Erich von Däniken has died
daniken.com128 points by Kaibeezy 2 days ago
128 points by Kaibeezy 2 days ago
https://x.com/vonDaeniken/status/2010314306894828023
I remember reading a von Däniken book when I was quite young, 9 or so, I think and being absolutely fascinated. Then after a while I realised it was pretty much all made up and what has stayed with me ever since was my blazing righteous anger that someone could make up a pile of stuff and put it in a book and claim it was true. That feeling has stayed with me far long than anything from the book itself. Perhaps most of us can assess something like this and decide for ourselves on the available evidence as to its truth and relevance. What the author claims seems, to me at least, a minor issue. I get it that you do not agree. More generally aside from outright lies and pure stories, there are always analogical levels of interpretation. Presumably, if an unbeliever, you're irate at many of the world religions. Well, I was 9 at the time and it was probably the first "science" book that I had read and got excited about. And no - never been impressed by any of the major religions - although (possibly influenced by Philip Pullman) I do wonder if there was a completely normal bloke in the middle east at the relevant time who suggested it might be good to stop being complete shits to each other... It's not Philip Pullman, it's living in a Christian society. The Enlightenment growing out of the Reformation meant that all the foundational atheist thinkers had deeply sentimental views of Christianity, which is how you get the Jefferson Bible (yes, a deist), and that Pullman quote and many more like it. "Well if you strip away all the things I don't like, this philosophy is very compelling" is only a conclusion you could come to when you already are predisposed to like the philosophy. "...nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change..." - Douglas Adams this is a fashionable sentiment, but as Nietzsche (a man who cannot be accused of having much sympathy for Christianity) pointed out: The notion that a slave, humiliated and crucified, was as worthy of mercy and equal was nothing short of a complete overturning of the moral order of the world. Far from obvious it was radical and subversive. The kind of modern atheist who doesn't see this does so because he has Christian values so deeply in his bones he doesn't even realize it. Given the prevalence of slavery within the first 1800 years of Christianity's existence, I don't think we can credit it with a value system that has sympathy for the fundamental humanity of the enslaved. More credit goes to the Enlightenment. But the slaves were told that there was an afterlife, and that they had a better chance of going there than rich people. That must have been nice to hear for them. Yup. Which was why some (probably Nietzsche, but AFAICR several people before him too) called Christianity "a religion for slaves": It's very very useful for elites throughout the ages, from Roman patricians to current techbroligarks, to fob the plebs off with "Your reward will come in the afterlife!"... So they don't make a ruckus about getting any reward for their toil in the present. Or, as Marx (no, not Groucho) put it: "Religion is an opium for the masses"; means the same thing. > I don't think we can credit it with a value system that has sympathy for the fundamental humanity of the enslaved. We can because there is a difference between introducing a new moral grammar into the world and what people do with it. The claim is not that Christians as people were any more moral or less power hungry than people tend to be, it's that from that point on in world history, they had to be hypocrites, precisely because something had metaphysically changed. The Enlightenment doesn't stand in contradiction to this, it's the culmination of it, which was most visible in particular among the American abolitionists. Who more than anyone else staked their claims on Christian (and Enlightenment) grounds. And as a practical point when it comes to today's issues. Pay attention to what the post-Christian secular America looks like. Because unlike the British humanists who thought equality was just common sense, you're going to be in for a wild ride, which Nietzsche did tell us. >I do wonder if there was a completely normal bloke in the middle east at the relevant time who suggested it might be good to stop being complete shits to each other... As far as I know, what we know as established historical fact is that: - there indeed was a bloke - he splintered from being a follower of another more famous bloke at the time who was executed by the romans for becoming too popular with the masses - he preached the world was about to end (as in, in their listener's lifetime) - he also pissed off the romans enough to be executed. Everything else is left to guess! >>>I do wonder if there was a completely normal bloke in the middle east at the relevant time who suggested it might be good to stop being complete shits to each other There wasn't any such bloke. I mean there was such bloke, but his qualities were completely opposite(Jesus was a violent man) to what he actually was and by various redactions and fusion of stories of initially opposing factions that were fighting over the actual seat of Jesus. Jesus was a leader of militants(his power was spread not with peaceful words, but with sword and quite violent words - just like modern terrorists do - one of such passage has been slipped through redaction and left in the Bible) of a very violent sect(which itself was lead by John the Baptist), that were terrorizing everyone else(not in open, but when blended among other people, exactly like cult of assassins in Assassin's Creed games) and his capture was a shock and possibly betrayal and apparently those militants for some reasons(Roman military might - obviously) were unable to mount a rescue mission and because of that all the magic stories and Fairy tales, that we know as Bible were invented. You can see development of same myths to failures of modern religious fanatics - the same "magical" explanations why they have failed over and over again. PS I do not hate Christianity, but I like cold hard Truth more than sweetest and softest Lies. He was the first person who introduced me to the idea that if you look at a thing with different mindsets, from different points of view, you can arrive at quite different opinions about the “true” nature of that thing. At that age, I didn’t yet understand why some people are incapable of changing their point of view. To be honest, I still don’t fully understand how ideology can cloud the