Michael Shermer vs. "alternative history" Hancock and Crandall
Get your popcorn ready for this three-hour extravaganza where Michael Shermer "debates" some "alternative history" people about whether there was some ancient lost civilization that was disrupted by a massive comet, which made the remaining humans revert to hunter-gethererism again after having had great but now lost wisdom.
Hancock is someone I have never heard of before but appears to buy into a lot of obviously silly things. He gets very angry, very quickly and spouts all kinds of ridiculous nonsense about Atlantis and other things. He is sensitive about the way the mainstream of academia have treated his crackpot theories, and he is a master of equivocating on his positions, at one time claiming to only be passing on someone else's theories and refusing to defend them, and at other times clearly pushing the ideas and getting stroppy when they are dismissed. He also wipes the floor with Shermer, as does Joe Rogan who both rightly (in my opinion) point out Shermer's well-poisoning tactics and his reliance on general principles of argument in lieu of specific knowledge about the subject at hand. But Hancock really is a crackpot.
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Shame on Michael Shermer for debating a crackpot. The debate might give the crackpot credibility.
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I did listen to the whole show - pretty entertaining. Shermer got a few general points in to good effect, but overall it sounded like, "teach the controversy." |
So, we were NOT hunter-gathers 12,000 years ago...?
We were in fact talented stone masons who built the largest stone structure the world has ever known? Interesting. |
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Skepticism is a kind of "woo"...
Adherence to it in spite of new-found facts is unwise. |
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...with construction requiring a force that was similar or even bigger than those who stacked up the pyramids. We were supposed to be small band of tribal units with simple stone tools. --- The multiple asteroid induced end of the ice age and resulting flood theory was really intriguing. |
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Shermer ended up agreeing with most of what Hancock said! |
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There's a good summary of the debate here by a guy called Jason Colavito. Here are some important points: Quote:
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The same blogger has written a very long review of Hancock's book here:
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Shermer and his other skeptic admitted they were wrong about Hancock, said they'd fix their mistakes, and both spoke well of Hancock and the big guy with the beard. Shermer 'ran of out steam'... BWAAAAHAAAAHAAAA. More like he ran out of room to stand, with a room so full of facts contrary to 'accepted science.' |
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--- Things Shermer agreed to: -His magazine wrongly characterized Hancock and his arguments -That we were more than mere hunter gatherers 12,000 years ago -A massive flood wiped out evidence of a civilization before this hunter gatherer phase -The scab lands contain the timeline and geological evidence of the end of the ice age -That Hancock is both reasonable and well researched |
Do you mean 'gatherer'?
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Old Graham Hancock. Personally, he was very important in my intellectual journey to skepticism.
Around middle school, I read Erich Von Daniken and thought it was really cool. Aliens, advanced ancient civilizations, were Final Fantasy games real? Where was my airship? Hancock built off a lot of that. By the time I read Hancock a few years later, I already found the alien thing ridiculous, but the idea that humans had been much more advanced in the past is, at least, possible. He used things like water erosion on the Sphinx (which seemed like hard science) and mapping the layout of the pyramids to patterns in the stars - all cool seeming stuff - and went from there. It was Hancock vs. Zahi Hawass, a guy Hancock painted as a villain over and over, that shook me into a more skeptical perspective. And lo, these years, decades, later, he's still going on about his same old stuff. The sad thing is that Hancock's thesis is insanely more extreme now than it was in the past. He is moving towards Van Daniken style insanity, but I promise you, his first few books have that veneer of reasonable theory. People had to work - in a good way - to reject the argument about water erosion on the Sphinx. That was a legitimate scientific idea that turned out to be wrong. Now...eh, it's just new agey craziness. |
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Only difference is that Graham Hancock is a flibbertigibbet and Charles Murray is the most influential scientific racist of the last two decades. |
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Had you listened to the interview, you'd have heard Hancock abandon his fingerprints theory. Did you see the debate between Hancock and Hawaas? Hawaas walks out after being confronted by evidence his theory don't explain. *Wait...did you say the water erosion evident on the Sphinx "isn't"...? Please do explain an alternate theory? |
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*Watch the interview... |
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You fail to understand basic English? Accusing someone of stealing isn't evidence, of anything. Along with the other bull hancock spewed like aliensdidit, Hawass was right to walk out on the con artist. |
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One, walking away from a 'debate' is poor form, period. If you are accused of a crime, call for evidence of it, or silence. Two, debates are not places for personal attacks...which Hancock has had to withstand for decades, and is still suffering. Hawaas ignores findings that contradict his timeline, he attacks those who offer other findings, and refuses open debate. I disagree with your characterization of the relationship between Hawaas and Hancock. |
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I always confuse him with Graham Phillips; that guy is a hoot! |
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The erosion was unlikely to come directly from rainfall, the patterns mimic those of runoff collection. |
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I think the 3500 BC date is still too late. Do you have a citation for those findings? |
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Instead, you are here talking about other people's useless-ness, really? |
If Shermer isn't an 'expert' why is he the leading editor of Skeptic?
"I am no expert, so I am the leading skeptic." *Damn, still no roll eyes icon...! |
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I was disappointed that Shermer let Hancock get away with the "I'm just reporting" dodge. If Hancock is quoting someone in Hancock's own book, how is that not an endorsement of what he quotes? It got worse when Shermer tried to point out other wacky stuff associated with Hancock's sources. Hancock simply pushed it away with an "I'm not saying I support that part and I refuse to defend it." [My use of quotation marks here is only to indicate a paraphrase based on my impression, not an actual quote.] This mechanism also came into play when Hancock was allowed to disown his previous works. Shermer had an opening to say something like, "Well, how long before you drop this theory too? That's exactly what happens when you base your ideas on cherry-picking the evidence and discounting scientific consensus." Hancock has an archeological site which has only been 5% excavated and shows stone age peoples building monoliths. That's it. Everything else is either a product of his own fertile imagination or plagiarized from other pseudo-science. |
I believe Graham Hancock was more mellow before he let the serpent Mother Ayahuasca enter into and slither around inside of his body and convince him to change his relationship with cannabis.
http://grahamhancock.com/giving-up-t...bitch-hancock/ ETA: Hey, I'm just reporting! |
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Shermer sadly has a track record of not preparing for debates the result is woo merchants can make him look like a fool. |
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As for Shermer accepting the absurd notion that a flood destroyed a civilization before the "Hunter Gatherer" phase. The evidence of that remains exceptionally close to zero despite Hancock's rantings. As for Hancock being both reasonable and well researched. Hilarious no doubt his 2012 boosterism was well researched. Nope Hancock consistently avoids up to date research and relies, very heavily on woo crap. Fingerprints of the Gods is ample proof of that. |
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"That ain't working, that's the way you do it. You play the guitar on the MTV. Money for nuthin. Chicks for free." |
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