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Re: Hollow Earth



On Sun, 23 Apr 2000 22:41:10 -0600 Jim Green wrote:
Well, yes Hitler did. Also I think that it was Euler who suggested that
there was a sun at the center of the Earth's hollow core.

I would also note that making jest of a theory does not help one evaluate
it.

It turns out Euler was correct, though he did not have the data to
suggest it was so. The Earth does have an internal source of energy,
now thought to be due to radioactive elements in it core. Thinking
that it was a Sun is just an error of a few orders of magnitude.

I did not make a jest of hollow Earth theory. I would never include
Adolph Schicklgruber in a joke. I was merely citing a source (Martin
Gardner) which mentioned the theory. When I wrote that was the only
source I could recall. On checking the web I find it all over the
place, even associated with our own Canadian holocaust denyer, Ernst
Zundel. I was not making a value judgment of the "theory" when I
associated the name of the principal sociopath of this century with
it. I would never do such a thing, though I do believe there is good
reason to suspect bad theory when it is associated with known bad
theorists, an irrational practice which I justify by saying it is
merely a successful triage technique which I apply in acknowledging
that my feeble mental apparatus is incapable of evaluating all
hypotheses presented to it rationally. Hollow Earth theory is just
such a theory, but Schicklgruber was not a theorist. He was a leader
who lacked rational and moral capabilities which we usually require
of people allowed to roam free in our society.

Hollow Earth theory is a hypothesis which dies too early in the
formation process to be called a theory. It suggests (in one of its
forms - there is more than one) that there is a hole at the North
Pole. Well, that had been checked by direct inspection by Amundsen
and Perry before the second world war. While they did not specify
that their observations invalidated the hypothesis, I feel it is
likely they would have confirmed the non-presence of the hole if
asked directly. Certainly now that the pole has been visited by a
nuclear submarine one would have to be the most gullible of all
conspiracy theorists to believe that the hole is being (or has been)
covered up.

Oh yes, about the Apollo 11 fantasy, that it was performed on a
sound stage in Hollywood: Have you ever looked at a science
friction movie that was fifteen years old and been unaware that you
were viewing fantasy? Special effects were not that good twice that
long ago. There are so many arguments against the idea of faking
Moon landings that one could go on forever constructing refutations
(I adduce here a novel one I've not seen before), but why would one
bother to do so? Theoretical triage using a well informed set of
prejudices, the hallmark of a trait we call "wisdom", will prevent
one's wasting time on such ideas.

Leigh (the unwise)