The saddest and most worrysome aspect of the exchange is actually the sender of the letter being a teacher. "As a teacher of young children, I have a duty to tell them history..."
“Yourselfs”
3/10, could try harder.
Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic
91–100 of 201 posts
Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic
#92This is the sort of craziness that led to the Dark Ages after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. We humans are pretty much our own worst enemies.
I would think that the craziness that led to the Dark ages would be the polar opposite - an unquestioning acceptance of all dogma, or at the very least, being scared to question
Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic
#93Armstrong's exact argument about the vast numbers conspirators that would be required to keep perfect secrecy is exactly what I use when people try to claim that the coronavirus is some kind of hoax or that there's some kind of conspiracy about vaccines. Have you ever tried to get thousands of people to cooperate on anything, let alone perpetuate a massive lie, when they have nothing to gain personally from doing so?
The great trick about this is that you don't have to believe in a perfect conspiracy, because you can just make up anonymous sources.
Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Flat Earth thing makes no sense to me, but regarding Anti-Vax: again, not defending them, but it’s trivially easy to find examples of governments (worldwide) deceptively giving people medicine which had a negative effect on their health, whether as experimentation, sterilization, or otherwise. The fact that vaccines are scientifically known to be safe is just lost in the noise. I attribute the rise of conspiracy…
I mention flat earth and anti-vax, because they are conspiracy theories that are not obviously driven by the government's behavior.
I am not too familiar with either, but in my view they are definitely associated with ‘authority’ whether then be mainstream media, government, institutions, etc.
Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic
#95I read it somewhere that the best way to respond to conspiracy theorist is to make a more outlandish claim: - Moon landing was fake. - You believe in the Moon?!
Have you used this in real life, and how did it go?
Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic
#96While we laugh at skeptics, often they serve a valuable purpose. Skeptics have often revolutionized our understanding of the universe. Like Galileo. We should be careful of unquestioningly believing "established" facts.
This guy isn’t a skeptic though, he’s a true believer. It’s just that his beliefs happen to be the opposite of established consensus, instead of being in line with it. That’s especially dumb, because if you’re going to blindly believe things you might as well blindly go with the flow, you’ll be wrong sometimes but right more often.
Actual skepticism requires a lot of intellectual effort and honesty. An actual skeptic on the moon landing/holocaust/global warming/Loch Ness monster/whatever would start from a position of genuine skepticism and curiosity, wedded neither to one side nor the other, and then carefully line up all the evidence on one side versus the other. That’s a valuable service; we don’t all have time to be genuinely skeptical about everything so it’s good to know there’s genuine skeptics out there doing the hard work for us; once in a while they’ll discover that the evidence for some popular belief actually isn’t as overwhelming as everyone believes, and that’s incredibly valuable. Genuine skeptics should be cherished and nurtured, but idiots who blindly take up contrary positions because they align with their worldview are of no value to anyone.
Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic
#97What gets me most about these fools is they completely ignore how much such a huge fake job would cost. It would be so expensive that you could cut the budget in half and just...go to the moon.
Sorry but two wrongs don't make a right. >It would be so expensive that you could cut the budget in half and just...go to the moon. Not even close.
I think actually you could cut budget much more than in half, and go to the Moon.
It's surprising how - comparatively - easy is - and was - to go to the Moon. Do you realize that for today technologies it's a walk in the park? It was done half a century ago. But that's not enough - even then in many aspects it was quite doable. Remember, the Moon race started as a calculated idea to win - all crucial requirements were approximately achievable, erring on "more likely than not". For example, F-1 first stage engine had a rather modest characteristics, except the size (which already provided a plenty of problems). The whole architecture was decided in favor of a single bug launcher - because docking was considered "risky", even though one docking (after liftoff from the Moon) and even one-half more docking (after translunar injection, when Apollo CM detached, turned over and docked with LM) eventually remained. Problems were being solved with size, not with smarter decisions - because the latter required time and were riskier.
So... Rocket science isn't a rocket science. Yes, Moon landing is one of the greatest technological achievements up to now. But it was done then, and for that much.
Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would faking it with a soundstage and some actors in a room, and some small models, cost so much more? A big budget Hollywood film like James Bond Moonraker (1979) was 1/1000th the cost of the Apollo program, and with no famous actors/actresses, simpler script, TV quality, surely a fake would be cheaper than that? If someone thought it was fake, they ought to be asking where the budget really went and whose pocke…
I remember reading an article years ago, saying that it’d have required the invention of electronics that did not exist yet to slow down the footage (simulating 1/6th g) and pull off a live broadcast that lasted hours and hours. So in essence, it’d have been the more impressive thing to do technologically speaking. Having seen the new 1 hour documentary on Apollo 11 and how rickety everything looked and barely worked…
You may be thinking of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loUDS4c3Cs
Edit: changed to earlier upload of same video
Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic
#99If Elon can't get us to the Moon by 2030, I'm putting my tinfoil hat on.
Does this sound like a group of guys who just accomplished the most impressive feat of human innovation?
Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, people have been selling an invisible product since thousands of years (religion), so it is quite possible to get billions of people to lie to themselves and to others.
I take issue with your "quite". Did you try to establish a new religion? Star Wars had some success on that, but even them - with all modern might of persuasion - didn't get billions - or tens of millions - of followers, and those who they did are arguably at least partially follow in jest. You can't apply "religion" argument that easily.
> Did you try to establish a new religion?
L. Ron Hubbard. Church of Latter Day Saints. There have been major religions established in the last 2 centuries in the USA alone.