My pareidolia knows no bounds.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by rderosa</i>
<br />we can easily be being fooled by images at this resolution.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">It's not the resolution per se, but the number of contributing pixels. If a feature contains too few pixels of any resolution, then your chances of being fooled rise greatly.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">What I'm attempting to show, is how we can be fooled by the type of images we currently have available to us, and I submit that there is a level of magnification (resolution) at which we no longer can be fooled.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">For absolute artificiality, there is no such threshold. I gave you an example (a deal of a shuffled, 52-card deck) where the odds against the particular result achieved (52 cards in a certain particular order) are 10^68-to-1. Yet it was pure chance nonetheless. What level of impobability do you propose to rule out chance?

More than that, the level you find convincing would differ greatly from the level others would find convincing. Must a feature have a level at which you can no longer be fooled? Or a level at which the most skeptical person on Earth cannot be fooled? This whole line of reasoning seems vulnerable to JR's subjectivity argument.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I'm not exactly sure why I'm having such a hard time conveying that point.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I think it is the aforementioned subjectivity that does the argument in. If it were possible to state some level that all would find convincing, you would have a better case. But it isn't possible.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I believe that it's quite possible that higher resolution images clears up a lot of the ambiguity in whether or not a certain feature is likely to be an artwork.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">But the example you gave, skullface, is itself arguable. To you, the higher-resolution image cast doubt on artificiality. To others, it solidified an evolving interpretation even more amazing than artwork on Mars. If you resume your studies of the area, especially trying a variety of different resolutions and broadening the area considered, you will find much more yet to be rediscovered.

I'm just pointing out that you can't serve both purposes at once. Analysis of Martian imagery is a whole different game if you are trying to establish artificiality than if you are trying to reconstruct the picture left behind by artists whose existence is no longer in doubt. Decide which goal you are persuing each time you do an analysis, and state your premises clearly. -|Tom|-

<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 /> I gave you an example (a deal of a shuffled, 52-card deck) where the odds against the particular result achieved (52 cards in a certain particular order) are 10^68-to-1. Yet it was pure chance nonetheless. What level of impobability do you propose to rule out chance?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
There's something I don't like about this analogy, but unfortunately I don't know what it is. But, I think it has something to do with this: A few weeks ago, I was standing in line at a 7/11 waiting to buy a Coke. The lady in front of me was buying lottery tickets. She started a conversation with me about the lottery. I said to her that once you realize the odds are greater than 10,000,000 to 1 that you will lose, it's hard to waste your money on it. Her reply was, "somebody has to win."

Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean you, I thought.

Just because a given arrangement of cards, that is arrived at by pure chance, has odds against it of 10^68-to-1, doesn't really mean anything relevant to this discussion. Suppose we examined that one shuffle of the deck. What would it look like? Would there be something in it that looked like art? When you first opened the deck, and it's in it's original arrangement from A to K of Spades, then Hearts, then Clubs, then Diamonds, then Jokers, you surely didn't think that was a chance arrangement? You knew there was an intelligent source of that arrangement.

I really don't see what the card analogy proves.

rd

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by rderosa</i>
<br />I really don't see what the card analogy proves.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">It demonstrates that, even when the odds against chance are as large as you care to name, a pattern found a posteriori can still be chance.

Yes, the deck must have some order. But the surface of Mars must have some "order" too. And if there are no regular, angular, symmetric patterns to be found, then what you are looking at is definitely <i>not</i> random because real randomness includes all possibilities, not just irregular ones. -|Tom|-

Correct me if I'm wrong but everyone has neglected to mention one of the essential characteristics of statistics, one that every professional gambler knows. Namely that extremely high odds are high beacuse they very rarely occur--statistially, and in reality too. A deck of cards all in order and also by suit can theoretically occurr, but no gambler in his right mind would ever bet on it, because it's a sucker's game.

This fact I think relates to Tom's "apriori principle." Not only are the odd's against seeing a face (<i>aposteriori</i>) with much of the detail of a real face, but made by natural causes, extremely high odds, but <b>predicting them </b> <i>apriori</i>, the odds are astronomically higher still. That is what makes the apriori principle so compelling.

