cladking

This is exactly the problem; where we are today. Numerous unsupportable trends are in place. People don't understand science so we allow the government to shut down generating plants supposedly to reduce so called greenhouse gas emmissions. Nevermind that this destroys vast amounts of wealth and causes jobs to go to China wghere they are very inefficient so the net result is even higher CO2 production each year. People are poorer in aggregate and more CO2 is added to our experiment on the planet. Rather than a comprehensive attack on production of the gas in light of human needs we are saddling the future with ever higher debt and fewer resources. It's simply inhuman. Where we are today is also the problem inasmuch as to virtually all individuals this means we are at the pinnacle of creation. People to believe that in aggregate we know almost everything when the fact is we don't even necessarily know more than cavemen. Technology is mistaken for knowledge because people because people don't understand the true nature of science. Our modern science is based on a simple enough metaphysic but in order to understand science one needs to know this and each experiment that has led to our knowledge and how technology springs from it. So we have an extremely dangerous superstition that we know everything and this allows us to stumble blindly into the future with no consideration to people who might live there and no consideration to the past. There are tests of our ability to cope coming up and rather than address issues related to these tests we waste more than we use. I believe ancient knowledge might be a help in several ways. Chief among them though is a simple understanding of just how ignorant we really are. Simply knowing this will help us see the future and to look for unintended consequences before the fact. Knowing we are part of nature in every real way might help us appreciate the majesty of nature and how small we really are. Understanding of the ancients might even help with mundane problems today such as new ways to attack problems with comprehension of phenomena or even the development of a format for artificial intelligence. I'd be happy just to discuss what the cavemen really knew and how they came to know it. I'd be happy enough just to show that once the means to build the pyramid is known that we'll find an extinct science that was in many ways far superior to our own. I think we'll find that the human race has been going downhill in terms of intelligence for a very long time and that we have been on a 4000 year detour from much of our humanity. We mistake our comfort for intelligence and our technology for knowledge. Simply stated, the paradigm for our understanding of the pyramid and its builders is absurd in the extreme. It is virtually baseless in fact and is built on assumptions. This "theory" has proven incapable of making accurate predictions since it was invented 150 years ago. There are people now trying to find a new paradigm that works and someday there is likely to be a lot of coalescence around something that does work and does make predictions. We'll find, no matter who or how they were built, that the builders were highly intelligent, knowledgeable, capable, and scientific. All the real evidence supports this. We'll find that where the builders said "the earth is high under the sky by means of thine arms tefnut", that they were literally and exactly correct by any real measure. The current paradigm excludes all the words of the buiders and the era as being irrelevant. Once you really know what "tefnut" and her arms are then you have the thing solved. Even a caveman knew the answer to this and could use the knowledge along with all his knowledge simultaneously.

No numbers really mean anything. Sure there are some like moles of one element that can combine with another that are reflective of reality but even these can be expressed in other terms and we'll probably find out some day that all Oxygen molecules are not created the same and differ along numerous parameters. Our metaphysics has caused a divorce between man and nature and between man and reality. The ancients were fully aware that numbers were not reflective of reality so they had a built in fudge factor of 1/ 64th by which anything might vary. 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 or as we'd say 1.5625%. This fudge factor could then be factored out for important things like perfect alignment of the Great Pyramid. Euclidean geometry simply defines the intersection of three lines at right angles to model reality just as numbers are an attempt to model a reality that doesn't actually exist. Just as there is no place to which eyclidean geometry can be apoplied there atre no objects or concepts to which numbers can be properly applied. Of course you can't add apples and oranges but you also can't add apples and apples in the real world for countless reasons. It's never legitimate to say one apple plus one apple makes 2 apples because apples differ and this sort of counting implies a knowledge of the future since perhaps one will be destroyed and become nothing but kitchen waste or the other will fall into the hands of Johnny Appleseed and become countless apples. If you have 64 apples in a bushel there is every chance that one is already more like garbage than it is an apple. This is the very nature of packing a bushel of apples; to be sure even apples that might not be good do not go to waste. If one throws away all apples that might not be among the best one might have no apples at all. Every apple is unique in all ways so they can be counted/ weighed/ or otherwise measured in infinite numbers of ways. How do you count the number of apples in applesauce? How do you count them after a major US manufacturer adds water to extend the number of jars he can sell to an unsuspecting public? The metaphysics of modern science removes people from knowledge because they don't understand what that knowledge is or how it was gained. All knowledge is visceral and modern people have very little visceral knowledge outside their specialty or their experience in some limited arena. Our belief in the sanctity and independent existence of numbers is one of our greatest weaknesses largely because most people have great difficulty applying them appropriately to the real world anyway. We see the real world kaleidoscopically through lens of numbers and "science" and believe what we see is the reality.

