This is getting kind of funny really…
Imagine that you were living back in the Pompey days and began studying what today would be called “geology”. Of course you wouldn’t have high tech equipment nor a huge backlog of well known geological events, but you could still take mildly accurate temperature readings here and there and detect strong tremors to which you applied your new thoughts concerning geological activity.
And one day, you walk into a local Roman pub generally keeping quite about your studies because no one would even begin to know what you were talking about but then a discussion comes up about the future of Pompey. You know that your theories are “just theories” and trying to prove anything to people who haven’t even begun to study such things would be ridiculous. But it’s just a pub discussion and no one really cares much anyway.
From your recent studies, you find it pretty conclusive that the local mountain is very probably going to blowup. You call it a “volcano event”. Of course no one really knows what that means and the thought of it seems more than just a little absurd. But then again, it is just pub chit-chat, but just happens to be aligned with your new expertise.
The bartender and locals hear you, chuckle, and politely ask for evidence of this event you seem all paranoid about. Obviously it is paranoia because everyone knows that the gods just don’t do that kind of thing without telling the public first through the priests. That’s what they are for.
So now, how would you convince even one of them that within a very short time, the entire city is likely to be devastated? To what degree, you don’t really know for sure, but you can tell it’s going to be pretty massive.
The challenge is actually one of complexity. There are too many smaller details to convey to the listener that have to all add up to the conclusion. Even if you could explain it all (they actually listened that long), it takes a long time for confidence to build concerning any one new idea and a series of them leading to a conclusion simply isn’t going to happen for a long time.
You can’t ask them to reference the priests, because first you don’t believe that the priests are that bright and even if they were, there is a good chance that they aren’t going to tell everyone anyway because that would cause a panic. And nothing is worse than a panic… well… at least that what the priests believe.
You can’t ask them to wait until they feel the Earth shaking under them, that would be too late. So what can you do? You know that at least most of them are going to die very shortly so you would like to do at least something. But what?
Just in the probing and idle chit-chat, you mention the probable scenario. You can easily tell that there isn’t going to be any panic because there is simply too much material for people to quickly digest. And you have to hope that the local priests know that else they will do their thing of secretly getting rid of the “witch trouble maker” - “terrorist”.
You can easily see that as always, every bit of evidence requires both thinking and a strong stand against plausible deniability. There is no one at that bar that thinks much at all (why would thinking people be at such a bar?) and also that literally everything is subject to plausible deniability that isn’t immediately obvious without thinking. If the slightest thought is involved, it is plausible that it isn’t being thought out properly - “the social uncertainty principle”.
Are you trying to start a panic? Certainly not, but you can see that even a panic would be better than what is about to happen by your calculations. And you are going to be right.
Are you going to convince anyone before it happens? Certainly not. You have nothing that such people can see as evidence despite it laying all around literally under their feet. It is too obscure in their eyes and not well defined by their authority figures. Evidence requires one of three things;
- Authority
- Immediate obviousness
- Rational thought
None of those qualify at hardly any pub.
And realistically what would anyone do about it anyway? A few could run, but how far? They wouldn’t run far enough because they couldn’t imagine the reach of such an event. They would at best try to take a few precautionary measures - totally futile.
Are you going to convert them into rational thinking people and then show them the actual evidence all within a few days? Yeah right.
It’s a pub.
Someone asked of the future.
You tell your story.
Everyone chuckles.
Everyone goes home.
Everyone dies.
To the universe the entire existence of homosapian is but the rising of a single morning Sun and your entire life, but a blink.