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Post by PhantomWolf on Jun 13, 2006 18:53:21 GMT -4
When I was writting the post I did in the WTC 7 thread, I was thinking about working out the line of best fit on a graph. Many here I am sure have had to plot data onto a graph and then attempt to extrapolate the line of best fit.
The Difference between the scientist and the CT, well for me, would be that the Scientist looks at the data he has and then attempts to position the line so that it reflects the data as accurately as possible, only removing the obviously out of place data points after that. The CT on the other hand has already drawn his line prior to plotting the data and so as such then removes any data that doesn't agree with his line so that the data fits the line, rather then the line fitting the data.
What I haven't been able to understand though, is why do people, often people that are reasonably intelligent, do this? Why is the CT so attractive to people that they would so willingly switch off their minds to accept it? That I don't understand.
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Post by 3onthetree on Jun 14, 2006 5:46:18 GMT -4
This is a real trap, and if you're Fairdinkum about finding the correct answers is something you can't do. My interest in the Apollo/Gemini program comes from the fact that they were A Giant Leap For Mankind and as such I don't take much of it for granted since they stopped leaping like that 40 years ago. True believers might be a good name.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jun 14, 2006 7:18:47 GMT -4
My interest in the Apollo/Gemini program comes from the fact that they were A Giant Leap For Mankind and as such I don't take much of it for granted since they stopped leaping like that 40 years ago.
Well they were, but they were EXPENSIVE giant leaps, and for the last 30 years no one else has been willing to pay the bill.
Edited to add] You can't take that no one else has done it sionce that no one wants to do it again, or that no one can do it again when there is the option that simply no one is willing to pay for anyone to do it. I went to the States last year. The only proof of this is a stamp in my passport, some photos I claim were taken in the States and some eyewittnesses. I haven't been back since, but that doesn't mean I didn't go, it just means I can't afford too. Now okay the analogy just break down a little in that others have gone there since, but the price of a tickety to the US is within most people's reach, the price of a trip to the moon is within the cost range of a a very select group.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jun 14, 2006 11:25:57 GMT -4
Don't hoax debunkers approach the Apollo landings with the preconception that the landings actually occurred and then find the evidence to refute particular hoax claims?
That would imply that the difference between believers and debunkers isn't so much "these people are already convinced they're right" as it is a difference in methodology.
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Post by gwiz on Jun 14, 2006 11:51:04 GMT -4
Don't hoax debunkers approach the Apollo landings with the preconception that the landings actually occurred and then find the evidence to refute particular hoax claims? That would imply that the difference between believers and debunkers isn't so much "these people are already convinced they're right" as it is a difference in methodology. Not really, a lot of the time a hoax claim can be refuted without reference to the reality of Apollo. The photo "anomalies" can be shown to be present in pictures taken on earth, the radiation levels in the Van Allen belts are used by engineers designing communications satellites, temperatures, craters and dust behaviour are basic physics, etc.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Jun 14, 2006 11:55:25 GMT -4
Don't hoax debunkers approach the Apollo landings with the preconception that the landings actually occurred and then find the evidence to refute particular hoax claims?
Not in most cases. Many of the hoax claims can be so easily debunked that whether one believes the landings took place or not is irrelevant. I do not need to believe Apollo was real to spot that the 'waving' flag is held by a pole across the top, and only moves when manipulated by an astronaut. I do not need to believe Apollo was real to understand how terrain and perspective affect shadow angles in photographs. When someone claims that a piece of video has obviously been slowed down to simulate the appearance of a low gravity environment, if I can find a piece of video from the same section of footage that shows an event that categorically cannot have been achieved that way, what difference does it make what I believe about Apollo?
Contrast that with the hoax claims about moon rocks. Confronted with geologists who categorically state the rocks were formed on the Moon, hoax believers conjur up ceramics labs, radiation ovens and ignorant geologists, or secret robotic sample return missions way ahead of anything we have the capability for even today, all things for which they are unable to provide any evidence whatsoever, in order to maintain the premise that Apollo was false.
That would imply that the difference between believers and debunkers isn't so much "these people are already convinced they're right" as it is a difference in methodology.
