At 3:24 AM -0400 03/11/2000, Peter Horton wrote:
Peter,
I don't think either point you raise about Mars helps your argument. We can
learn about the development of the solar system through robotic proxies,
and we can discover fossil life, or even live life (which I suspect is
unlikely), through robotic proxies. *shrug*
As for the notion that we've been there before, I think it's unlikelu, but
more importantly that it's extremely unlikely that suggesting this will
help further an argument about why we should go to Mars. I won't call you
crazy for your (admittedly pretty odd to me) beliefs, but then again I had
an argument with a loved one last week about whether fairies and elves
exist (I was firmly against, for the record), so I am probably deadened by
long exposure to the bulk of the effect of weird ideas. However, I tend to
not take arguments based on those kinds of ideas very seriously.
As for the historical validity of that claim, well, yeah Homo Sapiens have
been around for about that long afaik (and I just looked it up the other
week); certainly the whole notion of "progress" as we tend to present it in
our society is a romanticization of the way technological development
occurs in the real world, in fits and starts and backpedals and so on. I
read somewhere that someone dug up some kind of battery from the bronze age
which was probably used to treating bronze, for example, but we consider
Ben Franklin with his kite and a key in the middle of the string as our
popculture symbol for the discovering of harnessable electricity (right?).
But a lot of the arguments that people make about the future can be applied
to the past. For example, it's been pointed out that if we had some kind of
massive disaster, whether ecological or military or whatever, that we'd
have a hell of a time mounting another industrial revolution because all of
the easily accessible fossil fuels and lots of materials are now mined out,
and mostly deeper stuff remains. If that's so, then the presence of more
shallow deposits at the beginning of our own Industrial Revolution all over
the planet suggests that it was the first one on the planet, regardless of
whatever other land was above the surface (as you claim -- I know nothing
about that claim). Right? And I assume these ancient people would have had
to start their Industrial Revolution from scratch too, and to get to Mars,
would have had a significantly advanced technology, which suggests a very
widespread use of resources, which means they would have sucked lots of the
bauxite out of Africa and the oil out of Texas before we ever existed. :)
As for archeologists "explaining" away anomalies, well, sometimes people
create anomalies out of simple facts that archeologists can explain easily;
but when one has faith invested that the past is different from what
archeologists will "admit", one sees "anomalies" everywhere (witness von
Daniken as an example). I won't say archeologists have a complete picture
or aren't flawed and human, but I'm more disposed to listen to a person
whose job is looking at the past for greater understanding of the past, as
opposed to someone whose purpose is to look for evidence of something that
they want to have existed.
As for the Face on Mars, I find it an entertaining myth. You might be right
and I might be wrong, but I think if the cat were really out of the bag,
people would just own up to it. I only ever have seen the pic on the cover
of Weekly World News and in the X-Files. Till I see it anywhere else, I
remain highly skeptical. And again talk of the face on Mars is unlikely to
convince anyone that your idea about why we should go there is a valid one.
Maybe that's bigoted, but it's still true. *shrug*
Gord
