--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Hugo" <richardhughes103@> > wrote:
> FWIW, I'm inclined to suspect the ones that aren't > based on circles are human-made. Why? >> Would be more impressed if this had appeared *before* >> man had understood it. If it was a message from a >> different intelligence why is it at exactly the same >> level as us? Why didn't this appear in the 14th century > LOL. First you're dubious because the formations > aren't "meaningful," now you're dubious because > this one *is* meaningful. Make up your mind, please! I don't think you understood that. Read it again. Oh, OK. I'll explain, this would be more convincing if it had appeard at a time when we didn't understand what it was. As it is we could get pics like this from a high school textbook. My mind is made up, unless crop circles suddenly teach us something we didn't know it is most likely the work of man. > And in any case, the "message from a different > intelligence" claim isn't one I'm making. Yes it is. > But if I were, I could make the argument that the > "message" of a triple Julia set is, "This formation > was made by an intelligent force with a knowledge > of higher mathematics." See. If you think it was made by non-humans they must have been smart enough to understand this. > It's not even clear what you mean by "meaningless > shapes." It seems to me that any coherent pattern > can't be said to be meaningless. I wonder if the > word you're looking for isn't "abstract" rather than > "meaningless" Meaningless in the sense that it's just a pretty pattern rather than the message that ones like the fractal or Julia set seem to be saying. Which is that we understand maths to the same sort of level you do. Or to me it says; These are pretty pictures that will make mugs think we are as smart as them. > And as with the non-circle-based formations, I'm > inclined to be suspicious of the origin of those > that convey any concrete meaning, e.g., a model of > the solar system. You can't decide which ones yopu consider "real" or not based on things like that! It's way too biased. What you need is something like the PBJresearch team claim to have, definite non-fakeable physical traces. That is all it's going to come down to unless they do something no human *could* do, which sems along way off given the fact that,so far, they are all circular based and could have been caused by people pushing the crop down with garden rollers even if they weren't. Occams razor. > > And I don't trust the 20% > > figure either, it will probably come down to the perps > > wearing snow shoes or something, just to confuse the > > researchers. > > You know enough by now, I think, about the characteristics > of crop circles to be aware that this is a silly > suggestion. Do I? I've been reading about this stuff for years, in fact I bought my first copy of the Fortean Times (UKs journal of open minded inquiry into claims of the paranormal) because there was a crop circle on the front page. I've grown sceptical because of the amount of kiddology involved in peope *wanting* crops to be trodden down in a non-human way. I've stood in crop circles and watched them tell all around that this is conclusive proof. It will take more than square ones (actually they still have the spot in the middle the guy stands holding the end of the rope to measure everything out) or complex mathematical symbols to convince me now. Quite what it would take I don't know. Unambiguous messages in an alien language maybe.