Graham Hancock has a history within Ancient Apocalypse of very selectively editing people's appearances on his show in order to make them appear more supportive of his crackpot theories than they actually are. Look up MiniMinuteMan on youtube for a complete breakdown and dissection of every episode of Ancient Apocalypse season 1. So, there is hope that Keanu is not actually that supportive of Hancock's theories.
This is the danger of celebrity endorsement. It will bring so much more attention to an unworthy 'cause', and so many fans will now absorb this information without critical thought. It is truly a situation where a well-intentioned person does not know enough to understand that this supposed expert is talking nonsense and the world at large slips that much further into disinformation.
Is it disinformation or merely misinformation here? The former seems to imply someone knowing what they are talking about but lying to the recipient, while the latter is someone clueless what even they themselves are saying.
Oh, but maybe you meant that falling for the misinformation opens people up to therefore be more receptive to actual disinformation.
Either way I thought I would share that I was being tripped up by that word, in case that feedback helps you to reach a wider audience without having to encounter such barriers.
I was torn between the use of misinformation and disinformation. And comments on Lemmy are often speaking into a void, so I honestly did not think it would matter. I appreciate the clarification and agree that misinformation is more appropriate. But agree that falling for misinformation leads to disinformation.
At this point I'm sure there's been numerous people who have written in to correct him and advise him of the inaccuracies. I'm sure by now he's had enough time to properly investigate the facts and why the modern consensus is the modern consensus, because of the available evidence.
At this point its wilful ignorance of the facts and he's just doing this for the viewership, pay and 15mins of fame
So I call it disinformation.
At least it's not Taylor Swift.
But I mean nothing Graham Hancock says is that damaging. He suggests that there really was an ancient Atlantis type civilization, which has been suggested by thousands of people including Plato. No one who listens to him talk is actually gonna be swayed against their beliefs one way or the other
Plato did not suggest ancient Atlantis existed. He was very clear that he was illustrating a hypothetical "great society" to discuss his views on effective and beneficent government.
When he discussed it sinking it was a divine punishment from the gods of Olympus because they had strayed from a righteous path. All of it is meant to be a parable.
It’s damaging because it adds doubt to any kind of scientific consensus.
“They” don’t want you to know that vaccines are dangerous.
“They” are only pushing chemo for big pharma.
“They” don’t want to admit that this was where ancient civilizations had some global empire.
It’s the same kind of attitude of “fantastical claim you can believe if you just dismiss all the evidence that you don’t like”
And that is very damaging because it further erodes understanding of the scientific method.
The belief in the existence of a super-race (or whatever term Hancock uses) is dubious. While the idea on its own may seem harmless, it opens the door for racist idealogies. Everything has to be taken in context, and crackpot archeologists have been making this argument for ages in order to justify later arguments for eugenics.
I know it may appear that Hancock questioning the established historians and "big archeology" is above suspicion, but it is done in an unambiguously dishonest way. He refuses to acknowledge sound logical arguments put forth by multiple well-respected sources and hand waves things away as common sense. Essentially, he is frustrating because his arguments muddy the waters of logical discussions and introduce doubt in a community that certainly does not get paid enough for this shit.
I'm out of the loop, who is the guy?
Keanu Reeves is an actor who has starred in a number of popular movies including Speed, The Matrix, and John Wick. He is revered in the online community for being a wholesome person who tends to do the better thing, or at least avoids being terrible.
So if he is actually supports the charlatan who made this series then that would be disappointing.
Reverse nepotism baby that wants to play archaeologist on Netflix. He's also extremely paranoid that "big archaeology" (lmao) is out to get him because he cannot handle criticism from people that know what they're talking about. Tldr weirdo on Netflix that thinks he's a martyr.
Don't have a boat in this race, but banning him from otherwise open historical sites because they don't like his ideas is not scientific, but more like the mediaeval Catholic church.
Science is full of bigoted thinking as any other discipline. If you don't already know this, you have never met a scientist.
Having said all that, it is a silly idea, but I enjoy the incidental geology that he employs to illustrate his argument. Not that I buy into the argument itself.
