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Common sense used to dictate that the Earth was flat, and that the universe revolved around it. Common sense is also incredibly biased, and should never be used for anything other than the most basic of basic inferences in a discussion like this. Furthermore, common sense would dictate that "50 years ago [they] had the same data to work with. And the folks a century before that did too. And the folks a century before that." is a blatant load of ********** since it implies that no one has discovered any new information about anything in the relevant fields in the last 50/150/250 years, which we all, even you, know to be false. You're basically saying "Experts aren't to be trusted because archeology stopped excavating and studying the ruins of the Native American societies back in the 1700s." Read what you type, before you post it please.



So, your opinion that "Europe was the most advanced" and your refusal to acknowledge that non-european cultures that were as advanced as Europe, even if not by Europe's definition of advanced, did not exist, does not stem from the obvious the bias of Western Civilization believing it to be the case and thus neglecting the records of non-european cultures and their own advancements? You're getting pretty contradictory and self-defeating at this point, gbaji. It's no fun to watch you defeat your own arguments before anyone else gets a chance to

ITT: Gbaji admits that his knowledge of history is 150+ years out of date.

No. The experts of that time did. And the people assumed they were right because they were the experts and were supposed to know such things. Not much has changed in human society since then unfortunately.


So, I take it that you don’t consider Eratosthenes to have been an ‘expert.’

You're not taking into account time. It's easy to point to those in the past who were right about something, and those who were wrong. And we can say with our 20/20 hindsight that those who were right were the real experts and those who were wrong were just purveyors of falsehood (or superstition, or religious dogma, or whatever you prefer). The real question is about who the people at a given time consider to be the experts at that same time.

Most people in the world at that time (and for quite some time afterwards in fact) believed those who told them the earth was flat and/or that the sun revolved around the earth. So to those people, they were the "experts", and the guys like Eratosthenes were nuts who didn't know what they were talking about (if they knew about them at all).

The point I was trying to make is that we really haven't advanced much in terms of how we decide who are the experts of today. We still basically accept the word of those who tell us what we want to believe, or what is the most popular opinion. No different than how people made that determination back then. It's a mistake to assume that because we're alive right now that we're incapable of attributing expert status to those who are wrong. I'm quite certain that the folks who steadfastly believed the earth was flat were just as sure of what their "experts" had told them as anyone doing the same thing today.


That doesn't mean that all experts should be ignored. That's not the point. I'm saying that you should not assume that what someone is telling you is right simply because a bunch of other people tell you that you should believe in that someone. You should look at what the person is saying and make up your own mind. Preferably, you should endeavor to learn something about the subject so you can make your own assessment. Or at the very least, don't assume that some countering position must be wrong simply because it doesn't match that of those you call experts. If your only counter to what someone is arguing is to point at someone else and say "but he says you're wrong", then *you* don't really know which is right and which is wrong at all. You've just picked someone to believe is correct. It's all about methodology.

Gbaji thought processes?

I am the Norm. -> That is different from me. -> That is abnormal. -> That is wrong. -> That is inferior.

You can, and maybe should, put wholey in the last four phrases.

Edited, Feb 3rd 2012 3:40am by Aripyanfar

And question marks.

Which is why the margin of range of estimates of European population at that time period is 60% of the maximum estimate. Oh wait! It isn't. That's the American population at that time.

You're playing an all-or-nothing game here. I'm talking about relative accuracy of records. Trying to refute that by arguing that records weren't perfect nicely avoids the point, but is also somewhat irrelevant. We have a vastly better idea of the actual population levels in Europe during the time in question than we do about the population in America. Period. You're over focusing on things and missing the bigger picture here.



You are though. You associate lauding the accomplishments of non-western civilizations with being non-bigoted. Similarly, you associate failure to do so as bigotry. You don't want to be labeled a bigot, so you adopt the politically correct version of history. It makes you feel better and you join in those who coerced you to adopt that rather irrational position in harassing and attacking anyone who disagrees with your adopted position.

I don't blame you. It's the social pressure of the day. Most people are never able to rise above such things. It's a harder road to walk. It's much easier to just comply with those social pressures and fit in.




Um... No you didn't. You pointed to a handful of accomplishments which are not particularly noteworthy in an historical sense and then praised them as though they were special in this case. Then you ignored a whole list of accomplishments they were not even close to being able to achieve as meaningless. When I said that they were not meaningless, you insisted that I was proceeding from a Eurocentric point of view. Except that it was those additional accomplishments that allowed those unadvanced Europeans to cross the oceans and so impress the Aztecs that they thought they were gods and were willing to do pretty much anything for them.


You have established no objective means to actually measure the relative advancement of a civilization, yet you continue to insist that the Aztecs were advanced. Why?



And better roads. And better communication. And better trade. And better writing. And better math. And better construction. And better ship building. And better textiles. And better chemical knowledge. And better scientific knowledge. And they didn't practice human sacrifice. And they didn't still put on death games for the amusement of their citizens.


Seriously? I mean, the Europeans of that day were far from perfect, but they were head and shoulders ahead of the Aztecs in every way measurable.



I think I'm looking at a far bigger portion of the picture than you are. You're focusing on the size of one city and some good farming techniques for the area they were in and ignoring every other thing.

That's an incredibly unfair comparison to make though. We're not discussing who discovered what, but what discoveries (or advancements if you will) were known and used by the cultures in question. One of the reasons why the old world was more advanced was because of the interaction of many more cultures. This meant that advancements in one, spread to another, which might combine that idea with one from yet another to make something new, then that would spread back, etc. This sort of process was very much slower in America.

Um... And the Aztec didn't invent that stuff. They inherited it from the folks in the area before them, who got it from those before them. We could argue that the Mayans did develop a lot of that stuff and the Aztecs of the day simply learned it from them through time (and not a lot of innovation since then). I already acknowledged that the Mayans were pretty good at developing stuff. But they had died off as a culture long before the Aztecs of Cortez's day gained power in that region.



That's questionable really.



So their understanding was more accurate than a calendar, but their calendar wasn't more so. What? Europeans have had an understanding of the time between solstices and the fact that this changed over time (ie: leap years) for thousands of years. This is not some knowledge that was unique to the Aztecs (or the Mayans). Pretty much everyone knew this. And pretty much everyone's calendars ignored it because it was easier to write a calendar that contained a consistent and regular number of days.



Lol. What? Your statement doesn't even make sense. Stellar body means a lot of things. There's some evidence to suggest that they may have been able to detect that Orion wasn't a single point of light, but a collection of smaller ones. Whether that's true or just speculation after the fact is still in doubt. Absent a telescope, it would be hard to make that observation. So either they did develop telescopes or they somehow managed to detect this without one, or modern historians are completely misinterpreting the data.



Yeah. Because the Aztecs were sailing ships thousands of miles away and conducting trade with them. You do recall *why* Columbus took his journey in the first place, right? It was because the Spanish were getting cut out of the trade routes to China and the Far East and figured they'd sail West and get there that way and make tons of money with their secret route.

Comparing that with a trade system not much more advanced than that used in ancient Mesopotamia is kind of absurd.



We're talking about advancement though. You're cherry picking examples. You honestly don't think that Madrid in 1500 was an example of greater technological advancement than anything the Aztecs had at the time?



And yet, somehow they managed to make gunpowder. You sure you're not getting caught up on the terms? Let's not forget that the Europeans were the last in the old world to learn to make gunpowder, and they'd been making it for 2-3 hundred years before showing up in America.



This is just plain false. You're acting like there wasn't massive trade going on between Europe, Asia, and all points in between for centuries before Columbus took his voyage.




Except with regard to applied physics of course. Europeans were vastly more advanced in terms of engineering. Look, I know that you've been told that there's no real difference between a culture that can build standing stone structures like pyramids and one that can make use of domes, arches, flying buttresses and other techniques to make structures just as tall but with a fraction as much stone, but it's just not true. The reality is that those differences represent a couple thousand years of technological advancement. Lots of folks in history figured out how to cut large stones and pile them on top of each other. Some even developed this to make really large and evenly placed piles. But that only requires the most basic aspects of physics and engineering to do.



