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Armstrong's exact argument about the vast numbers conspirators that would be required to keep perfect secrecy is exactly what I use when people try to claim tha

Armstrong's exact argument about the vast numbers conspirators that would be required to keep perfect secrecy is exactly what I use when people try to claim that the coronavirus is some kind of hoax or that there's some kind of conspiracy about vaccines. Have you ever tried to get thousands of people to cooperate on anything, let alone perpetuate a massive lie, when they have nothing to gain personally from doing so?

desikoder 6y ago
Yeah, people have been selling an invisible product since thousands of years (religion), so it is quite possible to get billions of people to lie to themselves and to others.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Parent comment said nothing to gain from. Pascal's wager (at least) would suggest some kind of logic to it
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
    Pascal's wager never made sense to me. There are infinitely many possible belief systems. The odds of picking the right one are infinitely small. Picking the wrong one may even come with greater loss than picking none of them, because praying to false gods may bring upon me the wrath of the true gods more so than simply keeping an open mind.
- avmich 6y ago
  I take issue with your "quite". Did you try to establish a new religion? Star Wars had some success on that, but even them - with all modern might of persuasion - didn't get billions - or tens of millions - of followers, and those who they did are arguably at least partially follow in jest. You can't apply "religion" argument that easily.
  - Supermancho 6y ago
    > Did you try to establish a new religion? L. Ron Hubbard. Church of Latter Day Saints. There have been major religions established in the last 2 centuries in the USA alone.
    - avmich 6y ago
      Those are not major enough, not billions. 2 centuries are longer than Moon controversy, though not by much.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - Supermancho 6y ago
        Adding a new qualification of "not major enough" is a no true scotsman argument, which is not compelling. They are religions by any measure but your arbitrary goalposting. >> people have been selling an invisible product since thousands of years (religion), so it is quite possible to get billions of people to lie to themselves and to others. The "billions" qualification comes from your specific interpretation of this statement to mean a single religion. This is not the assertion. Nor is the specific count relevant to the point, as billions can be read to mean all relgions combined. Large groups of people can deceive each other and themselves. Full stop.
        avmich 6y ago
        > They are religions by any measure but your arbitrary goalposting. The argument was "people are believing in imaginary things, in billions and for centuries". For billions - or so - and for centuries - or so - arguments to apply, the religion ought to be major. > The "billions" qualification comes from your specific interpretation of this statement to mean a single religion. Oh, so now goalposting mean not a single example, but a combined group :) in comparison to one specific - and rather located in time and geography - government program. Frankly, at this point I don't see much sense in more hairsplitting. Points were made, anyone can think for oneself from these.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  The "product" being sold is a doctrinal basis for group cohesion, the same basic constitutive role that the following ideas play: "property is theft", "LOTR is the best book ever written", "transwomen are women", etc. (<- this is not a comment on the truth of these, only their social function). These ideas constitute groups around them, forming a bedrock of a social belief system. Ironically, this is exactly how conspiracies function: "we never landed on the moon". This does not apply to people with material goals, rather than social(/epistemic) ones. The goal, "let's poison everyone with 5G" isn't an essentially meaningless doctrine ie., whose only impact is on belief, not on the world. Goals to change the world, rather than to regulate belief, require actual self-awareness, coordination and a desire to realise that end-goal. In this case, i'd require >1mil+ people absurdly committed to poisoning everyone around them (and not least, to have some magical ability to induce a virus with a wifi signal).
solarkraft 6y ago
The great trick about this is that you don't have to believe in a perfect conspiracy, because you can just make up anonymous sources.
mihaifm 6y ago
They don't have to lie. You can have 90% of those 400k people do legit work, but still fake the landing. Maybe they built the rocket but encountered some technical bottleneck and had to fake the landing. Not a skeptic myself, but the argument that 400k people needed to keep a secret is pretty weak.
- jv22222 6y ago
  The movie The Cube springs to mind. No one knows what anyone else is building other than a very few who put the whole dastardly thing together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(film)
- avmich 6y ago
  > Not a skeptic myself, but the argument that 400k people needed to keep a secret is pretty weak. That's unless you start looking closer. Those people, they aren't universally fools, they think by themselves. Maybe not all 400k, but a sizeable non-reducible chunk of them do.
- publicrootkey 6y ago
  If the moon landing was indeed infeasible from a technical perspective at that time, those people would know, that their designs were inadequate or flawed. The "some people might think they do legit work" argument doesn't really hold, because they would either know it was an impossible feat, or it would possible and no need to fake the landing.
- jussij 6y ago
  That still leaves 40,000 people who are in on that lie.
- mullingitover 6y ago
  Even faking the landing would require cooperation from parties with nothing to gain, since independent parties were able to bounce a laser off the mirror that they placed when they landed.
- koheripbal 6y ago
moksly 6y ago
I read about homeopaths on arstechnica the other day and I have to say that it shock me. How did we ever get to a society where people are injecting mercury to fight diseases? The worst part about it is that some of these people are the same who fear vaccines. It just doesn’t make any sense. How do you even reason with those people? https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/homeopaths-sell-injections-containing-strychnine-lead-mercury-seriously/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/homeopaths-sell-inje...
- ghthor 6y ago
  The evidence about vaccines causing harm is piling up. The question of whether there is a conspiracy at least motivated by greed is also piling up. I personally think there is a even higher conspiracy, one on a spiritual level that is also involved in orchestrating the overall deception and harm caused by vaccines but I have no solid evidence for that.
  - wilt 6y ago
    Yeah that was me. If I can get enough people to use them I will get enough spirit energy to be able to buy a magic sword off a ghost. Then with the sword I can fight the magic photocopier to get the pendant to open the door....
  - tim333 6y ago
    The thing with vaccines is not that they never cause harm but that you can quantify how much harm vs how much good and usually good is a clear win bar the odd screw up eg https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/05/01/vaccine-swine-flu-coronavirus/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/05/01/vaccine-sw...

