Re: we're not going to see much sensible.

On Apr 20, 10:47 pm, "Makouli" <m...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Day Brown" <daybr...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:5666d04a-aa29-4767-9edb-5f181b72f24c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx





On Apr 19, 8:50 pm, Lee Olsen <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 19, 6:24 pm, Day Brown <daybr...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Apr 19, 6:27 pm, Lee Olsen <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:> >That's
not stupidity, just asinine.

And your adding to the flame war is not?

Thats a statement of fact Lee.

What would you know about facts?
For one, facts are most often challenged in a disrespectful way.
There's no real attempt at discourse, only the effort to prove
superiority in order to feed an ego. Epictetus:"When I man showed me I
was wrong, I was grateful to no longer be thinking wrongly. But when I
performed the same service for another, he always went away angry."

I've worked with the retarded, and when you show them they are wrong,
they are not angry at me, but dismayed. Anger is often expressed as
asininity, and is a symptom of neurosis, not stupidity.

The facts in this thread are few; all the remains of the early
hominids at issue would fit in a foot locker. We have no way of
knowing whether they are really representative of most hominids alive
at the time, and the fact is, we really dont know how many there were
in ecosystems that did not favor the preservation of fossils.

The recent skull found in Chad was in what had been a seasonal delta
like the Okavango. We have no way of knowing if the bone found was
deposited there by floodwaters or whether the individual died in situ.
We know that animals, including hominids, when sick, even if normally
living on savannah, will seek water, and more often die near it. The
proximity of the waterway proves very little.

We really dont have many facts, and what we do have does not warrant
the passion I've seen expressed.

Would you please stop with the hand-wringing already?
Read Marco's posts.  Then come back and say that there's
just too much passion in this debate.  The recent Carbon/
Oxygen isotope exchange should be enough of an example.
Marco will spend days calling "Savanna Fantasts" STUPID,
STUPID, STUPID --even when shown to have missed the
point by a country mile.  Then he'll shut up for 3 or 4 months
only to come back with the same flawed assertions.  How
long has he been going on about sedges and C4?  Years?
How do you make sense of the assertion that hominid
microwear shows similarilties with Capybara and thus
clearly indicates a semi-aquatic lifestyle?  How long do you
suppose you'll have to pour that in my ear before I want
to shoot you?  Marco and Pauly and Dimmy et al richly
deserve every ass-kickin' they get --and so do you.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Trying to educate DB? Maybe I can help (to be frank, not hopeful,
but...)

From: Ross Macfarlane (rmacf...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Subject: Re: Bipedal Orrorin?
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology.paleo
Date: 2004-10-15 02:33:08 PST

algis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Algis Kuliukas) wrote in message
news:<77a70442.0410141721.2047ae51@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>...
...
How do certain members of Homo sapiens sapiens evolve to become 'anti'....

This statement of Richard's begs the alternate question, which is
greatly more germane in a scientific context: how do certain HSS
evolve to become "Pro"? In other words, why do certain worldviews
become so fixed in the minds of individuals that they are incapable of
reasoning alternate points of view?

Richard, if you visit any popular Usenet group, you will find it has
its own set of resident loonies. Sci.anthropology, for example, has
Yuri Kuchinsky (he of the Kon Tiki set) and the racists;
sci.archaelology has the Von Danikenites & various other ;
talk.origins has the creationists. Alt.woodworking cops its own share
as well. It goes with the territory, and one of the attractions for
visitors is to watch the "tribal" battles between resident proponents
of various points of view.


I've concluded that it's part of human nature to be tribal
amd form clumps of 'us' and 'them'. Once it is decided that
someone is one of 'them', a process of dehumanisation takes
place which, apparently, knows no bounds.

- I've come across a number of them here (almost always anti-AAT) who
contribute nothing more than smart arse answers to a perfectly
reasonable theory - I have never come across a single positive
contribution to human thought from any of them - but then I'm new here
- so maybe they had one once.

Well I'm glad I'm not the only one who has come to that
conclusion. I've been here for about five years and I must
say that they do exist, although they are increasingly few
and far between.

The truth of the matter is that after a lot more than 5 years of
endeavouring to highlight what is neither perfect nor reasonable about
this "theory", the regular contributors who hold alternate viewpoints
have given up trying to debate on the basis of facts and logic, to
which Algis, Marc & others like them are singularly immune, and
generally resort to entertaining ourselves and others of like minds by
making good sport out of our resident AAH "loons".

But let me, for a moment, try to put some reason and perspective into
our behaviour, by (not for the first time) putting forward the idea
that AAH is a load of old bollocks which is not worth the bandwidth it
has occupied on SAP for over 10 years now.