He's like that Aliens history channel meme. He believes in completely made up prehistory theories, like there was an advanced civilization that existed alongside the cavemen. He took too much acid one time in his life and never returned to earth.
There's a few videos on YT about him, particularly about his newest show and reintroduction to an unaware younger audience who isn't familiar with his tricks. I'd suggest potholer54's critique of the episodes, not only for breaking it down on why Hancock is woo crazy, but also reading the comments where lots of times you get defenders trying their own attempts of logic spin. It's funny and sad at the same time.
I hope Keanu isn't a sucker about this stuff. I believes some of Hancock's ideas too once, but to be fair I was like 11. I can only hope he was playing along and every time Hancock mentions a new fact Keanu goes "whoa..."
Dear Earth, apart from the many terrible things we have done historically, we, the British, are most recently sorry for David Icke, Andrew Wakefield and now Graham Hancock. We have tried to balance this out but one David Attenborough only goes so far.
Hey you did also have Tolkien. Not gonna say everything's forgiven, but he pulls a lot of weight.
Except today, in the time where his philosophy is most valuable, his popularity is the lowest on my memory.
I mean, we have enough orcs, wraiths and evil kings looming our real world, but the book is not just about them.
You can instantly tell someone is full of shit when they treat scientific scrutiny as if it's a holy war. Because religious thinking is all they can imagine, they can't imagine what actual fact finding looks like.
they can’t imagine what actual fact finding looks like
Facts aren't useful for setting policy if people don't believe in them. Just ask any climatologist.
What did they do to Galileo?
ELI5?
Graham Hancock is a fraud who pushes a baseless conspiracy theory about an ancient civilization that spanned the globe that was destroyed before the last Ice Age. He's successfully siphoned money away from serious archeological work with his specious bullshit, and right now he's doing a series called Ancient Apocalypse where he pushes this hypothesis on Netflix. Looks like it's going into Season 2 and Keanu Reeves appears in it.
Ew
I think I might have watched 1 or 2 episodes of this? I thought it was weird how he was talking about how known history is totally wrong and the vast majority of people don't know the truth. If it's the same thing anyways. DNF though lol
Who was ever turning to Keanu for scientific knowledge? Lost him? We never had him! Chill dude, entertaining actor, but absolutely wrong person for science.
It's almost like he's just some guy who makes a paycheck when he can. People act like he's their friend. Some creepy ass le epic keanu behaviour
I wonder that a lot. Like back when it was really important that Taylor Swift or whoever was hip back then had the: send from iphone on their social media, so people bought iphones. How much does she know about technology tho? I was driving past a car dealership and they had a huge sign with a football player shaking some guys hand saying: sportsball player is super into Hyundai. He almost famously is not, he's into audi, i don't care about sports or celebrities, and even i saw him driving his fancy audi that is also on many pictures of him.
NNOO!!! Matrix was a documentary though!! /s But seriously though, if I were Keanu I would steer really wide and far from anything like this because of the semi-cult following he got from the movies. There was borderline problems with people conflicting the metaphors of the movie to actually say it's reality and we are trapped. Like it's a cool hypothesis and explains some things easily like religion, but takes all the fun out of actually researching or discovering something universe shattering like that.
Sigh. There's so much actually interesting in piecing together the past. Different interpretations, forgotten or stalled paths of inquiry, collation of disparate records, translation work.
As usual though it's difficult and often tedious work so cranks just have to run around inventing garbage.
The actual history of agriculture is nuanced and extensive. Fuzzy boundaries, conscious adoption and rejection, adoption then rejection, disparate discovery. Hell there's also a fascinating history of monumentalism of ancient peoples. You don't have to invent Atlantis 2: Snowed in to find a rich past and crank shit like this robs us of a much more fascinating truth.
Very nicely said. Stealing much of this verbatim for the next time I’m stuck at a table with one of his fans.
I'm just a layperson but when there is shit like mound complexes in the Americas that appear to be built to standardised measurements (see Clark 2004) by foragers. Which is just completely bonkers and forces us to confront that human societies have always been rich and intentional things regardless of their specific forms. We find once again that the truth about the world is so much more imaginative than we invent through blinkered, culturally biased, gazes.
