I heard that Apollo was a hoax...

[gonzo]

...and I was shocked.

The story may be a familiar one. I was 3 when Apollo 11 'landed 'on the moon, and the event is as vivid to me now as then. I watched every mission, and lapped up every detail. Not that I really understood it; for certain details to make sense (like the trajectory and the pattern the spacecraft flew in) took almost 10 years and a High School Physics education. Spaceflight, and specifically Apollo was inspirational. The things I didn't understand inspired a questioning response "so how does that work then?" A great way to develop an inquiring mind.

Years later and cynicism pervades. The people behind Apollo appear either incompetent or willfully negligent after Challenger. The US government demonstrates in many of it's operations that IT can't be trusted. And then you hear it for the first time "you realise that the moon landings were all hoaxed - just like that movie Capricorn One". And then came the proverbial mountain of evidence to prove it.

I'd always questioned why there were no stars in the photos. Here was an answer. Then there were the anomalies in the photos. Radiation levels in leaving low Earth orbit; the Russians knew the only possible shielding was 2m thick lead. The extreme environment was beyond the capabilities of the hardware of the time. etc etc

I watched a debate on TV and the fact that no-one was prepared to defend the case for the moon landings (except for one inept enthusiast) and the overwhelming evidence demonstrating it was hoaxed was damning. It was a lie and the biggest one of all time. And it had been proven so.

However, having developed that inquiring mind, armed with a high school physics education and a keen interest in photography, I was surprised to find how easy it was to debunk the hoax claims. Highly technical sounding claims could be addressed with fairly minimal research.

So why do these spurious claims and specious arguments get publicity and given credence when they can be so easily disproven? I worry that it's no just because we live in a cynical age; I worry that it's because we can no longer distinguish easily between fact and opinion. The age of the spin doctor and where 15 minutes of fame is more valued than a lifetime of hard work.

Normally I wouldn't see this as dangerous; just the usual crank theorists easily dismissed. But this IS dangerous given the age we are in, and the fact that merely repeating statements in a convincingly presented manner automatically gives them validity. It's bigger than just whether one programme was faked or not. This is about what we accept as fact and objective proof.

This is why this web sites and forums like this one, and those who contribute so coherently and knowledgeably are so important. As well as giving me the tools to a better understanding and better argument, it's helped revitalise that inquiring mind.

[Bob B.]

Welcome to the forum, gonzo.

gonzo said:

So why do these spurious claims and specious arguments get publicity and given credence when they can be so easily disproven?

I'm sure television shows this stuff because it is entertainment and people enjoy watching it, just like they enjoyed watching shows like the X-Files. However, TV does a great disservice by presenting this stuff in a way that makes it look like the conspiracists claims are worthy of serious consideration, rather presenting it like the fluff entertainment it really is. Unfortunately there are many people out there that are too gullible and uninformed to figure out for themselves that this stuff is nonsense.

gonzo said:

I worry that it's no just because we live in a cynical age; I worry that it's because we can no longer distinguish easily between fact and opinion. The age of the spin doctor and where 15 minutes of fame is more valued than a lifetime of hard work.

Your explanation sounds as good as any I've heard. It is a sad situation really.

gonzo said:

Normally I wouldn't see this as dangerous; just the usual crank theorists easily dismissed. But this IS dangerous given the age we are in, and the fact that merely repeating statements in a convincingly presented manner automatically gives them validity. It's bigger than just whether one programme was faked or not. This is about what we accept as fact and objective proof.

Having a few crackpots spouting off about their conspiracy theories would be no big thing it the rest of the population had sufficient critical thinking skills to see through their nonsense. The fact there does seem to be a problem doesn't say much about the average person's ability to differentiate fact from fiction.

I still have a hard time trying to understand what is going on inside the mind of the typical conspiracy believer that makes them want to believe this stuff.

gonzo said:

This is why this web sites and forums like this one, and those who contribute so coherently and knowledgeably are so important. As well as giving me the tools to a better understanding and better argument, it's helped revitalise that inquiring mind.

I hope you decide the stick around and contribute some more.

[Jason Thompson]

Half the problem is that it's far easier to question things that require detailed knowledge to defend than it is to explain them in a satisfactory fashion.

Check out stargazer's attempt at arguing that the Moon is a lethal emitter of gamma rays. He posts a picture that shows the Moon in gamma wavelegths, and indeed it does look bright. Add to that the fact that in gamma wavelengths the Moon is brighter than the Sun and you have a situation that the layperson can easily misinterpret. We know the Sun is a major producer of energy, so if the Moon is producing more of something than the Sun it must be dangerous, right?

That's a short line of logic, and it sounds plausible.

Now go and look at the post I made to refute the claim that the Moon is an emitter of dangerous levels of gamma rays. It's long and full of numbers, yet it is as short as I could reasonably make it without simply saying 'according to my calculations the moon actually only emits this much gamma radiation'. It is also exactly the kind of response that is needed to avoid a debate going down the 'I say this', 'well I say you're wrong' route.

Consider also the appeals to clips of suspect activity on the Moon. The conspiracy theorist presents a thirty second clip and says this shows something like a piece of speeded up film. The defence is that if you watch the whole piece of footage you can see other things that cannot be so explained, but this necessarily entails sitting down and watching something in some cases over an hour long.

Unfortunately a lot of people are more likely to opt for the path of least resistance, and since conspiracy theorist arguments involve shorter lines of logic and soundbite clips, that's the one they go for because it doesn't require any real effort to follow.

[PhantomWolf]

I also have to wonder how much of a part the Political scene about the world and also Hollywood has had a part to play. Scientists are often portrayed as stuffy individuals or geeks, totally uncool, where as ignorance and mucle is seen as cool. While this is changing a little with new shows like CSI, Bones, and even some movies, Hollywood however gives further dis-service to real science in even these shows by never actually using it. And worse it totally ignores science altogther and produces clangers of films and shows such as Armagedon, The Core, The Day After Tomorrow, SuperNova, Magma, Dante's Peak, 10.9, and so on and so forth, which have their science wrong time and time again, often totally and utterly wrong, but when people only ever see this sort of science protrayed, that is what they come to believe is the real thing. That space ships have to use their engines all the time to move , that space is full of dangerus bits of sharp rocks and radiation, and that thunder and lightning are concurrent. They believe what they see on TV.

And then Hollywood makes it worse. From The X-Files and Millenium to Independance Day to Conspriacy Theories to Enemy of the State to Erin Brocovich, Roswell, Taken, The 44,000. Without the Cold war, Hollywood has needed new enemy, and who do they pick? The US Government and big business. They portray these groups as having shadowy agencies in them that are out to get people for their own neferious purposes. Who hide the truth from people, and cover up everything from health hazzards to aliens. Again it builds a distrust in these groups because if it's on TV it must be true, or at least there is no smoke without fire, so it must be based on some sort of truth.

Add to this, especially in the US, that their politics don't actully help themselves to be trusted. Too often the US is seen by many, inside and out, as being gun happy shoot first ask questions later type cowboys. Instead of working things out quietly and diplomatically, they are all too ready to rush in all guns blazing. From Wacko to Iraq, this sort of attitude, whether only perceivd or real, builds up a further distrust.

Add to that events about the world where the US has fiddled, pushed its own agenda, and betrayed its own people through scanda, both, real of percieved. Watergate, Iran/Contra, Monica in the Oval Office. These all reflect badly on the very top, but so do the CIA's drug dealing in Laos, its setting up of dictators in Central America, and their Military's often callous disregade for its actions, be it bombing the Chinese Embasy in Bosnia or a warehouse full of medical supplies and aid in Afganistan. These failures of intelligence and poorly planned actions only create more distrust by their own people, and hatred from outsiders.

Even more I think that this mindset has become greater since the 2000 elections. Nearly 50% of the US voted against Bush last time and I'm sure the numbers will have increase in their disatified ratings now. With the claims of the election being stolen in 2000, and that Bush cheated to get the Whitehouse, to the claims of electorial rigging in 2004. This has continued to erode the belief of the people in their own Government structures, and that belief has been replaced by disbelief in anything it says. People have gone from uncritically believing what they are told, to uncrictially disbelieving what they are told.

Because of these things, people now are far more likely to believe, to want to believe any line that starts with "Your government is lying to you." They might not want it to be true, but they want to believe it is because they can then rationalise all the stupidy they are seeing from it. If they are being lied to then Bush didn't get voted in, thus it's not their fault they have an idiot as President. It's not their fault that the US foriegn policy is breeding more and more hatred of the US in overseas and particulary in Muslim countries. If it's all a lie, then there really are no terrorists out there that want nothing more than to kill them all. if it's all a lie then the failures of rising crime, poor education, a failing economy, in fact everything else, can all be blamed on some shadowy governemnt that is deliberately destroying the fabric of society for its all evil purposes of world domination. If it is all a lie, they don't have to take responsiblity for it themselves. And that is what they want to hear.

So it is now, pimed by real cases of moronic actions within the US government, with bulging beurocracies, with Hollywood demonising authority figures, and a total mauling the sciences, people such as Micheal Moore, Bart Sibral, and many others out there, often who have an axe to grind, have now the idea for making a quick buck by preying on the vulnerable minds of people who can no longer think for themselves any more.

This has to be one of the saddest things I see with those that come here backing one CT or another ( and usually all of them.) They think they are free thinking, but in reality, they are merely parroting a CT website that has already done all the thinking for them. They have a conclusion, but they can't actually defend how they got to that conclusion because they don't know how they did, all they have is the website and what it told them to think. It is sad. They are so bound up by their distrust and often hatred of authority and "The Government", they can't see past the real lies that are being told as truth under the cover of that hate. In many ways they are little better off than the militants whose Mulla's are always preaching extreme hatred of the US everyday in the Moasks all across the Musliem world. They are blinded to the rhetoric and vileness they are being feed, because they desperately want to belive it is true so that they can no longer take the blame for things in their own lives. They want to opt out of their responsiblity for what happens, and they do this by blaming others for lying and conspiring against them. Perhaps this is why many of the more radical ones often have more than a little anti-sematic and racism in them as well, it seems they suffer from the same sort of paranoids and belief starties of those in such groups as the KKK.

Anyways, I've rambled on a lot, and probably not said much, but perhaps in there somewhere is a light into why some of this is going on. Perhaps one day we'll actually grow up as a people, but I'm doubting that.

[PeterB]

PhantomWolf said:

Without the Cold war, Hollywood has needed new enemy…

In the thread that Stargazer started, I mentioned the boardgame “Twilight Struggle,” which is about the Cold War. Well, over the weekend, I bought the game, and it looks very interesting. The rule book has a page of designers’ notes, and they make one interesting point about the Cold War: we knew who the enemy was – the Reds in the Kremlin. There was a certainty about the two sides in the Cold War that is disturbingly absent in the War on Terror.