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by ibisum 5349 days ago
I would have thought quoting SZUKALSKI alone would have set that off, but okay .. not that I'm a huge fan of Zermatism (a subject I would have thought at least a few hackernews visitors might be familiar with) but the ideas of SZUKALSKI are intriguing from the perspective of being able to look outside the box. There is scientific analytical thought, and then there is artistic motive desire, and if you apply both to the same subject you often get surprising results.

In my opinion, the idea of Protong-as-a-warning has quite a bit of validity, if only intelligent minds weren't so easily dissuaded from looking outside their own little boxes now and then ...
1 comments
dalke 5348 days ago
"if you apply both to the same subject"

Where's the scientific thought?

If the world was covered with an ocean any time soon (call it the last million years so we can include every human culture) then there would be obvious physical traces, and salt-intolerant species, including plants, would have died.

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ibisum 5348 days ago
The oceans move, was his point. I would investigate the science, but the science-fiction of a language called Protong is far more intriguing and worthwhile a pursuit. While I will always respect the mainstream desire to discern the truth, a fiction about Easter Island may be just as valid.
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dalke 5348 days ago
Whenever I see "may" I have to remember that it's essentially meaningless, and your text is equally valid changing it to "may not", as in "a fiction about Easter Island may not be just as valid."

First you say "apply both to the same subject" and now you say that's fiction may be "just as valid."

Szukalski's fiction is 30 volumes of text. You pick out that "the oceans move"? (By which you mean "cover the Earth", not continental drift or tides.) What about that human culture comes from a people on Easter Island, after Noah's flood? How is that fiction at all valid? Races derive from crossbreeding of species, again, after the flood? How is that at all valid?

If it's hard to pick the valid fiction from the invalid, then what's the point? Isn't it like looking up the date by randomly picking a day from this year's calendar?

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