mind so thoroughly that only a single way of thinking remains possible. He had a way of describing things with a vigor that is quite rare. It was a fascinating read as a kid, blending science fiction with history and archaeology. Of course, later learning about the scientific method, or even just Occam’s razor, made it clear that the theory of ancient aliens is very unlikely, but the what if, the “wouldn’t it be cool if this premise were true,” still lingers in my mind from time to time. A quite unique and interesting person departed this planet yesterday. > At that age, I didn’t yet understand why some people are incapable of changing their point of view. To be honest, I still don’t fully understand how ideology can cloud the mind so thoroughly that only a single way of thinking remains possible. Are you describing Erich von Däniken's inability to change his mind when evidence clearly contradicted his theories? Was it inability or simply calculation? He made a livelihood out of making up stories about ancient aliens. He was financially motivated to keep telling his stories. Might be calculation for him. But inability for many of his believers, who had no financial gain. I think a large part of it is wishful thinking. As a scifi fan, I think it'd be great to find out that we were aliens seeeded on Earth by some advanced civilisation. To weigh up the facts and realise that there's all the evolutionary evidence to show that we did just evolve from fish is a bit more boring. Interestingly enough, but as a teenager, I classified his stories as sci-fi. And I was absolutely into sci-fi(that was the genre I kept reading right after Fairy tales... yes, Ive read Bible in my early teens as well - nobody asked me to do so) - it made me learn English, as I have read all the ~100 sci-fi books in my language and there was nothing else to read for me. > To weigh up the facts and realise that there's all the evolutionary evidence to show that we did just evolve from fish is a bit more boring. Your definition of boring is different than mine. I find the reality of what evidence points at to be awe-inducing! I watch Cosmos (original or 2.0) and I get goosebumps. There's no need to make shit up, the universe is wondrous. Okay, maybe "boring" is the wrong word. But just think how cool it'd be if there were bits of alien technology lying around waiting to be found rather than just a non-rusting lamppost, lines in a desert and a few pyramids? > Are you describing Erich von Däniken's inability to change his mind when evidence clearly contradicted his theories? He wasn't that unwavering. About the iron pillar of Delhi he said in his first book that it doesn't rust and thought this being a proof for alien interference. Later he turned around and said "By now this damn thing is rusting!". But he never changed his opinion on his basic premise. I guess it's easy to not change your theory if it can't actually be disproved. There are so many unknowns and gaps in history that you have enough space to fit a few ancient aliens in there. > Are you describing Erich von Däniken's inability to change his mind when evidence clearly contradicted his theories? Roughly 80% of the planet has an inability to change their mind regarding their religious beliefs. In reality, there is more evidence of ancient aliens that there is of almost every other religion, and yet the people who follow religion aren't being vilified the way the ancient alien believers are. I mean, look at your own question - do you routinely ask people (IRL and online) why they can't change their religion based on evidence? > Roughly 80% of the planet has an inability to change their mind regarding their religious beliefs. What makes you think so? Most people don't really have strong religious beliefs that they are testing against evidence, I suspect. It's mostly just a way to connect with their communities for most people. > Most people don't really have strong religious beliefs that they are testing against evidence, I suspect. Okay, lets go with that: that is still a lower bar than EvD theories, because he at least has some evidence while everyone else has none. Doesn't matter if the evidence is insufficient, or if the theory has been tested and found to be wanting, what matters is that it's still operating at a higher bar than many of the people on the planet who are not drawing such ire. I think you are quite correct to put Däniken in the corner of belief and religion, and not expect followers of his ideas to be open to rational argument by default. Exactly - that was my point! Why do those followers get so much vitriol but we give actual religions a free pass when they have even less evidence to support their beliefs? “Evidence” is often in time overruled by new knowledge and evidence. That’s not an argument against * any * current evidence, only sloppy thinking trying ignore evidence. What replaces evidence is better evidence, not fairy tales that ignores reality. And statistically, if you take all knowledge, and look at all the claims that have failed to displace it, you’ll find the vast majority of alternative claims are simply wrong. Yes, but the main question is into which direction the arrow of causalality points for the main part: Does an individual trust their image of the world, because it summarizes the evidence well? Or do they grade all evidence based on the image of the world they want to be true? In reality it has to be of course always a mixture of the two, even for the most reflected person. We cannot go through our days questioning everything all the time if we want to remain functional, some things we will have to take for granted. IMO the whole thing keeps boiling down to two questions: 1. Do you want to believe or do you want your world image to accurately represent the world as it is, even if there might be no such thing as objective truth in some cases? 