7 ms·

What gets me most about these fools is they completely ignore how much such a huge fake job would cost. It would be so expensive that you could cut the budget i

What gets me most about these fools is they completely ignore how much such a huge fake job would cost. It would be so expensive that you could cut the budget in half and just...go to the moon.

jwilber 6y ago
What it really comes down to is these people severely lack in critical thinking, so while it is surprising that they fail to account for other, seemingly obvious externalities, it really shouldn’t be.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  This critical thinking critique is pretty tautological. In effect we are saying "these people with wrong ideas, the problem is they are not good at getting ideas right". But that isn't useful/actionable knowledge. WHY are they bad at getting ideas right? Is it innate to the average human biology? Is it something that has gotten worse as more people have gotten onto the internet where they are exposed to non-curated data more? Whatever causes this we need to fight it.
  - JoeSmithson 6y ago
    What causes it is people have a gnawing sense of inadequacy, and conspiracies give them a sense of superiority. It's incredibly seductive to be in on a secret. It makes you feel special and boosts your self esteem.
  - zuminator 6y ago
    > Is it innate to the average human biology? I think it is an natural personality trait gone haywire. Just as there are some people who are pure herd creatures, completely trusting of authority, there are others who are inherently skeptical as a genetic trait. Humanity benefits from a certain degree of skepticism but since it's a spectrum, some people possess it in excess. In antiquity such people may have been heretics who questioned the Church, and they led us to the Reformation and to scientific progress. In the more recent past, they believed in alien landings and the Bermuda Triangle. Nowadays they're anti-vaxxers or flat Earthers, viewing the government or scientific orthodoxy as windmills to tilt against. Perhaps our current environment is to some extent conducive to runaway skepticism. Consider, obesity is rampant because human beings evolved in relative caloric scarcity, but in today's plentiful, carbohydrate rich diet, we find it hard to self-regulate our food intake. Perhaps conspiracy-theorism is rampant because humanity evolved in an environment where people were much less free to pursue their "alternative" urges, but the shackles have been loosened in the modern world. Freedom for better or worse also means freedom to hold fringe points of view.
  - brownbat 6y ago
    We are naturally far better at identifying what's plausible instead of sorting out what is likely, and we're better at giving kudos and recognition for the former than the latter even though it's easier. That makes some people hyperdevelop "theorizing" without working on "validation." We are dangerously good at making up stories to explain data. Talk to anyone about a spurious correlation[0] and they can provide you a just-so story that explains it as a real correlation in under a minute. Provide anyone with two competing theories that each account for some but not all of the available data, then ask them to rank the two based on likelihood. You'll make people visibly upset. (Our ability to invent new theories to fit any circumstance might partly explain why, for a while, explorers forgot how to cure scurvy.[1]) And it's easier to "look smart" the first way. No one can immediately determine whether you're good at the second unless you make a long series of predictions evaluated over time while constantly gathering more data. Everyone can see if you've connected a few dots in a clever and unexpected way. Talking heads are regarded as experts for going on shows and making vague predictions based on a few recent events, but are never called back to scrutinize their predictive track record.[2] Conspiracy theorists are generally just arguing something is plausible, and ignoring the messy step about what's more likely, with the implication you should just leap from plausible immediately to unwavering conviction. Some of this is just, well, one of these things is hard and the other is easy. But I'm confident both can be learned to some extent, based on personal experience of getting a better sense for these over time. So to the extent this is "fixable" at all,[3] maybe greater education about meta-cognition (esp. cognitive biases), the history of analytic philosophy, a humility about what one knows, and/or Bayesian reasoning earlier in education might help. Sidenote, this itself is arguably just another just-so theory too. Maybe I'm wrong about it all. :) [0] e.g., http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations [1] https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm [2] This is Phillip Tetlock's whole area of research. [3] To be fair, maybe we've already "fixed" this pretty well, we tend to attribute far fewer things to witchcraft than a few hundred years ago, maybe normal everyday education and expansion of literacy is enough and there will always be a handful of outliers and trolls. See also: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
  - jwilber 6y ago
    True. I think the actual cause is definitely multi-faceted, and expect a big cause is education. Both quality of that received (eg state funding), and level attained. Others have also mentioned other salient factors (psychology, etc)
- tim333 6y ago
  It's not all lack of critical thinking. It's also that it can be kind of fun to make out you and your friends are the ones who know the truth and the rest of the world are idiots. I mean many conspiracy theorists would be capable of researching the kind of stuff Armstrong uses in refutation but don't want to go there.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  The real issue is that they are disproportionately loud. Since they spend no time researching, they can spend all of their time being as loud and obnoxious as possible. ...and many of them make a living from the entertainment value of their conspiracy theories. What compounds their out-sized impact is the attention the media pays to them. Every time they they are featured by some reporter, social media site, or local media channel, they receive a fresh new set of subscribers. Rather than feeding these beasts, we need to learn to IGNORE idiocy.