I do. I can't imagine what makes anyone think he is intelligent or know its nature. Just the fact that we experience something doesn't mean we are experiencing it correctly. We use words to understand everything including our thoughts but words can be deconstructed. We can't model the real world in our minds except from specific perspectives at best. Other people will arrive at diametrically opposed positions using the same logic, premises, and evidence because of language. Consider that even the simplest questions about math and nature are beyond most peoples' ability to answer. Two of the worst groups for being able to answer whether or not an airplane could take off from a conveyor belt moving in the opposite direction at the same speed are airline pilots and people in aviation. These people aren't stupid but are merely highlighting the human condition and the fact that most people don't understand the wheel, or they can't maintain a single perspective in consideration of simple problems. I'm not saying there's no such thing as human intelligence merely that very few things are so exaggerated. Humans can't even learn any animal languages and have to teach animals our language. I wouldn't be so quick to underestimate animal intelligence at least relative to the reality of human intelligence. The understanding that is required to be a cat is very different than that to be human. How are we to relate to something so alien or to express it in human terms.

They didn't leave a written text, they left a large body of knowledge as language. The lack of a written language only impeded cavemen to the degree they could have individully learned to read and write. Generally groups were too small to have a "school" with more than a single student so the lack of books was not very limiting. They lacked paper, and access to those who might overcome this handicap. Trade was extremely limited before cities for logistical reasons. It's necessity that is the mother of invention and they had very little need for writing. There were, apparently, many individuals whose primary or sole function was to pass down history in oral form. But writing developed much later and possibly primarily by accident and serendipity. Natural phenomena were defined anthropomorifically and became part of the language. These are what we misunderstand as "gods". For instance a natural phenomenon is the concept of inertia and was one of the "lions" they called "neters". When you see this word think "nature" because everywhere it's used in the ancient literature you can substitute these terms without changing meaning. This phenomenon was named "shu" and shu could stand without getting tired. His consort was "tefnut" which is what objects do when they stop "standing"; they fall. Tefnut was the goddess of downward. There's great evidence for this and I'll be happy to provide it if there's interest. Let me point out that part of the ancient understanding of nature appears to exceed our own since part of the defining characteristics of tefnut is that she was "sneezed out". Where modern man sneezes into a clothe that spreads the germs in all directions they knew to point the sneeze downward so it would fall to the floor. There was no need to point a sneeze at the floor unless they understood the concept of germs. Shu, on the other hand, was spewed out of his father atum. People might consider such things trivial but a literal understanding of the words is possible and it says who these people were and gives a description of the processes by which they built the pyramids that is actually in evidence. For the Egyptians to know so much there is an implication that the knowledge couldn't come easily since they lacked modern science. It's apparent that at the very least they had huge amounts of observation behind them. Either philosophy was a common occupation which seems highly improbable in an era with no books or there was some other way to maintain the metaphysics by which they observed and understood nature. This strongly suggests that the most likely means was, indeed, language. Language which expresses itself through word order like computer code can generate quite complex ideas with very few words. This is exactly what exists in ancient times; very few words. Caveman knowledge grew until they could grrow their own food giving rise to cities. Cities gave rise to the need and ability to economically employ writing. Writing caused an explosion in human knowledge which so greatly complicated the language that it failed with the epicenter of this failure; "babel". This is the state of afairs. Today we have the opportunity to easily model this knowledge in computers. And then it can be brought up to date. The result would be extremely complicated and far beyond the ability of humans to speak or understand. It should be possible for computers. the results might be interesting. I think the fact that "intelligence" is virtually disproven is one of the more interesting implications. I think people should know we are speaking what the ancients called "confused language". It's impossible to go back but this might help guide us going forward. People have a right to know their very distant ancestors weren't brutish and ignorant. Perhaps we can gain some insight into what it means to be human.

As long as I'm in the right forum I have some new speculations I'm working on today. These are unsupported except by previous deduction and previous evidence but I'm still in sight of solid ground. An interesting thing that people seem to not notice is that the sun rises at Giza almost exactly 60 sec (one minute) later each day all through early summer. It seems highly improbable this is a cosmic coincidence and more likely is evidence they invented the minute and it is the basis of the clock/ calender. It might have been the Sumerians instead but the point stands; the minute is an approximation of a natural phenomenon. It is a messaged number in order to get 1440 in a day. It's interesting that the 1440 is to the "sacred number" 1460 as 360 is to 365. The Egyptian calender was 360 days with five "epigomanal days" added to reflect the year. There are so many relationships between numbers involved at Giza I'm beginning to speculate on the possibility of three dimensional geometry. Our euclidean systemn is essentially founded on the point with three rays to define other spatial dimensions so is one dimensional. The Egyptians might have used a spherical geometry based on the the one thing they knew; the earth. They said that "inertia" embraced all things which might imply much more than merely that they knew we are hurtling through space. They never drew maps and the like which might be because they saw all things from all perspectives. This is speculative but these people didn't think like us and they did use a sort of layered or multi-dimensional language.

This is merely pure logic; if you don't know what intelligence is in humans it is probably impossible for a human to recognize intelligence anywhere. It seems very probable that the very nature of intelligence varies between species. Human intelligence is founded largely on language since humans largely use language to think. No animal can pass learning to its offspring without either example or complicated language. Other animals have neither. It is readily apparent humans misapprehend the nature of intelligence. We can't measure it and can't define it in mathmatical terms. It's easiest to think of it as the abilty to learn and manipulate knowledge but it's far more complex and has hundreds of facets. Dinosaur intelligence would be different and equally complex.

It seems ironic that a concept that will be seen as obvious even with our highly limited current knowledge in fifty years is seen as speculative today. This post was an attempt to make the point that great cities and great pyramids didn't suddenly arise in a vacuum of knowledge and as a result of shamans, ignorance, and superstition. People needed real world knowledge to succeed far more in ancient times than they do today. Where it failed as a post it might succeed as a thread. The fact is that much of modern science could be deduced from observation and logic alone. This is a far more tedious means to invent knowledge but it is the direction even modern science has been heading. We might be nearing the point at which experimental science hits a roadblock and it could be the same or similar problem the ancients faced. Why else switch to logic,math, and thought experiments unless there is a problem developing experiments? I will defend this and expound on any point if anyone is interested. I'll also defend any points in my overall thesis which is a work much longer in process. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/72011-epistemology-science-and-technology/ There is good reason to believe that the ancients were scientists. Imhotep had a title that could be translated as "Chief of Observers". Each of the pyramids employed a couple of "Prophets" whose job was to make predictions about best practices. All of the evidence for the builders of the great pyramids indicate these people were highly trained and sophisticated. They had good health care that even included brain surgery (a few appear to have survived). It is nothing but interpretation that paints any of the ancients as beinfg superstitious or religious. These are modern constructs founded on assumptions and some of these assumptions I've already debunked (such as ramps). I've already shown that the assumption that there was no change in the culture between the great pyramid building age and the middle dynasty is absurd, baseless, illogical, and incorrect in all likelyhood. At some point in time there were highly primitive people but this probably disappeared almost immediately when language arose 40,000 years ago. Magic and religion couldn't protect people against predation and disaster but observation could and these observations were announced far and wide and passed down to children. All of history falls into place and makes perfect sense once it's realized that the language actually did change and the old science was utterly lost except for fragments of its metaphysics in modern religions. Cavefolk were far more interested in knowledge than charms and beliefs.

Human intelligence is grossly exaggerated. Nearly 50,000 years of human advancement and most individuals can't answer questions about even the most basic science. Even those who can answer questions can do so only because they have been educated in science and not because they are intelligent. It is not intelligence that created technology, it is language. This leaves us to try to fathom the nature of intelligence in animals without even an understanding of what it means to be that animal. Feline metaphysics are very different than canine. We understand none of their languages except for a single word here and there. If we did understand a species and its language we might see they are not stupid as it appears by their poor usage and understanding of human languages. If we don't truly understand what intelligence in humans is then we can't understand it in other species. Perhaps no other species has the ability to pass down complicated ideas to off spring other than through example. This is extremely limiting to the species but does not necessarily reflect at all on true intelligence.

I'm in much agreement. When you say the problem with physics is in the "calculation and interpretation of the phenomena" do you mean that calculation is dependent on interpretation and this is the only means by which calculation is a problem? Or is there another way in which calculation can be a problen in understanding physics? Good luck with you efforts.

Thank you. I will follow and defend the thread. I suppose the point was phrased so speculatively as to not be relevant to a thread on metaphysics. I'll try to avoid this in the future. The point was largely that a very highly advanced metaphysics can be deduced by the knowledge displayed in the only extensive writing that survives from the most ancient times; the Pyramid Texts. I realize no one understands this writing unless I do, so no one has cause to accept my interpretation. But still the fact remains that they display relatively sophisticated understanding of a few natural processes. This was the point of the last post; that this understanding would not have arisen over a brief period of time. In all likelyhood the ancient metaphysics required all of the first 40,000+ years of human advancement. There are some extraordinarily complicated scientific concepts imbedded in the Pyramid Texts. The most complicated that can be extracted is a perfect description of the hydraulic cycle; 1140c. (he is dried) by the wind of the great Isis, together with (which) the great Isis dried (him) like Horus. ...1146a. N. is the pouring down of rain; he came forth as the coming into being of water; 1146b. for he is the Nḥb-kȝ.w-serpent with the many coils; "Nḥb-kȝ.w-serpent" is mistranslated by Egyptologists in several ways which preclude their ability to understand. This is the "natural phenomenon" called "Nehebkau" which they mistranslate as "god". Nehebkau actually is the hydraulic process and his "coils" are the clouds. "Serpents" are simply "fluid flow" and could be very dangerous where even hydrogen sulphide could flow from the "gods" as well as the various natural and man made processes occuring to build pyramids and create primeval mounds. Of course their knowledge didn't stop at building great pyramids and knowledge of the hydraulic cycle this is just the evidence that I am correct. Of course if "Nehebkau" meant one thing in this instance and something else elsewhere there would be no meaning and we'd be justified in the assumption it is confused language just like we use. But everywhere the term appears it is consistent with this understanding. This consideration applies to the vast majority of the terms within the work; they are consistent with a wholly different understanding than that we use in day to day life. These are embedded so I can't show it but they also refer to rainbows as "light scatterers of the sky", "steps of light", and "sky arcs". Some of this is dependent on translation but the point stands that there is an effervescent column of water that off gasses CO2 and is adorned with rainbows. The more relevant point is that this implies they had a different way to think and speak and a very complicated language which was the metaphysics of their understanding. ...And just happened to be the basis of how they built pyramids which is how I stumbled upon it.

This is an issue I've given significant thought for a long time. I can imagine several ways that AI could be developed in the immediate future. I believe the biggest stumbling block to AI is simply we wholly misapprehend the nature of intelligence itself. We interpret it largely as the ability to learn and manipulate language and logic. We are blind to the fact that language can imply no intelligence because it can be deconstructed. Rather than trying to program the machines to iniate random progresssions of previous programs in logical sequence we are trying to teach the poor things to fetch like a dog or translate things into a language with no real meaning other than the flavor of the day. I wonder if the metaphysics of Pyramid Texts might be a framework for machine intelligence. I'm in close agreement and would even use many of the same words. I'm in less agreement here; I think this is a gross underestimation of the challenges facing us. It's not only that people aren't given an opportunity to excell but that people are not even able to be effective on their jobs. Most real work is being done by people the government calls illegal aliens so they work for very little and most other people aren't more than a few percent effective on their jobs. It's not just resources, human potential, and time being wasted it's much of humanity itself. Some will lay the blame at the failure of the schools resulting in too many individuals who will destroy tools and infrastructure if allowed think for themselves. But the real fault is the impossibility of laying blame for individual weakness and bad results. Of course this is a necessity when the ones at the top are culpable in many instances for causing economic and infrastructural catastrophies. Rather than being held accountable criminally or through reprimand and demotion they continue to get bonuses. We have what must be the most highly inefficient system ever devised. It depends on vast amounts of energy and rather than taking steps to stop the experiment on our planet we find ways to make the system increasingly inefficient and wasteful. I've long toyed with the concept the race would still live in caves if it weren't for the necessity of impressing women (the opposite sex). People seem to believe that in aggregate we know everything. I agree it is largely caused by mistaking technology for knowledge.