Um... Sure. I said that the Europeans were not perfect. However, they didn't include human sacrifice as part of their required worships. That they punished criminals and enemies with brutal means is a completely different story (and the Aztecs did as well). That you would equate them is frankly desperation on your part.

And I think it is telling. If you're trying to fall back on something other than technology to conclude that the Aztecs were an advanced people, then I think it's fair to examine those other things (like culture). And that includes their religious practices.



Yes. Both killed their enemies. Sometimes in deliberately brutal and public ways so as to scare others. But the Aztecs *also* practiced human sacrifice. And they also held death games for public entertainment. Not just as a form of capital punishment but because it was part of their culture to kill their own people as a means of appeasement to various gods. That is a practice that is "old" and most cultures grew out of over time. You'll have a hard time convincing anyone that it's a sign of advancement.

Edited, Feb 3rd 2012 6:21pm by gbaji

Maybe gbaji can't get around the fact that the South Americans were often running around mostly nude in hot, humid and drenchingly wet rainforests that were prone to fungus and mildew? Not that the Americans of the Andes were running around mostly nude.

I wish he would read or watch "Guns, germs and steel" already. And stop thinking everything is All Or Nothing. Take one list of criteria, and one civilisation is more advanced over another. Take another list of criteria and the second civilisation is more advanced than the first.

Edited, Feb 4th 2012 3:09am by Aripyanfar

That was the intent of my post. No one mentioned jealousy, but depending on how you're measuring "hard wired", then that makes a difference. You can't be "hard wired" to be in a poly relationship if you become jealous of one of your partners being with someone else.

Yes, you can control jealousy, but if you're truly "hard wired", then that jealousy should theoretically never occur. That's like saying that you're "hard wired" as one sexuality, but constantly fights feelings of another sexuality.



Because it's a natural feeling. You don't have to have fear of losing someone in order to feel jealousy in a poly relationship. If your S.O. takes you to McDonalds and do $1 Red Box rentals, but takes other people out to expensive dinners and world wide trips, it would be perfectly natural to express jealousy in that situation. In that situation, that jealousy wouldn't be from fear of losing a partner.



Read above.

Not only that, it's as I said before, if you prescribe to the concept of "true love", then your theory isn't accurate. You may be cool with your "side pieces" being intimate with other people, but the second you experience "true love" with someone, you will no longer be "cool" with that individual being intimate with someone else. Doing so contradicts the concept of "true love".



That's what I do, but that's only a viable option when there isn't any "true love".



Nope, I don't mean "one soul mate" I personally believe that there are multiple soul mates out there. I define a "soul mate" simply as someone who has a deep connection with you. I was referring "true love" to the highest form of love that you can have with a person. With that form of love, you would want to be with that individual until you die. You are willing to sacrifice your life, job and/or relationship in order to make that individual happy. When you do that, you're not happy that s/he's with someone else, you're happy that your S.O. is happy. Under your poly theory, you wouldn't go that far because you would have a plethora of people to replace that S.O.



If we're referring to the same concept, then I don't disagree.Just today and yesterday, I felt relieved that one of my friends with benefits developed strong feelings with someone else. My reasoning was a fear of her developing feelings for me and her getting hurt. Even though her relationship is "complicated" and she's technically single, I'm using this opportunity to step away and cheer on her relationship.

I don't know you, so I wont judge your situation, but generally speaking, that sounds like loving two people vs having "true love" with two different people. My definition is described above. If a person has true love with two different people, according to my definition, it would theoretically be impossible to choose one over the other.

In other words, take the feeling of a person wiling to give up everything for their S.O. Now add an additional person with the same S.O. Giving up everything would include giving up the S.O that you would give up everything to have, which includes the person that you're keeping. The only logical response would be the inability to choose either.