cladking

But why is it independent of man, and what makes it a property of nature? If it's a "definition", doesn't that mean it has to be defined by someone?

A scientist strives to remove human things from consideration. Ancient man did it through metaphysics and modern man does it through experimental parameters and controls. Nature is nature and this is what we're supposed to see and not our own eyes looking at it.

I'll probably have more response later to Manderson's last post.

I can't help but believe people do care about how the pyramid was bult and the nature of the people who built it but they are married to the concept that our ancestors were primitive bumpkins who dragged females by the hair back to their caves. People seem to need something solid in their lives and for some it's the concept of a supreme being and for others it's the supremacy of human beings.

Perhaps for some people it's just to much to accept no matter how much evidence exists. It's easier to just believe that the ancients stumbled on the ability to build pyramid as they were out being superstitious bumpkins.

Certainly progress has been very poor but I have managed to change the terms by which people argue. The fact is there is a very significant probability that the pyramid was built with the use of water pressure and that the builders were scientific and thought in terms of science. If this is true then it will come to be seen that it is we who are the superstious stumblebums rather than they. I believe that it is critical we learn this because the world and what it means to be human are going to be revolutionized in this century and we have a far better chance of success if we understand the nature of humanity.

People are closing their eyes to the facts because they choose not to see. None of these concepts are new. There is nothing new under the sun. The only thing really new is that there really was a change in the language and even most bible thumpers find this difficult to accept.

Thanks Michel123456 for the info. It's quite interesting. Many people don't realize that "Atum" was the first god who created himself yet the god Nun (phenomenon of water) already existed at this time. Egyptologists simply dismiss all these inconsistencies as irrelevant. Neither Aristotle nor Socrates is believed to have traveled to Egypt. Sir Isaac Newton studied the pyramid seeking knowledge about gravity but didn't know it when he found it. "8) It ascends from ye earth to ye heaven again it desends to ye earth and receives ye force of things superior inferior.". How's that for irony? He simply didn't know what "it" is. Two modern languages and he got so close.

 

Sir Isaac Newton studied the pyramid seeking knowledge about gravity but didn't know it when he found it. "8) It ascends from ye earth to ye heaven again it desends to ye earth and receives ye force of things superior inferior.". How's that for irony? He simply didn't know what "it" is. Two modern languages and he got so close.

He just needed an apple to fall on his head.

http://www.the-book-of-thoth.com/content-157.html

the best translation of the concept of using water to build pyramids ins the 12th century Latin;

8) With great capacity it ascends from earth to heaven. Again it descends to earth, and takes back the power
of the above and the below.

Though I love the rainbow in the Chinese version;

8) It ascends from the earth to the heavens (and orders the lights above), then descends again to the earth; and in it is the power of the highest and the lowest

Modern languages fail at communication. The ancient ones did not.

What is the difference between belief and instinct?

Maybe our instincts are just more complex?

Perhaps instincts are something like the "beliefs of species" but I suspect most instincts are far simpler and merely involve the way the brain is wired more than the way it's constructed or what's in it at birth. I don't know and there's every chance it's far more complicated and might be an expression of DNA or the like. I say wired because most instinctive reactions seem to be very basic and primal and don't usually involkve very complex behavior. Even where the behavior may seem complex it can be seen as simple from another perspective.

Belief though is usally extremely complex and always involves volition. No matter what you believe you believe it because you want to. I often warn children to be careful what they believe because this will define who they are and will determine their fate. Certainly a specific belief can be simple but it will normally be applied to a set of beliefs that already make it possible. Most individuals are taught their beliefs at a young age and never change the basic patterns. Even when you aren't taught them or reject them you still end up a product of your time and place largely because of language. The brain, with its beliefs, is organized by the logic of language which becomes a "civilizing" influence. Almost all individuals in a culture tend to share a core of similar beliefs and those who don't still express themselves in similar terms. Very few people are like someone who was raised by wolves and no ancient Egyptian has ever been born in Kansas and never will be.

Beliefs might be thought of as a filter for straining out extraneous information to prevent obverloading thought processes. They shouldn't be or shouldn't exist but this is one of their functions. Beliefs assure you'll see things that support them and that you won't see what contradicts them. Beliefs preclude, prevent, or lower the chances of making good scientific observation.

Instinct is like a frog's "knowledge" that when its tongue goes out a fly comes back with it. It's belief is that if it hangs around dead meat the tongue will be more active and its belly more full. This belief might impede it's ability to survive when conditions change.

We don't have instincts.

Of course we have instincts. Every animal on earth (and likely every plant) has instincts. Why would humans be different?

People lose touch with their instincts partly because they believe they are harmful or ineffective.

Pay attention to your instincts and you'll find them.

What actually makes something logical? And why does that does that thing make something logical?

Definitions.

Logic is a property of nature. It's no matter if that's a human construct or not since humans are part of nature. If A follows B then B precedes A by the definitions of terms whether man invents the terms or not. Man is a natural part of the natural enviroment even whan he is also its observer.

(emphasis mine)

There are problems in existing maths.

Dividing by zero and other infinities are not perfectly defined.

Yes! And it's one of the reasons I don't like euclidean geometry.

Math is very simple using our definitions but it might not be best at modeling the real world.

(emphasis mine)yes. But you can surely construct some other maths based on other axioms that do not "work" in the concrete world. I guess there are an infinity of wrong maths versus a few correct ones (if not only one).

