of "ignoring the proof" will be considered by some as to invalidate my whole argument, but there are many people who don't believe we really have good enough images yet to validate the proof. Didn't jrich spend days debatiing this very subject with you? I wouldn't attempt it, because I don't believe I could do a better job than he did, but I do see the merits of the argument that we really don't have good enough images yet.

But, you can see how shaky the house of cards is, if that original Cydonia face is nothing more than what mainstream sciences portrays it as.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">So I don't think the study of Ss, while interesting, has much relevance here except in cases of very noisy backgrounds, where caution with interpretations is always in order. -|Tom|-<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Right, but isn't that most of them?

Along these lines, I came across another photographer/artist face hunter, by the name of Alexander Boes. I just happened to see some of his work, while searching for Fred Ressler. Here are some of his pictures, and a description by him, of what he's doing, and what he thinks the criteria are for finding faces. It's interesting, because both sides of the argument can use his ideas to their advantage.

Disclaimer: I have no independent proof that these aren't artifacts from some indigenous peoples living in Kristiansand, Norway long ago, other than the words of the artist. Plus, remember that I am presenting this stuff as good examples of pareidolia, and that the artist states they tend to go away in daylight. Of course, one can argue that the Mars images that are repeated in two or more swaths, at different time of day or year therefore don't apply, but I'm not so sure about that.

But, take a close look at these, they are eerily similar to alot of the stuff on Mars.


<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
"What I mean is that I find them at night. Usually besides a road, and the rock is usually illuminated from above by streetlights.

I live in Kristiansand, Norway. The landscape is mostly valleys and big lumps of bedrock sticking up everywhere. So a lot of blasting through this rock is done when builing roads. these steep (often vertical) “walls” is where i have found most of the faces. I doubt any of mine have been deliberately crafted.......

I’ll also get daylight shots of the same spots, but few faces are very good (or visible) in daylight due to the lack of shadows.

Very detailed faces are rare. But crude faces and otherwise detailed faces missing one or more important parts are very easy to find. It’s a bit of ‘The tip of the iceberg’ situation. Only the very best are worth taking pictures of, since there are endless of places to go. At least here.

I have found very few faces in natural rocks and ‘mountainsides’. I guess because of the the more numerous shadows in the raw edges of blasted rock." Alexander Boe <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

See Stone Faces here:
www.home.no/stoneface/

Note: This could be the most important point yet: "and otherwise detailed faces missing one or more important parts are very easy to find."

I have often thought about this part of it. If a part of the face, small or large, is obstucted by a landslide or something of that nature, like we see on many of the Mars images, then we are free to "fill in the blanks", playing right into pareidolia.

rd

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Assume we ignore the "proof of artificiality" for a second, isn't this face a classic example of pareidolia? The simplest kind.
[rd]<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Using the original Cydonia Face as evidence of pareidolia is a classic example of assuming to be true that which is under contention--that which you are attempting to prove. It can only <i>still</i> be considered pareidolia if you falsify all of the evidence and proof that has been brought forth subsequently.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I know that the notion of "ignoring the proof" will be considered by some as to invalidate my whole argument, but there are many people who don't believe we really have good enough images yet to validate the proof.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

You may not be aware that Tom was in the "natural causes camp" until the later images came in, and the scientific studies were done. He's still in that camp (I believe) where most of the new discoveries are concerned, and for the same reasons.

My personal feeling is that too much was claimed for the original images, and too much doctoring of the evidence was done by some proponents of artificiality, but from the time of the 1998 image onward, many valid <i>a priori </i>predictions were fulfilled.

Again, this does not prove conclusively that the Face or any other object on Mars is artificial, but we are laying the groundwork for a viable theory. We are making good deductive assumptions and arguments, many of which are bearing fruit. The argument that many people still disagree needs to be considered of course, but that factor alone does not add much weight to the "natural formation/pareidolia" hypothesis. The proof one way or the other will come gradually as more and better evidence is amassed.

Because I am a believer in logic, I think we are right and you are mistaken in your beliefs. I've said this before but the only thing that negates my (subjective) opinion at this point is the possibility that the evidence has been corrupted by a massive NASA/JPL/MSSS conspiracy. I now think the chances of that are almost nil. That given, the Clown Mosaic alone is enough to prove to me that the artificiality hypothesis is the correct one (and there are other examples).