I suspect it's more common in youth. Certainly most kids/ young adults said they had experienced this 50 years ago. I suspect most people experience it at least once. It can last for some time and be intense or it can be fleeting and hardly noticed. Perhaps there is more than the single processing error occuring and the experience is being written into memory as well. It would certainly be of great interest if you could describe one of these events before it occurred.

There's nothing wrong with your experience and as nearly as I can tell it is a common human experience that I've had several times as well. There does seem to be one difference and that is that you remember it as a dream after the fact. I can't account for this without speculating so I won't try. I've had dreams that came true essentially as they happened in the dream. The details were mostly all different but the emotional response and the general nature of the facts were identical and did remind me of the dream after the fact. I did not experience this as exactly the same thing as what I consider "deja vu" so perhaps this is similar to your experience and you haven't actually experienced what is called deja vu. I would be slightly concerned if the details of the event are the same as the dream largely because it flies in the face of what I believe is the nature of time one of whose aspects is that it can't be predicted or foreseen in any meaningful way. The next time try to pay attention to the details and the nature of the memory. This might help shed light on the experience.

There's no such thing as "a subconscious". This isn't to say we are aware of every function occurring within the brain/body merely that there is only one of us inside each person. Dreams are most probably just partially processed random firings of neurons in the brain. These random firings are not very important when we are awake because they'll tend to fire outside of our current processing but while asleep they form the basius of our dreams. Watch a dog dream and chase rabbits in his sleep. The memory center works in our sleep so some of these dreams are remembered. Some people are relatively adept at predicting the future by the extension of trends and logic and might even get these insights as they sleep. But the fine detail as experienced by the sensation of deja vu is without scientific or logical basis and is probably impossible. The world is a big complicated place and I wouldn't want to claim any of it is actually figured out or to dismiss any idea out of hand but some beliefs are highly detrimental to the human race and no belief may be more detrimental than the "subconscious". It is much more likely that the brain somehow gets out of sequence in processing information that causes the sensation described. There is another sensation which I've experienced that might be relevant. Once when giving my order I saw the waitress write it down immediately before I said it. I asked and she said she hadn't. If all my sensory input other than merely my vision had undergone this for a short time rather than merely instantaneously, I believe I would have experienced "deja vu".

The only thing that matters is human life; all human life including people who have already died and those not yet born. To know ourselves we must know our past and there's no need to know ourselves if there's no future. This isn't to say that we should be inhumane to other life forms because such behavior diminishes what it means to be human.

There are numerous reasons this entire subject is irrelevant to human advancement. Discovery is contingent upon knowledge and the tools we possess to seek this knowledge. While language is paramount in all regards each new instrument to measure some aspect of nature gives us more data allowing more hypotheses. Each new theory provides insights into other aspects of nature. When a new invention comes along it usually appears in numerous places simultaneously as new theory, new material, new instruments, and new data arises. There is no theoretical limitation to human knowledge however my guess is that we'll find that some leaps will be highly elusive and we might not survive out own follies in the search. Understanding chaotic behavior, long time periods, and very small scale will not come easily. But if it does come it will have nothing to do with intelligence because there virtually is none. This isn't to say this lack of intelligence will necessarily persist, merely that this is the status quo and until machine intelligence arises it will remain so.

If intelligence were necessary to progress we'd still be living in caves. Language makes progress possible. It was language that made it possible for Newton to see from the shoulders of giants.

I've just started working on the determination of what cavemen knew and when they knew it. I already was able to deduce most of the metaphysics from a literal understanding of the sole piece of writing that survives in the ancient language, the Pyramid Texts. Now I've begun trying to decipher and deduce the science itself. The educated caveman would have known the nature of gravity, sizes of the earth and moon, orbits (probably non-mathematically), and might have had a wildly inaccurate idea of the speed of light. The typical caveman would maker fewer false statements about nature than the average college graduate. Of course they knew a great deal more than this as most of their knowledge concerned botany, zoology etc. I'm guessing at this point that the typical caveman was more intelligent as well. It is probable that it was the women who were primarily the scientists. I suppose people now are so superstitious and set in their thinking that they can't even entertain such ideas. We had backward and superstitious ancestors and nothing anyone can say and no amount of evidence will overturn it. This is simply such a massive reevaluation that it will require decades and demographic changes before it is fully accepted.

