I used to think that they were undoubtedly just a bunch of man made nonsense. However, nowadays I'm not so certain...

Giant crop circles just get wierder

yeah...right

alright, I'm putting you down for "they're a bunch of BS" jorkest...

a lot of the photos I've seen look photoshopped. It's a neat form of art.

no...not at all...if you can show me a crop circle like that...in the day time...with hundreds of people making it..ill believe they are fake

Some are faked, some are not.

There are too many reports of crop circles appearing over-night, or within a few hours that are far too complex to have been done by people in the amount of time alloted with no witnesses.

They are a means to try to get people to think outside the box...to expand their perceptions and consider possibilities they might not have thought about before.

i really dig them - such a nice art form, takes a lot of people management and care to create images of that size and accuracy.
i have no opinion on this - but im hopefull

Those two pictures up above of crop circles are really nice. I like the second one most. Very cool artwork.

Doesn't anyone watch television? There was some worlds greatest mysteries revealed or some crap a few years ago with a team of three people showing how they made crop circles. All though some are extremely elaborate with intricate details and patterns, SWIM believes 99% (he has been wrong once before) to be a hoax. Also, SWIM doesn't think super intelligent beings would waste time making pretty things in fields anyway...

SWIM does however believe in some pretty funky shit too so, who is SWIM to judge...

Photoshop Crop Circles

circlemakers.org

At any rate, some of them are quite beautiful. I hope the hoaxers don’t stop. I’m enjoying their beauty.

I think they are one of the most artistic hoaxes around.

I've seen many video's of them being made by man or when witnesses told the local newspaper that they saw people working on it the whole night.

I even recall an incident when 'suddenly' a crop circle appeared in the Netherlands near Schiphol Airport. A famous crop circle researcher went to that field and came with 'interesting' findings: "I can see that there is a high level of energy that's clearly notable, especially the level of 'orgon'", "A 'Bovis' of 9800 on a scale from 0 to 10000 is meaning something" and more of that crap talk.

Too bad for that 'researcher' that it was all a joke of a dutch electronics company...

Well, i think that ónly superintelligent beings would waste time making pretty things in fields and funny hoaxes.
Cropcircles are thé reason not to give up on our species, and that counts for the makers as well as the believers, each for their own reasons.

It's one thing to believe that amazing, previously unknown things are possible...and it's another to be a fool and a dupe.

Throughout history, 99.9999% of those who have believed in "magical" realities have been WRONG in what they believed.

People have to understand that if they wish to "believe" things (things that they think MAY be true, but which aren't at present demonstrably true) then they need to develop a keen sense of DISCRIMINATION--to avoid spending an entire lifetime in a meaningless fantasy world. The REAL WORLD can be as amazing and wonderful as we wish to make it...

What i meant was that only superintelligent beings (like humans) would have the tendency to believe in highly unlikely things and to play with that tendency.
I don't want to insult any pantherine here, but i don't think that siegfried and roy's tigers for instance, ever understood the whole point of their bosses magic.

I'm sorry to say that I see no evidence of "superintelligence" among human beings. In fact, there're examples of chimps showing themselves smarther than people:

Amazing short term memory...

Amazing creativity and insight...


Apparently...aliens are no smarter than people: thirty or forty years ago, "crop circles" were mostly just circles (where UFOs might have landed), now they're complex, apparently computer assisted designs. So it seems that aliens learn how to "improve their work" at around the same rate that people do...

...but I do understand your point: imagination is necessary for creativity. I've only been saying that problems arise when imagination and reality are seen as interchangeable. They are NOT!

apparently, lol

So if someone would add a 'disclaimer' underneath all his posts that would give him legal immunity if nessecary, for posts that might be seen as encouragement and admission of illegal behaviour, or that could be interpeted as jokingly referring to paranoia considering this possabillity, you would not see such a thing for instance as superintelligent behaviour?

We are not alone... in our love of cereal anyway.

By current estimates, humans have been around as a species for about 100,000 years. It took humanity about 80,000-90,000 to develop the ideas of cultivating plants and domesticating animals for food. It took most of the remaining 10,000-20,000 to develop writing, the printing press, and the cognitive process of science.

99,500 years just to get started? I wouldn't call that superintelligent behavior.

All the amazing developments of the last 500 years depended not on superintelligence, but on common intelligence collected and build upon by accrual. Our progress has been mostly based upon a collection of the occasional good ideas of people--the best of whom are lucky to have one or a few good ideas, analyses, or insights in a lifetime--using the very simple tools of experimental science.

Furthermore, recent work in cognitive science has demonstrated just how poorly put together we are in terms of thinking abilities.

History demonstrates that gory fights over resources are MUCH nearer to our hearts than thinking and analysis. Objectively, it seems we're only just a bit smarter than chimps--plus we possess the additional capacity to formulate concepts in spoken language and, at least for the last 500 years or so, easily store those concepts for others to use. That's about it--I just don't see the superintelligence you allude to...

IMO, the best way for individuals to maximize whatever inherent abilities they may have is to gain an awareness of just how meager our intelligence really is.