mav3rick 6y ago
Lol if there was even 1% chance of it being fake, the Russians would have made a hue and cry.
remarkEon 6y ago
Isn't this the joke? That if Kubrick really was going to be employed by the US Government to "fake" a moon landing that, with his penchant for realistic set design, he would've filmed it on site.
- teraflop 6y ago
  See also this Mitchell and Webb sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    Ha. I thought about linking that one. Always a classic.
    - wintorez 6y ago
      All three of them are great. The aliens, Moon landing, and Princess Diana.
jakeogh 6y ago
There are always people that actually believe it, but there are good reasons to suspect it's not entirely organic. If one made a list of times the "fake landing" thing was used, the vast _minority_ would be arguments agreeing with this skeptic; in reality, it serves a different purpose. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21170684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21170684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21057230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21057230
- surfpel 6y ago
  > The most effective way to prevent people from looking into something is to poison the well. Attach the thing to something else obviously false, bonus points if evokes a negative emotional response. But then what is the end goal of all this? Anti-US propaganda?
  - jakeogh 6y ago
    To cause the desired effect. It's the most effective technique to stop people from looking at something. Consider why this purely technical, on-topic and perfectly NIST sourced comment was flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23419760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23419760 screenshot: http://v6y.net/1592547475.screenshot.png http://v6y.net/1592547475.screenshot.png
    - malft 6y ago
      I assume it was flagged because unless you're already a true believer, "look! this falling building is falling according to the laws of physics" is not a very strong argument.
      - jakeogh 6y ago
        "Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact" 7 @ g for 2.25s is a verifiable fact from one of the most prestigious standards making bodies on the planet. There are tutorials on reproducing that NIST measurement. You seem to be not surprised it's flagged, and you bring up belief. Why? Believer of what? Argument of what?
jodrellblank 6y ago
Why would faking it with a soundstage and some actors in a room, and some small models, cost so much more? A big budget Hollywood film like James Bond Moonraker (1979) was 1/1000th the cost of the Apollo program, and with no famous actors/actresses, simpler script, TV quality, surely a fake would be cheaper than that? If someone thought it was fake, they ought to be asking where the budget really went and whose pockets it lined.
- duluca 6y ago
  I remember reading an article years ago, saying that it’d have required the invention of electronics that did not exist yet to slow down the footage (simulating 1/6th g) and pull off a live broadcast that lasted hours and hours. So in essence, it’d have been the more impressive thing to do technologically speaking. Having seen the new 1 hour documentary on Apollo 11 and how rickety everything looked and barely worked, I’d agree with that assessment.
  - Sniffnoy 6y ago
    You may be thinking of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loUDS4c3Cs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loUDS4c3Cs Edit: changed to earlier upload of same video
    - dreamcompiler 6y ago
      This is very informative presentation. Thanks for the link.
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
  Because you still need to build and launch a rocket, even if it doesn't go to the moon or carry the actual crew, it needs to at least go over the horizon convincingly enough. All that design and construction still needed to be paid for. Presumably faking the capsule return is cheap enough if you drop the capsule out the back of an aircraft. Faking lunar return samples, returning signals from orbit for the various ground stations around the world, and a variety of other things also required a lot of deception, too. Then, ofcourse, you have to hope that the Russians didn't put out a headline of "Americans fake lunar landing". Since they kept a close eye on things.
moralestapia 6y ago
Sorry but two wrongs don't make a right. >It would be so expensive that you could cut the budget in half and just...go to the moon. Not even close.
- avmich 6y ago
  I think actually you could cut budget much more than in half, and go to the Moon. It's surprising how - comparatively - easy is - and was - to go to the Moon. Do you realize that for today technologies it's a walk in the park? It was done half a century ago. But that's not enough - even then in many aspects it was quite doable. Remember, the Moon race started as a calculated idea to win - all crucial requirements were approximately achievable, erring on "more likely than not". For example, F-1 first stage engine had a rather modest characteristics, except the size (which already provided a plenty of problems). The whole architecture was decided in favor of a single bug launcher - because docking was considered "risky", even though one docking (after liftoff from the Moon) and even one-half more docking (after translunar injection, when Apollo CM detached, turned over and docked with LM) eventually remained. Problems were being solved with size, not with smarter decisions - because the latter required time and were riskier. So... Rocket science isn't a rocket science. Yes, Moon landing is one of the greatest technological achievements up to now. But it was done then, and for that much.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