2. Are you aware of the breadth of evidence you have (or the lack thereof)? E.g. when I develope software, I encountered grown, adult people who would talk about computers with superstition, as if it was some angry deity that had to be calmed. Now in their world there absolutely is evidence their rituals worked. But their evidence was based on an entirely wrong world model, where they treated a computer as a person, instead of treating it as a totally predictable automaton. Turns out praying doesn't help resolving a network issue, especially not if you click away the message explaining why it doesn't work without reading it. The von Däniken question fundamentally boils down to: If you have 1 billion pieces of evidence pointing one way and one piece pointing in the way of a fantastic fantasy novel, do you go with the "boring" 1 billion pieces or do you hyper-fixate on the one piece, build a theory that explains it in the most exciting way and then ignore all points where that theory collides with the 1 billion pieces of evidence? Right. For people who don't know the wealth of evidence we are talking about here, the Egyptians left very detailed records including wages of the people working on the pyramids[1], paintings showing the numbers of people needed to move heavy objects and how they lubricated the sand beneath the skids[2] etc [1] They weren't slaves, they were salaried workers, and there are records of how much they got paid and how many of them there were. [2] and the numbers check out when you do the standard "block on an inclined rough plane" thing you learn in 1st year mechanics. Check out https://sites.uwm.edu/nosonovs/2017/11/05/about-djehutihotep... where you can clearly see the pains they have gone to in order to ensure the numbers of workers are accurately portrayed Thank you. This was well-written and made a point I think I needed to see set out in this form. > We cannot go through our days questioning everything all the time if we want to remain functional, some things we will have to take for granted. On reading this, it struck me how much of the world we engage with on these terms. And how much of the information soup we live in seems designed to persuade us of things being just so. It being designed is what also should give away that it could also be designed differently. People who create, be it artists, designers and engineers can sometimes develope that insight from their daily practise. We create, thus we have a deeper than avarage awareness that the world is created and which factors play into it being this way and not a slightly different (better?) variation on the same theme. Aliens didn't build the fucking pyramids. I share your confusion about how ideology clouds judgement but I have a little anecdote. I sometimes give people the Monty Hall problem. When they get it wrong, it often falls into the category of staying with the initial pick increases chances or switching has equal odds. I then proceed to give them the example of N=100 doors, opening 98 others, leaving their pick and another closed and then asking them whether that makes a difference. If they insist that it makes no difference, I then start to play the actual game with them, writing down the prize door before the game starts and then proceeding with the game as normal. Only after a few rounds of them losing do they accept the proofs of what the optimal strategy is. My interpretation is that, before playing the actual game, they refuse to believe me. They don't trust me or the logic and so dismiss it. Once actual stakes are involved, even if it's their pride, only then do they start to be open to arguments as to why their intuition was wrong. Leave it to people in the tech industry to ask interview questions that confused Paul Erdös for days and expect their interviewees to reason through things during an interview. https://web.archive.org/web/20140413131827/http://www.decisi... I'd get the Monty Hall problem question right off the bat, but only because I've encountered it before, not because I can naturally reason through it better than Erdös. We used to ask job candidates a variation of the door in an infinite wall question [1]. The initial answer of many interviewees is to choose a direction and walk in that way forever, which is understandable, as infinity makes the question weird. What is more interesting is, even after I pointed out that this answer has a 50% chance of finding the door and I'm looking for a 100% solution, some candidates refused to give it a second thought, didn't change their answer, and insisted that this is the best course of action. [1] https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3915578/door-in-an-... The only reason people get confused about the Monty Hall problem is that the problem description rarely if ever makes it clear that the host knows where the car is and deliberately chooses a different door. It's inconceivable (for example) that Paul Erdos, a world class mathematician, would fail to solve this problem if it were actually communicated clearly. It is incredibly annoying that in the case where the host doesn't know where the car is but opens a goat door anyway, the probability goes back to 50-50 Eh, when you think about it, it makes sense. Original rules (host knows where car is and always opens a door with a goat): - 1/3 of the time your original choice is the car, and you should stick - 2/3 of the time your original choice is a goat, and you should switch Alternative rules (host doesn't know where car is, and may open either the door with the car or a door with a goat) - 1/3 of the time your original choice is the car, the host opens a door with a goat, and you should stick - 1/3 of the time your original choice is a goat, the host opens a door with a goat, and you should switch - 1/3 of the time your original choice is a goat, the host opens the door with the car, and you're going to lose whether you stick or switch So even under the new rules, you still only win 1/3 of the time by consistently sticking. You're just no longer guaranteed that you can win in any given game. But if he doesn't know where the car is, how can he be sure that the door he opens is going to have a goat? The scenario is the host doesn't know which door has the car, opens some random door, and that door happens to have a goat behind it. If you were in this scenario, your odds of getting the car doesn't change whether you switch or not That would indeed be annoying, but I doubt it is the case. If you only consider this scenario, it cannot be distinguished by conditional probability from the case that the host knows, and so the math should stay the same. As usual, the problem is not an incredibly difficult problem, but just a failure to state the problem clearly and correctly. Try to write a computer program that approximates the probability, and you'll see what I mean. https://github.com/yen223/monty_fall/blob/master/Monty%20Hal... The math is contingent on whether you know the host knows or doesn't know where the door with the car is. This is the counterintuitive bit. Your program shows exactly what I mean: "Impossible" cannot be non-zero, your modified question is not well-defined. Yes, of course it depends on the host knowing where the goat is, because if he doesn't, the scenario is not well-defined anymore. This is not annoying, this is to be expected (pun intended).
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