I find it very interesting that most critics are so sure of their opinions that they want to discourage any further research in this area. I don't know the exact wording, but isn't one of NASA's missions the search for extraterestrial life?. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Neil

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />Using the original Cydonia Face as evidence of pareidolia is a classic example of assuming to be true that which is under contention--that which you are attempting to prove. It can only <i>still</i> be considered pareidolia if you falsify all of the evidence and proof that has been brought forth subsequently.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I would refer you back to jrich's argument, which I agree with, that simply states in part (jr-correct me if I'm wrong) that the quality of the images that were used in the proofs are questionable at best, and then I'm drawing the inference as to what the state of affairs would be without that proof. Seems reasonable to me.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I find it very interesting that most critics are so sure of their opinions that they want to discourage any further research in this area.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I hope we continue to get more and better images, and that the search for the "smoking gun", the proverbial "watch", goes on and that everyone keeps an open mind. But there are a couple of different issues here. All I'm saying is that even if we find that the Cydonia Face is made of metal and is hollow, and there are watches all over the place, it does not necessarily follow that all of the face images are works of art, any more than it follows that Alexander Boes stone faces are works of art. Two different issues.

(added material) Let me rephrase that. Alexander Boes' stone faces <b>are</b> works of art, but they're <b>his</b> works of art.

The metallic hollow face would prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was an ancient civilization on Mars, but it wouldn't negate the pareidolia effect.



rd

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />Using the original Cydonia Face as evidence of pareidolia is a classic example of assuming to be true that which is under contention--that which you are attempting to prove. It can only <i>still</i> be considered pareidolia if you falsify all of the evidence and proof that has been brought forth subsequently.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">There are two very big problems with this statement:

First, the artificiality of Cydonia has not been proved in any meaningful way. There is imagery which, if it is interpreted in certain ways, tends to strongly support artificiality, but that is the most that may be reasonably claimed at this time.

Second the burden of proof is not on those who advocate pareidolia. Since evidence of artificiality is not yet conclusive pareidolia must be assumed to be the correct explanation. It does not require proof, but may only be disproved.

Given the above it is not a fallacy to hold the first image of the Face as an example of pareidolia. It is for you and Tom and others to prove that it is not and not just to yourselves.

I also want to address the connection between the artificiality of Cydonia,"land art" and other possible artificial structures. While it is true that if artificiality can be proved in one place that it makes claims of artificiality at others <b>more plausible</b>, plausibility does not constitute evidence. Every candidate must be evaluated on the basis of the evidence alone. Even if I believed that artificiality had been proved in the case of Cydonia, I would still be just as skeptical about the other claims as should everyone.

JR

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by rderosa</i>
<br />I'm not so sure that "no single image passes anyone's threshold of looking like an S". It may be that if we examine all the Yes pile, we might see some that upon extended "gazing" like I did with the Skullface scene, I can see the S.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The disclaimer in your first sentence seems a bit gratuitous. It was represented to us that all the images were white noise. The whole point of the paper was that you can get random dots to look like an S by summing images that have something (anything) in common with an S and subtracting images that do not. So you do not need any image to look like an S for the conclusions drawn by these authors to follow.

On Mars, we are dealing with some images that already look like something non-random and do not come from noisy or random backgrounds. The S study has no relevance to that type of image.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">It stikes me more like the experimenters are looking at something under the microscope (the white noise study) and finding faint traces of an element of how the mind works, that goes counter to what we would normally think.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">It does not run counter to the way I normally think about such things. As I explained, the way I would have acted if I were a subject would have resulted in no S pattern in the end. But if I followed the misleading instructions given to subjects, I would have gradually learned to go by even the mildest hint of an S shape, which would have divided all the white noise images into those that had something S-like about them and those that had nothing S-like about them. The former would have summed to the overall impression of an S as it existed in my mind (which would have looked like a "W" if that's what I thought the letter S looked like).

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Also, if the subjects weren't told there was an S there, they wouldn't have found <b>any</b>, right? (or would they?)<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">It depends on how random the white noise was. It used to be that TV stations signed off the air at some late-night hour, and their test pattern would be replaced by visual "static", continually changing rapidly. If is quite unimaginable that a detailed pattern would suddenly emerge from that noise on the screen. Of course, vague impressions of something might emerge as often as one's imagination permits that to happen.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">isn't this [Cydonia] face a classic example of pareidolia? The simplist kind.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">That was what the original, pre-MGS debate was all about. Eventually, eight tests emerged to distinguish artificial from pareidolic. These included all pareidolic faces being 2-D, formed either from profiles that vanish at other viewing angles, or tricks of light and shadow that vanish at other illumination angles. 3-D faces such as Cydonia apparently are too detailed for nature to simulate. The only other example in 3-D with <i>that</i> much detail sits on Mt. Rushmore.

Another of the eight tests was using military software designed to detect artificial structures (such as tanks or buildings) hidden in natural terrain. The Cydonia Face registered as 80% probability of being artificial. And there is no human interpretation involved in that result, so it would be difficult to attribute it to pareidolia.

By the end of 1996, the discovery that the Face was right on the old Mars equator and oriented upright with respect to it (one-in-a-thousand of happening by chance) placed the last of the original eight tests in the "artificial" column. So that conclusion was already unanimous when MGS was launched, and was used as a basis for getting NASA to request priority imaging of the Cydonia Face. It would still be a major public topic of discussion today if JPL had not killed major media interest in the story for their own selfish reasons.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">there are many people who don't believe we really have good enough images yet to validate the proof.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The operative word here is "believe". But science doesn't give any weight to opinion polls. Only observation, experiment, reasoning, or citation are recognized as a valid basis for a scientific conclusion. Hunches or preferences don't count.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Didn't jrich spend days debatiing this very subject with you?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Yes, he tried to argue that the four secondary facial features did not exist in objective reality, but were themselves pareidolic and "power of suggestion" (not his choice of words). I challenged him to view the Face animation on our web site, and to view the 1998 MGS image on a better monitor, then report back whether he still thought these features were just imagination (he called them "subjective"). I've not heard more from him on this matter since that challenge was issued.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I do see the merits of the argument that we really don't have good enough images yet.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Then I issue you the same challenge. I've heard that people can make themselves blind if they really don't want to see something, but I am convinced there are limits to this programmed blindness. Tell me if you don't see that the four secondary facial features exist with the right size, shape, location, and orientation in the animation and the 1998 image, with no background of similar objects that might allow us to pick and choose ones that matched our preconceptions. Or tell me if you don't see how the existence of these predicted features makes the argument compelling that the Cydonia Face did not have a natural origin.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">[tvf]: So I don't think the study of Ss, while interesting, has much relevance here except in cases of very noisy backgrounds, where caution with interpretations is always in order.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Right, but isn't that most of them?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Yes, it is. But nobody is claiming we can tell most flat art from pareidolia. It is merely being claimed that, given proved artificiality elsewhere, we are free to argue that artificiality is more probable than pareidolia in any particular case because of the degree of detail. Nothing is at stake in such arguments except whether the features in question should go into the bin of "finds" and be allowed to influence our hypothesis-forming about what this Mars flat art is telling us about the creators and their purposes.

Obviously, none of these possibly pareidolic images can be used as additional support for the artificiality hypothesis in general. But all that is needed of such images is that the odds against a natural origin are at least 51%.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">This could be the most important point yet: "and otherwise detailed faces missing one or more important parts are very easy to find."<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Most of us began with that premise at the outset. Faces in clouds and landscapes are indeed very common. But they are limited in their degree of detail. Read JP Levasseur's pareidolia paper again. We have never seen the detail of a Cydonia Face, much less that of a Mt. Rushmore face, in clouds or landscapes. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by MarkVitrone</i>
<br />I would like to pose a challenge to those interested in these Mars photographs. Can a curriculum be developed for the standardized evaluation of these photographs since the technology is fixed due to the pictures deriving from the same satelite? Mark Vitrone<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Mark, sorry I meant to answer this awhile ago. I even started it once, and got sidetracked.

There are a couple of cross-currents here. One is that there may be a certain amount of a proprietary nature to some of this. Some posters might not necessarily be willing to spell it all out, and I can easily see that point of view. Some of this is art, some science.

As far as whether or not something might be standardized, and a curriculum worked out, I have a little perspective on this, that may shed some light on the subject.

I once sat on the Metrology Committee at SEMI ('88-'93). SEMI stands for Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International, and is "the global industry association providing support to its worldwide members in the semiconductor industry at the local level."

I was on Measurements Subcommittee. We spent six months debating the definition of words like, "accuracy", "precision", "repeatability", "reproducibility", "matching", and drawing up the relevant test patterns that would be used. There were representatives from some of the biggest semiconductor manufacturers, test equipment, and process equipment companies. But not all of the companies participated. I don't think Intel was there, but National Semi was. Motorola scoffed. They had their own rules. Samsung was in its infancy, so they didn't know what we were talking about, anyway.

A year or two went by, and after a hundred revisions, the document went out to the world for approval.

Some liked it, some didn't and gave their reasons, and some balked totally. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) sent a letter to SEMI saying how they were the only institution in the country that could use the word "accuracy". There was no such thing as accuracy, other than in comparison to an approved standard, and there was no approved standard for the stuff we were defining (linewidths, registration, pitch, slope).

The paper died. We started all over again. I think it evenutally got done years later, but things were moving fast, so I don't know how the final product related to the original work.




rd