So long as the basis of a math are logically consistent, sufficiently defined, and properly applied there should be no problems. Some systems are too simple to be useful (like counting one, two, more than two), and some could be so complex they cause computers to overheat but there are countless possibilities.

 

I guess, in short, I really am curious what you think about science 80 years ago was so much better than how it is practiced today.

Let me just add this;

Hawking is supposedly a world class scientist but he came out recently and announced he has disproven the possibility that God exists. I have done better at casting doubt on the belief but in the process my estimation of the possibility has actually increased substantially.

Where does one turn for real science as an outsider?

I really quite disagree with this. Science as it is practiced in 2013 is worlds apart from how it was practiced in 1925.

 

The information sharing that exists today must be at least 1,000 more than occurred 80+ years ago.

 

While there may be a pocket or two of nationalism leftover, in any of the major players of scientific funding there isn't anyone pushing for a nation-specific type of science anymore. For example, there isn't anyone dictating a 'Germanic science' or a 'Soviet science' agenda like the Nazis and the Stalinist were doing. In the 1920s, it was very conceivable that your career would be ruined, or you'd even be possibly killed if your scientific work didn't meet some pre-defined political agenda.

 

And then lastly, the technology of the last 80 years has allowed so many more avenues of research. For example, the entire field of genetics, the large number of already successes that field has had, and the potential for so many more is owed to the direct manipulations of genetic material we can do today. Genetics 80 years ago was limited to what could be cross-pollinated.

 

I guess, in short, I really am curious what you think about science 80 years ago was so much better than how it is practiced today.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an insider and am not privvy to everything going on. Obviously there are many good things going as well as high quality and cutting edge science. Information sharing is, obviously, more common and rapid now days.

These aren't the things I'm talking about though. I'm talking about the bad science that is common and the inability of real scienbtists to get the ear of the media so people know what is actually going on. In the 70's you could read Scientific American and stay reasonably well informed but now days they print tripe about parallel worlds and global warming. I couldn't even tell you any of the leading scientists in the world today because scientific reporting has gone the same fate as news reporting; it's strictly political nonsense. It's all axes being ground and agendas that are wholly unrelated to science. even most of the science that is still occuring is often more math and thought experiments than it is experimental.

Of course the world is really composed of individuals and it is they who make new discovery and have new ideas. Even Egyptologists aren't all pseudo-scientific nincompoops. Indeed, perhaps none or few of them are except in aggregate.

Now most scientific research is aimed toward military applications and basic research has taken a back seat. Much of the research being done has to be politically correct to even get funding.

Of course much of the problem over the longer term is that in 1900 an individual could work alone with affordable instruments and this is becoming nearly impossible. Costs of living and research are both far higher and a far larger fraction of a living wage.

I see much more a ratcheting down in the quality, scope, and methodology of cutting edge research beginning about 1900. Of course there are hundreds of thousands of reputable scientists to whom this doesn't really apply but a system is composed of many people and it's the system that seems badly "misdirected".

 

Since the early 1900’s ALL “science” has been taken over by the Technology Culture of the religious Americans, represented by the trade-union-church AAAS. Plain and simple. There has not

been any science in the world since then except “religious-American-science”.

 

 

 

 

OK, science has taken a turn for the worse and I can even agree on its approximate swoon. It seems closer to 1925 to me though precursors existed earlier. But I can't see why you believe it has anything to do with religion. It's not as though science has been becoming more beneficial or less detrimental to religions over the decades. I've slain numerous windmills myself even though most were very diminuative, I am working on the grandaddy of all windmills right now which will have far ranging consequences once it's under my belt. Where is evidence that it's religious? Most signs point to the military but political correctness has the military more often on the side of foreign religions than those customarily associated with the US. Would any sect or religion use the benefits of scientific research into arms and then use the military itself to support "outsiders"?

I might even agree that the military industrial complex has a religious bent but this didn't come into power until the late-'50's.

It seems more like a massive confusion and superstition at play than religion (not entirely mutually exclusive but largely so).

language loss as an explanatory model for loss of old science is certainly good grounds. but rather than focussing exclusively on what was lost and why (we gain little from that i believe), focus on what remains and allow that to lead u to discover/deduce/speculate as to what was/is. again study the ALIVE ancient societies of today, study their ORAL histories and i suspect this will open a massive door into the past u endeavor to examine. simply coming to the conclusion that the ancients were highly intelligent breaks contemporary stereotype, but otherwise disclose little about what they actually knew. best to also study ancients of today to gain real insights and reduce speculation (which by definition is bound to be wildly incorrect, albeit better than the ignorance we are now beset by).

I'll keep this brief since the sofware is failing me here.

The Hebrew word for babel is "division". There are many ways in which loss of the ancient language caused division. Before the change there would have been numerous relatively isolated "societies" but they all shared the same language. When they did encounter outsiders the first thing they'd do is update each others language. Normally such updates would be insignificant unless the isolation had been very prolonged. After the change not only were most outsiders no longer understood at all but the new language fostered superstitions. There are probably no people alive today who hold onto more than small fragments of the ancient language and even less the way it was used. Certainly individual words survive (many are onomatopoeia) but vocabulary is nearly irrelevant to communication. I'm told there are some aspects of "computer code" that may survive in Hawaiian so, parhaps, this language evolved naturally away from the original natural language.