I'm not competent to judge your theory but find it interesting that I've needed to refer to the Koran a few times in my work. I believe there is a lot of information about ancient science in it if it can be sorted out.

We are on a collision course with reality caused by greed and superstition. We try to remedy the effects of excessive waste by wasting ever more and creating an accounting system that perverts reality itself. There's no way off but through some new invention such as fusion power or a new direction but there are too many beholden to the status quo for this to be a viable option. There are several severe tests coming in the next decades but we might not survive to even the first if we don't put our house in order.

Perhaps an expansion on the points would be beneficial. Modern science has an exceedingly simple metaphysic. Observation> hypothesis> experiment> conclusion. This is, of course all tied together with the logic and definitions that underlie it and its math. Most of the metaphysics can be stated in a few simple paragraphs. But people lose sight of this and the history of science which is essentially the history of the experiments so they don't understand the true nature of either science or the results. Most people mistake the technology generated by experimentation with science. People believe that it's knowledge that underlies science when the only reality is the metaphysics and the accumulated results of experiments. However, I have learned that this is not the only kind of science. I suppose everyone who's educated has a sort of sense that we've lost something or that something important came before us and this may it. We suspect there's a missing puzzle piece because of evisdence such as artefacts and the great pyramids which we hardly comprehend. We know on a visceral level that something must be missing. The ancient science was far more complex than ours. Where ours is observation and experiment based the ancient science was observation and logically based. This means they had to develop a massive metaphysics to understand nature. This all occured rather naturally in all probability because language was natural and incorporated science. It was composed of sounds from nature and the logic required to make communication possible and to rhyme with nature. Few words were necessary because meaning didn't come directly from the words but from their order like computer code. Word meanings, unlike in modern languages where words take their meaning from context, was very static but could be modified by phrases and sentences. As new learning occured the new concept became not a word per se but a "natural phenomenon" which was given human characteristics and incorporated into the language. This is invisible to us because we speak an entirely different language which can be deconstructed and interpreted. Ancient language loses its meaning when taken apart. We mistranslate "natural phenomena" as "gods". It appears that the ancient science was extremely advanced. Of course by our standards a lot of the cutting edge material was speculative but the same thing is occuring in science now with thought experiments and mathmatical justification for new cosmological concepts. I don't believe the old science was superior except where there is no modern lab equipment and tomes of previous experimentation. Where the modern "bible" is the "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" which contains tables and formulae theiur "bible" was the book of thot which contained the metaphysics of their science. I think this fragmentation is natural and caused by the simplicity of our science. It might not have to be such if people were trained in the metaphysics and experimental results but very few are. So we get a hodge podge of information as well as the inability to distinguish bad science from good science. Facts and data don't fit into an overall picture because of both extensive specialization and the comingling of reality with the flavor of the day. People are divorced from nature because they don't understand the science that discloses it and our machines work to remove nature from our lives. If it's cold we turn on the heater in the car. If there's no road to where we want to be then one is built. I don't believe any sort of religion existed before 2000 BC. Religion arose with the advent of modern language and was largely an attempt to preserve the ancient metaphysics. Today religion can give many people comfort but it does a less good job of uncovering nature or the nature of being human. Of course there are vast differences between the intent of religion and the modern day version. Modern religion is a sort of fixed point that is continually evolving. I believe we can't understand the true nature of humanity until we understand the nature of the ancients. I doubt we can invent artificial intelligence until we invent machine intelligence. Machine intelligence will not use modern language or any language where the meaning can be deconstructed. In order to pass Turing's test we'll simply need a translator for a thinking machine. The implications of all this are far ranging. I might not have even scratched the surface since nothing remains unchanged and even the concept of educated cavemen becomes a reality. We have an improper perspective of human history and science. It has made us blind to countless realities (or at least possibilities).

