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This is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?"
] |
>
I think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.
Uneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”"
] |
>
Okay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.
Not sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect"
] |
>
I'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the "maybe" and "probably" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.
I spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive.
There's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture
Historians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though."
] |
>
Glad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story."
] |
>
Depends on your value of "know" and your value of "much."
The number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.
For history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though."
] |
>
> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.
This is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete."
] |
>
The way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.
A: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.
B: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see
C: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.
Our sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?"
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>
Okay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day."
] |
>
To be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist."
] |
>
Take Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.
two things:
Flinder's methods:
i didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something.
also, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find "uncontemporary" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think "generally similar" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not "this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup". probably more like, "white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations"
complexity is not merely "fashion". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles.
where i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, "live, love, laugh" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though."
] |
>
!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives."
] |
>
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).
^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)"
] |
>
Yet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.
Do you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards"
] |
>
"Not having the whole story," sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, "We have very little to none of the story."
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have."
] |
>
You're just playing with semantics now.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\""
] |
>
No it's not.
How much one realises one doesn't know, matters.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now."
] |
>
Our understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters."
] |
>
!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues."
] |
>
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).
^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two."
] |
>
What scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of "I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.
As for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.
Additionally, we can use "faulty info" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards"
] |
>
!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.
I don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements."
] |
>
So, I'm going to use "the huns" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to "the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them" more than "the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?"
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?"
] |
>
Okay I see it. Like the other person said, "Cross referencing." But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\""
] |
>
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).
^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta"
] |
>
I think you have some pretty big misconceptions about what we know about history, what we don't know, and (most importantly) how we know about it.
I looked into Flinders Petrie's methods since I didn't know about them, and they seem eminently reasonable. Not only that, they have been refined and corroborated again and again by subsequent researchers.
Nothing is 100% certain. No one piece of information is 100% accurate. No one thing is 100% known. The best we can do is piece together what we have and use the available data to cross-check and arrive at our best guess. Even if one wood beam is out of place, if everything we have is lining up to approximately the same answer, we can have a degree or two of confidence in our answer.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards"
] |
>
What makes Flinders Petrie's methods reasonable?
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nI think you have some pretty big misconceptions about what we know about history, what we don't know, and (most importantly) how we know about it. \nI looked into Flinders Petrie's methods since I didn't know about them, and they seem eminently reasonable. Not only that, they have been refined and corroborated again and again by subsequent researchers. \nNothing is 100% certain. No one piece of information is 100% accurate. No one thing is 100% known. The best we can do is piece together what we have and use the available data to cross-check and arrive at our best guess. Even if one wood beam is out of place, if everything we have is lining up to approximately the same answer, we can have a degree or two of confidence in our answer."
] |
>
What exactly do you need your mind changed on? History is written by the people who wrote about it, and taking their word for it is all we can do.
You don't necessarily need to take their word exactly, however. Human nature is pretty fixed and there are some reasonable assumptions you could make about ancient people based on how people today are. Just because we have things like The Bible, Beowulf, and Shakespeare doesn't mean people in those times actually talked like that.
And in fact, in all three of those cases, we know that's not the case. They found runic tablets a while ago, that they thought were going to be like more mythology or something. They ended up being more like texts: short messages in plain language that you'd write today. Of course, Shakespeare was allegedly the only one that wrote the way he did. And both Hebrews and English writers took creative liberties and made stylistic choices in their writings.
Oh and, forget everything you think you know about English; 'Thou' is an informal pronoun.
So yes, our understanding of history is and will always be limited, especially since we can only dig up places that are in the middle of nowhere after we find a reason to excavate there. The only things we have to go off of, are what we find, and so we should expect what we know to change as we discover more.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nI think you have some pretty big misconceptions about what we know about history, what we don't know, and (most importantly) how we know about it. \nI looked into Flinders Petrie's methods since I didn't know about them, and they seem eminently reasonable. Not only that, they have been refined and corroborated again and again by subsequent researchers. \nNothing is 100% certain. No one piece of information is 100% accurate. No one thing is 100% known. The best we can do is piece together what we have and use the available data to cross-check and arrive at our best guess. Even if one wood beam is out of place, if everything we have is lining up to approximately the same answer, we can have a degree or two of confidence in our answer.",
">\n\nWhat makes Flinders Petrie's methods reasonable?"
] |
>
The degree of confidence we have of our past. Mine was 1% at most, and I feel like most people would be much higher.
Since making this post though there have been some points to raise my confidence level.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nI think you have some pretty big misconceptions about what we know about history, what we don't know, and (most importantly) how we know about it. \nI looked into Flinders Petrie's methods since I didn't know about them, and they seem eminently reasonable. Not only that, they have been refined and corroborated again and again by subsequent researchers. \nNothing is 100% certain. No one piece of information is 100% accurate. No one thing is 100% known. The best we can do is piece together what we have and use the available data to cross-check and arrive at our best guess. Even if one wood beam is out of place, if everything we have is lining up to approximately the same answer, we can have a degree or two of confidence in our answer.",
">\n\nWhat makes Flinders Petrie's methods reasonable?",
">\n\nWhat exactly do you need your mind changed on? History is written by the people who wrote about it, and taking their word for it is all we can do.\nYou don't necessarily need to take their word exactly, however. Human nature is pretty fixed and there are some reasonable assumptions you could make about ancient people based on how people today are. Just because we have things like The Bible, Beowulf, and Shakespeare doesn't mean people in those times actually talked like that.\nAnd in fact, in all three of those cases, we know that's not the case. They found runic tablets a while ago, that they thought were going to be like more mythology or something. They ended up being more like texts: short messages in plain language that you'd write today. Of course, Shakespeare was allegedly the only one that wrote the way he did. And both Hebrews and English writers took creative liberties and made stylistic choices in their writings.\nOh and, forget everything you think you know about English; 'Thou' is an informal pronoun.\nSo yes, our understanding of history is and will always be limited, especially since we can only dig up places that are in the middle of nowhere after we find a reason to excavate there. The only things we have to go off of, are what we find, and so we should expect what we know to change as we discover more."
] |
>
I think the people that assert that they know what happened are only fooling themselves. I call that the superposition fallacy. Some people just seem to be incapable of acknowledging that it's ok to not know the answers to something yet
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nI think you have some pretty big misconceptions about what we know about history, what we don't know, and (most importantly) how we know about it. \nI looked into Flinders Petrie's methods since I didn't know about them, and they seem eminently reasonable. Not only that, they have been refined and corroborated again and again by subsequent researchers. \nNothing is 100% certain. No one piece of information is 100% accurate. No one thing is 100% known. The best we can do is piece together what we have and use the available data to cross-check and arrive at our best guess. Even if one wood beam is out of place, if everything we have is lining up to approximately the same answer, we can have a degree or two of confidence in our answer.",
">\n\nWhat makes Flinders Petrie's methods reasonable?",
">\n\nWhat exactly do you need your mind changed on? History is written by the people who wrote about it, and taking their word for it is all we can do.\nYou don't necessarily need to take their word exactly, however. Human nature is pretty fixed and there are some reasonable assumptions you could make about ancient people based on how people today are. Just because we have things like The Bible, Beowulf, and Shakespeare doesn't mean people in those times actually talked like that.\nAnd in fact, in all three of those cases, we know that's not the case. They found runic tablets a while ago, that they thought were going to be like more mythology or something. They ended up being more like texts: short messages in plain language that you'd write today. Of course, Shakespeare was allegedly the only one that wrote the way he did. And both Hebrews and English writers took creative liberties and made stylistic choices in their writings.\nOh and, forget everything you think you know about English; 'Thou' is an informal pronoun.\nSo yes, our understanding of history is and will always be limited, especially since we can only dig up places that are in the middle of nowhere after we find a reason to excavate there. The only things we have to go off of, are what we find, and so we should expect what we know to change as we discover more.",
">\n\nThe degree of confidence we have of our past. Mine was 1% at most, and I feel like most people would be much higher. \nSince making this post though there have been some points to raise my confidence level."
] |
>
the problem is it is often used to date objects found near the carbon sample. Like, we just assume something found near it is the same age and pretend that over the thousands of years it wasn't moved there? A common example is finding a wooden beam in some ruins. How do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?
You can carbon date wood directly. Wood is a sample of organic matter which you can carbon date.
How do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?
Because you'd find discrepancies in all of the carbon samples that you have taken of the ruins. There are also methods other than carbon sampling that is used. You don't just pick one method to date a ruin and only use that method on one relics then call it a day. You use multiple methods on multiple relics.
