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It's more than just measuring outcomes. There's also a very strong belief among the scientifically minded that there should be a valid causal chain between one

It's more than just measuring outcomes. There's also a very strong belief among the scientifically minded that there should be a valid causal chain between one event and another. Astrology, even if it succeeded, would fail this test because there is no causal chain acceptable to science that explains why astrology was correct. Another test that must be met (and which many conspiracy theories fail miserably at) is the implication test: e.g., if that is true, then what else could be true? For example, if you believe Bush engineered 9/11, then surely he could have planted WMD evidence in Iraq (a far simpler conspiracy!) We never found WMD in Iraq, planted or otherwise, so the idea that Bush did anything special around 9/11 is just silly. One conspiracy which I think is particularly potent is the moon landing deniers. This conspiracy is tough to argue against because ultimately it really is unlikely that humans ever made it to the moon, and only a very few people were actually involved, and indirect video evidence is indeed capable of being faked. The best reason I can think of to argue against this is that far too many people would have had to be in on it for it to work, but really that's not very satisfying. (Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves!)

hussong 10y ago
(Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves!) OT, the old moon landing joke comes to mind: Astronaut: “Houston, we have a problem.” Houston: “What?” Astronaut: “The Russians painted the moon red!” Houston: “Well, do you guys have white paint with you?” Astronaut: “Yes. Why?” Houston: “Write Coca-Cola on it.”
kombucha2 10y ago
Well I mean for the moon landing hoax debate one can not only look at stuff left behind on the moon's surface let alone the fact that you can bounce a laser off of mirrors left on the surface to measure the distance from the Moon. It is also high unlikely that such items were placed there using automated methods.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  Don't you need a gigantic laser and an observatory to perform the mirror bounce trick? I'm sure skeptics would casually dismiss that one.
  - daurnimator 10y ago
    I thought this was dismissed by saying they were left by an unmanned mission.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
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- _fizz_buzz_ 10y ago
  > one can not only look at stuff left behind on the moon's surface I don't think we currently have telescopes that have the resolution to see objects on the moon that were left behind by the Apollo missions.
  - DrScump 10y ago
    The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter already has imaged multiple Apollo sites. Lunar Rover tracks are easily seen.
    - megablast 10y ago
      You are suggesting this would convince moon landing deniers?
    - guilhas 10y ago
      That's interesting. Where can I see those?
      - ejolto 10y ago
pharrington 10y ago
It's commonly asserted that with 1960's video editing technology, it would have been harder to accurately fabricate footage of humans on the moon than to actually send to and record humans on the moon.
- Stratoscope 10y ago
  Here's a fun video about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU
  - flukus 10y ago
    I can't see youtube at work, but I upvoted on the assumption that this was mitchel and web.
    - ajdlinux 10y ago
      I clicked it, making that same assumption. But alas not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw
Gustomaximus 10y ago
> Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves! There are reflectors on the moon people can (or could?) point lasers towards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_retroreflectors_on_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_retroreflectors_on_the...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- guilhas 10y ago
  I am not very informed on this but what would you say to this? There is people claiming moon is naturally reflective, and that there were successful reflection experiments before moon landing. National Geographic Vol. 130 No. 6 December 1966 'The Lasers Bright Magic' by Thomas Meloy Page 876 "Four years ago (1962) a ruby laser considerably smaller than those now available, shot a series of pulses at the Moon, 240,000 miles away. The beams illuminated a spot less than two miles in diameter, and were reflected back to Earth with enough strength to be measured by ultra sensitive electronic equipment."
- hyperpallium 10y ago
  [co-replying] Or an advertisement, you don't even need humans to go. e.g. Robert A Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon" http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/advertising http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/advertising
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  Actually most people do not have access to the required gigawatt laser equipment that can precisely targeted. Pointing a hundred milliwatts laser pointer, the common kind of laser people have access to, to the moon will have no effect.
flukus 10y ago
> (Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves!) Excuses will range from "we put it their with robots" to "aliens put it there for us". Some will use it as evidence of aliens.
adsfqwop 10y ago
