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Post by Count Zero on Aug 4, 2005 15:07:12 GMT -4
I think, in this particular case, this is an instance of "even if it isn't true, it should be."
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Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 4, 2005 21:14:07 GMT -4
The best swahilli mistake I've heard of was from an old black and white British film. It was about the one of the colonial wars. In this scene a native soldier is to run in, speak in swahilli then collaspe dead. Unfortunately they didn't bother checking the message given. That was still fine, until the movie got to Africa where the viewers roared with laughter as the soldier rushed in and proclaimed:
"I'm not getting paid enough for this job."
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Post by mushiwulf on Aug 4, 2005 22:23:01 GMT -4
Pumbaa means "simpleton" in Swahili.
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Post by turbonium on Aug 4, 2005 22:47:15 GMT -4
If one or two people don't see something that you believe to be obvious, that's excusable. If it seems that you're the only one who can see something, don't be so hasty to chalk it up to everyone being out of whack except for you. I have received many opinions on the stills - and many of them see them exactly as I do. This is through impartial surveys - I have not mentioned anything as to what is in the stills, I have only asked "What do you see in these stills and video clips?". I would estimate of the 100 or so opinions I've received, around 70% see it as I do. The other 30% say they aren't sure of what they see, but often make comments such as "is that a drummer in a concert?" for the "arm" stills. Remember, they were not told it was apparently on the Moon, or given any clue as to the location of the stills or the video clip. So no, I'm certainly not the only one who sees these things as I do.
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Post by turbonium on Aug 4, 2005 22:57:24 GMT -4
So, we have the ability to see the landing sites, after all. But not in sufficient detail to identify something as an Apollo artifact without knowing what it was first. Certainly not enough detail to convince you. Pixel-sized dots won't do the trick, and there's no better resolution yet available.Not according to the articles I posted at the start of this thread. To refresh your memory, or in case you missed it.... groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.malaysia/browse_thread/thread/58088074333b2e01/f78f9041deb9b382?lnk=st&q=vThe Sunday Telegraph 11-25-2 Dr Richard West, an astronomer at the VLT, confirmed that his team was aiming to achieve "a high-resolution image of one of the Apollo landing sites".
The first attempt to spot the spacecraft will be made using only one of the VLT's four telescope mirrors, which are fitted with special "adaptive optics" to cancel the distorting effect of the Earth's atmosphere. A trial run of the equipment this summer produced the sharpest image of the Moon taken from the Earth, showing details 400ft across from a distance of 238,000 miles.
The VLT team hopes to improve on this, with the aim of detecting clear evidence for the presence of the landers. The base of the lunar modules measured about 10ft across, but would cast a much longer shadow under ideal conditions.
Dr West said that the challenge pushed the optical abilities of one VLT mirror to its limits: if this attempt failed, the team planned to use the power of all four mirrors. "They would most probably be sufficiently sharp to show something at the sites," he said.The next article is from this year, and it describes the resolution capabilities of the VLT through the combined use of its telescopes... www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/V/VLT.htmlThe interference fringes produced when the beams are finally recombined provide the information needed to reconstruct the original image in unprecedented detail, giving a picture as sharp as if it had come from a single telescope 200 m across. If there were cars on the Moon, the Very Large Telescope would be able to read their number plates.
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Post by PeterB on Aug 4, 2005 23:00:01 GMT -4
G'day Turbonium
How many seconds of the video clip did these people see? And a lot of the pictures you've posted on this forum have so little context that it's not surprising that people might come up with unusual explanations.
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Post by JayUtah on Aug 5, 2005 1:13:05 GMT -4
I have received many opinions on the stills - and many of them see them exactly as I do.
Because you showed it to them. This is through impartial surveys...
No such thing. If I show you a photo, you focus on the photo. That in itself can be a bias.
I have not mentioned anything as to what is in the stills...
You don't have to. All you have to do to start building a preconception is to tell someone you want them to look at a photo.
I have only asked "What do you see in these stills and video clips?"
That's biased right there. You establish the preconception that there is something to see. At the least it is an invitation to free association and speculation, none of which is useful.
I would estimate of the 100 or so opinions I've received, around 70% see it as I do.
Irrelevant. How many of them had already seen it that way before you asked them?
Remember, they were not told it was apparently on the Moon, or given any clue as to the location of the stills or the video clip.
So you invited them to interpret the photos without providing any context for the interpretation? If this is your idea of image analysis you are way beyond help. You have completely broken every single rule of useful photographic interpretation and of investigative methodology. You're simply inviting people to indulge in creative thinking with no grounding in reality.
Why on Earth (or on the moon, for that matter) would you think that this is any way to discover the truth? You deliberately withhold essential contextual information and you deliberately invite speculation after telegraphing expectations. Your methods have no place in serious investigation.
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Post by Count Zero on Aug 5, 2005 1:29:20 GMT -4
Whenever you show someone a picture and ask, "What does this look like to you?" they will try to match it with something to which they are familiar.
Out of those 100 or so people you asked, how many are familiar with a folded-up Apollo S-band antenna? Familiar enough to recognize one in a blurry, low-quality video? Without any context, how many of them would be able to identify any piece of Apollo surface equipment other than the LM, the rover and the flag?
In technical matters, "opinions" are worthless - absolutely without any merit whatsoever - if the person making them is ignorant of the subject and has no idea of the context.
Even if you say, "This is a wrinkled piece of mylar on the side of the Apollo 12 Lunar Module descent stage. What do you see in the reflection?" it may not occur to them that valid mirror images are impossible to resolve under the circumstances of the video record. They have been asked to find a pattern, and pareidolia will very likely to cause them to do just that. It doesn't matter how many people say they see The Smoking Man swapping spit with G. Gordon Liddy: 100 or 1,000 opinions do not matter if connecting the bright spots is not a valid means to recreate an accurate reflection.
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Post by sts60 on Aug 5, 2005 9:45:36 GMT -4
So, we have the ability to see the landing sites, after all. But not in sufficient detail to identify something as an Apollo artifact without knowing what it was first. Certainly not enough detail to convince you. Pixel-sized dots won't do the trick, and there's no better resolution yet available.Not according to the articles I posted at the start of this thread. To refresh your memory, or in case you missed it.... No, what I meant was that we don't yet have the ability. That is, no telescope (on or orbiting Earth, or orbiting the Moon) currently has the ability to unambiguously resolve an Apollo artifact. "Unambiguously" in this context means for you to look at it and say "Well, dadgum, that's obviously an LM descent stage!" A dot and shadow where one should be is sufficient for me because I know it's there. But it won't convince you, as far as I can tell. Eventually, something will resolve Apollo artifacts to the point of seeing the landing legs or whatever. I don't know if SMART-1 will get low enough to do that, or when and if the VLT will be able to do that (I don't know much about interferometric observation). But neither one can do it now.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 5, 2005 11:32:23 GMT -4
So, we have the ability to see the landing sites, after all. They stated in the article that it wuld be pushing the limits of a single scope to see anything, nd they'd hve to have all four online to really see. As far as I know they haven't got all of them online yet.
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Post by JayUtah on Aug 5, 2005 12:53:04 GMT -4
The reference to "Rorschaching" to describe this context-free visualization is especially adept. It's not a pejorative; it's an accurate description.
Rorschach ink blots are (or were) used as a psychological assessment tool. Why? Because if you show someone an abstract visual depiction, completely free of context, and ask him to describe what he sees, you don't get a factual description of what's in the picture. You get what's on that person's mind. The premise that context-free visualization is more a product of mental creation than of observation is firmly established and needs no further support.
To argue that a context-free visualization has any bearing on reality outside the viewer's mind is simply absurd. To go even further and say that such visualization denies the purported context is a completely irresponsible stacking of the deck.
If you crop away the context from some abstract region in an Apollo photo and ask someone to describe what he sees in the abstraction, of course you're going to get a wide variety of "sightings": office chairs, walruses, naked women. Part of the human visual identification system "prunes" away candidates that are inappropriate to the context. Without a context, it's a free-for-all. But then, armed with those "identified" objects, to restore the context and reveal the photo as from Apollo, and then say that the "objects" in the photo prove that the context is false, is the ultimate misleading form of tail-wagging-the-dog. The context -- even a purported context -- is a necessary boundary to meaningful identification.
Proper investigative practice involves not only asking the right questions, but also asking them in the right way. "Tell me what you see in this photograph," is a leading question, even though it seems very innocent. That question boils down to, "Identify the objects in this photograph." That carries the presumption that there are objects in the image, and that they can be identified. Especially with abstract data, the subject has to be able to say, "I don't see anything there." But if he is predisposed to see something -- anything -- then his internal reaction to not immediately seeing something is to look harder (i.e., relax the tolerances) because there "is" something there and he's just not seeing it.
Even such innocent-sounding variations like "What do you see in this picture?" versus "What do you see in this photograph?" have an effect that must be accounted for. The latter establishes the context as a faithful recording, while the former leaves open the possibility of painting, drawing, caricature, or even non-representational graphic. Those determine what rules will be applied during the search for objects.
And questioning a room (even a virtual, online "room") of 100 people produces different results than questioning those same 100 subjects individually. As soon as the first person in a group says he sees a bunny rabbit in your picture, the question immediately shifts from, "Are there identifiable objects in this picture?" to "Is that a bunny rabbit or isn't it?" The other subjects are thus tainted by the first one's initial stab at identification.
A more reliable form of inquiry would be to individually say to each subject, "I'm going to show you a series of pictures. If you think you recognize something in any of these pictures, indicate it." And then only one or two of the pictures is actually the candidate photos; the rest are random graphical noise resembling the candidates. The language is carefully chosen to avoid preconceiving the presence of identifiable content while the embedding of data in noise allows us to calibrate each subject's individual propensity to create identifications.
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Post by turbonium on Aug 5, 2005 21:06:53 GMT -4
G'day Turbonium How many seconds of the video clip did these people see? And a lot of the pictures you've posted on this forum have so little context that it's not surprising that people might come up with unusual explanations. Hi peter. They were shown the entire video clip as originally posted on the Apollo site. The stills do have little context, of course. That's all I could go with, however.
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Post by turbonium on Aug 5, 2005 21:21:20 GMT -4
I have received many opinions on the stills - and many of them see them exactly as I do.Because you showed it to them. ?? As opposed to who else showing it to them? As impartial as can be done. Let's not split hairs. Again, what are the alternatives? Come on - "what do you see?" does not mean they will see something. Many of them simply repied that they do not see anything. Not irrelevant. They replied they saw an arm and people after looking at the stills and video clip. From the first time they looked at them. With no "prompting" from myself , that is, I didn't say, "Come on, don't you see such and such a thing here?" Please - "way beyond help?". I don't think insulting my honest and upfront method of garnering opinion is called for. If I said "This was taken on the Moon" or "This was supposed to have been taken on the Moon", you think it makes for a "serious investigation"? If I did, you would just turn around and say "That is setting up a bias for their opinions". Tell you what, I will ask the questions that way - we'll see if it makes any difference.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Aug 5, 2005 21:25:25 GMT -4
Without knowing what an S-band antenna is the people that you showed the picture to will have to figure out what it is. Go back to those same people and show them the picture of the collapsed S-band antenna and ask them again what they think the "mystery object" might be.
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Post by turbonium on Aug 5, 2005 21:31:35 GMT -4
And questioning a room (even a virtual, online "room") of 100 people produces different results than questioning those same 100 subjects individually. As soon as the first person in a group says he sees a bunny rabbit in your picture, the question immediately shifts from, "Are there identifiable objects in this picture?" to "Is that a bunny rabbit or isn't it?" The other subjects are thus tainted by the first one's initial stab at identification.
A more reliable form of inquiry would be to individually say to each subject, "I'm going to show you a series of pictures. If you think you recognize something in any of these pictures, indicate it." And then only one or two of the pictures is actually the candidate photos; the rest are random graphical noise resembling the candidates. The language is carefully chosen to avoid preconceiving the presence of identifiable content while the embedding of data in noise allows us to calibrate each subject's individual propensity to create identifications. First off, most of the 100 people were individually asked in person. The online responses were on different forums as well and did not consist of more than two or three replies for the most part. So it's really not a case of "I see what he sees". Again, "Tell me what you see" and "If you think you recognize something, indicate it" are not radically dfferent questions, nor do I believe they will garner many different opinions based on that. But, again, I will ask the question as you have posed it, to individuals that have no idea of any previous opinions. I will post the results here afterwards. Of course, you may doubt my honesty in providing the results, if they again show a response similar to my first survey. But I will not withhold or alter the results, all I can do is give my word that it will be the full and uncensored data.
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