I don't believe that primitive societies today usually have much commonality with societies in the distant past. Obviously even the most primitive societies today have attributes and some advantages to the distant past and even to "western civilization". But they may be mostly irrelevant to trying to understand cavemen or the ancient Egyptians who were the "crown of creation" relative other peoples who spoke natural language.

 

 

Mathematics is a language that is used to describe quantities. It's as simple as that.

 

 

So when I say "I'm going to give you two apples.", no one will have a difficult time understanding what that means because we are typically on the same page when it comes to knowing what an apple is.

Yes. Exactly. But it is still on both persons' shoulders to know the referent and to know the nature of "two".

The former could be computers (Apples) and the latter is a human (/crow) construct that isn't normally confused. Math works fine in theory and in all known cases works in the concrete world so long as its nature is understood and terms are properly applied. Of course this isn't necessarily the case as evidenced by government finances. Logic works fine only so long as it is properly applied and defined. These definitions rest now on things like euclidean geometry rather than the real world and this too makes them a construct.

hhh

I once worked in a plant that mixed various ingredients to make a consumer product. It was all automated and the computer system was quite antiquated. When it was updated I had an opprtunity to make interfaces so operators could see and control each process. I designed the entire interface system and the software department installed everything. When it was complete they wrote up a brief synopsis for the operators so they would know specifically what changes were made and how to affect the operation. When I read this synopsis I didn't even know what I was reading. There were numerous key words that seemed to imply it was this subject but the words were all a jumbled mess with no coherent meaning. I read this thing over and over and then suddenly about the tenth time it all fell into place and made perfect sense. They had simply described in English what changes they had made in the computer code. The synopsis was equivalent to computer code translated to English.

This is what the Pyramid Texts appears to be. A sort of computer code or natural language translated to English by people who don't know that the language provides meaning in a different way.

I believe I understand vast stretches of this work nearly as well as the author. I often say that it means exactly what it says and this isn't far off but what it says isn't expressed quite like the way we express things.  I suppose it's possible that this is largely caused by translation errors but generally the translationsd appear sound judging by the meaning.  It seems that since no one else can understand it even with my explanations I'm running into a brick wall. Perhaps I've deluded myself but then how would I have all this information that no one else has? Perhaps everyone is even stupider than I am, but in my experience this is improbable since I tend to be pretty thick. Perhaps everyone is playing games but then I'm right back to being deluded. This pretty much leaves only the possibility that the language changed and other people can't understand it. If it's true the language changed and there exists a story that the entire language of the world changed then a workable theory exists. On investigation of this theory I've found several pieces of evidence that fit and support it and no inconsistencies. I don't know. I do know that if you plug the concept of "cool effervescent water that tosses" into pyramid building then all human history fits a logical pattern and there is a significant probability that someone from babel built a tower for scientific purposes that fell from natural causes and led directly or indirectly to a change in language from something like computer code to the deconstructable nonsense that we all know and love.

I'm not married to the concept but it's easier on me to consider it as the most viable explanation at the current time. Hence we have priests whoi were actually scientists and cavemen who were while not highly educated could outthink most people alive today on any scientific subject. At least the "world curves the width of a river each day's walk" is much more sensible than most things I hear people say.

I'm sure every system becomes obsolete and fails at one point or another. This doesn't mean their can't be a newer better system though. Also even if

Anyways, the subconscious. You do agree that instincts drive people and other animals to do things, correct?

No.

All animals including man have instincts however in almost all humans almost all instinct is subsumed by knowledge and belief. Most humans operate almost strictly on belief and most animals usually operate mostly on instinct. Animals do operate on knowledge and belief but this tends to mostly occurs when they are comfortable with a full belly and no pressing needs other than avoiding predation. On the relatively unusual occasion that humans act on instinct it's usually in the face of danger. Many individuals have very poor or repressed abilities to operate on instinct because it is buried under many layers of conditioned behavior and thought.

Animals are in relatively little need of beliefs (thought?) and people are in relatively little need of instinct.

Like everything though if you merely pay attention to it you can usually find a means to affect it in yourself.

CLADKING: first i must say you are incredibly generous and that you'd share so much valued knowledge on a public forum to people who for the most part will not grasp the bulk of your thought.

I can't thank you enough for the encouragement. I've gotten very very little.

I have no means to establish these facts on my own for reasons I'd rather not discuss. I have no options but to pursue this the way I have. I might have gone to the media but do not desire the attention. My primary interest is now, and has been to know how the pyramids were built. I've been distracted from determining the specific details for over a year now because there needs to be testing done and it isn't happening. This makes it more tactically important to interest other people in the subject.

 

i am convinced the methodology was that of using locked canals similar to the Panama Canal and the methodology is something we could easily replicate if desired. how the stones were quarried, i don't know: do you have any ideas on how this might have been done? (where does freeMASONry fit into this? if at all?).

I believe locks were used limitedly. I don't know much about quarrying but experts believe channels were pounded by shatteriung stones into rectangular shapes and then holes were drill horizontally under them and wooden wedges inserted into these holes. The wedges were soaked with water and their swelling broke the stone free. I have no particular problem with this and some evidence exists. However there is a great deal not known ant the PT refers to a force (set) which operates the "Great Saw Palace". There's apparently more that isn't known.

I believe masonry is derived from pyramid building and there is at least limited knowledge of this among masons. I get a great number of google hits for masons. There are too many to be coincidental. I've managed to google up most of the 33rd degree stuff and their rituals and some can be interpreted to relate to pyramid building. I don't know.