Except debunkers don't make up stuff that 'must' have existed for our viewpoint to be correct. Everything required for Apollo to be genuine is documented. Hoax believers rely on secret things for which there is no evidence to maintain their beliefs in the face of otherwise overwhelming evidence. Look back at these boards and note the number of times we have been called sheep, been accused of being paid debunkers, been told that secret societies could rewrite science texts and con the world because who would know they were wrong, had people stubbornly refuse to address real issues, and even been personally abused. Yet how often has that behaviour been replicated by the other side?
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Post by JayUtah on Jun 14, 2006 12:23:44 GMT -4
Don't hoax debunkers approach the Apollo landings with the preconception that the landings actually occurred and then find the evidence to refute particular hoax claims?
No, not really. It's okay to go into a discussion having already drawn a conclusion so long as you're honest about how you drew it and what it would take to change that conclusion.
To say that "Apollo advocates" (how's that for a label?) have a preconception is not necessarily accurate. If by "preconception" you mean a desire to believe a certain conclusion, that's not necessarily accurate. When we say that hoax-believers are preconceived, we generally mean that they have reasons for their belief that have little to do with the evidence. They disbelieve Apollo because their worldview works better if Apollo was a massive government coverup. The discussion about the evidence is just a thin veneer over the belief.
There indeed may be some people who believe in Apollo for such "cheerleading" reasons as are commonly attributed to them by their critics, but I haven't met many. There don't seem to be many people who staunchly defend Apollo for no other reason that to defend the government and to want to believe in it. More common is the passive approach. People do believe Apollo but only because they have been indoctrinated in it and they simply accept it as a historical reality without having studied it much. That is the audience to which hoax arguments are generally intended, and so it's common to assume that any criticism of the hoax theory derives from such an audience. That too might fit a definition of "preconceived", but it doesn't necessarily embody -- as in the case of hoax believers -- the desire to believe.
A select few Apollo advocates are well enough versed in both the claims of the conspiracy theorists and the technical background of Apollo to address the arguments on an expert level. These have invariably reached the conclusion that, between the conspiracy theory and the NASA explanation, the NASA explanation is by far the best supported by evidence. When such a conclusion is drawn by that method, it is not preconceived. It is conceived after an examination of the evidence.
...as it is a difference in methodology.
But the difference in methodology in the important case is simply whether the conclusion was drawn prior to investigating the evidence or whether it was drawn after it. So it is exactly the difference between conceiving a conclusion and preconceiving it.
Just because I have a belief doesn't mean I can't support that belief with evidence and a sound argument. The argument that anyone who comes to a discussion with a conclusion in place is necessarily biased, is a common technique to poison the well. A well-reasoned argument does not necessarily have to start with a clean slate.
In fact, since most of the conspiracy arguments take the form of what's wrong with existing evidence or why you shouldn't pay attention to it or believe it, it's not necessary wrong to re-assert the validity of that argument over the conspiracists' objections.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jun 14, 2006 12:52:41 GMT -4
I think you were right Jay when you said that an argument doesn't have to begin fom a "clean slate" in order to be valid. I find it perfectly valid to begin with a "gut feeling" of how an issue should be decided and then finding the evidence to support it.
Several people on the board have been taking the hoax believers to task for beginning with their belief and then casting about to find evidence to support it. I would argue that the real problem debunkers have with hoax believers is entirely in what evidence they are willing to accept and which they reject - and not with the fact that they began with an opinion.
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Post by JayUtah on Jun 14, 2006 13:33:28 GMT -4
Engineering teaches you both to pay attention to and to be skeptical of those gut reactions. You learn very quickly that your experience and intuition is often right, but wrong often enough to warrant double-checking in all cases.
But in this case we're talking about topics that have been covered literally for decades. Just because some hoax believer is new to the party doesn't mean that some Apollo advocate has to set aside the beliefs he has concluded over several years of intense study, just to create some artificially level playing field.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jun 14, 2006 13:43:21 GMT -4
Just because some hoax believer is new to the party doesn't mean that some Apollo advocate has to set aside the beliefs he has concluded over several years of intense study, just to create some artificially level playing field.