Your going off the assumption that carbon dating is the only method used to find the age of a ruin. And that the carbon dating is done on only one object in the ruin
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nI think you have some pretty big misconceptions about what we know about history, what we don't know, and (most importantly) how we know about it. \nI looked into Flinders Petrie's methods since I didn't know about them, and they seem eminently reasonable. Not only that, they have been refined and corroborated again and again by subsequent researchers. \nNothing is 100% certain. No one piece of information is 100% accurate. No one thing is 100% known. The best we can do is piece together what we have and use the available data to cross-check and arrive at our best guess. Even if one wood beam is out of place, if everything we have is lining up to approximately the same answer, we can have a degree or two of confidence in our answer.",
">\n\nWhat makes Flinders Petrie's methods reasonable?",
">\n\nWhat exactly do you need your mind changed on? History is written by the people who wrote about it, and taking their word for it is all we can do.\nYou don't necessarily need to take their word exactly, however. Human nature is pretty fixed and there are some reasonable assumptions you could make about ancient people based on how people today are. Just because we have things like The Bible, Beowulf, and Shakespeare doesn't mean people in those times actually talked like that.\nAnd in fact, in all three of those cases, we know that's not the case. They found runic tablets a while ago, that they thought were going to be like more mythology or something. They ended up being more like texts: short messages in plain language that you'd write today. Of course, Shakespeare was allegedly the only one that wrote the way he did. And both Hebrews and English writers took creative liberties and made stylistic choices in their writings.\nOh and, forget everything you think you know about English; 'Thou' is an informal pronoun.\nSo yes, our understanding of history is and will always be limited, especially since we can only dig up places that are in the middle of nowhere after we find a reason to excavate there. The only things we have to go off of, are what we find, and so we should expect what we know to change as we discover more.",
">\n\nThe degree of confidence we have of our past. Mine was 1% at most, and I feel like most people would be much higher. \nSince making this post though there have been some points to raise my confidence level.",
">\n\nI think the people that assert that they know what happened are only fooling themselves. I call that the superposition fallacy. Some people just seem to be incapable of acknowledging that it's ok to not know the answers to something yet"
] |
>
In the examples I'm thinking of, namely ancient Egypt, the single wooden beam is the only carbon sample they have in the ruin. Everything else is sandstone or lime.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nI think you have some pretty big misconceptions about what we know about history, what we don't know, and (most importantly) how we know about it. \nI looked into Flinders Petrie's methods since I didn't know about them, and they seem eminently reasonable. Not only that, they have been refined and corroborated again and again by subsequent researchers. \nNothing is 100% certain. No one piece of information is 100% accurate. No one thing is 100% known. The best we can do is piece together what we have and use the available data to cross-check and arrive at our best guess. Even if one wood beam is out of place, if everything we have is lining up to approximately the same answer, we can have a degree or two of confidence in our answer.",
">\n\nWhat makes Flinders Petrie's methods reasonable?",
">\n\nWhat exactly do you need your mind changed on? History is written by the people who wrote about it, and taking their word for it is all we can do.\nYou don't necessarily need to take their word exactly, however. Human nature is pretty fixed and there are some reasonable assumptions you could make about ancient people based on how people today are. Just because we have things like The Bible, Beowulf, and Shakespeare doesn't mean people in those times actually talked like that.\nAnd in fact, in all three of those cases, we know that's not the case. They found runic tablets a while ago, that they thought were going to be like more mythology or something. They ended up being more like texts: short messages in plain language that you'd write today. Of course, Shakespeare was allegedly the only one that wrote the way he did. And both Hebrews and English writers took creative liberties and made stylistic choices in their writings.\nOh and, forget everything you think you know about English; 'Thou' is an informal pronoun.\nSo yes, our understanding of history is and will always be limited, especially since we can only dig up places that are in the middle of nowhere after we find a reason to excavate there. The only things we have to go off of, are what we find, and so we should expect what we know to change as we discover more.",
">\n\nThe degree of confidence we have of our past. Mine was 1% at most, and I feel like most people would be much higher. \nSince making this post though there have been some points to raise my confidence level.",
">\n\nI think the people that assert that they know what happened are only fooling themselves. I call that the superposition fallacy. Some people just seem to be incapable of acknowledging that it's ok to not know the answers to something yet",
">\n\n\nthe problem is it is often used to date objects found near the carbon sample. Like, we just assume something found near it is the same age and pretend that over the thousands of years it wasn't moved there? A common example is finding a wooden beam in some ruins. How do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?\n\nYou can carbon date wood directly. Wood is a sample of organic matter which you can carbon date.\n\n\nHow do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?\n\nBecause you'd find discrepancies in all of the carbon samples that you have taken of the ruins. There are also methods other than carbon sampling that is used. You don't just pick one method to date a ruin and only use that method on one relics then call it a day. You use multiple methods on multiple relics.\nYour going off the assumption that carbon dating is the only method used to find the age of a ruin. And that the carbon dating is done on only one object in the ruin"
] |
>
You can date the ruin via ways other than carbon dating. You can use radiometric dating on the lime and sandstone. Not to mention you can cross reference with all the info we already have on Egypt to see if the dates and locations line up.
You can check the wood type and see whether it was something used in ancient Egypt for construction. You can look at the designs and architecture.
What makes us relatively certain that we know something happened isn’t one piece of evidence. It’s thousands of pieces of evidence that all seem to fit together perfectly and paint a story
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nI think you have some pretty big misconceptions about what we know about history, what we don't know, and (most importantly) how we know about it. \nI looked into Flinders Petrie's methods since I didn't know about them, and they seem eminently reasonable. Not only that, they have been refined and corroborated again and again by subsequent researchers. \nNothing is 100% certain. No one piece of information is 100% accurate. No one thing is 100% known. The best we can do is piece together what we have and use the available data to cross-check and arrive at our best guess. Even if one wood beam is out of place, if everything we have is lining up to approximately the same answer, we can have a degree or two of confidence in our answer.",
">\n\nWhat makes Flinders Petrie's methods reasonable?",
">\n\nWhat exactly do you need your mind changed on? History is written by the people who wrote about it, and taking their word for it is all we can do.\nYou don't necessarily need to take their word exactly, however. Human nature is pretty fixed and there are some reasonable assumptions you could make about ancient people based on how people today are. Just because we have things like The Bible, Beowulf, and Shakespeare doesn't mean people in those times actually talked like that.\nAnd in fact, in all three of those cases, we know that's not the case. They found runic tablets a while ago, that they thought were going to be like more mythology or something. They ended up being more like texts: short messages in plain language that you'd write today. Of course, Shakespeare was allegedly the only one that wrote the way he did. And both Hebrews and English writers took creative liberties and made stylistic choices in their writings.\nOh and, forget everything you think you know about English; 'Thou' is an informal pronoun.\nSo yes, our understanding of history is and will always be limited, especially since we can only dig up places that are in the middle of nowhere after we find a reason to excavate there. The only things we have to go off of, are what we find, and so we should expect what we know to change as we discover more.",
">\n\nThe degree of confidence we have of our past. Mine was 1% at most, and I feel like most people would be much higher. \nSince making this post though there have been some points to raise my confidence level.",
">\n\nI think the people that assert that they know what happened are only fooling themselves. I call that the superposition fallacy. Some people just seem to be incapable of acknowledging that it's ok to not know the answers to something yet",
">\n\n\nthe problem is it is often used to date objects found near the carbon sample. Like, we just assume something found near it is the same age and pretend that over the thousands of years it wasn't moved there? A common example is finding a wooden beam in some ruins. How do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?\n\nYou can carbon date wood directly. Wood is a sample of organic matter which you can carbon date.\n\n\nHow do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?\n\nBecause you'd find discrepancies in all of the carbon samples that you have taken of the ruins. There are also methods other than carbon sampling that is used. You don't just pick one method to date a ruin and only use that method on one relics then call it a day. You use multiple methods on multiple relics.\nYour going off the assumption that carbon dating is the only method used to find the age of a ruin. And that the carbon dating is done on only one object in the ruin",
">\n\nIn the examples I'm thinking of, namely ancient Egypt, the single wooden beam is the only carbon sample they have in the ruin. Everything else is sandstone or lime."
] |
>
I thought carbon dating was radiometric dating? Pretty sure you can't use it on rocks because they don't have the materials with the long half-lives.
I don't buy designs and architecture because fashion changes and is different from region to region in current day life.
Not sure how wood type would help for dating.
If there were "thousands" of evidences to reference I would be convinced. For historical documents I did give a delta there. But outside historical documents I don't know of there being that many other reliable pieces of evidence.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nI think you have some pretty big misconceptions about what we know about history, what we don't know, and (most importantly) how we know about it. \nI looked into Flinders Petrie's methods since I didn't know about them, and they seem eminently reasonable. Not only that, they have been refined and corroborated again and again by subsequent researchers. \nNothing is 100% certain. No one piece of information is 100% accurate. No one thing is 100% known. The best we can do is piece together what we have and use the available data to cross-check and arrive at our best guess. Even if one wood beam is out of place, if everything we have is lining up to approximately the same answer, we can have a degree or two of confidence in our answer.",
">\n\nWhat makes Flinders Petrie's methods reasonable?",
">\n\nWhat exactly do you need your mind changed on? History is written by the people who wrote about it, and taking their word for it is all we can do.\nYou don't necessarily need to take their word exactly, however. Human nature is pretty fixed and there are some reasonable assumptions you could make about ancient people based on how people today are. Just because we have things like The Bible, Beowulf, and Shakespeare doesn't mean people in those times actually talked like that.\nAnd in fact, in all three of those cases, we know that's not the case. They found runic tablets a while ago, that they thought were going to be like more mythology or something. They ended up being more like texts: short messages in plain language that you'd write today. Of course, Shakespeare was allegedly the only one that wrote the way he did. And both Hebrews and English writers took creative liberties and made stylistic choices in their writings.\nOh and, forget everything you think you know about English; 'Thou' is an informal pronoun.\nSo yes, our understanding of history is and will always be limited, especially since we can only dig up places that are in the middle of nowhere after we find a reason to excavate there. The only things we have to go off of, are what we find, and so we should expect what we know to change as we discover more.",
">\n\nThe degree of confidence we have of our past. Mine was 1% at most, and I feel like most people would be much higher. \nSince making this post though there have been some points to raise my confidence level.",
">\n\nI think the people that assert that they know what happened are only fooling themselves. I call that the superposition fallacy. Some people just seem to be incapable of acknowledging that it's ok to not know the answers to something yet",
">\n\n\nthe problem is it is often used to date objects found near the carbon sample. Like, we just assume something found near it is the same age and pretend that over the thousands of years it wasn't moved there? A common example is finding a wooden beam in some ruins. How do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?\n\nYou can carbon date wood directly. Wood is a sample of organic matter which you can carbon date.\n\n\nHow do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?\n\nBecause you'd find discrepancies in all of the carbon samples that you have taken of the ruins. There are also methods other than carbon sampling that is used. You don't just pick one method to date a ruin and only use that method on one relics then call it a day. You use multiple methods on multiple relics.\nYour going off the assumption that carbon dating is the only method used to find the age of a ruin. And that the carbon dating is done on only one object in the ruin",
">\n\nIn the examples I'm thinking of, namely ancient Egypt, the single wooden beam is the only carbon sample they have in the ruin. Everything else is sandstone or lime.",
">\n\nYou can date the ruin via ways other than carbon dating. You can use radiometric dating on the lime and sandstone. Not to mention you can cross reference with all the info we already have on Egypt to see if the dates and locations line up.\nYou can check the wood type and see whether it was something used in ancient Egypt for construction. You can look at the designs and architecture. \nWhat makes us relatively certain that we know something happened isn’t one piece of evidence. It’s thousands of pieces of evidence that all seem to fit together perfectly and paint a story"
] |
>
Oh lol I was completely wrong about radiometric.
