Egregoros

@Deplorable_Degenerate @koropokkur @Bernard @GoyGirl @peepeepoopoocahcah1 @Nudhul @toiletpaper @hakui Now, my dad used to be a scientist working for the US Federal Government (retired); without naming his specific field, I can attest I got to go with goodly number of interdisciplinary investigations as a young’un. On one occasion, I got to see how archaeology is done, under the auspices of the US Federal Government. It was pretty eye-opening - though I didn’t realize it until I was much older.

By means of a very thorough, detailed, well-documented analysis of 50sq cm soil patches dug down 10cm at a go, sifted through graduated screens of decreasing-gauge, finer and finer, any significant objects caught are labeled by their coordinates and catalogued. It’s all very impressive. I got to do some of the digging and sifting, myself. All the data is then compiled into a great big catalogue, which then disappears forever into cardboard boxes in some field station closet. Lol jk - some GS9 gets paid to skim through it, looking for findings that might be useful in typing up a hundred or so page report, which is submitted to some GS11, and from there it vanishes from anything I had any business knowing about. Maybe, a couple few many years later, I’d get to see some of it mentioned in a book or whatnot; happened on a couple occasions.

Anyhow, though I have no detailed knowledge of the subsequent process, I’m aware that what’s happening is an interpretation of the compiled data, according to the prevailing paradigm narrative. It’s sort of like a “received tradition”, in that it’s assumed to be basically correct, until either something tangible is found by some GS13 that conflicts with the Narrative, or until everyone just sort of agrees to accept another Narrative.

The problem with this, is that the Prevailing Narrative is not, nor can it ever be, found in the data, itself; it simply isn’t there. Ideally, this Prevailing Narrative was informed of the most plausible explanation for things, from the get-go; but how on earth could it have been, before any data was collected ? It‘s astronomically improbable that they “got it right”, and the likelihood of arriving at a “truly corrected Narrative” by all this digging and cataloguing is also incredibly improbable - because there’s literally no way of determining that every incremental step along the way is further or closer to the True History of all these datapoints. It is an absolute fool’s errand. But it is, nevertheless, a very impressive, objective-looking fool’s errand.

What it ends up amounting to, after all is said and done, is affirming whatever the funders want it to affirm; whatever is deemed most consonant with the agenda of the University System.