I'm not saying they should. What I am saying is that the debunker can't blame the hoax believer for having already made up his mind before beginning the argument when he's just as guilty of having done the same.
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Post by JayUtah on Jun 14, 2006 14:38:44 GMT -4
That's still debatable. Making up one's mind after having studied both sides of the question carefully is markedly different than having made it up before studying the question thoroughly. As you have seen, most hoax believers come to the table very ill-prepared. They have only the common knowledge in favor of Apollo (or worse: common misconceptions) and their heads full of reasons to disbelieve. That's considerably different from someone who knows both sides of the story and knows why the hoax theory doesn't hold.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jun 14, 2006 14:49:05 GMT -4
As I said, your argument is with how they came to their conclusion - methodology.
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Post by sts60 on Jun 14, 2006 15:33:15 GMT -4
What I am saying is that the debunker can't blame the hoax believer for having already made up his mind before beginning the argument when he's just as guilty of having done the same.
No, but the HB can be blamed for refusing to change his mind, or even reconsider his assumptions, when every argument he brings forward is debunked. That's when "made up his mind before[hand]" crosses from merely being an initial viewpoint to an unalterably fixed viewpoint.
Consider examples from my (and many others') personal experience:
1a. I grew up believing the Apollo program landed men on the Moon and returned them to Earth, because I remember bits of it happening when I grew up, visited JSC as a kid, read about it, etc.
2a. I believed that there were WMDs in Iraq before the recent invasion (although I remember telling a friend when the invasion started, "We (U.S.) had better find them or we're gonna look like bigger a******s than usual").
1b. I grew up, studied physics, became an engineer, and worked in the space industry. I've worked for/with people who made Apollo happen; I've worked with astronauts; etc. I've garnered plenty of relevant expertise and found that everything I learn about Apollo makes perfect sense. I still believe Apollo happened pretty much as advertised.
2b. Based on plenty of information freely available even through mainstream media - I no longer believe there were WMDs in Iraq. They just weren't there. (Interestingly enough, this would have been much, much - by many orders of magnitude - easier to hoax than Apollo. "Throw-down" WMDs could have been prepared well ahead of time by a relatively small number of conspirators.)
Two cases in which my mind was "made up". One viewpoint supported by facts and retained; one viewpoint disproven by facts, and therefore discarded. Committed CTs, on the other hand, will almost never discard or even modify a viewpoint based on facts to the contrary.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jun 14, 2006 15:38:28 GMT -4
No, but the HB can be blamed for refusing to change his mind, or even reconsider his assumptions, when every argument he brings forward is debunked.
I agree with you there. He should at least reconsider at that point.
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Post by JayUtah on Jun 14, 2006 17:30:10 GMT -4
As I said, your argument is with how they came to their conclusion - methodology.
Yes -- it is not with the notion of a pre-existing belief. You can't simply say, "Oh, you already believe something with respect to Apollo's authenticity, therefore you can't discuss it with an open mind because you'll just be trying to defend that belief." Yet that is what I understand the criticism to be: if someone says he believes Apollo is real at the outset, everything he says will be dismissed improperly as mere posturing to defend the belief. That's just the standard attempt to poison the well.
Instead you have to examine the methodology by which the conclusion was reached.
"I believe Apollo was authentic because I'm a proud American."
"I believe Apollo was authentic because that's what I was taught to believe."
"I believe Apollo was authentic because I have studied how it was done."
These all express different reasons for belief, some of which might constitute an improper preconception and some of which might not. Similarly,
"I disbelieve Apollo because there are scientific reasons why it couldn't have been done."
"I disbelieve Apollo because I saw a video that persuaded me it was fake."
"I disbelieve Apollo because the U.S. government always lies."
express different possible preconceptions. Someone who implicitly disbelieves all government claims won't be swayed by evidence. His disbelief derives from a desire to disbelieve, not a rational reason to, and so although he may engage in a discussion over evidence, it is only to obfuscate your response. But someone who simply read a book or saw a video might be amenable to changing his mind.
And yes, often it takes considerable discussion to discover what type of hoax believer a certain person is. Not everyone who expresses a belief is automatically predisposed improperly.
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