desikoder 6y ago

Yeah, people have been selling an invisible product since thousands of years (religion), so it is quite possible to get billions of people to lie to themselves and to others.

mhh__ 6y ago
Parent comment said nothing to gain from. Pascal's wager (at least) would suggest some kind of logic to it
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  Pascal's wager never made sense to me. There are infinitely many possible belief systems. The odds of picking the right one are infinitely small. Picking the wrong one may even come with greater loss than picking none of them, because praying to false gods may bring upon me the wrath of the true gods more so than simply keeping an open mind.
avmich 6y ago
I take issue with your "quite". Did you try to establish a new religion? Star Wars had some success on that, but even them - with all modern might of persuasion - didn't get billions - or tens of millions - of followers, and those who they did are arguably at least partially follow in jest. You can't apply "religion" argument that easily.
- Supermancho 6y ago
  > Did you try to establish a new religion? L. Ron Hubbard. Church of Latter Day Saints. There have been major religions established in the last 2 centuries in the USA alone.
  - avmich 6y ago
    Those are not major enough, not billions. 2 centuries are longer than Moon controversy, though not by much.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Supermancho 6y ago
      Adding a new qualification of "not major enough" is a no true scotsman argument, which is not compelling. They are religions by any measure but your arbitrary goalposting. >> people have been selling an invisible product since thousands of years (religion), so it is quite possible to get billions of people to lie to themselves and to others. The "billions" qualification comes from your specific interpretation of this statement to mean a single religion. This is not the assertion. Nor is the specific count relevant to the point, as billions can be read to mean all relgions combined. Large groups of people can deceive each other and themselves. Full stop.
      - avmich 6y ago
        > They are religions by any measure but your arbitrary goalposting. The argument was "people are believing in imaginary things, in billions and for centuries". For billions - or so - and for centuries - or so - arguments to apply, the religion ought to be major. > The "billions" qualification comes from your specific interpretation of this statement to mean a single religion. Oh, so now goalposting mean not a single example, but a combined group :) in comparison to one specific - and rather located in time and geography - government program. Frankly, at this point I don't see much sense in more hairsplitting. Points were made, anyone can think for oneself from these.
mjburgess 6y ago
The "product" being sold is a doctrinal basis for group cohesion, the same basic constitutive role that the following ideas play: "property is theft", "LOTR is the best book ever written", "transwomen are women", etc. (<- this is not a comment on the truth of these, only their social function). These ideas constitute groups around them, forming a bedrock of a social belief system. Ironically, this is exactly how conspiracies function: "we never landed on the moon". This does not apply to people with material goals, rather than social(/epistemic) ones. The goal, "let's poison everyone with 5G" isn't an essentially meaningless doctrine ie., whose only impact is on belief, not on the world. Goals to change the world, rather than to regulate belief, require actual self-awareness, coordination and a desire to realise that end-goal. In this case, i'd require >1mil+ people absurdly committed to poisoning everyone around them (and not least, to have some magical ability to induce a virus with a wifi signal).

solarkraft 6y ago

The great trick about this is that you don't have to believe in a perfect conspiracy, because you can just make up anonymous sources.

mihaifm 6y ago

They don't have to lie. You can have 90% of those 400k people do legit work, but still fake the landing. Maybe they built the rocket but encountered some technical bottleneck and had to fake the landing. Not a skeptic myself, but the argument that 400k people needed to keep a secret is pretty weak.

jv22222 6y ago
The movie The Cube springs to mind. No one knows what anyone else is building other than a very few who put the whole dastardly thing together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(film)
avmich 6y ago
> Not a skeptic myself, but the argument that 400k people needed to keep a secret is pretty weak. That's unless you start looking closer. Those people, they aren't universally fools, they think by themselves. Maybe not all 400k, but a sizeable non-reducible chunk of them do.
publicrootkey 6y ago
If the moon landing was indeed infeasible from a technical perspective at that time, those people would know, that their designs were inadequate or flawed. The "some people might think they do legit work" argument doesn't really hold, because they would either know it was an impossible feat, or it would possible and no need to fake the landing.
jussij 6y ago
That still leaves 40,000 people who are in on that lie.
mullingitover 6y ago
Even faking the landing would require cooperation from parties with nothing to gain, since independent parties were able to bounce a laser off the mirror that they placed when they landed.
koheripbal 6y ago

moksly 6y ago

I read about homeopaths on arstechnica the other day and I have to say that it shock me. How did we ever get to a society where people are injecting mercury to fight diseases? The worst part about it is that some of these people are the same who fear vaccines. It just doesn’t make any sense. How do you even reason with those people? https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/homeopaths-sell-injections-containing-strychnine-lead-mercury-seriously/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/homeopaths-sell-inje...

ghthor 6y ago
The evidence about vaccines causing harm is piling up. The question of whether there is a conspiracy at least motivated by greed is also piling up. I personally think there is a even higher conspiracy, one on a spiritual level that is also involved in orchestrating the overall deception and harm caused by vaccines but I have no solid evidence for that.
- wilt 6y ago
  Yeah that was me. If I can get enough people to use them I will get enough spirit energy to be able to buy a magic sword off a ghost. Then with the sword I can fight the magic photocopier to get the pendant to open the door....
- tim333 6y ago
  The thing with vaccines is not that they never cause harm but that you can quantify how much harm vs how much good and usually good is a clear win bar the odd screw up eg https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/05/01/vaccine-swine-flu-coronavirus/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/05/01/vaccine-sw...