While I am a firm believer in logic reasoning, we also have to realize its shortcomings. The shortcomings stem from the fact that it is our brain that is used to draw the inferences and causal chains that lead to our logical conclusions. Therefore, when our brain is missing information, or just failing to piece together relevant causal chains, it is easy for it to come to the wrong conclusions. Your 9/11 reasoning is a good example why you just can't blindly rely on logic, without being extra careful you are not using the shortest, cheapest, and least information dense causal chain (i.e. drawing too simple conclusion, because of lack of information which lead to lack of complex reasoning). Let me present you with another causal chain that is equally "logical", but requires you to realize you have a complex causal network to decode, instead of the simple a-b-c 9/11-Bush-WMD reasoning you just used. Let's say the Bush family wanted a war in the middle east. To start that war, an event was needed to unite the US population and steer the public opinion in order to further this agenda. What has happened since 9/11 in the middle east? A new enemy was constructed; "The Terrorists", and Irak, Syria, Kuwait, Afghanistan etc....has become a war zone. Did they need to plant WMDs in Iraq to start these wars? Did they need to plant WMDs in Iraq to start the Iraq invasion? Answer is no. They got what they wanted anyway. Therefore, to say that planting WMDs was a requirement for 9/11 "conspiracies" to be true, is just not a valid conclusion. I'm not saying that what I described above is what happened, I'm just pointing out that the logical reasoning you just used is far too simple, and does not take into account complex causal relationships that may be at work. Such complex causal relationships only reveal themselves after you dig deep enough into all the available information. So the problem of blindly relying on logical reasoning for decision making, is the failure to understand that lack of sufficient information can still lead to incorrect assumptions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw&t=1m03s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw&t=1m03s In many cases it has been shown that conspiracies turn out to be true. And instead of the simple causal chains people believe that can be used to refute the conspiracies, it turns out that what you need to understand everything is not a simple chain, but something much more complex instead. I like to call these complex things not causal chains, but causal networks. That is where the real logic brainwork starts.
hyperpallium 10y ago
> a valid causal chain between one event and another I like fields. Uncomfortable with spooky action-at-a-distance? Just posit a field there, undetectable apart from its spooky action. Fields!
- throwanem 10y ago
  Luminiferous æther! It's a classic.
tzs 10y ago
> Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves! Just make sure that it is very well publicized, so that no one will discover it on their own. Finding an enormous structure on the moon could really freak people out. I know, because it happened to me. I was driving home in the evening after work, from Santa Monica to Pasadena, taking the 10 which goes through downtown Los Angeles. It was the middle of winter, so got dark early, and it was a foggy night. As I approached downtown, I could see vaguely in the sky through the fog the full moon. But something was off about it. There was some kind of dark markings on it covering much of the visible surface. I was totally confused. There was too much regularity and organization to the markings for them to be something natural, but no one on Earth had the technology to put anything so large on the moon that it would be easily visible to the naked eye, and even if that was possible they could not have done it so quickly--I had seen the moon the night before and it was completely normal. As an avid science fiction fan, I had always thought that when we got our first clear signs of alien life I would be excited, especially if it was signs of intelligent alien life. But as I came to realize that no one on Earth could be responsible for what I was seeing, and that what I was seeing was clearly the product of intelligence, I was not excited. Instead, I felt my mind realizing that it could not even begin to cope with such an enormous development, and it started to shut down. I could actually feel my sanity leaving. All that saved me at that point was that I realized it wasn't the moon I was looking at. What I was actually seeing was the logo of some company on a downtown skyscraper. Their logo was a white circle with some symbol in it, and they had that on a big lighted sign on the top of the building. The fog had hidden the rest of the building, leaving only that sign visible.
oAlbe 10y ago
> (Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves!) Actually, there are things planted on the moon by humans already. Like the retroreflectors[0] left by the Apollo 11 mission. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experime...
bigbugbag 10y ago
The Bush test is inadequately chosen, first I remember the Bush government actually used false WMD evidence such as satellite pictures, second finding WMD was unnecessary as objective was met and war had already been declared. History shows that the US uses such mischief to start wars (see Tonkin gulf incident, nurse Nayirah). The moon landing is actually easy to argue against, there are retroreflectors that were set up on the moon that are used with lasers measure the distance between Earth and Moon. http://www.moonlandinghoax.org/8.html http://www.moonlandinghoax.org/8.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment

hussong 10y ago

(Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves!) OT, the old moon landing joke comes to mind: Astronaut: “Houston, we have a problem.” Houston: “What?” Astronaut: “The Russians painted the moon red!” Houston: “Well, do you guys have white paint with you?” Astronaut: “Yes. Why?” Houston: “Write Coca-Cola on it.”

kombucha2 10y ago

Well I mean for the moon landing hoax debate one can not only look at stuff left behind on the moon's surface let alone the fact that you can bounce a laser off of mirrors left on the surface to measure the distance from the Moon. It is also high unlikely that such items were placed there using automated methods.

nsxwolf 10y ago
Don't you need a gigantic laser and an observatory to perform the mirror bounce trick? I'm sure skeptics would casually dismiss that one.
- daurnimator 10y ago
  I thought this was dismissed by saying they were left by an unmanned mission.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
_fizz_buzz_ 10y ago
> one can not only look at stuff left behind on the moon's surface I don't think we currently have telescopes that have the resolution to see objects on the moon that were left behind by the Apollo missions.
- DrScump 10y ago
  The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter already has imaged multiple Apollo sites. Lunar Rover tracks are easily seen.
  - megablast 10y ago
    You are suggesting this would convince moon landing deniers?
  - guilhas 10y ago
    That's interesting. Where can I see those?
    - ejolto 10y ago

pharrington 10y ago

It's commonly asserted that with 1960's video editing technology, it would have been harder to accurately fabricate footage of humans on the moon than to actually send to and record humans on the moon.

Stratoscope 10y ago
Here's a fun video about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU
- flukus 10y ago
  I can't see youtube at work, but I upvoted on the assumption that this was mitchel and web.
  - ajdlinux 10y ago
    I clicked it, making that same assumption. But alas not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw

Gustomaximus 10y ago

> Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves! There are reflectors on the moon people can (or could?) point lasers towards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_retroreflectors_on_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_retroreflectors_on_the...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
guilhas 10y ago
I am not very informed on this but what would you say to this? There is people claiming moon is naturally reflective, and that there were successful reflection experiments before moon landing. National Geographic Vol. 130 No. 6 December 1966 'The Lasers Bright Magic' by Thomas Meloy Page 876 "Four years ago (1962) a ruby laser considerably smaller than those now available, shot a series of pulses at the Moon, 240,000 miles away. The beams illuminated a spot less than two miles in diameter, and were reflected back to Earth with enough strength to be measured by ultra sensitive electronic equipment."
hyperpallium 10y ago
[co-replying] Or an advertisement, you don't even need humans to go. e.g. Robert A Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon" http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/advertising http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/advertising
bigbugbag 10y ago
Actually most people do not have access to the required gigawatt laser equipment that can precisely targeted. Pointing a hundred milliwatts laser pointer, the common kind of laser people have access to, to the moon will have no effect.

flukus 10y ago

> (Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves!) Excuses will range from "we put it their with robots" to "aliens put it there for us". Some will use it as evidence of aliens.