If u know the wood that was being grown in the region at the time or which woods were being traded. Also the most popular wood used during the time. Does it match woods used in other ruins found from that time.
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nI think you have some pretty big misconceptions about what we know about history, what we don't know, and (most importantly) how we know about it. \nI looked into Flinders Petrie's methods since I didn't know about them, and they seem eminently reasonable. Not only that, they have been refined and corroborated again and again by subsequent researchers. \nNothing is 100% certain. No one piece of information is 100% accurate. No one thing is 100% known. The best we can do is piece together what we have and use the available data to cross-check and arrive at our best guess. Even if one wood beam is out of place, if everything we have is lining up to approximately the same answer, we can have a degree or two of confidence in our answer.",
">\n\nWhat makes Flinders Petrie's methods reasonable?",
">\n\nWhat exactly do you need your mind changed on? History is written by the people who wrote about it, and taking their word for it is all we can do.\nYou don't necessarily need to take their word exactly, however. Human nature is pretty fixed and there are some reasonable assumptions you could make about ancient people based on how people today are. Just because we have things like The Bible, Beowulf, and Shakespeare doesn't mean people in those times actually talked like that.\nAnd in fact, in all three of those cases, we know that's not the case. They found runic tablets a while ago, that they thought were going to be like more mythology or something. They ended up being more like texts: short messages in plain language that you'd write today. Of course, Shakespeare was allegedly the only one that wrote the way he did. And both Hebrews and English writers took creative liberties and made stylistic choices in their writings.\nOh and, forget everything you think you know about English; 'Thou' is an informal pronoun.\nSo yes, our understanding of history is and will always be limited, especially since we can only dig up places that are in the middle of nowhere after we find a reason to excavate there. The only things we have to go off of, are what we find, and so we should expect what we know to change as we discover more.",
">\n\nThe degree of confidence we have of our past. Mine was 1% at most, and I feel like most people would be much higher. \nSince making this post though there have been some points to raise my confidence level.",
">\n\nI think the people that assert that they know what happened are only fooling themselves. I call that the superposition fallacy. Some people just seem to be incapable of acknowledging that it's ok to not know the answers to something yet",
">\n\n\nthe problem is it is often used to date objects found near the carbon sample. Like, we just assume something found near it is the same age and pretend that over the thousands of years it wasn't moved there? A common example is finding a wooden beam in some ruins. How do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?\n\nYou can carbon date wood directly. Wood is a sample of organic matter which you can carbon date.\n\n\nHow do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?\n\nBecause you'd find discrepancies in all of the carbon samples that you have taken of the ruins. There are also methods other than carbon sampling that is used. You don't just pick one method to date a ruin and only use that method on one relics then call it a day. You use multiple methods on multiple relics.\nYour going off the assumption that carbon dating is the only method used to find the age of a ruin. And that the carbon dating is done on only one object in the ruin",
">\n\nIn the examples I'm thinking of, namely ancient Egypt, the single wooden beam is the only carbon sample they have in the ruin. Everything else is sandstone or lime.",
">\n\nYou can date the ruin via ways other than carbon dating. You can use radiometric dating on the lime and sandstone. Not to mention you can cross reference with all the info we already have on Egypt to see if the dates and locations line up.\nYou can check the wood type and see whether it was something used in ancient Egypt for construction. You can look at the designs and architecture. \nWhat makes us relatively certain that we know something happened isn’t one piece of evidence. It’s thousands of pieces of evidence that all seem to fit together perfectly and paint a story",
">\n\nI thought carbon dating was radiometric dating? Pretty sure you can't use it on rocks because they don't have the materials with the long half-lives.\nI don't buy designs and architecture because fashion changes and is different from region to region in current day life.\nNot sure how wood type would help for dating.\nIf there were \"thousands\" of evidences to reference I would be convinced. For historical documents I did give a delta there. But outside historical documents I don't know of there being that many other reliable pieces of evidence."
] |
>
|
[
"/u/RedditExplorer89 (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.\nAll comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.\nPlease note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive. \n\nAre you sure about this? Certainly when I've taken history classes or attended talks, the speakers are, generally, careful to cite their sources and put what we think we know in the context of what can possibly be known.\nI think historians take it as a given that they're always working with incompete data and that their analyses may be challenged with new findings. Perhaps that's not been communicated well in the lectures you've attended?",
">\n\nThis is what I was going to say. I do think that many people who are responsible for communicating to the public fail to adequately communicate uncertainty, but the public often has a problem internalizing uncertainty. People often hear “we think this is what’s going on” as “this is definitely what’s going on.”",
">\n\nI think you just need to talk to more educated people. Most academics are well aware we don’t know everything, and that we are just taking our best guess.\nUneducated people that regurgitate the academics are often more confident in the finding than the academics. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect",
">\n\nOkay the more I think about it the classes I took only made claims about the area/period of study, and not in context of the whole world. Historians might be aware of this issue.\nNot sure I should give a delta though as this does reaffirm my main view though.",
">\n\nI'm a museum curator. We're very aware that we might be wrong about history. The thing is that visitors generally want a simple story and tend to get bored about all the \"maybe\" and \"probably\" and the like. So we tend to leave that out of the exhibit a lot of the time. Meanwhile when historians are talking to each other its very much an assumption that most of this is not 100% certain.\nI spent part of last night in a discussion about what exactly is up with the symbolism of red clothing in Icelandic sagas. Our main conclusion is that we don't really know when red became associated with blood and death, but red dye in medieval Iceland was probably kinda expensive. We still disagreed about whether it was just somewhat expensive or extremely expensive. \nThere's an entire theory that king Harold Fairhair of Norway may not have even existed. Sure there are documents and stories about him, but no archeology and most of those documents were written down centuries later. We know that it's possible that he didn't exist and was just a folktale. However it's also possible that he did exist and that version of the story seems more convincing to most people so that's the story that gets told in pop culture\nHistorians come to the conclusion that we're not certain about some things all the time. It's not even about the distant past, sometimes we're uncertain about things that happened two centuries ago. It's just that other people tend to prefer a simpler story.",
">\n\nGlad for your input, but not going to spend to much time here as this mostly re-affirms my main view (that we don't know much about the past). It does make sense that people want a simpler story though.",
">\n\nDepends on your value of \"know\" and your value of \"much.\"\nThe number of things that we can say are 110% true is relatively low, but not much lower than most of science. Most fields have unsolved mysteries and also things that we think are true but there are exceptions and uncertainties. Most fields gloss those uncertainties over when talking to beginners. Go ask a physist about how exactly why gravity works and exactly how certain they are of the answer. There are theories and evidence but no certainty.\nFor history, I can say with pretty high certainty that the island of Atlantis as Plato described it did not exist and that Plato almost certainly existed. I can say with a high degree of certainty that ancient civilizations almost certainly did not have airplanes and that spinning wool took huge amounts of labor in the Roman economy. I can make some pretty good guesses about the origins of monotheism among the Habiru people and some of the truth behind the legends of Troy. What we know isn't nothing. It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.",
">\n\n> It's as incomplete as any field where we know that our current knowledge is incomplete.\nThis is where I could use my view changed on still. My biggest issue is that I imagine our sample size is incredibly tiny of everything that was created. The conditions needed to preserve buildings or artifacts are pretty rare afiak. So like, how can anyone say there was not an Atlantis with any degree of certainty? (I don't know how Plato described it) Or couldn't there have been hundreds of sophisticated societies we don't know about because their remains have decomposed?",
">\n\nThe way that Plato described it, the ruins of Atlantis would have to be considerably larger than Libya.\nA: We'd notice something that big on the ocean floor in modern days. We don't have the ocean floor well mapped, but we do have maps good enough that it'd be really hard not to run into something that huge.\nB: Something the size of Libya disappearing would have major ecological effects which we don't see\nC: Someone else other than Plato would have noticed a land mass the size of Libya disappearing and the only source we have for the Atlantis legend is Plato. A disaster the size of Libya would have attracted thr attention of the ancient Egyptians for instance.\nOur sample size is somewhat small, but it's not so tiny that we can miss really giant things. Absolutely huge events have effects that we could see everywhere including the relatively small amount of stuff that survived to the modern day.",
">\n\nOkay lol I didn't know he claimed it was that big. I thought it was just a fancy-looking normal sized city. I can see how we can say a city that big probably didn't exist.",
">\n\nTo be fair, that's the description of the island, not the city proper. It'd still be absolutely gigantic on the ocean floor though.",
">\n\n\nTake Flinder Petrie's dating method where he assumes the more complex the pottery is, the later the period it comes from. That seems patently false to me! Fashion is in constant fluxation, sometimes rising in complexity but just as often dipping in complexity. There are tribes in mesoamerica that made their pottery less complex at times. In the modern day people like smaller, sleeker, designs just as much as people like the more extravagant.\n\ntwo things: \n\nFlinder's methods: \ni didn't know what Flinder's method was, so i looked it up. it appears this method also considered the stratigraphic layer from which a piece was discovered. older = deeper is long established one aspect of dating something. \nalso, it seems most of his contextual dating methods used material found in graves, which makes sense to me as places where its unlikely you'd find \"uncontemporary\" (to the burial) items w/ much frequency. it seems logical to me that if you look at enough graves that you can date which have style X, and then you find style X somewhere else, the age is reasonably likely to be generally similar. i think \"generally similar\" is probably the level of precision that would be used in dating items. not \"this one is clearly a 2022 plate, and this a 2021 cup\". probably more like, \"white porcelain, or similar derivatives, was common kitchenware from the 17th century onwards in western European civilizations\"\ncomplexity is not merely \"fashion\". The methods available to craftsman are contingencies on style, and these methods involve technical advancements. metallurgy is a good example of this. yes, you can make a simple stainless steel blade, you can't make stainless steel 10,000 years ago. the material used has some influence on feasible styles. \n\nwhere i do agree w/ you is in our tendency to derive seemingly distinct culture from ancient sites. it seems we assume ancient people were vastly different to the point of almost being alien. not every ancient building is a temple to the sun gods. not every room housed a priest's harem. i think we'd better off assuming our modern society is probably not that much different in terms of everyday life. on the weekend we go to a grocery store, so ancient people probably did something equivalent. on the way to work we stop at a coffee shop, ancient people probably had similar mundane habits. we buy garbage to decorate our house... in 10,000 years if someone unearthed some, \"live, love, laugh\" artifact from a house, they should probably be careful about giving it too much importance. likewise, we should be careful about assuming that we buy tools to fix things. we pay other people to cook for us on occasion. we poop in a room designed for pooping. etc. etc. etc. all this stuff feels like common and durable human behavior, and must have had a fixture in ancient people's lives.",
">\n\n!delta On Flinders method being used in conjunction with soil age. But more importantly, the fact that it was looking at available crafting methods for complexity, and not just fashion. (The professor for my class taught Petrie as if it was solely fashion, so he just did a poor job there.)",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nhlms81 (23∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\n\nYet when classes our taught on the subject, and people talk about these ancient times, it seems everyone talks as if what we know is fact, and/or that it is comprehensive.\n\nDo you have any evidence of this? Every historian/archaeologist, anthropologist, classics professor I have ever heard acknowledges that the we don't know the whole story, but that the evidence we do have points to the current understanding we have.",
">\n\n\"Not having the whole story,\" sounds like we have most of the story. What they should say IMO is, \"We have very little to none of the story.\"",
">\n\nYou're just playing with semantics now.",
">\n\nNo it's not. \nHow much one realises one doesn't know, matters.",
">\n\nOur understanding may be far from the facts but that doesn't mean assumptions are necessarily false. A spoon shaped implement was probably a spoon. A jug of wine was probably meant for drinking. A religious idol was probably meant for worship. A trail of artefacts probably means migration. We can piece together a lot based on ancient clues.",
">\n\n!delta I was probably overestimating the failure rate of guesswork. Even if it is not solid, it is probably correct more often than not, and thus boosts my confidence of our understanding a percent or two.",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Presentalbion (50∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nWhat scale are you talking about? Because sure, if you drill further and further down, you will always find more information we don't know about. But that makes the argument of \"I'd be surprised if we know 1% of it\" meaningless, because, there is always more that can be learned.\nAs for written records, you say it feels just like guess work, but what you do is guage reliability of documents based on other information you had available. Like, a person reporting an army was 1,000,000 strong elsewhere reported a group having 10,000 people in it when all other documents show that group had 1,000. Suddenly, the 1,000,000 fits a pattern of over-exageration. And then Census records don't align on top of it. Rarely is there a single document on it's own where we know nothing and are learning, but often we have other documents to compare it against.\nAdditionally, we can use \"faulty info\" to gain good information. For example, the person reported that large army. We know there weren't 1,000,000 people living there, but we can use it to confirm the army existed, or help track a known armies movements.",
">\n\n!delta Having lots of documents to compare to does sound like a more reliable way of determining the truth.\nI don't see how we can get info from the faulty documents though. If we know part of it is fake, isn't it likely the entire thing is fake? Why assume the army exists at all?",
">\n\nSo, I'm going to use \"the huns\" as a hypothetical example. Let's say we know they were in Armenia with lots of documentation, and then we know they left, but don't know where they went. During this time, suddenly someone in Cappadocia reports a 1,000,000 person army. We are able to find mass graves that roughly associate with that time, and we are able to find artifacts that should have belonged in Cappadocia in Mongolia from the correct time period. Additionally there are contemporaneous writings on rebuilding Cappadocia. Doesn't that point to \"the huns attacked Cappadocia during the period people had trouble tracking them\" more than \"the person was wrong about the army existing/lied about it altogether?\"",
">\n\nOkay I see it. Like the other person said, \"Cross referencing.\" But this comment helped illustrate it better for me !delta",
">\n\nConfirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Visible_Bunch3699 (13∆).\n^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards",
">\n\nI think you have some pretty big misconceptions about what we know about history, what we don't know, and (most importantly) how we know about it. \nI looked into Flinders Petrie's methods since I didn't know about them, and they seem eminently reasonable. Not only that, they have been refined and corroborated again and again by subsequent researchers. \nNothing is 100% certain. No one piece of information is 100% accurate. No one thing is 100% known. The best we can do is piece together what we have and use the available data to cross-check and arrive at our best guess. Even if one wood beam is out of place, if everything we have is lining up to approximately the same answer, we can have a degree or two of confidence in our answer.",
">\n\nWhat makes Flinders Petrie's methods reasonable?",
">\n\nWhat exactly do you need your mind changed on? History is written by the people who wrote about it, and taking their word for it is all we can do.\nYou don't necessarily need to take their word exactly, however. Human nature is pretty fixed and there are some reasonable assumptions you could make about ancient people based on how people today are. Just because we have things like The Bible, Beowulf, and Shakespeare doesn't mean people in those times actually talked like that.\nAnd in fact, in all three of those cases, we know that's not the case. They found runic tablets a while ago, that they thought were going to be like more mythology or something. They ended up being more like texts: short messages in plain language that you'd write today. Of course, Shakespeare was allegedly the only one that wrote the way he did. And both Hebrews and English writers took creative liberties and made stylistic choices in their writings.\nOh and, forget everything you think you know about English; 'Thou' is an informal pronoun.\nSo yes, our understanding of history is and will always be limited, especially since we can only dig up places that are in the middle of nowhere after we find a reason to excavate there. The only things we have to go off of, are what we find, and so we should expect what we know to change as we discover more.",
">\n\nThe degree of confidence we have of our past. Mine was 1% at most, and I feel like most people would be much higher. \nSince making this post though there have been some points to raise my confidence level.",
">\n\nI think the people that assert that they know what happened are only fooling themselves. I call that the superposition fallacy. Some people just seem to be incapable of acknowledging that it's ok to not know the answers to something yet",
">\n\n\nthe problem is it is often used to date objects found near the carbon sample. Like, we just assume something found near it is the same age and pretend that over the thousands of years it wasn't moved there? A common example is finding a wooden beam in some ruins. How do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?\n\nYou can carbon date wood directly. Wood is a sample of organic matter which you can carbon date.\n\n\nHow do we know it wasn't replacing an older beam?\n\nBecause you'd find discrepancies in all of the carbon samples that you have taken of the ruins. There are also methods other than carbon sampling that is used. You don't just pick one method to date a ruin and only use that method on one relics then call it a day. You use multiple methods on multiple relics.\nYour going off the assumption that carbon dating is the only method used to find the age of a ruin. And that the carbon dating is done on only one object in the ruin",
">\n\nIn the examples I'm thinking of, namely ancient Egypt, the single wooden beam is the only carbon sample they have in the ruin. Everything else is sandstone or lime.",
">\n\nYou can date the ruin via ways other than carbon dating. You can use radiometric dating on the lime and sandstone. Not to mention you can cross reference with all the info we already have on Egypt to see if the dates and locations line up.\nYou can check the wood type and see whether it was something used in ancient Egypt for construction. You can look at the designs and architecture. \nWhat makes us relatively certain that we know something happened isn’t one piece of evidence. It’s thousands of pieces of evidence that all seem to fit together perfectly and paint a story",
">\n\nI thought carbon dating was radiometric dating? Pretty sure you can't use it on rocks because they don't have the materials with the long half-lives.\nI don't buy designs and architecture because fashion changes and is different from region to region in current day life.\nNot sure how wood type would help for dating.\nIf there were \"thousands\" of evidences to reference I would be convinced. For historical documents I did give a delta there. But outside historical documents I don't know of there being that many other reliable pieces of evidence.",
">\n\nOh lol I was completely wrong about radiometric. \nIf u know the wood that was being grown in the region at the time or which woods were being traded. Also the most popular wood used during the time. Does it match woods used in other ruins found from that time."
] |
In a statement, police said the arrests were made at the makeshift camp near the northern town of Subotica, where 109 illegal migrants were found, 29 of whom were "interesting security-wise".
Yeah, I want to know more about that.
|
[] |
>
Justice
|
[
"In a statement, police said the arrests were made at the makeshift camp near the northern town of Subotica, where 109 illegal migrants were found, 29 of whom were \"interesting security-wise\".\n\nYeah, I want to know more about that."
] |
>
I would think he would be extradited to France for trial, there won't be an exchange but cooperation gives Serbia a bit of political credit with Europe. Serbia may delay the extradition to make a point but it's in their interest to maintain a working relationship with France which is one of the destination countries for the many refugees and migrants flowing through the Balkans.
|
[
"In a statement, police said the arrests were made at the makeshift camp near the northern town of Subotica, where 109 illegal migrants were found, 29 of whom were \"interesting security-wise\".\n\nYeah, I want to know more about that.",
">\n\nJustice"
] |
>
|
[
"In a statement, police said the arrests were made at the makeshift camp near the northern town of Subotica, where 109 illegal migrants were found, 29 of whom were \"interesting security-wise\".\n\nYeah, I want to know more about that.",
">\n\nJustice",
">\n\nI would think he would be extradited to France for trial, there won't be an exchange but cooperation gives Serbia a bit of political credit with Europe. Serbia may delay the extradition to make a point but it's in their interest to maintain a working relationship with France which is one of the destination countries for the many refugees and migrants flowing through the Balkans."
] |
Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend..
|
[] |
>
With Trump it's always Me Me Memes.
|
[
"Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend.."
] |
>
Republicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee's new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.
REPUBLICANS: “You’ll be sorry! We’ll get the IRS to look into the tax records of Democrats, and make sure they are punished for proven illegal wrongdoings!”
THE REST OF US: “Um, ok, that would actually be great. People who cheat and obfuscate their taxes are ~~screening~~ screwing over all taxpayers, and should be stopped.
|
[
"Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend..",
">\n\nWith Trump it's always Me Me Memes."
] |
>
Inb4 they unironically rant about forcing Biden to release his tax records!
Probably dress it up in 'release the real ones' or some such conspiracy bs.
|
[
"Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend..",
">\n\nWith Trump it's always Me Me Memes.",
">\n\n\nRepublicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee's new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.\n\nREPUBLICANS: “You’ll be sorry! We’ll get the IRS to look into the tax records of Democrats, and make sure they are punished for proven illegal wrongdoings!”\nTHE REST OF US: “Um, ok, that would actually be great. People who cheat and obfuscate their taxes are ~~screening~~ screwing over all taxpayers, and should be stopped."
] |
>
Well, from the party who brought you “give us the real birth certificate”, that would surprise no one
|
[
"Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend..",
">\n\nWith Trump it's always Me Me Memes.",
">\n\n\nRepublicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee's new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.\n\nREPUBLICANS: “You’ll be sorry! We’ll get the IRS to look into the tax records of Democrats, and make sure they are punished for proven illegal wrongdoings!”\nTHE REST OF US: “Um, ok, that would actually be great. People who cheat and obfuscate their taxes are ~~screening~~ screwing over all taxpayers, and should be stopped.",
">\n\nInb4 they unironically rant about forcing Biden to release his tax records!\n\nProbably dress it up in 'release the real ones' or some such conspiracy bs."
] |
>
Friday news dump. New Years weekend. Terrible timing after waiting six years. But I’ll take it.
|
[
"Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend..",
">\n\nWith Trump it's always Me Me Memes.",
">\n\n\nRepublicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee's new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.\n\nREPUBLICANS: “You’ll be sorry! We’ll get the IRS to look into the tax records of Democrats, and make sure they are punished for proven illegal wrongdoings!”\nTHE REST OF US: “Um, ok, that would actually be great. People who cheat and obfuscate their taxes are ~~screening~~ screwing over all taxpayers, and should be stopped.",
">\n\nInb4 they unironically rant about forcing Biden to release his tax records!\n\nProbably dress it up in 'release the real ones' or some such conspiracy bs.",
">\n\nWell, from the party who brought you “give us the real birth certificate”, that would surprise no one"
] |
>
Friday data dump; news articles come for awhile after.
|
[
"Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend..",
">\n\nWith Trump it's always Me Me Memes.",
">\n\n\nRepublicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee's new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.\n\nREPUBLICANS: “You’ll be sorry! We’ll get the IRS to look into the tax records of Democrats, and make sure they are punished for proven illegal wrongdoings!”\nTHE REST OF US: “Um, ok, that would actually be great. People who cheat and obfuscate their taxes are ~~screening~~ screwing over all taxpayers, and should be stopped.",
">\n\nInb4 they unironically rant about forcing Biden to release his tax records!\n\nProbably dress it up in 'release the real ones' or some such conspiracy bs.",
">\n\nWell, from the party who brought you “give us the real birth certificate”, that would surprise no one",
">\n\nFriday news dump. New Years weekend. Terrible timing after waiting six years. But I’ll take it."
] |
>
This is like being a kid and opening up all your presents right before the holiday break is almost over. Cruel timing.
|
[
"Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend..",
">\n\nWith Trump it's always Me Me Memes.",
">\n\n\nRepublicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee's new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.\n\nREPUBLICANS: “You’ll be sorry! We’ll get the IRS to look into the tax records of Democrats, and make sure they are punished for proven illegal wrongdoings!”\nTHE REST OF US: “Um, ok, that would actually be great. People who cheat and obfuscate their taxes are ~~screening~~ screwing over all taxpayers, and should be stopped.",
">\n\nInb4 they unironically rant about forcing Biden to release his tax records!\n\nProbably dress it up in 'release the real ones' or some such conspiracy bs.",
">\n\nWell, from the party who brought you “give us the real birth certificate”, that would surprise no one",
">\n\nFriday news dump. New Years weekend. Terrible timing after waiting six years. But I’ll take it.",
">\n\nFriday data dump; news articles come for awhile after."
] |
>
So the USA LOVING PATRIOT paid less in taxes than an UBER driver. Got it.
|
[
"Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend..",
">\n\nWith Trump it's always Me Me Memes.",
">\n\n\nRepublicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee's new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.\n\nREPUBLICANS: “You’ll be sorry! We’ll get the IRS to look into the tax records of Democrats, and make sure they are punished for proven illegal wrongdoings!”\nTHE REST OF US: “Um, ok, that would actually be great. People who cheat and obfuscate their taxes are ~~screening~~ screwing over all taxpayers, and should be stopped.",
">\n\nInb4 they unironically rant about forcing Biden to release his tax records!\n\nProbably dress it up in 'release the real ones' or some such conspiracy bs.",
">\n\nWell, from the party who brought you “give us the real birth certificate”, that would surprise no one",
">\n\nFriday news dump. New Years weekend. Terrible timing after waiting six years. But I’ll take it.",
">\n\nFriday data dump; news articles come for awhile after.",
">\n\nThis is like being a kid and opening up all your presents right before the holiday break is almost over. Cruel timing."
] |
>
Well, you don't get to be a pretend billionaire by paying taxes... or your contractors, or your hookers, or your lawyers, or your illegitimate children, or...
|
[
"Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend..",
">\n\nWith Trump it's always Me Me Memes.",
">\n\n\nRepublicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee's new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.\n\nREPUBLICANS: “You’ll be sorry! We’ll get the IRS to look into the tax records of Democrats, and make sure they are punished for proven illegal wrongdoings!”\nTHE REST OF US: “Um, ok, that would actually be great. People who cheat and obfuscate their taxes are ~~screening~~ screwing over all taxpayers, and should be stopped.",
">\n\nInb4 they unironically rant about forcing Biden to release his tax records!\n\nProbably dress it up in 'release the real ones' or some such conspiracy bs.",
">\n\nWell, from the party who brought you “give us the real birth certificate”, that would surprise no one",
">\n\nFriday news dump. New Years weekend. Terrible timing after waiting six years. But I’ll take it.",
">\n\nFriday data dump; news articles come for awhile after.",
">\n\nThis is like being a kid and opening up all your presents right before the holiday break is almost over. Cruel timing.",
">\n\nSo the USA LOVING PATRIOT paid less in taxes than an UBER driver. Got it."
] |
>
Trump:
"I look very much forward to showing my financials, because they are huge."
TIME, 14/4/11
"I say, not in a braggadocios way, I've made billions and billions of dollars dealing with people all around the world."
CNN Republican debate, 16/9/15
|
[
"Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend..",
">\n\nWith Trump it's always Me Me Memes.",
">\n\n\nRepublicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee's new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.\n\nREPUBLICANS: “You’ll be sorry! We’ll get the IRS to look into the tax records of Democrats, and make sure they are punished for proven illegal wrongdoings!”\nTHE REST OF US: “Um, ok, that would actually be great. People who cheat and obfuscate their taxes are ~~screening~~ screwing over all taxpayers, and should be stopped.",
">\n\nInb4 they unironically rant about forcing Biden to release his tax records!\n\nProbably dress it up in 'release the real ones' or some such conspiracy bs.",
">\n\nWell, from the party who brought you “give us the real birth certificate”, that would surprise no one",
">\n\nFriday news dump. New Years weekend. Terrible timing after waiting six years. But I’ll take it.",
">\n\nFriday data dump; news articles come for awhile after.",
">\n\nThis is like being a kid and opening up all your presents right before the holiday break is almost over. Cruel timing.",
">\n\nSo the USA LOVING PATRIOT paid less in taxes than an UBER driver. Got it.",
">\n\nWell, you don't get to be a pretend billionaire by paying taxes... or your contractors, or your hookers, or your lawyers, or your illegitimate children, or..."
] |
>
|
[
"Ah, the memes shall be glorious this weekend..",
">\n\nWith Trump it's always Me Me Memes.",
">\n\n\nRepublicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee's new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.\n\nREPUBLICANS: “You’ll be sorry! We’ll get the IRS to look into the tax records of Democrats, and make sure they are punished for proven illegal wrongdoings!”\nTHE REST OF US: “Um, ok, that would actually be great. People who cheat and obfuscate their taxes are ~~screening~~ screwing over all taxpayers, and should be stopped.",
">\n\nInb4 they unironically rant about forcing Biden to release his tax records!\n\nProbably dress it up in 'release the real ones' or some such conspiracy bs.",
">\n\nWell, from the party who brought you “give us the real birth certificate”, that would surprise no one",
">\n\nFriday news dump. New Years weekend. Terrible timing after waiting six years. But I’ll take it.",
">\n\nFriday data dump; news articles come for awhile after.",
">\n\nThis is like being a kid and opening up all your presents right before the holiday break is almost over. Cruel timing.",
">\n\nSo the USA LOVING PATRIOT paid less in taxes than an UBER driver. Got it.",
">\n\nWell, you don't get to be a pretend billionaire by paying taxes... or your contractors, or your hookers, or your lawyers, or your illegitimate children, or...",
">\n\nTrump: \n\"I look very much forward to showing my financials, because they are huge.\"\nTIME, 14/4/11\n\"I say, not in a braggadocios way, I've made billions and billions of dollars dealing with people all around the world.\"\nCNN Republican debate, 16/9/15"
] |
Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??
If that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.
But he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *
/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.
Edit: spelling
|
[] |
>
This is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder.
This would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling"
] |
>
Florida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction."
] |
>
That says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25.
It's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them.
It also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault"
] |
>
At no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.
Over 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work."
] |
>
Sounds like healthy inter agency rivalry
/s
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often"
] |
>
Seeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard.
Great access to the beach and rockets, though.
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s"
] |
>
I grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though."
] |
>
This is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago.
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole"
] |
>
What the hell did I just read 😐
"Police officer spouse of police officer in same department calls 911 to report police officer has guns, is going nuts and ends up in armed standoff with another agencies police officers." That was my takeaway. Did I miss anything?
Fiance - police officer- Cocoa PD
Fiance - police officer - Cocoa PD
Brevard county PD - More police officers
What the fuck.
Look, I know police are not particularly liked or trusted these days, but... What the fuck is WRONG with the hiring practices in the states? (It's rhetorical)... I can't imagine anything like this happening in any other country in the modern day. Smaller communities in the US seriously need to up their training and mental health awareness game.
*edit - can't imagine this happening in more developed (ie: 1st world) countries, is what I should have said.
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole",
">\n\nThis is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago."
] |
>
Engaged not married (i.e. fiancée and fiancé not wife and husband), but yeah.
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole",
">\n\nThis is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago.",
">\n\nWhat the hell did I just read 😐\n\"Police officer spouse of police officer in same department calls 911 to report police officer has guns, is going nuts and ends up in armed standoff with another agencies police officers.\" That was my takeaway. Did I miss anything?\nFiance - police officer- Cocoa PD\nFiance - police officer - Cocoa PD\nBrevard county PD - More police officers\nWhat the fuck. \nLook, I know police are not particularly liked or trusted these days, but... What the fuck is WRONG with the hiring practices in the states? (It's rhetorical)... I can't imagine anything like this happening in any other country in the modern day. Smaller communities in the US seriously need to up their training and mental health awareness game.\n*edit - can't imagine this happening in more developed (ie: 1st world) countries, is what I should have said."
] |
>
Fair point. I would say in my own defense, not exactly the most staggering of errors in light of all the circumstances.
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole",
">\n\nThis is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago.",
">\n\nWhat the hell did I just read 😐\n\"Police officer spouse of police officer in same department calls 911 to report police officer has guns, is going nuts and ends up in armed standoff with another agencies police officers.\" That was my takeaway. Did I miss anything?\nFiance - police officer- Cocoa PD\nFiance - police officer - Cocoa PD\nBrevard county PD - More police officers\nWhat the fuck. \nLook, I know police are not particularly liked or trusted these days, but... What the fuck is WRONG with the hiring practices in the states? (It's rhetorical)... I can't imagine anything like this happening in any other country in the modern day. Smaller communities in the US seriously need to up their training and mental health awareness game.\n*edit - can't imagine this happening in more developed (ie: 1st world) countries, is what I should have said.",
">\n\nEngaged not married (i.e. fiancée and fiancé not wife and husband), but yeah."
] |
>
Odds on him keeping his job? He looks like your typical rightwing POS cop that loves to beat up people and shoot things.
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole",
">\n\nThis is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago.",
">\n\nWhat the hell did I just read 😐\n\"Police officer spouse of police officer in same department calls 911 to report police officer has guns, is going nuts and ends up in armed standoff with another agencies police officers.\" That was my takeaway. Did I miss anything?\nFiance - police officer- Cocoa PD\nFiance - police officer - Cocoa PD\nBrevard county PD - More police officers\nWhat the fuck. \nLook, I know police are not particularly liked or trusted these days, but... What the fuck is WRONG with the hiring practices in the states? (It's rhetorical)... I can't imagine anything like this happening in any other country in the modern day. Smaller communities in the US seriously need to up their training and mental health awareness game.\n*edit - can't imagine this happening in more developed (ie: 1st world) countries, is what I should have said.",
">\n\nEngaged not married (i.e. fiancée and fiancé not wife and husband), but yeah.",
">\n\nFair point. I would say in my own defense, not exactly the most staggering of errors in light of all the circumstances."
] |
>
This proves that they can be delicate when they want to be. If you are one of them you can shoot at the cops and they will practice restraint.
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole",
">\n\nThis is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago.",
">\n\nWhat the hell did I just read 😐\n\"Police officer spouse of police officer in same department calls 911 to report police officer has guns, is going nuts and ends up in armed standoff with another agencies police officers.\" That was my takeaway. Did I miss anything?\nFiance - police officer- Cocoa PD\nFiance - police officer - Cocoa PD\nBrevard county PD - More police officers\nWhat the fuck. \nLook, I know police are not particularly liked or trusted these days, but... What the fuck is WRONG with the hiring practices in the states? (It's rhetorical)... I can't imagine anything like this happening in any other country in the modern day. Smaller communities in the US seriously need to up their training and mental health awareness game.\n*edit - can't imagine this happening in more developed (ie: 1st world) countries, is what I should have said.",
">\n\nEngaged not married (i.e. fiancée and fiancé not wife and husband), but yeah.",
">\n\nFair point. I would say in my own defense, not exactly the most staggering of errors in light of all the circumstances.",
">\n\nOdds on him keeping his job? He looks like your typical rightwing POS cop that loves to beat up people and shoot things."
] |
>
Cop on cop violence is getting out of control
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole",
">\n\nThis is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago.",
">\n\nWhat the hell did I just read 😐\n\"Police officer spouse of police officer in same department calls 911 to report police officer has guns, is going nuts and ends up in armed standoff with another agencies police officers.\" That was my takeaway. Did I miss anything?\nFiance - police officer- Cocoa PD\nFiance - police officer - Cocoa PD\nBrevard county PD - More police officers\nWhat the fuck. \nLook, I know police are not particularly liked or trusted these days, but... What the fuck is WRONG with the hiring practices in the states? (It's rhetorical)... I can't imagine anything like this happening in any other country in the modern day. Smaller communities in the US seriously need to up their training and mental health awareness game.\n*edit - can't imagine this happening in more developed (ie: 1st world) countries, is what I should have said.",
">\n\nEngaged not married (i.e. fiancée and fiancé not wife and husband), but yeah.",
">\n\nFair point. I would say in my own defense, not exactly the most staggering of errors in light of all the circumstances.",
">\n\nOdds on him keeping his job? He looks like your typical rightwing POS cop that loves to beat up people and shoot things.",
">\n\nThis proves that they can be delicate when they want to be. If you are one of them you can shoot at the cops and they will practice restraint."
] |
>
Is it, though?
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole",
">\n\nThis is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago.",
">\n\nWhat the hell did I just read 😐\n\"Police officer spouse of police officer in same department calls 911 to report police officer has guns, is going nuts and ends up in armed standoff with another agencies police officers.\" That was my takeaway. Did I miss anything?\nFiance - police officer- Cocoa PD\nFiance - police officer - Cocoa PD\nBrevard county PD - More police officers\nWhat the fuck. \nLook, I know police are not particularly liked or trusted these days, but... What the fuck is WRONG with the hiring practices in the states? (It's rhetorical)... I can't imagine anything like this happening in any other country in the modern day. Smaller communities in the US seriously need to up their training and mental health awareness game.\n*edit - can't imagine this happening in more developed (ie: 1st world) countries, is what I should have said.",
">\n\nEngaged not married (i.e. fiancée and fiancé not wife and husband), but yeah.",
">\n\nFair point. I would say in my own defense, not exactly the most staggering of errors in light of all the circumstances.",
">\n\nOdds on him keeping his job? He looks like your typical rightwing POS cop that loves to beat up people and shoot things.",
">\n\nThis proves that they can be delicate when they want to be. If you are one of them you can shoot at the cops and they will practice restraint.",
">\n\nCop on cop violence is getting out of control"
] |
>
That is a shitty website
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole",
">\n\nThis is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago.",
">\n\nWhat the hell did I just read 😐\n\"Police officer spouse of police officer in same department calls 911 to report police officer has guns, is going nuts and ends up in armed standoff with another agencies police officers.\" That was my takeaway. Did I miss anything?\nFiance - police officer- Cocoa PD\nFiance - police officer - Cocoa PD\nBrevard county PD - More police officers\nWhat the fuck. \nLook, I know police are not particularly liked or trusted these days, but... What the fuck is WRONG with the hiring practices in the states? (It's rhetorical)... I can't imagine anything like this happening in any other country in the modern day. Smaller communities in the US seriously need to up their training and mental health awareness game.\n*edit - can't imagine this happening in more developed (ie: 1st world) countries, is what I should have said.",
">\n\nEngaged not married (i.e. fiancée and fiancé not wife and husband), but yeah.",
">\n\nFair point. I would say in my own defense, not exactly the most staggering of errors in light of all the circumstances.",
">\n\nOdds on him keeping his job? He looks like your typical rightwing POS cop that loves to beat up people and shoot things.",
">\n\nThis proves that they can be delicate when they want to be. If you are one of them you can shoot at the cops and they will practice restraint.",
">\n\nCop on cop violence is getting out of control",
">\n\nIs it, though?"
