Think you know how crop circles are made?
August 31, 2007
Sure you do! Everyone knows that, right? A few guys, some rope, some boards, a free evening…
I haven’t really given them much thought since the exposé that happened approximately a billion years ago before there was HTML and man lived happily with his friend the dinosaur, but Ali has me re-thinking cereology. She says:
Since their initial claims (made in 1991), plenty of other hoaxes–perpetuated both by individuals and by groups who, unbelievably, have even hired themselves out to corporations to incorporate company logos into their land-art–have come to light; however, the legitimate phenomenon has continued to outpace such hoaxed crop formations both in intellectual profile (e.g. the mathematical proportions and theorems included in even apparently simple designs) and in quality of work.
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My skepticism, so easily won before, gradually turned entirely towards the hoaxers themselves, whose shoddy imitations of the genuine phenomenon were as unconvincing as their spurious claims to be the makers of the real thing when it did appear. This meant, though, that I still needed some better explanation for who or what made these crop circles, not to mention how, and why. [ Cereology, Ufology, and Other -Ologies ]
Theories abound. A few crop-vandalizing public artists appears to be just one.
This is as good a reminder as any that just because you can explain some instances of doesn’t mean you’ve found the secret to any phenomenon. Maybe all the crop circles are created by humans. But maybe only some are — in mimicry of the real thing.
Posted in Deep Weirdness
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August 31st, 2007 at 5:28 pm
I am recommending you for BlogDay 2007 (my site has more details).
September 4th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
I thought I’d do a proper response here… Theoretically at least, something else has to be “out there”. The burden of proof is on this side at least and I emphatically believe that all government files with information on the subject should be opened. Whose best interest is it in to keep information about extraterrestrial beings quiet? To me, this is akin to open source software — as a team/community, we can work out the best response. Sure some responses won’t be right — but we’ll be able to figure out the best possible answer after analyzing all data. — Just my humble opinion…
September 4th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Where extraterrestrial life and crop circles are concerned, I tend to lean toward Occam’s Razor: All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one. I’ve been a big fan of the idea of life on other planets coming to visit since I was a little kid and, oh, how I wanted the pyramids to have been built by aliens, but to be honest, I’ve been to Stonehenge and while it’s impressive, I’m still pretty sure that if there’s life out there smart enough to travel through space, they wouldn’t be playing mind games with us with stone circles and crop circles; they’d either invade and conquer or leave us alone and let us develop or destroy ourselves.
September 4th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
It’s difficult to apply Occam’s razor to theories when you don’t know their truth-value. Often the OR is used to justify not looking any deeper into a subject because a simpler explanation is merely available, without any attempt made to actually put that theory to the test.
Also, WRT alien behavior, your assumption relies on “smart enough” aliens being culturally similar to our own. I don’t see any reason why alien life would necessarily have to share our cultural priorities — or even understanding of language — in order to travel between star systems. I mean, we have our culture and we can’t.
September 5th, 2007 at 7:56 am
[...] Lynne mentioned Occam’s Razor, which reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about the Razor for a long [...]
September 5th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
I tend to agree with Thud. We assume a whole lot about possible alien life, and tend to think of it in terms of our own values, culture, and technology. None of which may have anything to do with anything. We’re an egotistical bunch, we humans.
I do think government files should be made available, but I also believe what was said in the movie Men in Black–”A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals.” Or something to that effect. If the government doesn’t seem to be panicking and bleeding money towards space defense, then they probably don’t have a lot to panic about. On the other hand, the general public WOULD panic in the face of direct proof of alien life. So maybe it’s better that we just don’t know.