 

why are u sharing so rich information on a forum such as this where clearly no one has much real interest, aptitude or inclination to understand?

I'm here specifically to expose this to real scientists. Egyptologists are are very knowledgeable and intelligent but do not follow proper scientific procedures nor do scientific testing. Their results are correct to the degree the assummptions are correct but these assumptions are apparently all in error. They are no help to outsiders and do better counting angels that can dance on the head of a pin than gathering knowledge or discussing findings. They are hamstrung by assumption and tend to get angry when challenged.

 

Why are u so passionate about this area? What caused u to investigate this area? And most imortantly "Who are you?"

Interesting questions. I can't be entirely forthcoming.

I might be the last educated caveman or a reincarnation of a pyramid builder. No, not literally of course but I grew up naturally inclined to question everythinmg and was encouraged in this direction. Everything had to be checked. This is a poor way to learn specialties and I lacked the funding anyway so I became self taught. I invented a new field of study I call generalism but is known by a few as nexialism.

My passion is partly because I believe man is on the wrong path even before I found that we might be on a 4000 year detour. It's partly because I find sorts of "soul mates" among the Egyptians. They have been horribly maligned for many centuries. They have been ridiculed, laughed at, and had their graves desicrated since time immemorial. The major source of my passion is simple curiousity about how they built these. I know viscerally that ramps are an impossibility and that they quite probably had a motive force.

That the ancients are defined for political, religious, and racial reasons also sticks in my craw. They deserve to be understood for who and what they were and if I'm right then we can't even understand ourselves or the nature of humanity without understanding the Egyptians and by extension, cavemen.

I have to be much more circumspect on this last point but suffice to say that there are implications of this that will impact directly on me and many others alive today and time is of the essense.

 

And given ur clear understand of certain affairs, what do u believe is the reason the assinine explanations of egyptian technology is peddled to the world.

I'm not sure it's this apparent that they are wrong. I am sure they actually believe these people were as primitive as they claim. They point to the lack of artefacts in the museums as proof that there was no complicated technology. But right inside the Cairo Museum is what I believe we know as the "fire-pan"; a signalling device to alert builders to report to work;

This device sat in the nurse canal on the mehet weret cow and stayed burning so long as the water was violently rocked by the falling water. Its ability to float was maintained by the renennutet which channed CO2 from the eye of horus to beneath it. It was probably known as the "mks-sceptre" and with the nbht-sceptre which waved the "variegated feathers of the mehet weret cow" were the only two automatic signalling devices in operation. This device was probably the highest technology they possessed but it paled in importance and beauty to some of their simpler technology.

I believe Egyptology just took a wrong road 150 years ago based partly on racism but primarily on inertia and building on older beliefs.

 

clearly our world today has enough intelligent people to know u can't build what was the worlds tallest structure for thousands of years by using ramps? why so much lies about egypt? why feed the general population so much disinformation? the strategy on egpyt is akin to military misinformation stratgey used to manipulate public opinion and sow support for invasions/wars?

I think at this point it's mostly a matter of them talking themselves into it. Just this past summer they commissioned another study to determine the feasibility of ramps. They always just assume the exiostence of ramps and compute the effort but don't consider the ramps must have only a single shape. Their descriptions of ramps always comes up Escher-like because there is no systemthat would work and the evidence says there were no ramps.

 

or can it be that the 'experts' really are as stupid as they seem? who is behind the information controll and why? I know ignorance is key to controlling people...from taliban to cia to islamic mullahs. controll people by becoming the pilot of their minds and u controll all else. controll is exercise by evil. as in the presence of light darkness ceases to be: so it is clearly fear.

Truth to tell, I've always believed human intelligence is grossly over rated. It barely exists at all. Everything we do is primarily a manifestation of habit founded on beliefs developed by the learning made possible by language. Yes, there are flashes of true intelligence in people but there is in animals as well. We simply are creatures of habit. This was probably just as true before the languagfes wwere confused. The real difference, I believe, is ancient people knew they were ignorant and not intelligent but this knowledge was lost at the tower of babel.

 

Or if not lost, is being hidden?

It's not hidden. It's right out in the open everywhere we look. It's in the PT, Bible, Koran, and various ancient writings. We simply misinterpret it. This knowledge and the ability to get back to where we once were will have to wait until the science is done.

Sorry too many questions but u wrote so liberally and generously ur generosity elicited it.

There are some questions here I've never been asked. Thanks.

Crash smack dab into reality, you mean when all of our problems become overwhelming to the point we can't fix them? I don't think this is definite, it could go either way.

I didn't mean to suggest that we can't become sufficiently productive to continue to finance mountains of waste, debt, and stupidity in the short term. I merely mean that eventually a system based on waste, irresponsibility, and incompetence must fail

 

Cladking i'm sure you feel that people hear this is their subconscious and they can use it as an excuse, at the end of the day someone who wants an excuse is going to find one. Although I do believe that the Freudian subconscious needs to be updated, psychology is a relatively new science.

Yes. This is essentially my problem with the concept of the "sub-conscious".

