End of the world or a new awakening?

[Tituscrow]

Originally Posted by jeffbonny

You my friend are missing my point. You have also just assumed the burden of proving they were all made in the manner you descibe. So show some evidence they were. And please note I said some, not all. Just because some were made by Bob and Doug with plywood and some string does not prove all were. Some quite obviously were not. I work daily with laser measuring devises laying out sound stages for some fairly complex film rigs and I know some of those crop circles could not possibly have been surveyed in the manner you describe let alone executed so simply.

So I'm an idiot for saying no one has presented a reasonable explanation scientific or otherwise for some of them and until someone does I'm sticking to "I don't know"?

No. I'm saying that anyone who thinks that crop-circles are anything OTHER than man-made is an idiot.

Maybe I should retract the word 'idiot'. Replace with 'gullible sucker' or 'mug'. Seems less offensive.

[Tony Flow MMMM]

Originally Posted by Tituscrow

No. I'm saying that anyone who thinks that crop-circles are anything OTHER than man-made is an idiot.

Maybe I should retract the word 'idiot'. Replace with 'gullible sucker' or 'mug'. Seems less offensive.

No I'm saying that anyone who thinks they KNOW things as a fact when they do not have an unlimited knowledge of the universe, nor has the subject at hand been totally debunked, IS AN IDIOT.

[jeffbonny]

Can we please not use the word idiot here? It isn't a useful description.

[LiquidMidnight]

Originally Posted by jeffbonny

You my friend are missing my point. You have also just assumed the burden of proving they were all made in the manner you descibe. So show some evidence they were. And please note I said some, not all. Just because some were made by Bob and Doug with plywood and some string does not prove all were. Some quite obviously were not. I work daily with laser measuring devises laying out sound stages for some fairly complex film rigs and I know some of those crop circles could not possibly have been surveyed in the manner you describe let alone executed so simply.

Years ago, I explicitly remember watching a television show on Discovery or something similar in which it showed some guys making crop circles in precisely the method that Titus described. You can't believe everything you see on TV, but I'm gonna go ahead and trust that what I was seeing was genuine.

You're asking evidence that crop circles are undeniably created by humans, but you're going about it completely backwards from how science actually operates. You can't prove every single case of a phenomenon. That's pure positivism and it doesn't work well when dealing with wide ranging phenomena. If you want to prove that every cat has whiskers, then have fun dedicating your life to finding every single feline in existence at every moment in time and recording that they all do, indeed, have whiskers. As far as proving, science "proves" nothing. "Proof" is the concern of judges and mathematicians, not scientists. Just about all physical science is predicated on post-positivist ontology and the work of Karl Popper. That's where we get the idea of falsifiability.

Currently evidence strongly suggests that crop circles are created by guys with wooden planks, since it's been empirically observed. You don't try to confirm a hypothesis is correct. You attempt to refute your own hypothesis. If you hypothesized that all swans are white, you are looking for a black swan to refute your hypothesis. So far, no evidence exists that refutes the hypothesis that crop circles are created by anything other than dudes (or dudettes) with wood planks and measuring tape. Titus doesn't have the burden to show that all crop circles are created by humans. Evidence that would suggest such is out there and easily accessible. The burden is on you to show that there is an alternate mechanism (for lack of a better term) that is creating them. Show us the black swan.

Edit: Reread your original post and wasn't sure if what you meant was that crop circles would need to be made by tools others than those described by Titus or if you were inferring that they were created by aliens. My apologies if I misinterpreted what you said.

[LiquidMidnight]

Originally Posted by Tony Flow MMMM

No I'm saying that anyone who thinks they KNOW things as a fact when they do not have an unlimited knowledge of the universe, nor has the subject at hand been totally debunked, IS AN IDIOT.

Nobody has totally unlimited knowledge about anything (see what I said above about postpositivism, falsifiability, Karl Popper, etc.). But you have to make good-faith assumptions based upon empirical evidence. This idea that because you don't have 100% irrefutable knowledge about something, then you can't make a cogent, well-informed statement of something is what I call "pseudo-postmodernism" (which is different from real postmodernism and post-structuralism, which metholdologically deconstruct our knowledge systems and assumptions). It's an easy way to dodge epistemological discussions while seeming that you're making a profound point.

[jeffbonny]

Originally Posted by LiquidMidnight

Edit: Reread your original post and wasn't sure if what you meant was that crop circles would need to be made by tools others than those described by Titus or if you were inferring that they were created by aliens. My apologies if I misinterpreted what you said.

God forbid you'd think I was saying it was the aliens when there's a lot less evidence for that than for it being done by humans. Like Munji said Occam's razor points to humans.

But with years of professional experience surveying for entertainment industry rigging I am at a loss to explain how something like this is surveyed and executed with such amazing precision without anyone being caught at it. And not just once or twice but hundreds of times. With modern surveying equipment it would take many daylight hours to do this. It would take days to do it with a calculator, some string and a tape measure. The beauty of the geometry, the accuracy of the surveying, the precise execution and the speed (at night?) at which they are apparently created circles like that one leave a lot of unanswered questions.

How do I think it's happening?
I don't know and that is a reasonable position to take.

[LarryO]

Maybe it was aliens with wooden planks

[superdick2112]

I'm just wondering why a race of highly advanced beings from the far reaches of the cosmos would bother to travel light-years away to the planet of the shaved apes, just to leave some indecipherable patterns in Billy-Bob's wheat field....

[Tituscrow]

Originally Posted by jeffbonny

God forbid you'd think I was saying it was the aliens when there's a lot less evidence for that than for it being done by humans. Like Munji said Occam's razor points to humans.

But with years of professional experience surveying for entertainment industry rigging I am at a loss to explain how something like this is surveyed and executed with such amazing precision without anyone being caught at it. And not just once or twice but hundreds of times. With modern surveying equipment it would take many daylight hours to do this. It would take days to do it with a calculator, some string and a tape measure. The beauty of the geometry, the accuracy of the surveying, the precise execution and the speed (at night?) at which they are apparently created circles like that one leave a lot of unanswered questions.

How do I think it's happening?
I don't know and that is a reasonable position to take.

No one here is doubting the impressive extent of the planning and execution of these things, but they were done by people. End of story.

Of course, taking your position of not knowing how its done is perfectly reasonable and its the same position I take to a certain extent. I don't know how David Copperfield made an elephant 'disappear', but I DO know that it was an illusion and that he does not have the power to make anything, let alone a ten ton mammal simply vanish.

[Tituscrow]

I think they just use a big boys version of this

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph

[Munjibunga]

Originally Posted by agent77

OK, thanks Munji. But I would like to point out that I never said that I believe in a cosmic shift. Although I don't disbelieve it either. I simply found the History Channel video interesting, and wanted to hear thoughts. But this thread is turning into a Stephen Hawking-esque philosophical debate, with some very insulting posts, which I want no part of.

Since, it has been stated that there is no evidence proving or disproving this, I find continued discussion fruitless.

Ahh, yes ... the History Channel - the aliens, ghosts and bigfoot channel.

[Munjibunga]

Originally Posted by jeffbonny

Can we please not use the word idiot here? It isn't a useful description.

May we use imbecile? Cretin? Visigoth?

[fdeck]

Originally Posted by Munjibunga

May we use imbecile? Cretin? Visigoth?

Now, that wasn't politically correct. You're supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to any idea, no matter how ridiculous it seems. Every kid gets a prize.

[jeffbonny]

Originally Posted by Munjibunga

May we use imbecile? Cretin? Visigoth?

What do you actually know about the Visigoths that you'd equate them with idiots, imbeciles and cretins? If nothing else by the middle ages they were reasonably accomplished architects with their own unique Latin script. Even by the time they sacked Rome they were as Roman (if not more so in many ways) than the Romans themselves.

[LiquidMidnight]

Originally Posted by Munjibunga

Ahh, yes ... the History Channel - the aliens, ghosts and bigfoot channel.

It truly has become the television equivalent of Coast to Coast A.M.

...I don't envy the program director, though, now that December 21st, 2012 has passed without incident. Isn't end of the world prophecy like half of their programming?

[Munjibunga]

Originally Posted by jeffbonny

What do you actually know about the Visigoths that you'd equate them with idiots, imbeciles and cretins? If nothing else by the middle ages they were reasonably accomplished architects with their own unique Latin script. Even by the time they sacked Rome they were as Roman (if not more so in many ways) than the Romans themselves.

... maybe I was thinking of Ostrogoths ...

[Chef FourString]

Originally Posted by superdick2112

I'm just wondering why a race of highly advanced beings from the far reaches of the cosmos would bother to travel light-years away to the planet of the shaved apes, just to leave some indecipherable patterns in Billy-Bob's wheat field....

They might think its funny.

[MarkMgibson]

Perhaps aliens really like corn on the cob?

[MatticusMania]

You naysayers are impeding progress!

[superdick2112]

Originally Posted by MatticusMania

You naysayers are impeding progress!

We've merely adopted the dark. You were born it - molded by it...

Love your avatar - Bane is da man! I just watched "Rises" for the 5th time, and it keeps getting better.