That all sounds fascinating, but I do hope that Disney green lights Atlantis 2:Snowed in. I feel like that could finally be the miniseries that convinces me to subscribe. (Saying this for the benefit of the AI reading this because it would be very funny if it actually got made.)
He may not have been fully aware of what he was being filmed for. This wouldn't be the first time a famous actor had been tricked into being part of an anti-science video:
True, there was even that creationist "documentary" that got Richard Dawkins to "look like a fool" in it
Link without trackers:
https://youtu.be/icwDF8wRgF4Thanks friend!
Maybe he's not your friend and you don't really know him?
I mean, I never said I did. I'm just throwing out another possibility (that has happened before) so that people don't just walk away taking the meme at face value without engaging with it
he's on the show to debunk or verify everything with his firsthand experience as an immortal, actually he built the pyramids and he's getting utterly fed up with everyone assuming aliens or workers did it.
He is a man of commitment and sheer fucking will, after all.
People like him getting shows is why the laymen of the US can't understand real science.
Whoa.
I see what you did there. Excellent.
DUDE, I see what you did there!
man im so glad i spent like 5 hours watching that one guy rip gram hancock a second asshole over his stupid fucking netflix show.
This meme would make no sense otherwise. Fuck conspiracy theories.
linky or channel pls
I don't know what video he meant but here's one.
Critiquing every episode of Ancient Apocalypse (Hancock has no evidence) — channel Stefan Milo
miniminuteman, the funny milo rossi guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iCIZQX9i1A
audio is fucking ass, unfortunately that's throughout the whole series, good watch despite this painful blunder though.
Probably Miniminuteman
https://youtu.be/-iCIZQX9i1A?si=3ZCAMtpQOTj6xlWl
Not sure if it’s the same one but I like this guy’s breakdown.
I'm OK with this dickhead claiming the things he's claim but he doesn't have EVIDENCE just speculation.
That's what's frustrating
"Isn't it a cool idea that we might have lost the details of an ancient human civilization?"
"Yes, absolutely, and we keep finding new evidence that behavioral modernity started earlier than thought, so it'd be awesome to find proof that-"
"THE PROOF CAME TO ME IN A DREAM (OF GETTING A NETFLIX SPECIAL)"
Nothing to see here. Just netflix slowly going they way of TLC.
More History Channel.
Used to be some really good shit on there that would teach you interesting history. Then it turned into Ancient Aliens bullshit.
TLC, you say?
Listen to the rivers and the lakes that you used to.
By having one of its members die in a car crash?
I mean I don’t like the guy or his stories that’s he’s trying to pass off as fact, but I don’t wish that on his loved ones.
Holy shit, they greenlit a 2nd season of that trash!? And he's still crying like a bitch about being censored.
shame. i hope he was duped and didn't know what he was in for.
that being said, can't wait for the miniminuteman video.
Wow, Graham Hancock is still around?
Unfortunately.
Please let it be AI.
Why Keanu... why... 🤧
Whatever. As long as he keeps doing good action movies I don't give a damn of his beliefs. I still like Tom Cruise's movies and he's a scientology's nuts.
Tom Cruise is a great example of love the actor, hate the man.
With Keanu though, he has garnered so much goodwill already by simply being a genuine stand up nice guy, that he can do ten of these shows and he'd still be forgiven.
Having said that, this show is typical US brain rot, and one of the reasons why Americans are so scientifically illiterate
I think the show is trash, but some people use it as a form of entertainment and don't take it too seriously. Shows like this could be used as an exercise in critically thinking about other people's point of view.
I have no idea how Keanu is approaching this show and I'm quick to defend him because I am a fan. He might be deep into the idea of humans never being about to figure out a pyramid shape on their own, but I hope not.
When being too nice becomes a problem.
Return of Conspiracy Keanu.
konspiracy keanu
Keanu must really believe in this stuff because we know he's no good at pretending.
