My pareidolia knows no bounds.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by pareidoliac</i>
<br />rd- It's not the number of eyes, or nose, that makes the difference but the number of countable details. A face with a patch over the eye that had 100 countable details would be more phenomenal than a face with two eyes and 35 countable details.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Yes, I understand. I wasn't trying to say it was the number of eyes that mattered. What I was saying was you can't try to compare an eye to a head. I'm with you on this.

rd

<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 />you can see the bone structure under the sculptor's "skin," including the temporal bone, supraorbital process, frontal bone, and nose bridge. You can see skin texture, you can see 3 or more parallel lines (skin wrinkles) under the eye, and crows feet at the corners; you can see a great hairline at the side and top; you can see strands of hair<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I give you Leonardo da Vinci (emphasis added):

(now remember, he's looking at a stucco wall, the ashes in the fire, or the clouds, or mud, or other such places):

"thou shouldst regard various walls which are covered with all manner of spots, or stone of different composition. If thou hast any capacity for discovery, thou mayest behold there things which resemble various landscapes decked with mountains, rivers, cliffs, trees, large plains, hills and valley of many sort. Thou canst also behold all manner of battles, life-like positions of strange, unfamiliar figures, expressions of face, costumes, and numberless things which thou mayest put into good and perfect form. The experience with regard to walls and stone of this sort is similar to that of the ringing of bells, in the strokes of which thou willst find anew every name and every word that thou mayest imagine to thyself. Do not despise this opinion of mine when I counsel thee sometimes not to let it appear burdensome to thee to pause and look at the spots on walls, or the ashes in the fire, or the clouds, or mud, or other such places; thou wilt make very wounderfull discoveries in them, <b>if thou observest them rightly. For the mind of the painter is stimulated by them to many new discoveries</b>, be it in the composition of battles, of animals and human beings, or in various compositions of landscapes, and of monstrous things, as devils and the like, which are calculated to bring thee honor. For through confused and undefined things the mind is awakened to new discoveries. <b>But take heed, first, that thou understandest how to shape well all the members of the things that thou wishest to represent, for instance, the limbs of living beings, as also the parts of a landscape, namely the stones, trees, and the like.</b>"

Leonardo da Vinci, Book on Painting

Translation of the sentences in bold (by me).

a.) If you accept the fact that you can find them, you will. You will make many wonderful discoveries.
b.) But, to paint them, you still have to know how to paint and "shape well" all the things you want to represent. If we're talking about photography, it would behoove you to know something about photography, to which I admit I'm somewhat of an amateur.

rd

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">To paraphrase a humorous movie scene - "Consistency? We don't need no stinking consistency." Except of course where it is really necessary. [LB] <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Since this segment of the message board is devoted to a discussion of artificial structures on Mars, it is certainly legitimate to allow both sides to be discussed, as you're doing. This would be, of course, the artificiality hypothesis and what I would characterize as the "elaborate pareidolia hypothesis." But there is also a third hypothesis which is scientifically possible, though IMO logically highly unlikely. For lack of a better name, let’s call it the "hoax hypothesis." This is also an artificiality hypothesis in a sense; because, as Fred intuited, if the faces on Mars were made, not by Mars humans of the distant past, but by earth humans of today, they would indeed be artificial, after a fashion.

My brother got into the science of this possibility awhile back, and consulted some experts who opined that it is theoretically possible. In a nut shell, individual "hackers" could do it if they had the necessary knowledge and access codes, but only on a very small scale. But to account for the large number of faces that we see on Mars there would need to be a massive (illegal) conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of government bureaucracies. This is almost impossible for a number of reasons which I have talked about in the past. And I have therefore given it up as a reasonable possibility. It boils down to two reasons; 1- Nobody could be that smart. You'd have to remember and co-ordinate thousands of little details, and they would have to be consistent with innumerable overlapping swaths, retaken images, and context images, at different lighting, acquisition parameters, resolution, and so on. 2- Nobody could be that weird (I'm speaking of ancient Martians, all present company excepted) to think up the kind of art we're seeing.

A little political discussion as it directly pertains to these issues should be allowed, but not knee-jerk politics or ideology, or “talking points.”

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 />Nobody could be that weird (I'm speaking of ancient Martians, all present company excepted) to think up the kind of art we're seeing.-Neil<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. I'm surprised you are admitting it.

Which is precisely why there really is only one logical conclusion we can come to. Pareidolia. I'm currently working on what I call "The Pareidolia Soup Theory". It's an ambitious undertaking, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to figure it out without some mathematical help, (demonstrating it, that is), but I might be able to be pointed in the right direction by Dr. Schyns or Ian Smith.

rd

Here's my overview on what we've learned so far after 10 weeks of wide-ranging and fascinating discussion on this topic:
<ul><li> We began with the recognition that "what something looks like" cannot be used to judge either artificiality or lack thereof. This has been confirmed in this discussion by many new examples showing that any number of points of coincidence can occur between natural and artificial images. </li><li> We began with three criteria for sorting out natural from artificial: a priori predictions, context, and relationships. Insofar as I could see, the discussion has developed no new criteria. </li><li> The Cydonia Face could be adjudged artificial before MGS on the basis of eight criteria, all of which favored artificiality in the end. Then sixteen highly specific new tests of artificiality (predictions of four parameters for each of four features falling within pre-specified ranges) came out in favor of artificiality despite odds against chance of 1000 billion billion to one. Moreover, the Face has no noisy or complex background that might allow us to find such features by chance. </li><li> Given a natural origin ruled out for at least this one feature on Mars, artificiality and pereidolia start on equal footing as explanations of other features, with neither being a more likely default explanation. </li><li> Our goal here was to develop better criteria to sort out natural from artificial for such features. But those criteria are apparently the same as they are for judging images here on Earth (e.g., 3D vs. 2D, artificial construction materials, etc.), with no new ones coming to light. </li><li> Discussants are allowing their biases about whether or not a first case for artificiality on Mars has been made, to determine their judgments about features that might otherwise have an equal chance to be judged natural or artificial. As noted repeatedly at the outset, this discussion of potentially pareidolic images makes sense only in the context of artificiality established in at least one other place on Mars. Otherwise, the most reasonable stance would be that they are all pareidolic. </li></ul>The failure to develop new, broadly acceptable criteria correlates with the failure to persuade any active participant to switch sides. I conclude we are as polarized as NASA and as society at large.

Did I miss something, or do others see this differently? -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The failure to develop new, broadly acceptable criteria correlates with the failure to persuade any active participant to switch sides. I conclude we are as polarized as NASA and as society at large.

Did I miss something, or do others see this differently? -|Tom|-<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I think all of the active participants in this debate are precisely where they were in the beginning. Unknown is the number of silent participants who changed their minds or were at least influenced. New paradigms will not be changed by logical argument alone; and scientific method, even if impeccable, will not convince many where extraordinary new hypotheses are concerned. We need much more convincing proof. However we are all on record now, (as long as this message board is archived and safely preserved). History will decide who was right and who was wrong. The decision may come relatively soon or it may take many years. Needless to say I am convinced the artificiality hypothesis is the correct one.

Neil