Of course you're right that people can excuse themselves of anything at all and will find a way to intellectualize it, blame God, fate, or anything but their own misguided behavior or their own weaknesses, perversions, or carelessness. But I don't see this as the problem of the 20th century where tens of millions were simply murdered, often horribly, and many millions more died in senseless wars. I believe the problem is that too many people believe we aren't responsible for our results or our actions. Most of these people don't believe we are responsible because of some imagined sub-conscious or overwhelming urge. This allows schools that don't teach and institutions that don't react. Families are breaking down as increasing government interference affects all aspects of society. People can't be trusted to do what's right so government is appointed to not hold anyone responsible (at great cost).

No one is responsibnle for what they do or how they do it but increasingly people are held responsible for what they think or how they say it. Rather than getting better results this leads to more and more political correctness. Everyone talks a good game and then passes laws and institutes programs that discriminate because of characteristics over which no one has control. Every year human life is held in lower esteem and individual rights give way to civil rights. The same processes are going on nearly world wide.

Until people are held responsible schools will turn out illiterates whose atrocities are excused in advance by a media that pretends their victims were "caught in the crossfire" rather than murdered to force relatives to join gangs. School boards are more interested in political activism than concerned with a 70% failure rate for the boys they are supposed to be teaching. Meanwhile families continue to breakdown because fathers whose income is dependent on drugs sales tend to be exceedingly undependable. Mothers who get paid to have children are not always the best care givers. Of course you can't get too specific because that might indicate a lack of political correctness which is the only standard to which anyone is held. The status quo always remains unaffected because no one is responsible. There is no investigation into why the media is not honest about the facts and no one cares how badly the government does anything or polices the activities of business. So even ketchup doesn't work anymore which is just as well since you probably can't get it open anyway. Everyone sits back and knows no one is to blame. We buy shoddy products from China or leave money in the banks run by those who get billion dollar bonuses but pay no interest. The country runs on inertia and the status quo and will, right up until we crash smack dab into reality.

 

Your repetition of this strawman is becoming tedious. No serious scholar of history or the development of science and technology considers Egyptian civilisation backward in the perjorative sense you imply.

This isn't my argument at all. This is the Egyptological perspective. This is essentially the viewpoint of western civilization as well as most of the world today. My argument is that this perspective is demonstrably wrong and patently illogical.

To deny that this is the Egyptological viewpoint is to subscribe to their political correctness which holds scientific achievement in a society equally to superstition and primitiveness. No, it's not my contention that one is inherently wrong or one is inherently right. It is my conrtention that one leads to life and one leads to death. It is superstition that kills and it kills individually and collectively. I don't know if there's something wrong with Egyptians having been superstitious or not and it's irrelevant to any of my arguments. The Egyptians were who they were and nothing an Egyptologist nor I say can possibly have any effect whatsoever.

Nor is it my contention that "science" as we know it has led to any "truth" or complete understanding. It is my opinion that science as we usually practice it and understand it today has obscured more issues and more truth than it has disclosed. I believe that "technology" has become mistaken for knowledge and science has more in common with religion in most minds than with truth. This also is irrelevant to any of my arguments.

There's simply no question that Egyptology paints these people as backward and superstitious. They hold up the Pyramid Texts which they admit they can't understand and that they translate it improperly anyway and call it prima facie evidence that the great pyramid builders were hamstrung by religion, believed in magic, and were willing to risk their own lives and the lives of their families in order to construct a 6 1/2 million ton tomb for a dead king who never died. Were this not sufficient they also say that they were so backward and primitive the only possible means they could devise to lift stones was to build a ramp! It's irrelevant that the only evidence for any of this comes from thousands of years later because this is still how they define the great pyramid builders; in terms of later people and later evidence. This isn't open to question but is established fact. They even translate lines from the PT to suggest that their gods needed to be told to not walk in the corpse drippings of a dead god who was born a mummy but lived forever!!! How much more primitive and backward can a people actually be to believe or write such nonsensical tripe?

722c. Thy foot shall not pass over, thy step shall not stride through,

722d. thou shalt not tread upon the (corpse)-secretion of Osiris.

723a. Thou shalt tiptoe heaven like Śȝḥ (the toe-star); thy soul shall be pointed like Sothis (the pointed-star).

Rather than question the possibility that they are misunderstanding the material, they simply accept that these people were beholden to stinky gods who walked in the secretions of corpses. None were immune to such treatment;

1272a. If Isis comes in this her evil coming;

1272b. do not open to her thine arms; that which is said to her is her name (of) "wide of ḥwȝ-t (evil-smelling)."

In other words they say that logic didn't matter to the Egyptians and that they'd endanger the lives of their loved ones to do things for stinky gods who walked in corpse dripping after being born dead but this OK because there's nothing wrong with that.

Well, I should break this to them more gently but there really is something wrong with that. No, this isn't necessarily a value judgement since these are unpopular now days but what's wrong with it is that such twisted and convoluted thinking can't lead to a perfect pyramid but only to confusion.

They started with the assumption that the people were superstitious and this is the foundation on which Egyptology rests. This assumption is obviously in error because it is inconsistent with the facts, has no predictive capability, and is inconsistent with human nature.

Certainly the could do this, but what evidence do you have that they did do this?

They would be aware that the air could contain moisture, since rain fell, but how would they know that it was composed of a mixture of gases and - yes - what evidence do you have that such was the case?

