T or E

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Larry Burford</i>
<br />In your post just above the first image was fine but the second image was replaced by the "announcement". <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I saw it one other time. I'll look into it. I don't like it either.

rd

So Neil,

I spent some time looking again at your new faces, and I can see "clown," "saint," "batman," "zorba," and "spidey," but none of the others. Batman actually contains two faces. There is another one just to the right of batman, with an open mouth, that is even more real-looking to me, and may also have a protrusion coming out of the top of his head.

Emanuel

Last night, after a hard day, I watched for the first time Superman III. Any movie with Richard Pryor in it can't be all bad, and seeing a younger Annette O'Toole as Lana Lang was—well, interesting. Anyway, while Supey was flying through the Grand Canyon, I started seeing faces everywhere on the canyon walls. I mean convincing faces. It was then I knew that I had better do a serious reality—and sanity—check.

To start, here's a definition of Pareidolia.
www.wordspy.com/words/pareidolia.asp
Readers of this post are familiar with the concept, but we should keep in mind that pareidolia is a psychological trait in all normal humans, not just something that goofy people see. We see faces because we are hard wired to do so, just as we are prone to the light inversion effect mentioned by Tom, and discussed in our T or E paper and post. I suspect that like other of our traits and skills, it can be developed and heightened, or it can lay dormant and unused. It can also be compensated for by the use of scientific rules and by reason.

In the past week or so I have poured through scores of hi-res strips in the Valles Marineris system, which mainstream science has as a kind of rift or tectonic fault line associated with the formation of the Tharsis region on Mars, and Meta Science hypothesizes to be the result of deteriorating orbit of a small moon of Mars, ultimately forming the gouge-out we see today. There are, or seem to be, hundreds of faces, mostly on the smaller side, on the slopes or floors of the various Chasmas of this system. The fact that the famous “Arrow” is there,” (see Tom’s Slide Show), and also JP Levasseur’s “Skullface,” led me to think there would be more, and I was apparently right.

So what about pareidolia? The fact is that short of rigorous scientific tests and controls, we can’t be absolutely sure if what we see is pareidolia or what it actually seems to be (in this case faces). I suspect this is especially true when we are dealing with images in grayscale that are seen at great distances and with relatively low pixel resolution. The argument has been made that these images may have been designed to be seen at one particular distance and no other, and the comparison was made to the Mona Lisa which can be seen at some distance, but when viewed under a microscope would be a mass of undistinguishable forms. But I think this is a slippery slope which can easily lead us to rationalize pareidolia. For one thing, it is a false analogy; because the Mona can be seen at any distance except microscopically. But as I will show below, pareidolia can be much more elusive, often recognizable at one distance only, and then evaporating like a puff of smoke at all other distances (or times). Here’s a link to one particular strip that gave me ajida for just that reason. It’s loaded with large images that evaporate when you zoom in on them, grotesque “faces” at medium magnification, and tiny “faces” everywhere. That was when I stopped to watch S-III.

www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e01_e06/images/E04/E0401975.html

Anyway, I can’t say more here, except that some of the faces we have been viewing may be the real thing, meaning actually existing on Mars as artificial surface art, or created in some hacker’s computer (at this point I’m not prepared to say which). But we would be deluding ourselves not to admit that some are the result of pareidolia. Before more confirmations at different resolutions come in, and on the ground research is conducted, the rule of thumb should be detail, proportion, and as Rich pointed out, response to computer tools. If the computer picks up details under manipulation and or magnification, that’s a good sign that they are really there. If they evaporate like a puff of smoke, that’s a good indication of pareidolia.

Neil

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I definitely see most of the faces in your "Mt. Rushmore" post. [Emanuel]<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Here's the link for "Sculptured Faces," E0201962.

www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e01_e06/images/E02/E0201962.html

The big face looks something like Gary Lockwood in Star Trek's "Where No Man Has Gone Before," complete with the glowing eyes (hmmm). A good <i>apriori</i> test would be to see if the eye in shadow is there in a new image with different lighting. Another factor; this "sculpture" is definately on the 1500 m, cliff wall of the W. Candor Chasma, apparently near the base (see MSSS link with hi-res and context image in link; also see mola map.) This would be another similarity with Rushmore--if real. Also the size is right; the sculpture, including the small faces is 1/2-3/4 km wide.





Neil

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />I started seeing faces everywhere on the canyon walls. I mean convincing faces. It was then I knew that I had better do a serious reality—and sanity—check.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">You should have seen my wife and I sitting in Yosemite valley one sunny afternoon, eating lunch and having a beer. It was the year after you first visited and told us about the Cydonia Face. We stopped counting faces at about 15. In my opinion, some of them were considerably better than the "Philosopher", "Greta", "Pinochio", "Mugsy" and "Peter Pan". Although, admittedly, I can't prove that now, because I have no images of the Yosemite walls.

Having said that though, before you throw the baby out with the bath water, let me post a quote from JP Levasseur. This was from his first response to me, when I asked him if he had seen the other faces in the area of the Profile Image:

" Numerous additional faces and patterns have indeed been noted in that image, but in my opinion none compare with the primary profile and all its detail and proportion. It seems to me that if the strongest of the faces, the primary profile, is not considered strong enough evidence for artificiality, then the rest, which in my opinion are weaker, only serve to weaken the overall case for artificiality, something that can be construed as support for the claim of overactive imaginations. I'm not saying those additional formations are not artificial, only that claiming too many can be counterproductive. But the day a single shred of solid proof of an artifact emerges from the Martian sands, the rest will automatically have integrity. Until then, even though they certainly add to the science, I think they dilute the overall case for Martian artifacts." {From correspondence with JP Levasseur}

Because the whole overall area of the Profile Image seemed to be "composed" of those four images, all in the same style, all lending weight to the other, I tended to disagree with respect to the Profile Girl and Family. On the other hand, I immediately started to see his point, as Emanuel started to post more and more obscure images of faces (no offense intended).

In this post, I think you have combined good images with obvious pareidolia images, thereby weakening your case somewhat. It's still an interesting exercise, but I'd say the likelihood of "Philosopher" being Martian Art, is about as strong as the images on the Yosemite Walls being Martian Art.

Some of them, like the "Clown", would make good test cases for artificiality, though. Same with "Saint". If they go "poof" at higher resolution, well "reality check" ain't the half of it.

This is one of the reasons why I liked the subject of the "T or E" so much (which incidentally, seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle). It sidesteps the whole issue of pareidolia.



rd

Hi Neil,

Have you considered that the main art director for the movie Superman III, Brian Ackland-Snow, is also an employee for JPL? I find this quite interesting.

Emanuel