Algis tries to paint the mainstream scientists' skeptical reception to
the AAX as a "shocking indictment", implying something like a
deliberate conspiracy by the entire paleoanthropological world to
ignore, dismiss or suppress a dangerous idea. Such immoderate language
does little to help his case, but irregardless, the evidence is
against the facts that he puts forward.

For example, Algis' own website, www.riverapes.com, includes the
proceedings of a conference, The Aquatic Ape: Fact or Fiction, held in
Valkenburg, Netherlands, in 1987:

http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/FoF/FactOrFiction.htm

And what was the conclusion of the editors?
(http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/FoF/epilogue.htm)

"
Our general conclusion is that, while there are a number of arguments
favouring the AAT, they are not sufficiently convincing to counteract
the arguments against it.
"

And again: Marc frequently posts a link to a symposium on "Water and
Human Evolution" held in 1999:

http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html

It was attended by AAH proponents (such as the owner of the website,
Mario Van and of course Marc & Elaine Morgan), and well-known
scientists including Philip Tobias, who is frequently cited by AAH
proponents for having once published an opinion piece which was
favourable to AAH, and John Langdon, who is frequently cited by AAH
skeptics for having published an unfavourable piece.

The symposium report (http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Report.html)
includes the following statement:

"During the final discussion, Tobias challenged the proponents of the
aquatic hypothesis to refine their model."

In other words, almost 40 years after Hardy first published his New
Scientist speculation "Was Man More Aquatic In The Past", the
hypothesis was still not sufficiently articulated to present a serious
alternative to convince even the most sympathetic of research
professionals.

...

The AAH barely passes the test of a hypothesis, because it
is:

- Internally inconsistent (one example: comparing human hairlessness
to aquatic mammals, while insisting that humans were never as aquatic
as otters. No semi-aquatic mammals that are less aquatic than otters
are hairless.)

- Rarely able to make predictions, and never yet to make any that
withstand close scrutiny (consider the differences in the proposed
evolutionary pathways & timelines of Hardy, Morgan, Verhaegen or
Kuliukas, for example. Or look at the current Verhaegen line proposing
seaside dispersal of early Homo out of Africa, and compare it with the
geographic location of Dmanisi, Georgia - home to early Homo ca. 1.6
MYA, and a long way from any ocean.)

- Contradicted by available evidence (such as C12-C13 ratios in
Australopith bones, which imply a grassland-derived diet).

Time and again AAH has been scutinised here in SAP against scientific
criteria such as proposed above, and time and again it has failed.
Long-term SAP participants such as myself have tried on many occasions
to engage in reasoned debate with AAH proponents - especially Algis,
who used to be one of its more reasonable and likeable supporters. But
as time has gone on, he has become less and less amenable to reason,
and the more reason and logic are used against him, the more he is
liable to resort to ad hominem attacks, prejudicial language, appeals
to authority and other logical fallacies...

All my claims in the above paragraph can be subject to scrutiny by a
search of the SAP archive on Google:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=sci.anthropology.paleo.

(Try a search for the thread "Bipedalism Thought Experiment" and watch
how Algis handles Jason Eshleman's criticisms of his "thought
experiment". Jason is a physical anthropologist and one of the few
professional scientists who post regularly on SAP.)

Algis won't like my criticisms, and I don't propose to engage yet
again in a game of claim and counter-claim with him over them, because
I and others have done it before, and it is ultimately futile trying
to engage in dialogue with a closed mind. Perhaps that is not the same
with Richard01 [make that Day Brown]. We'll see...

Ross Macfarlane
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: were not going to see much sensible.
    ... facts are most often challenged in a disrespectful way. ... Marco will spend days calling "Savanna Fantasts" STUPID, ... making good sport out of our resident AAH "loons". ... But let me, for a moment, try to put some reason and perspective into ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Questions about human aquatic past
    ... you have to understand that the AAH "debate has been going on ... algis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote in message ... But let me, for a moment, try to put some reason and perspective into ... Algis tries to paint the mainstream scientists' skeptical reception to ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Questions about human aquatic past
    ... you have to understand that the AAH "debate has been going on ... algis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote in message ... But let me, for a moment, try to put some reason and perspective into ... Algis tries to paint the mainstream scientists' skeptical reception to ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Bipedal Orrorin?
    ... >>facts, when selectively choosing favorable KNOWN evidence and ignoring the ... > different weightings on the evidence and interpreting it accordingly. ... would you even say that the arguements for AAH ALWAYS even abid by my much ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Bipedal Orrorin?
    ... >You can get that label when boxed into a corner by undeniable facts and then ... different weightings on the evidence and interpreting it accordingly. ... >have tried to take each little tid bit of the AAH and publicly pull it ... >insult and unwillingness to apply reason, it becomes very hard to see the ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
Loading