All of these things can be learned from observation and then confirmed by further observation. I specifically mentioned one means of confirming the size of the earth by how much things appear to dip below the horizon due to distance. This is hardly rocket science and there's no reason to believe cavemen were stupid. Bees describe to the community the distance and direction to food so why would man with a complicated language not be able to do the same? Obviously they had sort of measures for both long and short distances so they could communicate. To claim otherwise is to suggest that language and human intelligence didn't exist because they were cavemen. Initially these concepts would have been "primitive" such as "a day's walk" to describe long distances and they would observe that in a day's walk a mountain receded the width of a river below the horizon. We might see this as highly primitive and believe it doesn't represent real knowledge but we are wrong. We believe this because we misapprend the nature of knowledge itself. The caveman could use all his knowledge simultaneously because he understood both the metaphysics and the individual facts themselves. He'd know things like a smoke signal or a reflection from a distant base camp would be affected by various condition including the curvature of the earth. People now simply don't and can't think in such terms.

As far as tides showing the distance to the moon all they needed was the concept of gravity (tefnut) and its diminuation over distance. The highest tide is always on the side facing the moon and the second highest tide is on the side away from the moon. The difference in height of these two tides gives an estimate to the moon in all locations on earth (though some can be a little confounding to to the movement of the water). The high tide in Egypt was 4" if memory serves.

If cavemen had tried to use shamanism and superstition to understand their world we wouldn't be here because they'd have succombed to faster predators, disease, poisons, and the myriad dangers waiting in a world that lacked highways and hospitals. Logically each tribe, band, group, or gang that tried to live by magic would wither and die and the world would naturally be polpulated by those that used observation and common sense to understand and manipulate their world. Logically this is just a form of survival of the fittest which works even better for social animals like humans. It was cavemen and pre-civilized people who invented agriculture and gave rise to the cities. Cities did not rise like termite mounds because mans' needs are so much more complex and diverse.

My fields of expertise lie far outside of solar phenomena and the size of Venus. There are other possibilities for ways to discover the speed of light but I think they would all require fast communication which could not have existed until 8000 years ago. As a child Ibelieve I could see Venus' disc when it was aligned with the sun properly. I included it parenthetically just to help direct readers to see that there is a great deal of observation and shortcuts to obtaining knowledge. If Venus behaved as a planet and appeared as a disc it would suggest each of the planets were discs despite the inability to see it. Who was it, Yogi Berra who said that there's a lot you can see if you just look. I would say that there is much more you can see if you observe.

I believe in twenty years it will be the common assumption that the ancients must have been scientists. But then, I expect this new assumption to start yielding actualm evidence pretty quickly because this is the nature of proper theor; it makes predictions. This is the nature of being human; it's far easier to see what you're looking for than what you aren't.

Let me turn your question around on you; what evidence do you have that the ancients were so ignorant. Does the lack of books and nuclear reactors necessarily mean that the people of the day weren't scientists?

There's no such thing as "the subconscious". There might multiple consciousnesses in the body but there's only one single integrated and complete consciousness of which we are aware. This doesn't mean there's nothing going on in terms of processing, sensation, perception, and cognition of which we aren't aware, merely that there's only one of us that is complete. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if there are low level consciousnesses in ganglia and nerve clusters throughout the body but these consciousnesses are aware of their function and the overriding consciousness. This might be the basis of "muscle memory" and our ability to achieve exceedingly fine control of the concrete world through our muscles.

But the Freudian idea that we are split into pieces is simple fantasy and misunderstanding of his work. It's likely the result of a dalience with a sister in law that was intellectualized and then misunderstood.

There's plenty going on beneath the surface because the brain is a lean mean processing machine. It processes information and filters out overload and information which it is preset to ignore (anything that defies our beliefs). These "sub-processes" can come under some lose control if we strive for it. Things such as seeking answers in our sleep actually works. We are mere observers but I seriously doubt there is more than one of us in each instance except where disease processes are at work.

We become our beliefs so to some degree if you choose to believe in the subconscious then you are likely to exhibit more behavior and more attributes consistent with having a "subconscious". I believe this is very unhealthy for the human race though it's one of those things that give some individuals comfort. To each his own.

I suppose this depends on what we mean by "numbers." Clearly the symbols themselves are constructs, in the sense that we've taken particular shapes to associate with particular quantities. But as for the concept of quantity itself, I wouldn't call that a human construct.

 

As far as I know, as far as we know, objects within the universe exist regardless of whether life is around to observe them. And by virtue of the fact that objects can move, combine, break apart, etc., the quantity of some arbitrary "single" object within some sufficiently small region of space varies. Numbers describe variations in quantity, and therefore, since quantity exists and can vary, then numbers exist.

One always and necessarily runs into the same considerations no matter what he counts.

There might be four apple seeds in an apple but perhaps only one is viable and can grow into a new tree. A section of sky can be defined and four stars counted in it but on another night there might be three or forty. A cell divides into two but these are not really identical and one might even be a mutation that is important to the survival of that species.

Obvioiusly counting is important to observation but the numbers really have more in common with construct than reality. This doesn't mean there is nothing that isn't more reality than construct. Swings of a pendulum are pretty similar, but more importantly, they are consecutive so each can be numbered ordinally. Frequency and things like heart rate are similar. If "two" individuals have different heart rates then you can certainly count them and divide by two to get an average. People should remember when they perform such counting and calculations exactly what it is to which the numbers refer. We should remember when adding apples and oranges that there's no such thing as an "apple-orange". It's easy to apply derived science too broadly and make improper extrapolations. We only really know what the experiment says and in the terms of how it's conducted.

It looks like the OP has deserted the thread. I'm curious what was in mind.

