Tom - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter question

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />jrich writes: "...exploring only anthropomorphic assumptions in your reasoning above, aren't you assuming that whatever beings created the artifacts had similar visual acuity to modern humans?"

These "anthropomorphic assumptions" are based on <i>mounting evidence </i>that these people of whom a number of artistic renderings of their faces have been preserved for us to see--<i>resemble us</i>, quite distinctly it seems. It is a working hypothesis to be sure, but if you have something better, I'd be interested in hearing it.

Neil<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
If the "face" is artificial, then many things may be deduced anthropologically, as the discussions in this forum have demonstrated. However, the entire reason to believe the "face" is an artifact is the fact that it seems to resemble a human face. It is one thing to find a structure on Mars that shows evidence of being artificially constructed and, curiously, appears to resemble a human face. It is quite another thing entirely to find a structure that vaguely resembles a human face and based solely on this characteristic believe that it may be artificially constructed. This is anthropomorphism of the first degree. Many here are using observations of characteristics that are merely <b>consistent with</b> artificiality as evidence <b>of</b> artificiality.

JR

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by jrich</i>
<br />Many here are using observations of characteristics that are merely <b>consistent with</b> artificiality as evidence <b>of</b> artificiality.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">A basic premise of scientific method is that everybody is biased, and one must find tests of hypotheses whose outcome cannot be controlled by the experimenter or all tests will tend to confirm pre-existing biases. In this discussion, that applies with equal weight to pro-artifact and anti-artifact biases, whichever you happen to be pre-disposed to have.

Here's an example of how this works in practice. Suppose a playing deck of 52 cards is dealt among four players, who then receive 13 cards each, presumably at random. We examine our dealt hand and discover that we received all 13 spades in the deck. The odds against that happening by accident are 635 trillion to one. So can we conclude with certainty that some trick was involved? No. Events such as this one can and do happen by chance all the time. For example, for every 13-card hand ever dealt, the odds against getting that particular hand (whatever it was) from a deck of 52 unique cards are also 635 trillion to one. So every deal is a statistical "miracle".

By contrast, suppose that I predict before the dealt cards are seen that your hand will contain 13 spades (or any 13 unique cards). On average, I'd have to make hundreds of trillions of guesses before guessing your hand correctly. So if I guess it correctly the first time, you can have confidence at 635-trillion-to-1 odds that it was not a lucky guess. I must have had some way to know or predetermine the outcome.

Applying this to the Cydonia Face, when we first came upon it in 1976, that could be a lucky accident and its resemblence to a humanoid face could have been pure chance (like being dealt 13 spades). The first instance of any statistical fluke merely allows us to form hypotheses and design predictions to test them. But when specific predictions to test the artificiality and natural origin hypotheses for the Face were designed in 1997, the year before MGS took its first hi-res image, the odds against the highly specific predictions associated with the artificiality hypothesis being correct by chance were much longer than the odds of an accident in my card example.

When all those predictions were fulfilled by the 1998 image, it did not matter whether we were pro-artifact or anti-artifact anymore. We were obligated by scientific method to accept the test outcome, and any rationalization after the back is nothing but bias talking unless it becomes generally agreed that the test had a methodological flaw. Several possile ones have been proposed, but no one has found an actual flaw yet. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />I think it is a mistake to extrapolate from this case that this is what we should always expect; to lose the big picture in the details, and “apologize in advance” so to speak, by explaining that this will always be so, at least at certain distances or degrees or resolution.

We still have no idea of what method of construction was used, or even if there was just one standard method. There could have been several methods<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Neil, I can easily see why you would say this. Everything points to the fact that more resolution is better. Ian Smith, a well known scientist in semiconductor industry, pretty much said the same thing Tom did. Here are some of his comments:

"The hardest thing is getting more resolution, medical imaging and astronomy folk spend forever on this.... signal to noise ratio declines as spatial frequency increases.... more and more effort to eke signal out of noise.

Contrariwise, lowering resolution is easy.... just filter all the extra detail out. Lots of options on how to filter. Besides just classically removing or suppressing the high frequency components in the image (smoothing, averaging, low pass filtering using e.g. Fourier transforms) there are other ways you can also improve signal to noise ratio for the stuff you want without losing spatial resolution.... for example, if you have a lot of noise, but it comes from segments of the image you are definitely not interested in, then just blanking those regions out spatially may help interpretation, without removing high frequency data. e.g. if the signal is more prominent in woodland, then eliminate towns."

All I'm trying to say, is that I think we will very quickly get to the point that we have too much resolution, and finding ways to suppress that resolution artistically and intelligently will quickly become vogue.

Take the Stock Market as an example. I remember when you had to go to the library a couple of times a week, and look through 50 newspapers to draw a chart with 50 data points.

Look at it now. We have access to literally thousands of free services, and millions (billions) of data points. Stuff that used to cost thousands, you're now falling all over. Does it do anyone any good? Yes and no. Yes, if you learn to ignore it, and no if you don't.

I think the same thing should be true in this field.




rd

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br />Applying this to the Cydonia Face, when we first came upon it in 1976, that could be a lucky accident and its resemblence to a humanoid face could have been pure chance (like being dealt 13 spades). The first instance of any statistical fluke merely allows us to form hypotheses and design predictions to test them. But when specific predictions to test the artificiality and natural origin hypotheses for the Face were designed in 1997, the year before MGS took its first hi-res image, the odds against the highly specific predictions associated with the artificiality hypothesis being correct by chance were much longer than the odds of an accident in my card example.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Tom,

You are making way too much of your predictions. If the Face is natural and by chance has many of the characteristics of a humanoid face, then it is no surprise that it would look like a face on the 1976 image. Its also no surprise that the 1998 image would reveal more of those features. From this perspective its clear that the odds of your predictions being correct are exactly same as the odds of the existence of a natural geological formation with the gross characteristics of a humanoid face, which, absent any other evidence of artificiality, appears to be 100%.

JR

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by jrich</i>
<br />If the Face is natural and by chance has many of the characteristics of a humanoid face, then it is no surprise that it would look like a face on the 1976 image. Its also no surprise that the 1998 image would reveal more of those features.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">We had a communication disconnect somewhere, but I'm not sure where. Isn't your example analogous to saying that you shouldn't be surprised that I predicted your 13 cards correctly before seeing them because the deal was destined to come out that way whether I predicted it or not?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">From this perspective its clear that the odds of your predictions being correct are exactly same as the odds of the existence of a natural geological formation with the gross characteristics of a humanoid face, which, absent any other evidence of artificiality, appears to be 100%.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">To my knowledge, there is no counterpart to the Cydonia Face anywhere on Earth. All those illusory faces in landscapes disappear at different viewing or lighting angles. (Our MRB paper on pareidolia shows several famous examples.) And none of them have nearly as much detail as Cydonia. The closest thing we have on Earth to a 3-dimensional face mesa that looks the same under all lighting and viewing angles is at Mount Rushmore. But even that is just 1% of the size of the Cydonia mesa.

So I clearly don't understand your point. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">To my knowledge, there is no counterpart to the Cydonia Face anywhere on Earth.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Nothing that looks like the face perhaps, But as Alan. F. Alford pointed out in one of his books the Cydonian Face and The Great Pyramid of giza were both on the Equator before Mars did the polar shift, no idea what meaning this has though (it includes alot of interventism)

And by the way, the fact that there is no remotely similar face on earth, wouldn’t that by probability increase the chance of it on Mars?. Of course, the chance decreases as the artificial features of the face increase.