Elaborate Pareidolia and other Mysteries

<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 /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I stated quite some months ago that the reasoning of the artificiality proponents is essentially the same as that employed in Intelligent Design: [jr]<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">We disagree on this. ID is a religious theory. We invoke no deities and no miracles here. The possibility of sentient life outside of our small planet is a falsifiable scientific hypothesis with supporters ranging from NASA to Arthur C. Clark, to Carl Sagan.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I would be interested to know how one could falsify the theory that there is sentitient life outside our planet. It is a theory that may be confirmed, but not falsified. It is therefore not a <b><i>scientific</i></b> theory. Likewise, the theory that we are the only sentient life in the universe cannot be proved, only disproved. Therefore, it is not a <b><i>scientific</i></b> theory either. So what then are these "theories"? They are <i><b>beliefs</b></i> about the natural world, and the only legitimate place for such beliefs in scientific reasoning is as <i><b>assumptions</b></i>. For this reason the existence of Martians like the existence of deities may not be proved, only <b><i>discovered</i></b>. So far I have seen no discoveries of either.<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">Richard, if someone doesn't write a doctoral dissertation on the correlation between political ideology and skepticism of UFOs, Global Warming, Intelligent Design and Martian artifacts, I think will.

"Dr." Rich [jr]<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">A good place to start would be an analysis of Image 2, and proof of its “pareidolia-hood.”<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Huh?

JR

If neither DeRosa brother has anything new to say (and I don't mean just new pictures to make the same old points), how about resting until you do?

Neil: I suggest you quit being defensive and so easily baited, and quit attacking your brother even when he attacks you. If you must, do it off-line. I suggest you ignore all his future posts until something worthy of comment by you comes along, which has not happened for the last several months now.

Rich: I suggest you quit commenting on Neil's posts and stick to the science issue on the table, about which there appears to be nothing new to say. Your "Ressler scale", even if it were objectified, has no apparent value distinguishing pareidolia from artifacts because both come with high, medium, and low scores on your scale.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">[Rich]: If someone says something absurd, and you reply, "that's absurd" (a la Ann), is that ridicule? I don't think it is.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">It is ad hominem and unscientific. If you had said "stupid", it might be more obvious to you that you are just insulting the writer because ideas have no intelligence of their own. In science, arguments are valid or invalid for stated reasons, but most other attributes compliment or insult the writer.

In this instance, you claimed that the idea of artifacts all over Mars was absurd and compared it to the "divine intervention" idea. I gave an argument why artifacts all over our own Moon are most likely a reality of our own future, and you just repeated referring to artifacts all over Mars as "absurd". I don't see any legitimate argument you might make that abundant artifacts are even of low probability, much less an absurd idea or one on a par with divine intervention. -|Tom|-

Much earlier, Rich and I had this exchange (Rich first):
<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">I still don't see what makes "Pompador Rock" in Mt. Tamalpais any different than a normal human head (albeit larger), and why that one wouldn't survive the test any more than a statue of a human head, made by man would.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">It loses its face-like appearance when viewed at other angles, just as all the other examples of landform faces do. Moreover, if that weren't so, we would be able to conclude at a high confidence level that it was man-made precisely because faces with 3D features have too much complexity for chance.

However, to avoid being circular here, I will agree that you have found your one example if you can show that it still looks reasonably like a face when viewed head-on or from the opposite side. My point is that natural features don't have that much complexity. And your example has so few face-like features that the face illusion might go away even at a different time of day because if the lighting did not cast that one shadow, the face would not appear to have that "eye".<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I am sorry this was never followed up. If we have any hope of finding a way to tell pareidolic from artificial, it surely rests with using terrestrial examples where we have some hope of finding ground truth.

This Pompador Rock case was interesting because there might be an outside chance that it was a true artifact and not a product of nature. Either way, we seem to have another (tentative) criterion for eliminating pareidolia as an explanation: true three dimensionality (i.e., details that persist through a large range of both lighting and viewing angles). -|Tom|-

<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 />Your "Ressler scale", even if it were objectified, has no apparent value distinguishing pareidolia from artifacts because both come with high, medium, and low scores on your scale.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Ok, on all points except this one. I never said the "Ressler Scale" had anything whatsoever to do with distinguishing pareidolia from artifacts. As a matter of fact, I specifically said that it can't be used for that. Maybe you missed it.

This is a crucial point in the whole discussion, and I really would like to get this squared away, since I know you don't want me to post more pictures (which I wasn't intending to, by the way).

You were the one who brought up the subject of "telling whether or not something was pareidolia or artificial" with respect to the Mars images, I never did. I admitted I didn't have a clue how to do that.

I've been saying since day 1 of the Pareidolia thread that my intention was to show that there exists Earthly Pareidolia that is as elaborate as the Mars so-called art. No more no less. You may not think that's an important point, but Neil certainly does, because anytime I've shown that he's bent over backwards to try and minimize that fact, on the hopes of keeping his Martian Art theory alive.

