misterd on 05 December 2007
| Astrodust said: @misterd You kind of have a bad attitude. Anyways there is no need to get upset over the Mayan predictions because they can be interpreted in more than one way. Are you denying the 4 points I made in the opening post? All I am saying is that 2012 is a significant year. Read it again. The Mayans believed in a transition period in 2012. For some people this is enough and will provide a catalyst to change for the better. Like the person on the mountaintop that stares out and better understands himself. If 2012 is the end of the world that is okay too cause maybe we were not meant to live forever. At least living in a way that hurts one another so much. |
Actually I have (not "kind of") a scientific attitude. All this is - to use a phrase you like - cherry picked* data without any context to it. As for 2012 being a significant year... on what basis? Every year ends up being significant in some way to someone. To just say "it's significant" is useless unless you can explain how. The solar system entering some new region of the galaxy (something we do daily - we are moving along a pretty good clip, after all) is not expected to have any substantial impact on a human level. And without any data as to the sucess of the Mayan's predictions along these lines (not the calenedar, but of "significant changes" happening), there's no reason to give the prediction any weight. Also, the Mayan prediction for 12/21/12 is based on a religious belief about the length of creation, not on any astronomical phenomenon, so this correlation does appear to be coincidence retroactively interpreted as prediction. Historically there have been people who have believed any number of dates were "significant" and would bring great change. Usually they have been wrong, and the ones who weren't are few enough in number to be statistically insignificant (again, enough people pick enough years, someone will be right that something of some sort will happen). In the end, we all have two choices - to sit around and wait for something momentous to bring about change, or to get off our asses and do it ourselves. Historically, the later has more success than the former. *Cherry picked is an accurate colloquialism that describes the data. People using it in the correct context are not, by an large, using it to appear smart - they are using it to accurately convey an important concept. On the other hand, in my experience those who pull out the "you're only using those words to sound smart" card tend to do so because they are insecure about their own intellectual prowess. In either case, your critique of the term was a non-sequitor that did nothing to answer the criticism about the predictions.
