From: Alintelbot@aol.com
Date: Wed Jul 21 1999 - 18:04:31 MDT
>Open letter, huh? Well, for what it's worth, Crocker's right and you're
>wrong. You're insufficiently skeptical and most of the "mysteries"
>you've been posting about are known loads of crap.
I honestly think this issue is an emotional/social one; the nature of the
Cydonian formations is a secondary issue at best. Paul was right in his post
of a few days ago. I have the distinct impression of being rejected by a
hive mentality. The name-calling, the repeated refusal to correctly read my
posts...it's all characteristic of a communal aversion response. It's a
shame that the minds behind these posts can't excavate far enough behind the
"laughter curtain" that's been built around the subject; there's real meat at
the heart of this issue (near-mantric references to Richard Hoagland and
conspiracy theories aside), and while no one cares (or, more accurately,
wants to care--which is excusable, but only to a degree), I'm not going to
cave in.
Examining planetary surfaces for ET artifacts is completely legitimate (it
was, ironically, one of the stated agendas of the Viking mission). The
business about Cydonia that causes the uproar among the self-proclaimed
rationalists is that the "Face" is a face. If it's real--a big "if,"
naturally--then some sort of terrestrial connection seems in order, and
mainstream science just isn't equipped to deal with such an absurd prospect
after "Chariots of the Gods" and countless other pseudoscientific attempts to
prove we're not alone. And so we've isolated ourselves to the possibility:
if I mention a group of actual no-kidding scientists who are working on the
subject, they're labeled "crackpots" or misguided hucksters.
(Lee Crocker, apparently recognized as one of the most rational posters,
accused me of _making up_ SPSR. Of course, he also denounced the relevance
of my commentary for, among other reasons, my use of the word "morphology" in
regards to a landform instead of "shape." I was, in his esteemed opinion,
baiting the "masses" with an unnecessarily "scientific-sounding" word.)
Just as I wouldn't butt in with a bunch of rash conclusions about
nanotechnology if I hadn't read Drexler, I think it's only fair to expect a
_basic_ degree of literacy about the subject of planetary SETI before a list
member makes some sweeping pronouncement about the "Face." I wonder if any
of the posters who seem so confident and knowledgeable have read the basic
texts re. the issue: "The McDaniel Report" by Stanley V. McDaniel, "The
Martian Enigmas: A Closer Look" (second edition) by Mark Carlotto, "The Face
on Mars" by R. R. Pozos and SPSR's "The Case for the Face." _None_ of these
publications pretends to arrive at a final conclusion. But, interestingly,
they're all a hell of a lot more cogent than the knee-jerk drivel and
name-calling that my postings have met. "Boundless expansion" my ass; you've
got a nice club going, and you're trying your best to maintain the status quo.
I'm apparently the only person on this list who _doesn't_ know if the "Face"
is artificial or not. Everyone else, it seems, has been there already and
subjected the Cydonian enigmas to their own hands-on reality tests. In a
perverse way, I envy their certainty.
I've said before that it's neither my intention nor my hope to "change
anyone's mind" re. the "Face" (which, I should reiterate, is but one of the
peculiar formations in the region and--to some researchers--one of the least
interesting!) I agree absolutely with the poster who asserted that the "keep
an open mind" crowd were a bunch of self-contradictory kooks. You can't keep
an "open mind" about everything. You _can_, however, keep a kind of mental
gray basket for phenomena for which you have insufficient evidence. There's
nothing wimpy or un-extropian about this, and it's certainly as divorced as
can be from the "I Want to Believe" mentality (with which my stand on Cydonia
has been confused by several reportedly intelligent people).
I'm actually less interested in the violent dismissals I've received than the
_reasons_ for justifying the dismissals. If nothing else, it's a good
example of epistimology at its worst. So that's my take on this. Scientific
discussion was obviously never in the cards, so I'm salvaging this sad
"discussion" thread as a sort of short-course in online anthropology.
Fact: Throughout Cydonia there are bisymmetric formations perched on crater
rims, without any sign of being affected by impact ejecta (in fact, they look
quite sharp and relatively "new"-looking). These features (the "Cliff"
feature to the far right of the "Face" and sharing its orientation, and the
"Crater Pyramid," farther south and easily the tallest structure in a
100-mile radius), are set at right angles to their respective craters.
Faulting, etc. has been ruled out. Whatever these things are, they formed
_after_ the meteor impacts. How? This is an unanswered question, and one
that doesn't involve tedious bickering about facial resemblances and pattern
interpolation (as valid as this discussion can be when done democratically).
Prediction: List members who don't know what the hell I'm even referring to
will inundate this list with "skeptical" griping (and will probably work in
the word "crackpot" while they're at it).
The bottom line is that there is reason to seriously consider possible ET
ruins on Mars. The "Face," at this point, becomes almost immaterial, the tip
of a vast iceberg of unprecedented weirdness that has yet to be explained
geologically. Fortunately, we're dealing with objects we can demystify _this
year_, with the Mars Global Surveyor.
Back in high school, I won a paid trip to NASA headquarters in Florida to
present my proposal on Cydonia and possible artificiality. NONE of the
scientists I talked to in the course of evaluating my paper exhibited the
utter refusal to consider the evidence I've met on this list. Sure, some of
them had their doubts, and often said as much. But--and this is
crucial--they didn't make pronouncements beyond what they knew. They didn't
go beyond their data. The resistance I've encountered on this list appears
to be peculiar to "extropians" (or should that be with a capital "E"?)
Are extropian list members necessarily smarter than anyone else? I've
certainly had more interesting dialogues with a quite skeptical planetary
geologist. Are extropians privileged to some vast fount of secret knowledge
denied the rest of the world?
Why am I the only person on this list who doesn't know if there are nonhuman
artifacts on Mars or not...?
--Mac Tonnies
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