Post by JayUtah on Feb 5, 2006 1:49:02 GMT -4
What you hear is also purely subjective, of course.
Yes. If I say it sounds to me like electronic distortion that's a subjective opinion. If I were in forensic engineering mode, I would have said, "The sound exhibits characteristics consistent with electronically-induced distortion." You have to be careful when you write up stuff like that for real because you can unintentionally create legal liabilities.
If you hear "woof!" from outside, you will probably say it's a dog barking. But what you heard was a "sound consistent with the bark of a dog." One of those statements is an identification of source and causation, for which you may not have any actual evidence. The other statement expresses an observation by drawing an analogy likely to be familiar to the reader.
Expertise or experience may or may not play a factor in this identification. You don't necessarily have to be an expert to argue that the garble sounds different in some way than the regular transmissions. Nor do you have to be an expert to say that one garble sounds like other garbles. Still subjective, but not yet begging the question. But you might have to be an expert, or to have experience, to judge that the garble is consistent with electronic distortion. Yes, to say it is electronic distortion is to speculate.
If you have experience with electronic encoding of sounds, you might be able to argue defensibly that the sound is consistent with other examples of electronic distortion you have heard. You're presumed to know what it sounds like, even if you have no idea how exactly it's produced.
If you have expertise in the Apollo communication system you would be qualified to argue that the system's design and operation could give rise to electronic distortion. But that's not pertinent to making the observation; it comes into play later when evaluating potential causes. The key concept is that if you didn't know the system could leak, and didn't know that leaks would be distorted, you wouldn't necessarily think of that as a potential cause.
Whoa, hold on and ease up. This is the claim Sibrel makes in the interview I heard as a "third party voice". I'm not personally claiming there is "evidence" for a third party voice.
Don't worry; I get the picture that you aren't necessarily buying his argument. Translate "you" to "Sibrel" as necessary.
In order for Sibrel's claim to hold, he has to show that this noise is different from all others like it because it represents a word. He has to show that the word it represents is "talk". He has to show that it was uttered by a third person, and that the reason that third person said it was to prompt the astronaut.
He can't prove any of that.
He doesn't even let the viewer know that this kind of sound occurs at other times in the recordings. Nor does he let him know that experts on the Apollo comm system know all about it. They diagnosed it. But the viewer won't necessarily know to consider the possibility that this was an unintentional, partial transmission. Sibrel, as the reporter and commentator, is responsible for representing the context of the observation fairly.
Sibrel presents no argument that the noise is the word "talk". He simply suggests to the viewer that it is, and then lets him hear the data. Unfortunately this is a distinctly Sibrellian approach. Many of his conclusions are simply his opinion hedged about with question-begging accoutrements such as, "Anyone can see that..." and "You'd have to be delusional not to agree that..." Agreement is virtually assured when Sibrel stacks the preconceptional deck.
In this audio recording there is only one track purporting to represent a conversation between the CAPCOM and the Apollo 11 crew. Attributing statements to individual speakers is a matter of recognizing the speaker by his voice and interpreting from context. There's no out-of-band information or anything like that which would let us know for sure who is speaking at any one time. And so when some sound is attributed to a third party, that's purely presumptive.
Sibrel expertly slips that interpretation in without anyone even realizing it. Unfortunately it's crucial. If either the CAPCOM or someone on the spacecraft said it, Sibrel has no case. Only if there is some off-screen "director" to imply that the astronauts and CAPCOM are merely actors does Sibrel's case make sense. But Sibrel just wished that third party into existence. That's what constitutes begging the question.
Jay - I have this vision of your blood pressure rising to perilous levels.
Well, yes, but not because of this. Other stuff going on.
I just got done going through all this with someone on Yahoo who might be Sibrel himself. So from my point of view -- which isn't your fault at all -- it's like someone coming into a meeting half an hour late and insisting that he be brought up to speed on what happened before he got there. Kind of an "Oh no, not this all over again."
Sorry for being short with you. To me this is a very open-and-shut case. Sibrel is totally out in left field. It's like someone asking what would be the implications of what we know to be AM static really was ghosts talking.