Likewise if we see one face on Mars with a strong resemblance in features, proportions, and details to a human face; the odds against such an occurrence are extermely high. But if we see <b>many</b> such faces; the odds are astronomically higher, for a reason similar to the apriori principle, namely the orders of magnitude increase in the odds against it.

That's why these faces are freaking so many people out. Not knowing this fact the debunkers can say "sure that looks like a face," or "I see what you see, but so what, it's still natural. It's possible." But if they recognize this fact they must maintain (like Seargent Schultz) that "they see nothing." "It's all pareidolia."

Neil

<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 />How can specific predictions of a maximum and minimum acceptable range for size, shape, location, and orientation of each of four predicted facial features, made in advance of any knowledge of their existence, be considered subjective? How can measuring what is then seen and determining if it meets the criteria stated in advance be considered subjective?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The subjectivity arises when analyzing the image for the existence of additional features that were not visible in the first images and predicted to be found in later images.

With the a priori predictions you are establishing a confidence level of artificiality that will only be recognized by those that interpret the later images the same as you. This is not entirely useless, but its still fundamentally subjective.

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 />The subjectivity arises when analyzing the image for the existence of additional features that were not visible in the first images and predicted to be found in later images.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">How so? You have not offered any new definition of "subjectivity" than the one I gave. So in what sense are the measured size, shape, location, and orientation of the predicted features "based on somebody's opinions or feelings rather than on facts or evidence; or existing only in the mind and not independently of it"? (I'm quoting the dictionary definition of "subjective" here.)

I don't see a way to call these measures "subjective" by either definition on the table. So I'm guessing you must be thinking that calling them "eyebrows, irises, nostrils, and lips" is subjective, which I would not argue with. But that was not part of the prediction protocol precisely because judging somethng to be an "eyebrow" would be highly subjective. But the protocol called only for a non-descript feature having certain maximum and minimum deviations from the nominal size, shape, location, and orientation. The fact that <i>any</i> feature exists with those four properties within the narrow specified limits just where predicted <i>and nowhere else</i> is the objective part.

Interpreting those features as "eyebrow", etc., remains subjective, but is done as a recognition of the successful prediction. In other words, we call the feature above the eye socket an "eyebrow" because its predicted size, shape, location, and orientation were based on the range of eyebrows found on human faces. But naming them is not part of the protocol. So I recommend focusing on the purely objective prediction of four features (call them "A", "B", "C", and "D" instead of "eyebrow", "iris", "nostrils", "lips") with four specific properties each. Anyone with a hi-res, high-contrast monitor can see that such features exist where predicted and nowhere else. Judging the existence of an eyebrow would be subjective, but judging the existence of a feature with four measureable properties is objective.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">With the a priori predictions you are establishing a confidence level of artificiality that will only be recognized by those that interpret the later images the same as you.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Those who do not wish to consider the hypothesis seriously will always find excuses to declare the protocol flawed, if they even bother to read it. That does not change the fact that no flaw has yet turned up in the reasoning, which is basic scientific method as used to remove subjectivity and bias from influencing the outcome of predictions. It is sufficient for our purposes here that the test is legitimate, whether or not it is persuasive to people generally. Everyone has biases, and not everyone understands scientific protocols. That is why the world is a mess on conflicting beliefs.

Let's see if we can find any common ground to stand on here. Would you agree with this statement?

Based on the appearance of features apparently resembling an eye socket, nose, and mouth on the Cydonia "Face" mesa in two 1976 Viking images, six SPSR members predicted in 1997 that higher-resolution MGS images taken in 1998 would show features conforming to the specifications in Table I of their paper "Evidence of Planetary Artifacts" at spsr.utsi.edu/ Subsequent inspection of those higher-resolution images confirmed the existence of features conforming to those predictions, and also confirmed that no other features of a similar character existed elsewhere on the mesa.

That makes no reference to interpretations of the new images. Can we at least agree on this as a basic, objective fact? -|Tom|-