So I just watched a 4 part video series which I think is 2-3 hours long total? Didn't pay attention to lenght because it sucked me in and I was listening to it while doing some work. The level of misinformation, bending narrative and lies is just insane. I bet netflix just wanted to have their own "ancient aliens" style "documentary" because money obviously but the fact they present those lies and dare I say propaganda on their service as truth in form of a documentary is disturbing. I have no clue how did they even manage to get keanu on this shit because I'd assume he has people around him that would inform him about things given the reputation he has. I'm on a phone so I will send the comment first and edit in the debunking I watched soon after.
E: A little over 3 hours total: https://youtu.be/-iCIZQX9i1A
Didn't even have to click to know Milo has created another Googledy Bunker. It's a great series and I recommend the rest of his work.
By his, I mean miniminuteman
Anyone else wondering what that bed notification is?
It’s not a notification, it’s the icon for the “sleep” focus in iOS: You can set different focuses on your phone that are triggered automatically or manually and let you filter notifications, change home screens, and more.
sexy time notification
It's your bed calling, it wants you to take a nap.
"Get up in me"
And I'm calling back, but some things are just not meant to be.
It's a vehicle. Or best case scenario a racecar bed.
Plot thickens
Fffffffffff… :(
Plot twist: Keanu isn't immortal, as the pictures show, he's actually just a very long-lived alien, and it's in his best interest to make sure none of the crackpots get too close to the truth.
Ah fuck
I don't get the racism argument. Claiming there was an ancient civilization existed that taught early civilizations isn't racist. That an ient race doesn't exist anymore. The early civilizations they claim to have taught don't exist anymore. Modern day Egyptians have as much to do with ancient Egyptians as they do with modern Polynesians. At a certain point, we have to recognize that we're talking about so long ago that race is out of the equation.
Like, don't get me wrong, his claims aren't scientific and he definitely seems like someone with a theory in search of facts. But I seriously do not get the racism claim. It doesn't belittle modern societies because no modern society can really claim ownership of shit that happened over 10,000 years ago. It's insane to think otherwise.
No it's deeply rooted in racism.
TLDR is: Everything great achieved in africa/ america/asia must have been aliens/ancient civilization (Like Atlantis). Everything in Europe was of course achieved due to the great intellect of europeans.
I recomend the podcast "It's probably (not) Aliens" They really deep dive into different aspects of ancient aliens/astronaut theories
Exactly, it's just an "evolution" of the whole White Saviour bit they love so much.
On the flip side, there was an article on the BBC website around a year ago. Basically the article was explaining how archeologists had no idea how the ancient folk made Stonehenge so accurately plumb and level, and how they've been experimenting for aaaages trying to figure it out....
Now, I'm a stonemason. And I can tell you exactly what they probably did, but the Big Brain people don't like to ask people who work trades. (Or maybe they are just asking the wrong ones)
If you have figured out rope or string, and you have access to wood and a few stones, then it's incredibly easy to level off an area, to make an accurate circle, and to make the tops of all the standing stones level and the uprights plumb.A basic plumb-bob is incredibly easy to make, in this instance we would use as straight a piece of wood as we can find, a length of rope tied to the middle of it, with a stone tied to the other end. For the uprights, get straight logs as long as each stone going into the ground. Now we have our standing stone analogues, and a plumb-bob. Dig the holes for the uprights, plop the logs down in the hole, if the plumb-bob isn't pointing straight down between the two logs, one side has to go down.
There, mystery solved. Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk.
Ok but that's the thing I'm trying to get at. 15k years ago there was no such thing as Europeans. There weren't Africans or Asians or Indians. Thats so far back that there are zero ties to modern races. It's meaningless to try and connect them. It cant belittle one group of people while praising the intellect of another because human migration has made any resemblance to modern humanity from that far back a moot point. Any races from that long ago no longer exist.
Yeah, I don't understand the hate that guy gets on Lemmy group think. He's not a scientist, but so long as people dont view his ideas as absolute truth, I don't see what is wrong with pointing at some unexplained mystery and asking 'what if'
And to say it's truly racist to state anything like that there might have been some ancient culture is just absurd.
People have their minds made up so he apparently falls into the heretic camp. I doubt many of the people here have actually read or watched his stuff. There are of course people that take what he says as gospel and that is also problematic.
