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I hate anti-CT people. Questioning is the way of science. If someone wants to question whether the US arrived to the Moon or not, let them, dont discredit the

I hate anti-CT people. Questioning is the way of science. If someone wants to question whether the US arrived to the Moon or not, let them, dont discredit them Let them look for evidence and present their case. What are we afraid of? Same happened with the 9/11 stuff. In the quest of looking for answers after the questioning, maybe we will get more knowledge. But instead people stayed with the first government sanctioned story and accepted it blindly . Same happened with the WMD story... society has to learn to be more skeptic, and to value those that question and look for answers.

brookst 3y ago
Too many things get dismissed as conspiracy theories, that’s true. But the CT mindset of absolute certainty doesn’t do its adherents any favors. Skepticism should extend to one’s own beliefs, and claims of actual conspiracies need evidence. The stupid chemtrail thing is a perfect example. Any thinking person can see the insanity required to get everything wrong about airplanes, weight, parts per million, and airport logistics. Yet to this day there are people who don’t just belief the conspiracy theory, but hold an unshakable belief in it. Some of those people were probably right about WMDs and other things. But so why? Stopped clocks and all that. A conspiracy theory mindset is toxic to actual reason.
- infamouscow 3y ago
  Everyone that was right about WMDs got it right because literally no physical evidence was ever given to the public. It was clear as day to anyone skeptical. Let's stop trying to rewrite history.
croes 3y ago
They aren't discredited because they asked questions but because they don't understand existing evidence and because their "evidences" are either already debunked or were nonsense in the first place. But they don't stop, you have to repeat they same things over and over again.Live, Die, Repeat. And some point everybody has enough. They found no evidence for a fake moon landing, no evidence for 9/11 being an inside job, but they found evidence the US lied about WMD. Guess which of the former CTs still believe?
- codr7 3y ago
  Who are "they"? The government?
  - croes 3y ago
    CTs. How often must someone explain why there are no stars visible in the moon photos or why the flag moves?
    - codr7 3y ago
      As often as needed to make people believe the BS.
kmeisthax 3y ago
My objection to conspiracy theories is the saliency bias. Conspiracy theorists ignore entirely plausible if not outright proven conspiracies because that makes them boring. And at the same time, they continue to pursue conspiracies that have mountains of opposing evidence because they're interesting, or because it makes a group of people they hate look bad. Like, let's take the moon landings as an example. Those are some of the most well-documented events to question, so there's lots of evidence for them that's kind of difficult to fake[0]. Hell, if they did film actors in a studio, how did they keep the Soviets from immediately noticing and embarrassing America over it? Faking the moon landings would be a pure ideological win for Soviet Communism. I think the most instructive example is Jeffrey Epstein. There is more conspiracy theorist interest in whether or not his prison suicide was a murder than the actual child sex ring he was running! The moment a conspiracy theory is proven, conspiracy theorists move on to something more farfetched, as if explanation destroys their power. So now that "a good chunk of US and UK politicians were organized pedos" isn't salient enough, now we have to invent rogue endocrinologists overprescribing HRT in the name of Satanists getting high off adrenochrome in the nonexistent basement of a third-rate DC pizza parlor. There is literally nothing scientific about this. Conspiracy theorists will never uncover a single actual conspiracy. The thing about conspiracies is that they tend to be frustratingly mundane: like, "Intuit pays off Senators to make tax filing difficult" levels of boring. If you want to keep that from getting out, what you can do is invent a more salient theory and deliberately leak that instead. How many actual conspiracies are being covered up by conspiracy theorists only chasing after the interesting ones? [0] Take the Apollo Guidance Computer, a luggage-sized electronic computer that actually did most of the mission calculations for spaceflight. There's about fifty of them, and they are fully working computers that collectors have even managed to restore to fully working order. Why waste the billions it took to develop such a thing if you're just going to film a few actors in a studio?
- opportune 3y ago
  There’s also a wide class of conspiracy theories that are the favorites of the mentally ill (mostly paranoid schizophrenics and those with delusions of grandeur) and the dimwitted (mostly about the government being all powerful and wanting to kill us with no rational motive, ie FEMA camp stuff, which then gets mixed into their personal politics). The government doesn't need to do anything to discredit legitimate conspiracy theorists, these types of people exist independent of the government. There are absolutely smart, open minded, intelligent “conspiracy theorists” but because they’re not obsessive whack jobs they are unrecognizable by that term.
JohnBooty 3y ago
Time, attention, domain expertise, intelligence: these are all finite resources. Most worthwhile questions require, at a minimum, a certain level of expert domain knowledge to resolve. If someone wants to question whether the US arrived to the Moon or not, let them, dont discredit them Let them look for evidence and present their case. What are we afraid of? Let competing ideas battle it out in the marketplace of ideas, right? This actually works really well in a lot of instances. The catch is that it requires the "consumers" in the "marketplace" to have the domain expertise to correctly judge which idea is best. And this is very often not the case. Particularly when we are talking about the general public. When the public can't accurately judge the merits of competing ideas on merit alone they will (of course) naturally gravitate to the ideas that are more slickly presented, the ideas that simply make them feel better, the ideas that don't challenge their existing beliefs, etc. There is also the issue of asymmetric information warfare. If you are slick enough you can wage a lopsided war of attrition against your opponents. It takes little effort to spread falsehoods, and it typically takes multiple times as much effort to debunk them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop Same happened with the WMD story... society has to learn to be more skeptic, and to value those that question and look for answers. This is an example of what I'm saying. The public initially largely supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan because they were not educated consumers: the public had no way of independently verifying the WMD claims. There was no marketplace of ideas, just a monopoly.
- dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
  Summary of what you said: A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on...
pawelmurias 3y ago
Most CTs aren't about asking questions but about providing often bullshit answers with no evidence. Being suspicious if things happened exactly the same official way is reasonable. CT "people" believe that some doubt about one thing or the other is solid evidence that the world trade center was demolished with a sledgehammer (or some other far fetched theory that would require a mountain of evidence)