I thought it was a done deal when I first posted the first link to Fred's photos, but Neil employed the Mineola Carney objection, so I had to continue on until I could show it for my self. I think I've succeeded now, so there's really nothing else for me to do.

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." {unknown}


rd

{this is a sort of paraphrase of another post I posted on one of these threads}

Tom, I think some of the more recent Faces that Neil has posted, like "Coprates Lady" and the Nili Fossae faces prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is nothing anyone could ever do to prove to Neil they <b>are not art</b>, by employing any method you can think of. Unless we were to find some kind of historical records that couldn't be denied. My argument was that it was the same as if you and I were standing next to one of the Yosemite walls, and we saw a reasonably good face up close. If I said, "I think it's pareidolia" (meaning not man made), and you said, "No this must have been carved by Indians", there is no way either of us could "prove" to the other which was true. We'd have to either get historical records, or do some kind of failure analysis on the rocks to see if they were carved, or things of that nature.

So, as long as we're restricted to images, it's impossible. "Coprates Lady" makes that quite clear.


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Here's a copy of the message:

<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"><i>Originally posted by Ephemeral</i>
<br />When I show Martian images and keys to friends never exposed to them before, keys often reinforce their first impression and snap-judgment, as in: 'See, I had spotted it!, or in: 'Well, if I show you a key, I can make you see any face in the world...'<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Yes, you're right, but the problem goes even deeper than that. The keys help one see the face you are pointing out, just as RobRatliff now sees the Mephistopheles face in the pareidoia thread. They serve to eliminate the ambiguity in what is being discussed, whether it's being presented as "artifact" or "pareidolia". But, as I have shown, since one can so the same thing with pareidolia, they don't serve as proof. Also, the Coprates Lady, and the Nili Fossae faces offer the final proof that the question of artificiality or not will never be solved by imagery alone. These particular images are very high resolution. We are in fact "there" looking at it. Neil is dogmatic in his belief that they are "artifacts". Most others would consider them run-of-the-mill pareidolia. It's no different than if two people were standing by one of the walls of Yosemite discussing faces they see. One might say it's chance contrast, while another might say they must be some Indian artifacts. There is no way to prove who is right, independent of some hard evidence, or more importantly by some historical record, or written evidence.

As a matter of fact, even with hard evidence of artificiality, like a mechanical device, for instance, that still wouldn't mean there were faces all over the planet. For that to be "proven" it would take historical records like heiroglyphics or something of that nature.

The bottom line? It's going to be a long time before this is "settled", so I wouldn't lose sleep in the meantime.

But they are "pretty".rd<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
rd

I’d like to make a small “plea for the freedom of dissent” here. I do not deny the right of the owner of a given forum to set the tone of discourse on that forum, and if that “tone setting” requires the stifling of some free speech deemed “troublesome” or “abrasive,” well he has that right. On the other hand, censorship of scientific debate can raise a plethora of new problems, not the least of which is to stifle new scientific ideas.

We are dealing here with potentially one of the most important new ideas of our time. One of the reasons for ”rehabilitating” my brother Richard a few months ago was that he offered a strong new voice for the “pareidolia camp,” which the owners felt necessary to keep the debate from being one sided, and possibly too shallow. In other words, they did not want a bunch of ”anomaly hunters preaching to the chorus.” And that’s fine.

But there is another side of this issue. A few years ago there were a number of competent thinkers, both finding anomalies in the NASA images, and making good logical and scientific cases for them. But I know from conversations with some of these individuals that many were so badly burnt from their efforts, that they are now very reticent to speak in open forums, or even to be associated with them. I don’t have to name them; many of us know who they are.

Alright, fine. Richard and I took up where they left off. And then we ended up in opposite camps. So be it. He and I don’t agree on much now, but I’ll say this for him (which I can’t say for many others). He has a lot of nerve, and he is not afraid to express an opinion, and as everyone knows, so do I. But it is now deemed somehow too risky to the guardians of this forum to let the debate go forward. And I am at a loss to understand why.

Often, in the history of science when diametrically opposed paradigms confronted each other, there were strong words. But as long as the rules of civility are not bridged, this is necessary and proper if the truth is to be got at. There are many examples one could cite from history. One I like is “Darwin’s Bulldog,” Thomas Huxley. Here are a few of his choice words, words that make Rich’s and mine seem tame by comparison.

“I finished your book yesterday... Since I read Von Baer's Essays nine years ago no work on Natural History Science I have met with has made so great an impression on me & I do most heartily thank you for the great store of new views you have given me... As for your doctrines I am prepared to go to the Stake if requisite... I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable abuse & misrepresentation which unless I greatly mistake is in store for you... And as to the curs which will bark and yelp - you must recollect that some of your friends at any rate are endowed with an amount of combativeness which (though you have often & justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead - I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness.” [T. Huxley]

Best wishes,
Neil DeRosa