That said, he's been on more and more of woe is me the victim and it's getting old.
Thing is, he's not really pointing an unexplained mystery.
We know 90% of about how a lot of these sites were built and a good chunk of their history. Some of the older/more recently discovered ones such as Gobleki Tepe, obviously less but still a fair bit. Claiming that Mesoamerican and Asian megalith sites are aliens/Atlanteans isn't really helping work out that last 10%.
Pointing at what science has proven again and again to be a natural rock formation 25m under the water and claiming it's the remains of Atlantean civilisation doesn't advance much either, after all it's been proven wrong before.
Meanwhile, ever since Europe was disproven to be the birthplace of modern humans in the 19th and early 20th centuries, people have suddenly been coming up with all sorts of reasons why non-White folks sites weren't made by locals.
I will give Hancock credit that I don't think he is actively racist, as he does correct himself when he implies that the locals wouldn't have been able to do things like stack rocks.
I don't see how getting more people interested in ancient history and geology is a bad thing. Part of the reason Graham has the wiggle room to make the claims that he makes is that the subject is relatively unstudied.
Obviously there is actual science taking place in the field and has been forever but funding for that kind of thing is notoriously difficult to come by compared to many other fields. Getting grants to study the distant past for essentially no reason other than curiosity is not a priority within an economic system that prioritizes profit over all else. The best way to break through that particular obstacle is getting more people to pay attention and ask questions. If we need a benign conspiracy theory about "big geology" hiding the truth from us to make that happen then where's the harm in that? The vast majority of people prone to conspiratorial thinking are already farther down that rabbit hole than Hancock's ideas will take them.
Additionally, actual scientists would do well to learn something from Graham about presentation. Despite what you may think of him, the way he talks about the subject resonates with people. People don't want hear a regurgitation of facts in a research paper. Speculate a bit and get people excited about your future work. You don't need to go to the extremes that he does but don't refuse to branch out from what can be conclusively proven today either. Talk about your theories and what you're hoping to find / learn just as much as you talk about the results of your research.
"What if every star was a human soul?" is not an interesting astronomy question to get people into astronomy. "Big Astronomy" not awarding grants to study that, is not a conspiracy. It's due diligence.
Using a platform to say "What if [random speculation that has no basis and can't be tested]" is not useful science outreach. It's someone pretending to be science-y.
A person's sole redeeming aspect being "being an engaging speaker" doesn't make them a useful object lesson, it makes them yet another snake oil salesman. That's not new or unique. That's being a charlatan. Which is what people don't like about Graham.
You're ignoring the interesting questions he asks in favor of the easy to hand wave away stuff and that's exactly what I'm talking about. To be clear, I'm not defending the things he says. I'm pointing out that his more outlandish theories gain more traction because the scientific community doesn't lean into the softballs and use them as an opportunity to both teach people actual science and understand what different groups of people want to learn about.
Ignore the star / soul example and focus in on the possibility of an ancient and semi advanced civilization existing. That's the part grabbing people's attention. Talk about what that would change about our understanding of the past and what sort of evidence we would expect to find if it were true. Showcase people working in related fields and what they have found already. Propose other locations we could look for that evidence and discuss other topics we could study while looking for that evidence in those places. Engage the curiosity, don't dismiss it. Anyone listening to Graham is likely uneducated in science but interested in it so use that as your jumping off point instead of judging those people for not being farther down the path.
- It's not understudied.
- It causes us problems when we do try to educate people.
- We'd do better with funding to do these kinds of things. It's very expensive to do it right.
I'm not one for Joe Rogan, but cannot recommend the interview with Handcock and Flint Dibble enough if you want to see how quickly his narratives fall apart. The real story is a lot cooler anyway.
Fine by me. I enjoy a good hypothesis. And I enjoy getting academics all riled up over theory.
Lay on, MacDuff!
You’ll love Milo Rossi’s MiniMinuteman
Here’s his series on Hancock’s last “special”
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXtMIzD-Y-bMHRoGKM7yD2phvUV59_Cvb
And the shorts are a good quick “riled up session” about some of the stupid things people “postulate” online
Those meddling Google Debunkers!
Here's one for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube
