There’s an assumption that what I am doing, because it is putting out results that contradict commonly held assumptions, must somehow be bogus. This is because with most people, belief trumps evidence.When evidence contradicts belief, it is ignored.
It is said there are four types of people (actually three, but I added a fourth):
- Those who understand without seeing.
- Those who see and understand.
- Those who see and do not understand.
- Those who see and refuse to understand.
I clearly fall under the second heading. Left to my own devices, I have occasionally stumbled on new knowledge, and then gradually come to understand it. But for the most part, I have to be shown something before I come to understand it.
Unfortunately, the majority of people fall under the last two categories, either being unable to grasp, or stubborn in indoctrinated beliefs to the point of being hard-boiled and determined to be wrong, and remain wrong. I cannot change that, nor will I let it hinder me in any way in my explorations.
The above photo is a rerun. It is me. Another blogger thought he could unseat my work by clumsily showing that I am actually John Candy, a nice joke, but one that allowed me to prove my point as well, that my technology is solid.
I want to introduce some math into the technique, and it will be brief, so bear with me. Let’s say there are seven facial features that define a face:
- Pupil distance
- Shape of head
- Ear Height
- Nose
- Distance from base of nostrils to mouth
- Mouth
- Chin
Obviously there are others, but that is enough to make the point. (Ear height and shape of nose and chin can be altered by plastic surgery. The rest cannot.)
I use pupil distance as a starting point, and then lay one-half of a face in one photo next to a face in another. I do not monkey with that distance. It is a constant.
That done, what are the odds, that the other features will line up as well? Look at my photo above. It is a perfect match in all regards. Let’s just posit for sake of illustration that the odds of each of these seven features all lining up at once are one in ten. The odds of all seven lining up at once are …
(1/10) X (1/10) X (1/10) X (1/10) X (1/10) X (1/10) X (1/10) …
or one in ten raised to the 7th power, or one in ten million. Ten is an arbitrary number. I could have as easily used twenty or fifty or one hundred to describe all the possibilities with the human face.
The point is that when we get alignment as I did with my own face at age 30 and age 64, there is an extremely high likelihood, almost a certainty, that we are looking at the same person. Further, failure to achieve these alignments means we are looking at two different people. Each conclusion is useful.
Piece of Mindful 
I had a frank discussion about just this method with a colleague yesterday, outlining the same facial features- He countered that I should do exactly what you did, align my young face with what’s left from today- Not sure where to find old photos but will try- Seems like an exercise everyone on board with the message here should try-
Anyway, I always start my defense statement with: Belief and knowledge are two different things- I “know” that jumping off a fifty story building will result in my death, so I don’t need direct experience to “know” that- Extrapolating from jumping into a pool, say, will secure that knowledge- After gravity, though, almost everything else not directly experienced has to be listed on a plausibility index- With this kind of photo analysis, a true sensory experience (seeing) can now supersede the esoterica of things like numerology and the alignment of stars and even intuition, though that, with imagination, are my twin towers of “knowledge”, confounding though they are to rank materialists, PC addled atheists and vegan Nazis, etc… Resting…
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Traveling. Whe. We return next week.
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And yet all the features seem to line up except for the nose and ears. That’s gotta be pretty long odds already. And how many times have we heard the excuse that nose and ears get longer with age – shouldn’t those be taken out of the equation anyway? !
Really Mark, we all know you’re not John Candy. The original poster admitted it was a joke anyway – his point was, even if you get an astronomically unlikely facial match, that doesn’t prove a zombie – especially when the entertainment industry is so incestuous, as repeatedly proven by the MMC.
My own approach to it is to take the empirical evidence and then use my own eyes and brain to determine if the two candidates actually look remotely like the same person. I don’t hold the same degree of skepticism as our hilarious blogger does, and I think many of your conclusions are absolutely correct, but I also don’t think the face splitting technique is a particularly rigorous method. Or, to put it in a way that sounds rather less like an incredulous white coat – perhaps your conclusions should be tempered with a little common sense?
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This post was written years ago. You are late on the scene. I don’t do face splits anymore due to lack of rigor. I don’t search for zombies anymore, as I don’t care. I’ve simply backed off and formed a highly skeptical attitude about all news, science, sports and entertainment. All the world’s a stage. But more importantly, the vast majority of the population is easily fooled, kept in a state of perpetual anxiety by fake events, and thus controlled. Others who write about the human condition often have a Pollyannish notion that things can change with more and better knowledge of our ‘reality,’ like ministers of the gospel. I do not suffer such illusions. I am only along for the ride.
I do wonder at times what our existence would be like if people were not controlled as they are, the few ruling the many. What if education was real, people were developed as thinking creatures, “news” was put out to pasture and events allowed to unfold in the humdrum routine that they do … utter chaos or utter boredom? I choose the latter. At least our fake reality is interesting.
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That was pretty good,Mark. You told it like it is,or at least the way you see it. I’ve been skeptical of some of the things you wrote in the past. But that’s what gives the individual reader a right to think for themselves. One of the things I have come to admire and respect,is that you do value the input of your other writers contribution to this blog.( and they know who they are ) They can draw conclusion,without jumping to conclusion )”KNOW WHEN” and “WHEN NOT”to give in, and yes,even sometime walk away with a different point of view…I think having an open mind,is what” real research” is about.
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Thanks for the kind words. We do have very good writers here, and I enjoy their work. In addition, each has his/her own focus.
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