] |
>
It's the stuff after the ? in the url that's changing the format to be so much worse. Remove that and it's better.
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole",
">\n\nThis is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago.",
">\n\nWhat the hell did I just read 😐\n\"Police officer spouse of police officer in same department calls 911 to report police officer has guns, is going nuts and ends up in armed standoff with another agencies police officers.\" That was my takeaway. Did I miss anything?\nFiance - police officer- Cocoa PD\nFiance - police officer - Cocoa PD\nBrevard county PD - More police officers\nWhat the fuck. \nLook, I know police are not particularly liked or trusted these days, but... What the fuck is WRONG with the hiring practices in the states? (It's rhetorical)... I can't imagine anything like this happening in any other country in the modern day. Smaller communities in the US seriously need to up their training and mental health awareness game.\n*edit - can't imagine this happening in more developed (ie: 1st world) countries, is what I should have said.",
">\n\nEngaged not married (i.e. fiancée and fiancé not wife and husband), but yeah.",
">\n\nFair point. I would say in my own defense, not exactly the most staggering of errors in light of all the circumstances.",
">\n\nOdds on him keeping his job? He looks like your typical rightwing POS cop that loves to beat up people and shoot things.",
">\n\nThis proves that they can be delicate when they want to be. If you are one of them you can shoot at the cops and they will practice restraint.",
">\n\nCop on cop violence is getting out of control",
">\n\nIs it, though?",
">\n\nThat is a shitty website"
] |
>
Having traveled the world I now realize ALL police are corrupt.
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole",
">\n\nThis is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago.",
">\n\nWhat the hell did I just read 😐\n\"Police officer spouse of police officer in same department calls 911 to report police officer has guns, is going nuts and ends up in armed standoff with another agencies police officers.\" That was my takeaway. Did I miss anything?\nFiance - police officer- Cocoa PD\nFiance - police officer - Cocoa PD\nBrevard county PD - More police officers\nWhat the fuck. \nLook, I know police are not particularly liked or trusted these days, but... What the fuck is WRONG with the hiring practices in the states? (It's rhetorical)... I can't imagine anything like this happening in any other country in the modern day. Smaller communities in the US seriously need to up their training and mental health awareness game.\n*edit - can't imagine this happening in more developed (ie: 1st world) countries, is what I should have said.",
">\n\nEngaged not married (i.e. fiancée and fiancé not wife and husband), but yeah.",
">\n\nFair point. I would say in my own defense, not exactly the most staggering of errors in light of all the circumstances.",
">\n\nOdds on him keeping his job? He looks like your typical rightwing POS cop that loves to beat up people and shoot things.",
">\n\nThis proves that they can be delicate when they want to be. If you are one of them you can shoot at the cops and they will practice restraint.",
">\n\nCop on cop violence is getting out of control",
">\n\nIs it, though?",
">\n\nThat is a shitty website",
">\n\nIt's the stuff after the ? in the url that's changing the format to be so much worse. Remove that and it's better."
] |
>
|
[
"Aggrevated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill? Over 100 rounds fired? What the actual fuck??\nIf that guy had been any other person they would have lit up his house, his whole goddamn block.\nBut he's a cop, so *come on bro, he was just having a bad day bro. He only beat his wife a little bit bro, just not even that much bro, please come on. He's a cop you know, we have to think about his feelings bro, you know sometimes cops have bad days and just need to get loaded up on booze and fire 100 rounds through the old AR10 into the street at swat bro. You know how it is, think about the damage we could do if we held him accountable bro. *\n/s for all you boot lickers out there who have been fully on board to this point with letting this piece of shit off the hook again.\nEdit: spelling",
">\n\nThis is very common all across the country. In many states, aggravated assault or first degree assault are the same degree of felony as attempted murder. They carry the same possible penalties and are much easier to prove to a jury in court. It removes the av possible defense of claiming they weren't trying to kill anyone and shouldn't be convicted of attempted murder. \nThis would be charged the same way for any person regardless of occupation because it makes no difference in punishment and ensures an easier conviction.",
">\n\nFlorida law sees a difference. Attempted murder vs Aggravated assault",
">\n\nThat says second degree murder carries a sentence up to 15 years and aggravated assault with a firearm can reach as much as 25. \nIt's very unlikely this would ever be charged or convicted as attempted first degree without further proof he had some plan to draw in police to kill them. \nIt also doesn't remove the possible defense of the guy claiming he was never trying to kill anyone. As stupid as that sounds, that defense can work.",
">\n\n\nAt no point did we hear any return fire from law enforcement.\n\nOver 100 rounds fired from a long gun. Shooting AT officers and vehicles. Talked him down. If only they took this much care more often",
">\n\nSounds like healthy inter agency rivalry \n/s",
">\n\nSeeing how Sheriff Ivey fancies himself a law enforcer in the old west it only follows that the county would become just as chaotic. The fish rots from the head and not even the pelicans and ospreys around here would touch the rotting carcass that is Brevard. \nGreat access to the beach and rockets, though.",
">\n\nI grew up an hour west of Daytona; it's a craphole",
">\n\nThis is the second time in a few weeks my area shows up on Reddit. In case anyone is interested -- this is 20 minutes down the road from where the guy drove his car into the fireworks store and all the product went off. That was on here a short time ago.",
">\n\nWhat the hell did I just read 😐\n\"Police officer spouse of police officer in same department calls 911 to report police officer has guns, is going nuts and ends up in armed standoff with another agencies police officers.\" That was my takeaway. Did I miss anything?\nFiance - police officer- Cocoa PD\nFiance - police officer - Cocoa PD\nBrevard county PD - More police officers\nWhat the fuck. \nLook, I know police are not particularly liked or trusted these days, but... What the fuck is WRONG with the hiring practices in the states? (It's rhetorical)... I can't imagine anything like this happening in any other country in the modern day. Smaller communities in the US seriously need to up their training and mental health awareness game.\n*edit - can't imagine this happening in more developed (ie: 1st world) countries, is what I should have said.",
">\n\nEngaged not married (i.e. fiancée and fiancé not wife and husband), but yeah.",
">\n\nFair point. I would say in my own defense, not exactly the most staggering of errors in light of all the circumstances.",
">\n\nOdds on him keeping his job? He looks like your typical rightwing POS cop that loves to beat up people and shoot things.",
">\n\nThis proves that they can be delicate when they want to be. If you are one of them you can shoot at the cops and they will practice restraint.",
">\n\nCop on cop violence is getting out of control",
">\n\nIs it, though?",
">\n\nThat is a shitty website",
">\n\nIt's the stuff after the ? in the url that's changing the format to be so much worse. Remove that and it's better.",
">\n\nHaving traveled the world I now realize ALL police are corrupt."
] |
Your great-grandma is only 87?
Man I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.
|
[] |
>
Yeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99."
] |
>
My parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70."
] |
>
I have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.
Man I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named"
] |
>
Her expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma"
] |
>
She was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“"
] |
>
Those fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France"
] |
>
I can’t blame her
You machine is magnificent!
Please,
Share specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter
Is that purple on black?!
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then"
] |
>
It’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!"
] |
>
Alpaca is a great switch :0
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2"
] |
>
"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood."
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0"
] |
>
Your great grandma looks like she gives great hugs
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\""
] |
>
She does !
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs"
] |
>
Seems like a cool lady.
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !"
] |
>
She is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady."
] |
>
I presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff."
] |
>
Your great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.
They had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability.
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!"
] |
>
Well she asked me why the keys were not in alphabetical order, she didn’t know because she never typed on a typing machine before…
But she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!",
">\n\nYour great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.\nThey had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability."
] |
>
But she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.
Touch typing is a lost art, sadly.
Do any schools even teach that anymore?
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!",
">\n\nYour great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.\nThey had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability.",
">\n\nWell she asked me why the keys were not in alphabetical order, she didn’t know because she never typed on a typing machine before… \nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults."
] |
>
Being a gamer, I picked up touch typing as soon as I got my first PC and it seems like the natural way to type. Discovered the stare-at-the-keyboard way of typing only recently when I saw one of my non-computer-savvy friends type. Glorious 15 WPM
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!",
">\n\nYour great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.\nThey had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability.",
">\n\nWell she asked me why the keys were not in alphabetical order, she didn’t know because she never typed on a typing machine before… \nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.",
">\n\n\nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.\n\nTouch typing is a lost art, sadly. \nDo any schools even teach that anymore?"
] |
>
my touch typing as a “gamer” was characterized by my left hand having best access to the keyboard (being on the keys already) and centered over WASD rather than ESDF. so I typed as much as I could reach with my left hand and used a few fingers from my right hand sparingly.
taught myself how to properly touch type a few years ago though and I very much prefer it. except it took an otholinear keyboard to get the zxc cluster down.
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!",
">\n\nYour great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.\nThey had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability.",
">\n\nWell she asked me why the keys were not in alphabetical order, she didn’t know because she never typed on a typing machine before… \nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.",
">\n\n\nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.\n\nTouch typing is a lost art, sadly. \nDo any schools even teach that anymore?",
">\n\nBeing a gamer, I picked up touch typing as soon as I got my first PC and it seems like the natural way to type. Discovered the stare-at-the-keyboard way of typing only recently when I saw one of my non-computer-savvy friends type. Glorious 15 WPM"
] |
>
ISO.. That is weird!
j/k
Nice to see her showing interest.