What gets me most about these fools is they completely ignore how much such a huge fake job would cost. It would be so expensive that you could cut the budget in half and just...go to the moon.

jwilber 6y ago

What it really comes down to is these people severely lack in critical thinking, so while it is surprising that they fail to account for other, seemingly obvious externalities, it really shouldn’t be.

gameswithgo 6y ago
This critical thinking critique is pretty tautological. In effect we are saying "these people with wrong ideas, the problem is they are not good at getting ideas right". But that isn't useful/actionable knowledge. WHY are they bad at getting ideas right? Is it innate to the average human biology? Is it something that has gotten worse as more people have gotten onto the internet where they are exposed to non-curated data more? Whatever causes this we need to fight it.
- JoeSmithson 6y ago
  What causes it is people have a gnawing sense of inadequacy, and conspiracies give them a sense of superiority. It's incredibly seductive to be in on a secret. It makes you feel special and boosts your self esteem.
- zuminator 6y ago
  > Is it innate to the average human biology? I think it is an natural personality trait gone haywire. Just as there are some people who are pure herd creatures, completely trusting of authority, there are others who are inherently skeptical as a genetic trait. Humanity benefits from a certain degree of skepticism but since it's a spectrum, some people possess it in excess. In antiquity such people may have been heretics who questioned the Church, and they led us to the Reformation and to scientific progress. In the more recent past, they believed in alien landings and the Bermuda Triangle. Nowadays they're anti-vaxxers or flat Earthers, viewing the government or scientific orthodoxy as windmills to tilt against. Perhaps our current environment is to some extent conducive to runaway skepticism. Consider, obesity is rampant because human beings evolved in relative caloric scarcity, but in today's plentiful, carbohydrate rich diet, we find it hard to self-regulate our food intake. Perhaps conspiracy-theorism is rampant because humanity evolved in an environment where people were much less free to pursue their "alternative" urges, but the shackles have been loosened in the modern world. Freedom for better or worse also means freedom to hold fringe points of view.
- brownbat 6y ago
  We are naturally far better at identifying what's plausible instead of sorting out what is likely, and we're better at giving kudos and recognition for the former than the latter even though it's easier. That makes some people hyperdevelop "theorizing" without working on "validation." We are dangerously good at making up stories to explain data. Talk to anyone about a spurious correlation[0] and they can provide you a just-so story that explains it as a real correlation in under a minute. Provide anyone with two competing theories that each account for some but not all of the available data, then ask them to rank the two based on likelihood. You'll make people visibly upset. (Our ability to invent new theories to fit any circumstance might partly explain why, for a while, explorers forgot how to cure scurvy.[1]) And it's easier to "look smart" the first way. No one can immediately determine whether you're good at the second unless you make a long series of predictions evaluated over time while constantly gathering more data. Everyone can see if you've connected a few dots in a clever and unexpected way. Talking heads are regarded as experts for going on shows and making vague predictions based on a few recent events, but are never called back to scrutinize their predictive track record.[2] Conspiracy theorists are generally just arguing something is plausible, and ignoring the messy step about what's more likely, with the implication you should just leap from plausible immediately to unwavering conviction. Some of this is just, well, one of these things is hard and the other is easy. But I'm confident both can be learned to some extent, based on personal experience of getting a better sense for these over time. So to the extent this is "fixable" at all,[3] maybe greater education about meta-cognition (esp. cognitive biases), the history of analytic philosophy, a humility about what one knows, and/or Bayesian reasoning earlier in education might help. Sidenote, this itself is arguably just another just-so theory too. Maybe I'm wrong about it all. :) [0] e.g., http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations [1] https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm [2] This is Phillip Tetlock's whole area of research. [3] To be fair, maybe we've already "fixed" this pretty well, we tend to attribute far fewer things to witchcraft than a few hundred years ago, maybe normal everyday education and expansion of literacy is enough and there will always be a handful of outliers and trolls. See also: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
- jwilber 6y ago
  True. I think the actual cause is definitely multi-faceted, and expect a big cause is education. Both quality of that received (eg state funding), and level attained. Others have also mentioned other salient factors (psychology, etc)
tim333 6y ago
It's not all lack of critical thinking. It's also that it can be kind of fun to make out you and your friends are the ones who know the truth and the rest of the world are idiots. I mean many conspiracy theorists would be capable of researching the kind of stuff Armstrong uses in refutation but don't want to go there.
koheripbal 6y ago
The real issue is that they are disproportionately loud. Since they spend no time researching, they can spend all of their time being as loud and obnoxious as possible. ...and many of them make a living from the entertainment value of their conspiracy theories. What compounds their out-sized impact is the attention the media pays to them. Every time they they are featured by some reporter, social media site, or local media channel, they receive a fresh new set of subscribers. Rather than feeding these beasts, we need to learn to IGNORE idiocy.

