I disagree strongly with you about who is better, if there are artificial pyramids on Mars.
If you have received sufficient evidence to be pretty certain, you are acting rational on rejecting the notion of pyramids on Mars up to the point (and only up to there) you receive more convincing evidence to the fact that there are pyramids on Mars. In that case you should a) gather more evidence and decide which point is correct b) switch pretty immediately in case there really are pyramids.
In particular I claim you have basically zero evidence against martian pyramids except the general heuristic of occam’s razor.
Also, abstaining from making public your (uninformed) opinion on martian pyramids would reduce you credibility loss in case there are any.
Finally, science will not just turn to “wrong” just because there are martian pyramids,
most of it still stands as it is.
I was probably reading too much into the example, assuming that “pyramids on mars” was supposed to stand for more anti-scientific things like human faces on mars, hieroglyphic inscriptions on Mars, etc.
Pyramids or canals on Mars would be OK, as long as they’re built by Martians. That would even be exciting. My sense is that the Weekly World News wouldn’t run a story on anything on Mars unless it connected with ancient Earth civilizations. Or Batboy.
BTW, there are some natural pyramids on Earth. Very small ones, inside caves, as crystals.
I disagree strongly with you about who is better, if there are artificial pyramids on Mars.
If you have received sufficient evidence to be pretty certain, you are acting rational on rejecting the notion of pyramids on Mars up to the point (and only up to there) you receive more convincing evidence to the fact that there are pyramids on Mars. In that case you should a) gather more evidence and decide which point is correct b) switch pretty immediately in case there really are pyramids.
In particular I claim you have basically zero evidence against martian pyramids except the general heuristic of occam’s razor.
Also, abstaining from making public your (uninformed) opinion on martian pyramids would reduce you credibility loss in case there are any.
Finally, science will not just turn to “wrong” just because there are martian pyramids, most of it still stands as it is.
I was probably reading too much into the example, assuming that “pyramids on mars” was supposed to stand for more anti-scientific things like human faces on mars, hieroglyphic inscriptions on Mars, etc.
Pyramids or canals on Mars would be OK, as long as they’re built by Martians. That would even be exciting. My sense is that the Weekly World News wouldn’t run a story on anything on Mars unless it connected with ancient Earth civilizations. Or Batboy.
BTW, there are some natural pyramids on Earth. Very small ones, inside caves, as crystals.