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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

#111

Post by bawolff »

avmich wrote: post #81
desikoder wrote: post #64

Earlier 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.

I think OP is being reductive, but at the same time, people do make new religions. We usually call them cults. Christianity didn't get a billion followers overnight, it took literally 2000 years of proselytizing. Who knows, the scientologists of today might be the mainstream religion of tomorrow

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

#112

Post by avmich »

Supermancho wrote: post #100
avmich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those are not major enough, not billions. 2 centuries are longer than Moon controversy, though not by much.

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

#113

Post by avmich »

bawolff wrote: post #111
avmich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think OP is being reductive, but at the same time, people do make new religions. We usually call them cults. Christianity didn't get a billion followers overnight, it took literally 2000 years of proselytizing. Who knows, the scientologists of today might be the mainstream religion of tomorrow

Cults are cheap, they come and go. Religion - a true one, that's what counts. Cults we've had in the high school, nobody remembers them after a while.

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

#114

Post by bsder »

dnautics wrote: post #38
ceilingcorner wrote: post #16

They would have you believe that the United States Government perpetrated a gigantic fraud on its citizenry. Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that happened, by any government. The “Weapons of Mass Destruction” lie could be described using the exact same sentence, and that wasn’t even twenty years ago. Not defending the moon landing doubters, or conspiracy theorists in general, but: the proper response to…

Wasn't the wmd not a fraud? It was just overselling a truth. IIRC the claim was that Saddam Hussein had ceased reporting the location of stockpiles of nuclear material that the UN used to keep track of. The sin of the bush administration was that they sold it to the public that this was a national security threat even though they knew it was very lightly enriched and counted on the public not knowing or caring (remem…

You are mostly correct, but the bluff wasn't really directed at the US. The bluff was meant for Iran, mostly, and Israel, possibly.

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

#115

Post by luckylion »

dyslexit wrote: post #85
ceilingcorner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a single example. The list of governmental frauds is as long as recorded history.

I would argue that government lies, especially ones that happen on a scale like that in the US, are not at all why we have conspiracy theorists. I think there's a more underlying human need to believe that there is something behind "it all", and when that is combined with a lack of education, political awareness, or just stubborness, you get people who will believe almost anything. That, and occasionally mental illne…

> not because of singular examples of wide scale government fraud

I agree, but I do believe it's mostly because of many small scale lies. If there was only one example of government lies in history, but it was a big one, I don't think we'd see the same level of conspiracy theory acceptance.

The fact that there is a constant stream of lies of all shapes and sizes from the government, the media, companies etc is what contributes to it the most. Once you make people lose their trust in those institutions, they will pay more attention to anyone presenting "alternative" explanations ("this explains that thing as well, but it's not peddled by the liars, so maybe it's true"). If those explanations then also line up with their world view, it's hard to convince them otherwise.

I see that in a friend who still reads the news. He no longer trusts anything he reads, so it's a constant state of "they are probably lying, but why are they lying about this" and he's more susceptible to conspiratorial theories imho. He's not "there" yet, because he'll also research those theories and often come back to me and say "yeah that was bullshit" and share what he found, but the threshold for looking into and considering it an actual possibility is much lower.

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

#116

Post by wintorez »

gorgoiler wrote: post #95
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?!

Have you used this in real life, and how did it go?

I actually did. Not for the moon landing though. It basically frustrates the person to the point that they begin questioning their own conspiracy theory. Sometimes you need to hold a mirror in front of people to see themselves.

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

#117

Post by jv22222 »

mihaifm wrote: post #104
mullingitover wrote: post #51

Armstrong'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?

They don't have to lie. You can have 90% of those 400k people do legit work, but still fake the landing. Maybe they built the rocket but encountered some technical bottleneck and had to fake the landing. Not a skeptic myself, but the argument that 400k people needed to keep a secret is pretty weak.

The movie The Cube springs to mind. No one knows what anyone else is building other than a very few who put the whole dastardly thing together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(film)

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

#118

Post by avmich »

mihaifm wrote: post #104
mullingitover wrote: post #51

Armstrong'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?

They don't have to lie. You can have 90% of those 400k people do legit work, but still fake the landing. Maybe they built the rocket but encountered some technical bottleneck and had to fake the landing. Not a skeptic myself, but the argument that 400k people needed to keep a secret is pretty weak.

> Not a skeptic myself, but the argument that 400k people needed to keep a secret is pretty weak.

That's unless you start looking closer. Those people, they aren't universally fools, they think by themselves. Maybe not all 400k, but a sizeable non-reducible chunk of them do.

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

#119

Post by JoeSmithson »

gameswithgo wrote: post #34
jwilber wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This critical thinking critique is pretty tautological. In effect we are saying "these people with wrong ideas, the problem is they are not good at getting ideas right". But that isn't useful/actionable knowledge. WHY are they bad at getting ideas right? Is it innate to the average human biology? Is it something that has gotten worse as more people have gotten onto the internet where they are exposed to non-curated d…

What causes it is people have a gnawing sense of inadequacy, and conspiracies give them a sense of superiority.

It's incredibly seductive to be in on a secret. It makes you feel special and boosts your self esteem.

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

#120

Post by moksly »

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 a conversation is rarely going to happen.

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