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Moderator Note

Oy! Pyramid Texts stay in the speculations thread please!

There is also some evidence for how these structures were built that show a highly intelligent and sophisticated people. Egyptologists point to each feature and say it was made for "religious purposes" but the majority of these features actually disclose the means used to build. The pyramids are founded on water collection devices. Before the first stone went onthe pyramid a large water tight structure was made. In the case of the Great Pyramid this device also channeled water to the two points on the cliff face which would have been the most advantageous places to put counterweights. One of these counterweight runs is actually man-made because the natural cliff had the wrong shape. These runs are almost exactly 300' in lenght which is exactly the distance ancient reports claimed stones "moved toward the pyramid". Other reports say a "priest" attached a piece of paper to it and then it "flew away" (presumably 300' toward the pyramid). Much of the runs are satill apparent and the main run to the quarry even has a "tomb" that might function as an hydraulic elevator. A huge hole on the east side of the pyramid appears to be an hydraulic leveling device for loading the "boat" that took stones up the side. There is water erosion in the canal leading to the place of the eastern counterweight. Remember this is a desert and the only water is believed to be in downpours for which these canals are woefully underdesigned. They simply couldn't channel any but the smallest rains and it's known rainfall was as much as 4 times greater during construction. These "aprons" under and surrounding the pyramids are perfectly level and imply that water must have been used to achieve such accuracy. There is a cistern directly downhill from the the second pyramid (G2) which could not be filled in a rain event because the inlet was too small. This simply screams that there was running water since they wouldn't want to drink the dirty Nile water which was 150' lower and half a mile away. Running water means there was an unknown source.

Design, construction, and maintenance of ramps would have been onerous tasks but nothing would have been more onerous than dragging stones up them. It's all wholly unevidenced anyway and the word "ramp" isn't even attested until long after great pyramid building ended. The pyramids are five step structures as can be seen on the gravimetric scan half way down the page here;

http://hdbui.blogspot.com/

This is not at all consistent with the use of ramps.

What we can see is vertical lines on the pyramids;

[http://www.puretravel.com/uploadedresources/continents/subcontinents/countries/Giza%20pyramids%20Egypt_20090218143916.jpg

What we see is a deep groove from the top to bottom on all four sides;

http://www.catchpenny.org/images/ikonos.gif

http://www.catchpenny.org/concave.html

These features are not religious and are not the work of people who had no means of building pyramids other than tying a rope to them and dragging them up ramps they themselves built. The titles of the builders do not reflect ignorant bumpkins but rather sophisticated and intelligent people. They had jobs like "Overseer of the Metal Shop" and "Weigher/ Reckoner". There are no jobs like harness makers, basket weavers, or overseer of stone draggers. All this is a modern superstition born of the idea our ancestors were incapable of inventing even the simplest systems and making the most basic observations. We assume that their science and technology were basic even as we can see that it was not. Since there is no preserved science from so long ago we might assume their metaphysics was so different than ours we might not recognize it if it were a snake and bit us. First we need to use our science to discover how this was built and then I'm confident their metaphysics and their epistomology will slowly come into sharp focus.

Cavemen would have had an excellent estimation of the shape and size of the earth by direct observation. They would simply see that the horizon dips down on both sides over water. One can get a good feel for the size of the planet by this alone. Then to refine the estimate the distance measured from a height would show how much of this height was hidden behind the horizon. No doubt they used an estimate equivalent to about 16' for each five miles. They could confirm their theory by observation of the shape of the earth on the moon during an eclipse. Certainly all the nearby bodies in the heavens (including Venus) are round. The distance to the moon can be estimated by the relative heights of the tides once they deduced (or discovered) that the pull of an object (tefnut) is decreased by the inverse of the square of the distance. This could be observed in numerous ways including the size of a ripple in a lake. This means would not provide a close estimate but would be sufficient for all their practical purposes. They would probably have some comprehension of the nature of the atmosphere because they knew they needed air and that air had constituent parts. They could see the planets orbiting differently than the stars and that the stars "twinkled" and would likely deduce that this was caused by the tiny angle of vision (and perhaps atmospheric disturbance). Even the depth of the atmosphere can be estimated by the varying air pressure. This estimate would be greatly refined over the years from "the air too thin up there" to the same sort of units that we used today to measure it.

The distance to the sun was likely poorly estimated with only the shadows of the earth and moon to work with. They would quickly see it was a very long way since the moon's shadow has the same apparent size despite its position. It's apparent ancient man sun gazed to affect his pineal gland and quite possibly observed sunspots. It would be noticed that the aurora boreaolis would peak a few days after such events and this "speed" was likely mistaken for the speed of light. While wildly inaccurate, it still would have been sufficient for all ancient purposes.

Ancient science was far more adept at disclosing concepts and accurate modeling (especially ancient cosmology) than it was in producing technology. There's some reason to believe their pharmacology or botany, entomology, zoology etc were somewhat better since it was cavemen who invented the agriculture which gave rise to great cities. It was cavemen who preceded (khepri) the genius of the Egyptians.

Somehow all of this technology and its metaphysics were utterly lost around 2000 BC and the only thing we have to try to understand it is the gobblety gook known as the Pyramid Texts. There is something very wrong with this picture. It is simply not logical to use the fact we don't understand something as evidence those who produced it were superstitious and backward and this goes many times over when it was they who gave us the pyramids and civilization itself.

