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Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic

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Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic

#161

Post by tim333 »

jwilber wrote: post #7
dreamcompiler wrote: post #5

What 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.

What it really comes down to is these people severely lack in critical thinking, so while it is surprising that they fail to account for other, seemingly obvious externalities, it really shouldn’t be.

It's not all lack of critical thinking. It's also that it can be kind of fun to make out you and your friends are the ones who know the truth and the rest of the world are idiots. I mean many conspiracy theorists would be capable of researching the kind of stuff Armstrong uses in refutation but don't want to go there.

Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic

#163

Post by jakeogh »

moksly wrote: post #120
wintorez wrote: post #59

I 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?!

The best way is to use the Socratic method, if you have a lot of time. If you throw enough wilful ignorance, compliments, kindness, genuine interest and an endless amount of questions at someone, you’ll eventually get them arguing with them selves. It’s really the only way to move someone, because you’re not really convincing them of anything, they are doing that themselves. Of course in the modern day and age, such…

For sure. If you genuienly want to convince someone of something, you must be willing to engage them in the details.

Trivilizing the disagreement is a defense mechanisim. If I am unwilling to engage with someone, I'll still be polite to them. If one is so sure they are misguided, trivilizing it will re-enforce their position. It's counter-productive; we all live in the same universe.

Text breaks this a bit, often it's clear to one of the participents that there will be no reply, and you are not really speaking to them. But IRL, in person, and especially in private, it really matters.

Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic

#164

Post by tim333 »

ghthor wrote: post #137
moksly wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read about homeopaths on arstechnica the other day and I have to say that it shock me. How did we ever get to a society where people are injecting mercury to fight diseases? The worst part about it is that some of these people are the same who fear vaccines. It just doesn’t make any sense. How do you even reason with those people? https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/homeopaths-sell-inje...

The evidence about vaccines causing harm is piling up. The question of whether there is a conspiracy at least motivated by greed is also piling up. I personally think there is a even higher conspiracy, one on a spiritual level that is also involved in orchestrating the overall deception and harm caused by vaccines but I have no solid evidence for that.

The thing with vaccines is not that they never cause harm but that you can quantify how much harm vs how much good and usually good is a clear win bar the odd screw up eg https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/05/01/vaccine-sw...

Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic

#165

Post by jakeogh »

LAMike wrote: post #99

If 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? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeAGGpRYmKY

Honestly, it really does. Nothing about that suggests they are making up anything. It's throughly organic; off the top of their heads. None of the body language or vocalization suggests deception to me. They include esoteric details and caveats without hesitation. It's fun to watch, thanks for posting.

Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic

#166

Post by me_me_me »

Trasmatta wrote: post #65
Falling3 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point though. If Aldrin's implicit argument is the US government would never try and defraud its citizen, then any example of such a fraud disproves him.

Do you mean Armstrong? Because I went back and read the argument in the letter, and that's not his argument at all. His first argument was that it's incredibly unlikely that 400,000 people would have been complicit in such a fraud with none of him breaking ranks. His second argument was all of the scientific experts from other countries who all agree it actually happened. He didn't make any claims about how "the US g…

Just imagine if Soviet Union could prove US faked the Apollo program, faked claims of landing on the moon.

But i bet Soviet Union was on the conspiracy too xD

Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic

#167

Post by simonh »

luckylion wrote: post #146
simonh wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but in a democracy it’s very difficult to defraud the public, because the government employees doing the defrauding are the public. At any given time, large swathes of those employees are politically opposed to whoever is in power. That’s why the WMD fiasco is so instructional. It failed immediately, for precisely the reasons we would expect any such fraud against the population to fail, and for precisely the r…

> That’s why the WMD fiasco is so instructional. It failed immediately Maybe we have a different understanding of "failed" or "immediately", but it worked well enough to get the media on board to build a case for war and carry it for long enough until the actual war started. It was solid enough that even all the doubt coming from NATO partners (and the flat out refusal to be part of it with Chirac's utterance that "F…

It succeeded at getting us into a war, but did not succeed at silencing and neutralising criticism and counter evidence. The equivalent would be if the Apollo program was riven by controversy, doubt and criticism from the start, but nevertheless went ahead and rockets were launched but the fakery was ultimately conclusively exposed in the early 1970s, with all the astronauts coming clean and admitting to it.

There was a considerable body of evidence against the WMD story right from the start. Senior CIA personnel were crying foul at how their intelligence was being manipulated for political ends from an early stage, it's just that evidence wasn't enough to stop the war.

Nothing remotely like that ever happened with the Apollo program. There has never been any substantial evidence or testimony against it from within government or NASA, or as Neil pointed out from any foreign specialists or experts, even the Russians. Conversely the WMD story was being challenged internationally from it's conception, as you pointed out yourself.

In terms of challenges, counter evidence and controversy at the time the two cases could not possibly be more starkly utterly different, and that's why they are useful comparisons because the WMD thing shows clearly how government deceptions actually work out.

Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic

#168

Post by majewsky »

me_me_me wrote: post #166
Trasmatta wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean Armstrong? Because I went back and read the argument in the letter, and that's not his argument at all. His first argument was that it's incredibly unlikely that 400,000 people would have been complicit in such a fraud with none of him breaking ranks. His second argument was all of the scientific experts from other countries who all agree it actually happened. He didn't make any claims about how "the US g…

Just imagine if Soviet Union could prove US faked the Apollo program, faked claims of landing on the moon. But i bet Soviet Union was on the conspiracy too xD

puts on additional layer of tinfoil hat

Of course the Soviets were in on it. They didn't publicly humiliate the US because they feared Mad Man Nixon would start WW3 over it. IT ALL MAKES PERFECT SENSE.

Re: Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic

#170

Post by maxst »

Rapzid wrote: post #135
jodrellblank wrote: post #46

Earlier 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…

Because all of the technology and machinery necessary to go to the moon was designed and built. The massive and massively expensive Saturn V rockets(many of them) were designed, built and launched to witnesses. The LEM, CSM, suites, computers, and etc were all built. The simulators were built and simulations run. Etc and etc and etc; hundreds of thousands of people invovled. So, pretty much all the cost of going to t…

And they would know that "maintaining that lie for N years" would prove useless as soon as the powerful cameras in lunar orbit would photograph the landing sites. Who would participate in such a lie knowing 100% it will be exposed, eventually...
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