I found this thread on a search. I hope people don't mind bringing back old threads here (I'm still really a newbie). I think I've stumbled on the answer. It's the metaphysics of modern science that has caused the fragmentation. I don't mean the fragmentation of knowledge as that is natural due to the remarkable quantity of knowledge and the "necessity" for specialization. It's the fragmentation of the knowledge itself which is rarely understood by anyone because people mistake technology for science and for knowledge. Technology is merely the ability to remove something from the lab and does not connote any knowledge. All human knowledge is therefore either incorrect as being overgeneral or is true in light of the metaphysics. Nothing we learn can legitimately be extrapolated, except through technology, to the real world or a real world way to understand existence. We are victims of our great success as surely as the ancient metaphysics failed. Ancient science was real world science. While the technology was usually simple the metaphysics are extraordinarily complex. Rather than a mere process based on observation like modern science there was extraordinary logic to know how to apply observation to knowledge. This metaphysics appears to have been language itself and when human knowledge exploded with the advent of writing the language became too complex. The metaphysics was lost and it is remembered as the story of the tower of babel. The great world religions are mostly an attempt to preserve the old metaphysics. Confusion still reigns.

I should think "better" would apply to the nature of a fish. Since fish are prey they need to see any movement around them. The location of the eyes on the side of the head and their ability to take in a wide and deep panorama allows a fish rapid response to attack from nearly any direction.

Sad to say that it is not in the least a bold statement. Indeed, I've been the world's leading expert on the literal meaning of the Pyramid Texts almost from the day I began studying them. The simple fact is that almost no researchers at all have ever even considered that this work might have a literal meaning. It's just like they found the world's first book and never even bothered to read it. It wasn't found until long after the language was translated and the finder (Masperro) was familiar with a later book that is derived from it. This is the book of the dead and it is obviously a book of magic and obviously derived from it so it wasn't noticed that the PT was distinct, it is ritual and it is not magic nor religion. It simply is written in an older form of the language where meaning is determined by context like computer code. There are two or three other people who take the PT literally and I've studied their work. While some is quite insightful and all of them are very scientific, I personally don't believe the meaning they found actually exists as they interpret it. Their interpretations are mostly wrong. This isn't so much to say that I discount their conclusions so much that I find them unsupportable linguistically, scientifically, and (probably) culturally. No one to my knowledge claims to basically understand most author intent other than myself. Egyptologists consider this work something akin to gobblety gook that can't be understood but still use it to try to understand the people. These people come off looking like bumpkins because you can't ascribe a deep seated belief in illogical and contradictory religious beliefs as well as superstitious beliefs in magic and incantation in anyone and have them look sophisticated. The PT does have a consistent and literal meaning and it was I who found it. I have used this meaning to uncover the physical facts and the physical facts to aid in understanding the PT. The work is actually quite simple or I'd have never cracked it. The bulk of the real work to solve this was really done by google. I understand that most people are very concerned with "credentials" and the like. Suffice to say I normally describe myself as a disabled ditch digger. Of course, like everything, it's more complicated than this. I personally don't believe it matters where ideas come from; they are either supportable or they are not. I've always considered myself a "generalist". There is another term for what I mean that actually pre-dates my term and this is "nexialist" that I've discovered only very recently (with a little help from a friend); http://www.nexial.org/nexialism.htm This is similar to what I mean by "generalism". I believe that widespread specialization is one of the greatest threats to the human race. http://www.sciencefo.../page__st__2680 These would have been spectacular in their day. This site is probably the most disturbed by man site on the face of the planet and has been disturbed for at least 6000 years probably. There was water and in a desert water is life. In all probability their word for "life" was a representation of the geyser we call an "ankh". Most people don't realize that the builders invented the calender and that these structures are oriented perfectly N/ S so that they will work as a timepiece and a calender. Each side is indented a few inches so on the equinox the light will flash across the side as the sun sets. On the solstice the shadows of the corners of the three Giza pyramids form a wide straight line at sunset. http://www.catchpenny.org/concave.html Bronze was of critical importance to their ability to construct these.

...Just a story... When I was your age or just a little older I developed a truly beautiful 58 step proof that anything divided by zero equals infinity. I showed it to all my teachers and anyone I could and they mostly just shrugged. While checking it for about the 100th time I found the 45th step was a very subtle assumption of the conclusion so the proof meant nothing. People don't think about underpinnings and definitions of our ideas nearly enough so lose sight of what the results really mean and most of us get worse with age. Never lose your doubt. Try to keep as broad a perspective as possible.