mav3rick 6y ago

Lol if there was even 1% chance of it being fake, the Russians would have made a hue and cry.

remarkEon 6y ago

Isn't this the joke? That if Kubrick really was going to be employed by the US Government to "fake" a moon landing that, with his penchant for realistic set design, he would've filmed it on site.

teraflop 6y ago
See also this Mitchell and Webb sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw
- remarkEon 6y ago
  Ha. I thought about linking that one. Always a classic.
  - wintorez 6y ago
    All three of them are great. The aliens, Moon landing, and Princess Diana.

jakeogh 6y ago

There are always people that actually believe it, but there are good reasons to suspect it's not entirely organic. If one made a list of times the "fake landing" thing was used, the vast _minority_ would be arguments agreeing with this skeptic; in reality, it serves a different purpose. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21170684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21170684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21057230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21057230

surfpel 6y ago
> The most effective way to prevent people from looking into something is to poison the well. Attach the thing to something else obviously false, bonus points if evokes a negative emotional response. But then what is the end goal of all this? Anti-US propaganda?
- jakeogh 6y ago
  To cause the desired effect. It's the most effective technique to stop people from looking at something. Consider why this purely technical, on-topic and perfectly NIST sourced comment was flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23419760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23419760 screenshot: http://v6y.net/1592547475.screenshot.png http://v6y.net/1592547475.screenshot.png
  - malft 6y ago
    I assume it was flagged because unless you're already a true believer, "look! this falling building is falling according to the laws of physics" is not a very strong argument.
    - jakeogh 6y ago
      "Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact" 7 @ g for 2.25s is a verifiable fact from one of the most prestigious standards making bodies on the planet. There are tutorials on reproducing that NIST measurement. You seem to be not surprised it's flagged, and you bring up belief. Why? Believer of what? Argument of what?

jodrellblank 6y ago

Why would faking it with a soundstage and some actors in a room, and some small models, cost so much more? A big budget Hollywood film like James Bond Moonraker (1979) was 1/1000th the cost of the Apollo program, and with no famous actors/actresses, simpler script, TV quality, surely a fake would be cheaper than that? If someone thought it was fake, they ought to be asking where the budget really went and whose pockets it lined.

duluca 6y ago
I remember reading an article years ago, saying that it’d have required the invention of electronics that did not exist yet to slow down the footage (simulating 1/6th g) and pull off a live broadcast that lasted hours and hours. So in essence, it’d have been the more impressive thing to do technologically speaking. Having seen the new 1 hour documentary on Apollo 11 and how rickety everything looked and barely worked, I’d agree with that assessment.
- Sniffnoy 6y ago
  You may be thinking of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loUDS4c3Cs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loUDS4c3Cs Edit: changed to earlier upload of same video
  - dreamcompiler 6y ago
    This is very informative presentation. Thanks for the link.
paranoidrobot 6y ago
Because you still need to build and launch a rocket, even if it doesn't go to the moon or carry the actual crew, it needs to at least go over the horizon convincingly enough. All that design and construction still needed to be paid for. Presumably faking the capsule return is cheap enough if you drop the capsule out the back of an aircraft. Faking lunar return samples, returning signals from orbit for the various ground stations around the world, and a variety of other things also required a lot of deception, too. Then, ofcourse, you have to hope that the Russians didn't put out a headline of "Americans fake lunar landing". Since they kept a close eye on things.

moralestapia 6y ago

Sorry but two wrongs don't make a right. >It would be so expensive that you could cut the budget in half and just...go to the moon. Not even close.

avmich 6y ago
I think actually you could cut budget much more than in half, and go to the Moon. It's surprising how - comparatively - easy is - and was - to go to the Moon. Do you realize that for today technologies it's a walk in the park? It was done half a century ago. But that's not enough - even then in many aspects it was quite doable. Remember, the Moon race started as a calculated idea to win - all crucial requirements were approximately achievable, erring on "more likely than not". For example, F-1 first stage engine had a rather modest characteristics, except the size (which already provided a plenty of problems). The whole architecture was decided in favor of a single bug launcher - because docking was considered "risky", even though one docking (after liftoff from the Moon) and even one-half more docking (after translunar injection, when Apollo CM detached, turned over and docked with LM) eventually remained. Problems were being solved with size, not with smarter decisions - because the latter required time and were riskier. So... Rocket science isn't a rocket science. Yes, Moon landing is one of the greatest technological achievements up to now. But it was done then, and for that much.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]