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!",
">\n\nYour great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.\nThey had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability.",
">\n\nWell she asked me why the keys were not in alphabetical order, she didn’t know because she never typed on a typing machine before… \nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.",
">\n\n\nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.\n\nTouch typing is a lost art, sadly. \nDo any schools even teach that anymore?",
">\n\nBeing a gamer, I picked up touch typing as soon as I got my first PC and it seems like the natural way to type. Discovered the stare-at-the-keyboard way of typing only recently when I saw one of my non-computer-savvy friends type. Glorious 15 WPM",
">\n\nmy touch typing as a “gamer” was characterized by my left hand having best access to the keyboard (being on the keys already) and centered over WASD rather than ESDF. so I typed as much as I could reach with my left hand and used a few fingers from my right hand sparingly.\ntaught myself how to properly touch type a few years ago though and I very much prefer it. except it took an otholinear keyboard to get the zxc cluster down."
] |
>
Show a RGB keyboard to a caveman and he'd probably shit his pants
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!",
">\n\nYour great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.\nThey had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability.",
">\n\nWell she asked me why the keys were not in alphabetical order, she didn’t know because she never typed on a typing machine before… \nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.",
">\n\n\nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.\n\nTouch typing is a lost art, sadly. \nDo any schools even teach that anymore?",
">\n\nBeing a gamer, I picked up touch typing as soon as I got my first PC and it seems like the natural way to type. Discovered the stare-at-the-keyboard way of typing only recently when I saw one of my non-computer-savvy friends type. Glorious 15 WPM",
">\n\nmy touch typing as a “gamer” was characterized by my left hand having best access to the keyboard (being on the keys already) and centered over WASD rather than ESDF. so I typed as much as I could reach with my left hand and used a few fingers from my right hand sparingly.\ntaught myself how to properly touch type a few years ago though and I very much prefer it. except it took an otholinear keyboard to get the zxc cluster down.",
">\n\nISO.. That is weird!\nj/k\nNice to see her showing interest."
] |
>
Augur60 WKL? Classy.
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!",
">\n\nYour great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.\nThey had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability.",
">\n\nWell she asked me why the keys were not in alphabetical order, she didn’t know because she never typed on a typing machine before… \nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.",
">\n\n\nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.\n\nTouch typing is a lost art, sadly. \nDo any schools even teach that anymore?",
">\n\nBeing a gamer, I picked up touch typing as soon as I got my first PC and it seems like the natural way to type. Discovered the stare-at-the-keyboard way of typing only recently when I saw one of my non-computer-savvy friends type. Glorious 15 WPM",
">\n\nmy touch typing as a “gamer” was characterized by my left hand having best access to the keyboard (being on the keys already) and centered over WASD rather than ESDF. so I typed as much as I could reach with my left hand and used a few fingers from my right hand sparingly.\ntaught myself how to properly touch type a few years ago though and I very much prefer it. except it took an otholinear keyboard to get the zxc cluster down.",
">\n\nISO.. That is weird!\nj/k\nNice to see her showing interest.",
">\n\nShow a RGB keyboard to a caveman and he'd probably shit his pants"
] |
>
Nope it’s a Polaris WKL. Classy none the less
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!",
">\n\nYour great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.\nThey had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability.",
">\n\nWell she asked me why the keys were not in alphabetical order, she didn’t know because she never typed on a typing machine before… \nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.",
">\n\n\nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.\n\nTouch typing is a lost art, sadly. \nDo any schools even teach that anymore?",
">\n\nBeing a gamer, I picked up touch typing as soon as I got my first PC and it seems like the natural way to type. Discovered the stare-at-the-keyboard way of typing only recently when I saw one of my non-computer-savvy friends type. Glorious 15 WPM",
">\n\nmy touch typing as a “gamer” was characterized by my left hand having best access to the keyboard (being on the keys already) and centered over WASD rather than ESDF. so I typed as much as I could reach with my left hand and used a few fingers from my right hand sparingly.\ntaught myself how to properly touch type a few years ago though and I very much prefer it. except it took an otholinear keyboard to get the zxc cluster down.",
">\n\nISO.. That is weird!\nj/k\nNice to see her showing interest.",
">\n\nShow a RGB keyboard to a caveman and he'd probably shit his pants",
">\n\nAugur60 WKL? Classy."
] |
>
A lovely keyboard, regardless!
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!",
">\n\nYour great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.\nThey had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability.",
">\n\nWell she asked me why the keys were not in alphabetical order, she didn’t know because she never typed on a typing machine before… \nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.",
">\n\n\nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.\n\nTouch typing is a lost art, sadly. \nDo any schools even teach that anymore?",
">\n\nBeing a gamer, I picked up touch typing as soon as I got my first PC and it seems like the natural way to type. Discovered the stare-at-the-keyboard way of typing only recently when I saw one of my non-computer-savvy friends type. Glorious 15 WPM",
">\n\nmy touch typing as a “gamer” was characterized by my left hand having best access to the keyboard (being on the keys already) and centered over WASD rather than ESDF. so I typed as much as I could reach with my left hand and used a few fingers from my right hand sparingly.\ntaught myself how to properly touch type a few years ago though and I very much prefer it. except it took an otholinear keyboard to get the zxc cluster down.",
">\n\nISO.. That is weird!\nj/k\nNice to see her showing interest.",
">\n\nShow a RGB keyboard to a caveman and he'd probably shit his pants",
">\n\nAugur60 WKL? Classy.",
">\n\nNope it’s a Polaris WKL. Classy none the less"
] |
>
Thanks !
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!",
">\n\nYour great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.\nThey had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability.",
">\n\nWell she asked me why the keys were not in alphabetical order, she didn’t know because she never typed on a typing machine before… \nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.",
">\n\n\nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.\n\nTouch typing is a lost art, sadly. \nDo any schools even teach that anymore?",
">\n\nBeing a gamer, I picked up touch typing as soon as I got my first PC and it seems like the natural way to type. Discovered the stare-at-the-keyboard way of typing only recently when I saw one of my non-computer-savvy friends type. Glorious 15 WPM",
">\n\nmy touch typing as a “gamer” was characterized by my left hand having best access to the keyboard (being on the keys already) and centered over WASD rather than ESDF. so I typed as much as I could reach with my left hand and used a few fingers from my right hand sparingly.\ntaught myself how to properly touch type a few years ago though and I very much prefer it. except it took an otholinear keyboard to get the zxc cluster down.",
">\n\nISO.. That is weird!\nj/k\nNice to see her showing interest.",
">\n\nShow a RGB keyboard to a caveman and he'd probably shit his pants",
">\n\nAugur60 WKL? Classy.",
">\n\nNope it’s a Polaris WKL. Classy none the less",
">\n\nA lovely keyboard, regardless!"
] |
>
So you know you have to build her one now right? Jk, LOL! Seriously though pretty awesome she's showing interest in your hobby. My family thinks I'm off my rocker with custom keyboards being one of my fav hobbies.
|
[
"Your great-grandma is only 87?\nMan I feel old. My last living grandparent is 99.",
">\n\nYeah my grandad is the oldest of her 7 children and my dad is the oldest top, and I’m the oldest as well. My grandad 70.",
">\n\nMy parents are in their early 70s, I’m in my early 30s, no children, all grandparents died before I was 8 years old. Have no idea what my great grandparents were even named",
">\n\nI have the same age difference with my parents, but somehow my great grand mother managed to survive until I was around 11 when she slipped off the toilet and broke her hip.\nMan I didn’t realize it then how cool it was to be able to talk to my great grandma",
">\n\nHer expression: “Lubed, but not filmed? ..Mm..“",
">\n\nShe was talking food with my dad which is pretty much the same thing here in France",
">\n\nThose fingers touched mechanical typewriters and you just know it, she would’ve loved to have one of these back then",
">\n\nI can’t blame her \nYou machine is magnificent!\nPlease,\nShare specs! I can’t help myself when there’s a good iso enter\nIs that purple on black?!",
">\n\nIt’s a Polaris WKL in purple built with L&F Alpacas and GMK Rouge which is light purple on a very deep purple. Also matching alpaca durock v2",
">\n\nAlpaca is a great switch :0",
">\n\n\"Hmm, it's a lot smaller than my old Underwood.\"",
">\n\nYour great grandma looks like she gives great hugs",
">\n\nShe does !",
">\n\nSeems like a cool lady.",
">\n\nShe is ! During dinner she talked on how she followed around my great grandpa during WW2 (he was in the FFL) to make sure he wouldn’t do stupid stuff.",
">\n\nI presumed ur great grandma was a medic during WW2. Now I am having the BF1 vibe already. Thanks!",
">\n\nYour great grandma may have been a better and faster typer than any of us ever will be. 87 is not crazy old, and she's in the right age range to have worked as a typist when mechanical typewriters were being replaced with electrical ones.\nThey had to be super accurate back then, because there was no real backspace ability.",
">\n\nWell she asked me why the keys were not in alphabetical order, she didn’t know because she never typed on a typing machine before… \nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.",
">\n\n\nBut she told me tales of some of her friends who could write blindfolded entire pages without faults.\n\nTouch typing is a lost art, sadly. \nDo any schools even teach that anymore?",
">\n\nBeing a gamer, I picked up touch typing as soon as I got my first PC and it seems like the natural way to type. Discovered the stare-at-the-keyboard way of typing only recently when I saw one of my non-computer-savvy friends type. Glorious 15 WPM",
">\n\nmy touch typing as a “gamer” was characterized by my left hand having best access to the keyboard (being on the keys already) and centered over WASD rather than ESDF. so I typed as much as I could reach with my left hand and used a few fingers from my right hand sparingly.\ntaught myself how to properly touch type a few years ago though and I very much prefer it. except it took an otholinear keyboard to get the zxc cluster down.",
">\n\nISO.. That is weird!\nj/k\nNice to see her showing interest.",
">\n\nShow a RGB keyboard to a caveman and he'd probably shit his pants",
">\n\nAugur60 WKL? Classy.",
">\n\nNope it’s a Polaris WKL. Classy none the less",
">\n\nA lovely keyboard, regardless!",
">\n\nThanks !"
] |
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