Yes. If I say it sounds to me like electronic distortion that's a subjective opinion. If I were in forensic engineering mode, I would have said, "The sound exhibits characteristics consistent with electronically-induced distortion." You have to be careful when you write up stuff like that for real because you can unintentionally create legal liabilities.
If you hear "woof!" from outside, you will probably say it's a dog barking. But what you heard was a "sound consistent with the bark of a dog." One of those statements is an identification of source and causation, for which you may not have any actual evidence. The other statement expresses an observation by drawing an analogy likely to be familiar to the reader.
Expertise or experience may or may not play a factor in this identification. You don't necessarily have to be an expert to argue that the garble sounds different in some way than the regular transmissions. Nor do you have to be an expert to say that one garble sounds like other garbles. Still subjective, but not yet begging the question. But you might have to be an expert, or to have experience, to judge that the garble is consistent with electronic distortion. Yes, to say it is electronic distortion is to speculate.
If you have experience with electronic encoding of sounds, you might be able to argue defensibly that the sound is consistent with other examples of electronic distortion you have heard. You're presumed to know what it sounds like, even if you have no idea how exactly it's produced.
If you have expertise in the Apollo communication system you would be qualified to argue that the system's design and operation could give rise to electronic distortion. But that's not pertinent to making the observation; it comes into play later when evaluating potential causes. The key concept is that if you didn't know the system could leak, and didn't know that leaks would be distorted, you wouldn't necessarily think of that as a potential cause.
Whoa, hold on and ease up. This is the claim Sibrel makes in the interview I heard as a "third party voice". I'm not personally claiming there is "evidence" for a third party voice.
Don't worry; I get the picture that you aren't necessarily buying his argument. Translate "you" to "Sibrel" as necessary.
In order for Sibrel's claim to hold, he has to show that this noise is different from all others like it because it represents a word. He has to show that the word it represents is "talk". He has to show that it was uttered by a third person, and that the reason that third person said it was to prompt the astronaut.
He can't prove any of that.
He doesn't even let the viewer know that this kind of sound occurs at other times in the recordings. Nor does he let him know that experts on the Apollo comm system know all about it. They diagnosed it. But the viewer won't necessarily know to consider the possibility that this was an unintentional, partial transmission. Sibrel, as the reporter and commentator, is responsible for representing the context of the observation fairly.
Sibrel presents no argument that the noise is the word "talk". He simply suggests to the viewer that it is, and then lets him hear the data. Unfortunately this is a distinctly Sibrellian approach. Many of his conclusions are simply his opinion hedged about with question-begging accoutrements such as, "Anyone can see that..." and "You'd have to be delusional not to agree that..." Agreement is virtually assured when Sibrel stacks the preconceptional deck.
In this audio recording there is only one track purporting to represent a conversation between the CAPCOM and the Apollo 11 crew. Attributing statements to individual speakers is a matter of recognizing the speaker by his voice and interpreting from context. There's no out-of-band information or anything like that which would let us know for sure who is speaking at any one time. And so when some sound is attributed to a third party, that's purely presumptive.
Sibrel expertly slips that interpretation in without anyone even realizing it. Unfortunately it's crucial. If either the CAPCOM or someone on the spacecraft said it, Sibrel has no case. Only if there is some off-screen "director" to imply that the astronauts and CAPCOM are merely actors does Sibrel's case make sense. But Sibrel just wished that third party into existence. That's what constitutes begging the question.
Jay - I have this vision of your blood pressure rising to perilous levels.
Well, yes, but not because of this. Other stuff going on.
I just got done going through all this with someone on Yahoo who might be Sibrel himself. So from my point of view -- which isn't your fault at all -- it's like someone coming into a meeting half an hour late and insisting that he be brought up to speed on what happened before he got there. Kind of an "Oh no, not this all over again."
Sorry for being short with you. To me this is a very open-and-shut case. Sibrel is totally out in left field. It's like someone asking what would be the implications of what we know to be AM static really was ghosts talking.
;D
