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French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

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Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#41
post #17

I worked with a guy that said the moon landing was fake. The only evidence he could provide was the number of images of space that claim to be real but end up being doctored or fake, every time I called him out on his bs I was wrong and the image was fake. Thanks Scientists!

If it makes you feel any better, it's essentially impossible to convince a moon landing hoax believer they are wrong.

TBH, I think extreme skeptics (e.g., flat-earthers) play a useful role in public discourse.

They effectively shine a light on the limits of each person's ability to justify their beliefs, vs. what beliefs are generally accepted just because nobody challenges them.

I've seen a similar effect in several Christian communities in the U.S. If a Christian is mostly surrounded by other Christians, it's easy to accept lots of beliefs because they're not challenged. But if they end up in an environment where people challenge those beliefs, or if there's a lot at stake for holding wrong beliefs, they tend to scrutinize their beliefs much more carefully. I think, overall, they benefit from pruning down their beliefs to a smaller set of better-justified ones.

So to the extent that flat-earthers help others think more critically, I'm glad they're part of public discourse.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#42

I worked with a guy that said the moon landing was fake. The only evidence he could provide was the number of images of space that claim to be real but end up being doctored or fake, every time I called him out on his bs I was wrong and the image was fake. Thanks Scientists!

Where are you browsing for images of space that everyone you looked up it was fake?

I think these fake photos are ones his friend offers up to him as evidence. It's not too hard to find "fake" images from NASA; they release a lot of composite images, false color, etc. Presented in the wrong way, or to somebody inclined to cynical skepticism, these can be construed as 'fake' and used to reinforce that cynical skepticism.

An important question to keep in mind when playing this game: was the fake photograph ever a real fake photograph, or is it a fake fake photograph? Sometimes people deliberately construct fake photographs specifically to be debunked as fake, to bolster their claim of the whole thing being fake. e.g. I photoshop a picture of Mount Rushmore on the Moon, claim I got the photo from NASA and say "Look how obviously fake it is! NASA thinks we're utter fools." Except usually it's more subtle than that. They'll take a picture of a desert on earth, adjust the colors to make it look like Mars, then present both the original and the altered alongside each other, claiming the doctored image of an earth desert is purported to be real by NASA. If you can bait somebody into defending the faked image, you can debunk them easily since the whole thing was a setup.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#43
post #9

This article presupposes that Proxima Centauri is not, in fact, made of chorizo. Whereas we have long known that the moon is made of cheese. I think Klein is floating a test balloon to gauge the public's willingness to consume the 'celestial charcuterie' theory of the heavens.

It would be a lot of fun if someone competent with physics explained how celestial bodies would behave if they were made of meat. That'd be a fun Youtube video imo.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#44
post #9

This article presupposes that Proxima Centauri is not, in fact, made of chorizo. Whereas we have long known that the moon is made of cheese. I think Klein is floating a test balloon to gauge the public's willingness to consume the 'celestial charcuterie' theory of the heavens.

> willingness to consume the 'celestial charcuterie' theory

After the theory, next step is an interstellar mission to literally consume the celestial charcuterie.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#45
post #29
post #27

TikTok level humor now entering HN.

I see this as pretty high brow academic trolling in vein of the Sokal hoax [0] - but I suppose it's a sign of the times the "publication" is a single tweet. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

Sokal was really of another order.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#46
post #9

This article presupposes that Proxima Centauri is not, in fact, made of chorizo. Whereas we have long known that the moon is made of cheese. I think Klein is floating a test balloon to gauge the public's willingness to consume the 'celestial charcuterie' theory of the heavens.

> This article presupposes that Proxima Centauri is not, in fact, made of chorizo. I don't think it does. It can both be true that Proxima Centauri is made of Chorizo and that the French Scientist tweeted a picture of some Chorizo that was not Proxima Centauri.

Ahh, but you are forgetting the Spanish Highlander conjecture.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#48

> A photo tweeted by a famous French physicist supposedly of Proxima Centauri by the James Webb Space Telescope was actually a slice of chorizo. > … > Klein told French news outlet Le Point that his intention had been to educate people about fake news online While I respect the position that people should always check sources, “person famous in their field posts a lie about something well within their field, then tut…

The picture he posted is so obviously and visibly a slice of chorizo that it really is no more than a good joke, nothing smug about it.

IMHO, it does demonstrate his point very well if some people took his statement that it was Proxima Centauri at face value simply because he is an expert.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#49
post #9

This article presupposes that Proxima Centauri is not, in fact, made of chorizo. Whereas we have long known that the moon is made of cheese. I think Klein is floating a test balloon to gauge the public's willingness to consume the 'celestial charcuterie' theory of the heavens.

It would be a lot of fun if someone competent with physics explained how celestial bodies would behave if they were made of meat. That'd be a fun Youtube video imo.

I think that if there were a ball of meat the size of a star, it would collapse into an actual star, although smaller and more dense.

I would really be interested to know what Steller atomic composition most closely matches that of a sausage.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#50

> A photo tweeted by a famous French physicist supposedly of Proxima Centauri by the James Webb Space Telescope was actually a slice of chorizo. > … > Klein told French news outlet Le Point that his intention had been to educate people about fake news online While I respect the position that people should always check sources, “person famous in their field posts a lie about something well within their field, then tut…

I'm pretty sure it was an a posteriori explanation for a joke that went wrong because journalists can't recognize a slice of chorizo
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