adsfqwop 10y ago

While I am a firm believer in logic reasoning, we also have to realize its shortcomings. The shortcomings stem from the fact that it is our brain that is used to draw the inferences and causal chains that lead to our logical conclusions. Therefore, when our brain is missing information, or just failing to piece together relevant causal chains, it is easy for it to come to the wrong conclusions. Your 9/11 reasoning is a good example why you just can't blindly rely on logic, without being extra careful you are not using the shortest, cheapest, and least information dense causal chain (i.e. drawing too simple conclusion, because of lack of information which lead to lack of complex reasoning). Let me present you with another causal chain that is equally "logical", but requires you to realize you have a complex causal network to decode, instead of the simple a-b-c 9/11-Bush-WMD reasoning you just used. Let's say the Bush family wanted a war in the middle east. To start that war, an event was needed to unite the US population and steer the public opinion in order to further this agenda. What has happened since 9/11 in the middle east? A new enemy was constructed; "The Terrorists", and Irak, Syria, Kuwait, Afghanistan etc....has become a war zone. Did they need to plant WMDs in Iraq to start these wars? Did they need to plant WMDs in Iraq to start the Iraq invasion? Answer is no. They got what they wanted anyway. Therefore, to say that planting WMDs was a requirement for 9/11 "conspiracies" to be true, is just not a valid conclusion. I'm not saying that what I described above is what happened, I'm just pointing out that the logical reasoning you just used is far too simple, and does not take into account complex causal relationships that may be at work. Such complex causal relationships only reveal themselves after you dig deep enough into all the available information. So the problem of blindly relying on logical reasoning for decision making, is the failure to understand that lack of sufficient information can still lead to incorrect assumptions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw&t=1m03s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw&t=1m03s In many cases it has been shown that conspiracies turn out to be true. And instead of the simple causal chains people believe that can be used to refute the conspiracies, it turns out that what you need to understand everything is not a simple chain, but something much more complex instead. I like to call these complex things not causal chains, but causal networks. That is where the real logic brainwork starts.

hyperpallium 10y ago

> a valid causal chain between one event and another I like fields. Uncomfortable with spooky action-at-a-distance? Just posit a field there, undetectable apart from its spooky action. Fields!

throwanem 10y ago
Luminiferous æther! It's a classic.

tzs 10y ago

> Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves! Just make sure that it is very well publicized, so that no one will discover it on their own. Finding an enormous structure on the moon could really freak people out. I know, because it happened to me. I was driving home in the evening after work, from Santa Monica to Pasadena, taking the 10 which goes through downtown Los Angeles. It was the middle of winter, so got dark early, and it was a foggy night. As I approached downtown, I could see vaguely in the sky through the fog the full moon. But something was off about it. There was some kind of dark markings on it covering much of the visible surface. I was totally confused. There was too much regularity and organization to the markings for them to be something natural, but no one on Earth had the technology to put anything so large on the moon that it would be easily visible to the naked eye, and even if that was possible they could not have done it so quickly--I had seen the moon the night before and it was completely normal. As an avid science fiction fan, I had always thought that when we got our first clear signs of alien life I would be excited, especially if it was signs of intelligent alien life. But as I came to realize that no one on Earth could be responsible for what I was seeing, and that what I was seeing was clearly the product of intelligence, I was not excited. Instead, I felt my mind realizing that it could not even begin to cope with such an enormous development, and it started to shut down. I could actually feel my sanity leaving. All that saved me at that point was that I realized it wasn't the moon I was looking at. What I was actually seeing was the logo of some company on a downtown skyscraper. Their logo was a white circle with some symbol in it, and they had that on a big lighted sign on the top of the building. The fog had hidden the rest of the building, leaving only that sign visible.

oAlbe 10y ago

> (Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves!) Actually, there are things planted on the moon by humans already. Like the retroreflectors[0] left by the Apollo 11 mission. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experime...

bigbugbag 10y ago

The Bush test is inadequately chosen, first I remember the Bush government actually used false WMD evidence such as satellite pictures, second finding WMD was unnecessary as objective was met and war had already been declared. History shows that the US uses such mischief to start wars (see Tonkin gulf incident, nurse Nayirah). The moon landing is actually easy to argue against, there are retroreflectors that were set up on the moon that are used with lasers measure the distance between Earth and Moon. http://www.moonlandinghoax.org/8.html http://www.moonlandinghoax.org/8.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment