Remember how many people believed the "Face On Mars" stuff back in the 80s, 90s?

[Logical]

People swore that is was created by aliens. Then the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took more detailed pictures and suddenly no one believed it any longer.



This is proof to me that people LOVE to find unusual explanation for totally normal stuff. The excitement that it might be an alien created face out weighed fact that it was a photo illusion.

I think many people are more susceptible to this than others.

That is why ESP, Ghosts, Loch Ness Monster, Etc are immediately believed by so many people.

The Face On Mars, another item in the long list of Pseudo Science that turned out to be nothing.

[jberryhill]

1. Umm... well you see....

You fail to account for the fact that the alien intelligence monitoring us does not want us to know of their existence.

They had not anticipated we would find the face on Mars. Accordingly, when they found we had discovered it, they altered it beyond recognition.

That's why it doesn't show up in the later picture.

Of course, you dismiss this readily explainable event, and ignore the mounting evidence of other structures, statutes, and apparent underground civilization that has accumulated since that time.

[Logical]

2. Hmmm...that never occurred to me! I feel dumb now!

[deconstruct911]

3. So the face on Mars

is proof that CT's are crazy? Maybe Mars is not the only thing that requires a closer examination....

[Bolo Boffin]

4. I don't think that's what Logical said.

One of the key disagreements here is what's a pattern and what's coincidence. The face on Mars shows one way we as humans see patterns where there are none.

[deconstruct911]

5. I see the point

Sorry for my lame attempt of humour. (It wasn't an attack or anything) Just thought it had a sense of irony in the (group)

[Bolo Boffin]

6. Ohhhhh, humor!

I thought... isn't there something in the rules that only our side can have dry humor? Community Standards?

[OnTheOtherHand]

9. for what it's worth --

actually concluding that the "face on Mars" was made by aliens seems weird to me, but seeing it as a face seems almost irresistible -- not crazy at all.

So, part of the lesson should be that people in general have a propensity to see patterns that may not be there. That affects everyone's judgments, and we should all be aware of it.

Sorry to give an absolutely serious response.

[greyl]

10. Right, it's not about seeing patterns that aren't there, it's about ascribing meaning

to the patterns for no good reason.

It's not a mistake to see a face in that photo of Mars where the lighting is right. The mistake is in believing the fairy tails invented to explain the face.

[frogmarch]

11. It's hard for me to resist seeing patterns.

I see dead people. They're everywhere. Yesterday I saw Abe Lincoln in the speckled wall paper design in the bathroom, and I've seen George Washington, Charles Darwin, and many other famous dead people on walls and in clouds many times in my life. I once saw a really cool vampire in the knotty pine wainscoting of my parents' breakfast room. I named him Vern. I've also seen landscapes and cute furry animals in patterns my brain has created.

I see patterns everywhere. I can't help it.

None of the images fool me into thinking they're real, and I never believed the face on Mars was anything more than an illusion either. We humans are natural-born pattern seekers, but that doesn't mean we have to let our creative, pattern-conjuring brains go all goofy on us.

[OnTheOtherHand]

12. "I see dead people. They're everywhere."

Nice lede!

For what it's worth, I don't see dead people. My visual imagination isn't all that vigorous.

We humans are natural-born pattern seekers, but that doesn't mean we have to let our creative, pattern-conjuring brains go all goofy on us.

Sure. I'm not trying to rationalize irrationalism. But I think it's not surprising that we end up in futile arguments over whether such-and-such looks like a "squib."

True to my name, I want to add an "On the other hand...," but I'll lay off.

[frogmarch]

15. I didn't mean to imply

that I thought you were trying to rationalize irrationalism. I think I understood what you were saying, and I agree. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that we see patterns, but often not the same ones.



I think the inkblot above looks like two lumpy, long-legged dancers leaning toward each other while holding onto a purse. My husband says it looks like someone spilled something. No imagination!

Edited (again) to add: on the other hand...

[OnTheOtherHand]

21. sure, we need some sort of shorthand for this

I think our points are complementary. I haven't found a way to say "I wasn't saying" that economically excludes the reading, "How dare you insinuate that I meant...?" Maybe if I had written, "Just to be clear, I wasn't saying...."

Yeah, that ink blot totally looks like two people holding something, although something ought to be said about the flying chicken-squirrels behind their backs. I have no idea what that is between them -- a floating dog treat, perhaps?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

31. He's the only man to have ever scored extra-credit on a Rohrshach test

He is...the Most Interesting Man in the World.




Stay thirsty, my friends.

[frogmarch]

32. I'll tell him. He'll

be so proud! lol

[ryan_cats]

33. I see...

I see, a pelvic bone and two femurs. I'll check myself into the local mental health clinic...

[frogmarch]

34. Now I see them too! I'll

go with you.

[ryan_cats]

36. Let's go, Bellevue has room...

Let's go, Bellevue has room...

[AngryAmish]

35. Exactly right. Look at the bunker on this golf hole.

It looks like a certain female body part to me.

[Logical]

8. Do you not think any CTs are crazy?

[LARED]

7. 'I think many people are more susceptible to this than others.'

Yes, and many call themselves Truthers.

Ironic.

[Grateful for Hope]

13. I wonder if you are comparing 9/11 skeptics to your OP.

[Logical]

14. Most people do not think 9/11 was an inside job either.

[JackRiddler]

16. Globally? I doubt that.

[Bolo Boffin]

17. Are we allowed to discount the opinions of those who think the Jews did it? n/t

[JackRiddler]

23. That wouldn't be an inside job, would it?

[Bolo Boffin]

24. People who think the Jews did it generally also think

that the Jews are inside everything.

[Logical]

18. Sure globally. Locally. Most people do not like wild theories. They are fun I agree but fiction.

[getdown]

20. You speak for most people?

[Logical]

22. Only the majority.

[JackRiddler]

25. Opinion survey results have been far less conclusive than you imply.

You can look them up yourself, they've been reviewed here often enough. However, before getting to that I'd question your premise about what constitutes "wild." I think given the history of covert politics and criminal politics as engaged by US (and other) security institutions worldwide, to think a 9/11 would one day be applied to the United States by elements from within its own secret government milieu for the purpose of effecting a political shift they find desirable is not a particularly wild idea. I for one was expecting it long before it happened; call that a bias if you will. Defining what's "wild" before examination is also bias. And provincial: you'd not think the idea so wild if the name of the country was Russia, or China.

[Logical]

26. Yes, 9/11 is wild.....

And even among the 9/11 truthers there is infighting......So who really knows what 9/11 part we are supposed to believe?

The planes were holograms? Missles were fired from the planes? No windows on the planes?

Once you have final answer to which wild theory is the right version let me know.

[JackRiddler]

27. I don't need to answer for what others claim...

any more than you should be held responsible for Cheney's highly important conspiracy theory linking the alleged 9/11 hijackers to Saddam Hussein.

[OnTheOtherHand]

28. shrug

I think I disbelieve the wild theories primarily because they are wild, not because self-identified 9/11 truth movement folks argue about them.

It doesn't seem logical to dismiss a theory about 9/11 strictly on the basis that there are too many wild theories about 9/11 already. It should at least depend on the substance of the theory. There are lots of "critiques of global warming" that I feel pretty comfortable dismissing on their face because they reek of stupid and/or political, but that doesn't mean that I assume that anything counter to the latest IPCC assessment report must be wrong.

[Logical]

29. I just asked for the 9/11 theory we are debating here so I can successfully debunk it. I need to....

know which theory I am debunking.

[OnTheOtherHand]

30. fair enough

Based on Jack's words above, one might construe a general theory: elements from within the United States' own secret government milieu executed, participated in, and/or facilitated the 9/11 attacks for the purpose of effecting a political shift they found desirable.

Stated at that level of generality, the theory appears to be unfalsifiable. It cannot be proven that no one in the "secret government" facilitated the 9/11 attacks for political purposes. That isn't a reason actually to believe the theory; unfalsifiability isn't a good thing.

Certainly I think that some specific versions of this theory are more plausible than others, although I can't think of good evidence for any version. In some cases, the lack of good evidence strongly suggests that the version is wrong. In other cases, not so much.

[Quartermass]

19. I still have mixed feelings about it.

I'm personally still not sure it wasn't a trick of light and shadow myself.

The thing about the second set of pictures of the face is that those pictures are a couple of decades apart. That's a lot of sand and other weather processes on the area.

However, I don't know if it is a real face or not. It could very well be a trick of some sort, then again, it might not.

The only thing that will settle the matter for me finally is if we send a manned team and fully explore that place.

[Ter]

37. I still do

It was a real picture and the ones after were all doctored.

[zappaman]

38. Really?

How do you know this?