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Moderator Note

Oy! Pyramid Texts stay in the speculations thread please!

Excellent. Without the Pyramid Texts my case is virtually air-tight because ALL of the physical evidence supports the idea that they used counterweights full of water to lift stones to build the great pyramids. The PT is essentially used by Egyptologists as proof that the bulders were superstitious bumpkins and as such had no other means to build these pyramids. Briefly, the pyramids are five steps because they pulled stones up the sides one step at a time and they were built on water collection devices because they reused this water for myriad purposes inclusing more lifting. Evidence is actually fairly extensive and I'll be happy to elucidate any point. It should be added that no physical evidence exists that any stones were lifted on any great pyramids with the use of ramps. The "evidence" for ramps is that they were too primitive to employ any other means. This argument is logically flawed as well since ramps would have been grossly inefficient and require more effort than the pyramid itself. On completion of the core the ramps would then have to be rebuilt to apply the cladding stones which used to be on them. Ramps can be excluded altogether as a possibility on the basis of extensive physical evidence and logic.

My contention is that the ancient metaphysics was the language and since none of the language survives other than the Pyramid Texts this leaves us to infer the knowledge and epistomology from the physical evidence itself. In the real world the Pyramid Texts will come to be seen as a form of metaphysics but unlike everything else I can't show this to the unwilling nor in this thread. I can show that they had extensive knowledge and that the pyramid manifests significant amounts of that knowledge. It's not just the extensive use of the highest technology of the day including bronze, lead, gold, and numerous other materials primaily created or refined by man but the nature of the constructions themselves. Many of the techniques used are still poorly understood or not understood at all. They polished large quantities of granite and laid water tight joints between 70' and 140'. The interior would have required extensive math to lay out as a plan and its exactness demands it was all planned. The original casing stones were so exacly placed that visitors of the time couldn't see the seams and believed some stones were 20' in lenght. Petrie described the surviving casing stones as having been laid with "optical precision".

One can make an argument that this could all be done by stinky footed bumpkins but then comes the layout of the Giza Plateau. The Great Pyramid is oriented perfectly north to south. This means they had knowledge of true north to a very high degree of accuracy. This would not come about by watching shadows and required stellar observation and this is reinforced by the existence of a calender and their naming of some stars (in the PT). It's also reinforced by the fact that the calender appears to have been based on the minute. This is the lenght of time that sunrise increases daily at Giza during early summer. It is divided into 60 seconds which is the length of time of the human heart beat. All of nature was set to the music of the human heart beat (60 Hz). The three largest pyramids are aligned with sunset on the winter solstice such that their shadows combine along a line stretching nearly to the sea. This must have been a wondrous sight to those who knew to look. Perhaps most incredibly, and less well known, is that each side of the Great Pyramid doesn't lie in a single plane. Each side is actually comprised of two planes slightly offset from one another such that there is a seam running from the apex to the bottom middle of each side. This offset is only a few inches but causes the pyramid to "eat its own shadow" at sunset on the autumal and vernal equinoxes.

A great deal of knowledge manifests in not only the pyramids but the entire culture that built them. We are viewing this culture through misunderstanding, confusion, and 19th century eyes. We are simply ignoring the actual evidence in a headlong rush to the answers while refusing to do the basic 21st century science that would answer these questions positively. Until our science is done ramps remain debunked and the actual evidence suggests a very sophisticated and intelligent people whose metaphysics are not in evidence. I believe the missing metaphysics are in plain sight and mistaken for gobblety gook.

Crows can count.

Thus numbers are not a human construct.

Indeed!

However this fact doesn't preclude the possibility that numbers aren't a human and a crow construct.

We know particles are identical through scientific testing, it's not an assumption. But it is true that the meaning of a number can change depending on the context you apply it to, as you have pointed out.

By knowing how many or how much apples we have we can make an excellent prediction of how much applesauce it will yield. By the same token if we know how much of two reactants exist we closely estimate the product. But this doesn't mean each apple or each proton is identical. We don't even know all the constituent parts of a proton yet so it's impossible to say they are identical or that their constituent parts are each identical. So far as I'm aware there's pretty limited evidence on even the weights of protons and these can not be closely estimated by deflections in individual collisions so have to be inferred from atomic masses and the like.

I think of it this way; no two objects in nature are identical so it seems most unlikely that two objects known only as a theoretical construct are identical. Perhaps someday we'll be separating all sorts of elemental particals by type to achieve some new property or ability to combine with other elements in a new way.

Or maybe we're approaching another bridge out in science caused by our inability to understand its entire metaphysic which includes experimental results. Perhaps our modern reliance on thought experiments is symptomatic of any impending road block. Perhaps specialization will forestall this problem.

Have you seen this talk from Lawrence Krauss? It's just slightly over an hour, and discusses this concept quite a bit.

 

 

I've seen this before and it is superb. It dovetails nicely with what I believe is the ancient metaphysics as it appears in the Pyramid Texts; 0 = 0.

I often joke that man creates the universe by the invention of machine intelligence which runs amuk and becomes "God".

Everything worth anything makes itself, right?

Perhaps time is the only thing that actually exists and it is immutable and eternal.

Perhaps it can, however, coalesce into tiny bits of "matter" which can form the building blocks of of matter. Maybe the universe is far older than we can imagine and big bangs occur in regions where too matter collects.

It's a massive dance that grows ever heavier and more extensive.