brookst 3y ago

Too many things get dismissed as conspiracy theories, that’s true. But the CT mindset of absolute certainty doesn’t do its adherents any favors. Skepticism should extend to one’s own beliefs, and claims of actual conspiracies need evidence. The stupid chemtrail thing is a perfect example. Any thinking person can see the insanity required to get everything wrong about airplanes, weight, parts per million, and airport logistics. Yet to this day there are people who don’t just belief the conspiracy theory, but hold an unshakable belief in it. Some of those people were probably right about WMDs and other things. But so why? Stopped clocks and all that. A conspiracy theory mindset is toxic to actual reason.

infamouscow 3y ago
Everyone that was right about WMDs got it right because literally no physical evidence was ever given to the public. It was clear as day to anyone skeptical. Let's stop trying to rewrite history.

croes 3y ago

They aren't discredited because they asked questions but because they don't understand existing evidence and because their "evidences" are either already debunked or were nonsense in the first place. But they don't stop, you have to repeat they same things over and over again.Live, Die, Repeat. And some point everybody has enough. They found no evidence for a fake moon landing, no evidence for 9/11 being an inside job, but they found evidence the US lied about WMD. Guess which of the former CTs still believe?

codr7 3y ago
Who are "they"? The government?
- croes 3y ago
  CTs. How often must someone explain why there are no stars visible in the moon photos or why the flag moves?
  - codr7 3y ago
    As often as needed to make people believe the BS.

kmeisthax 3y ago

My objection to conspiracy theories is the saliency bias. Conspiracy theorists ignore entirely plausible if not outright proven conspiracies because that makes them boring. And at the same time, they continue to pursue conspiracies that have mountains of opposing evidence because they're interesting, or because it makes a group of people they hate look bad. Like, let's take the moon landings as an example. Those are some of the most well-documented events to question, so there's lots of evidence for them that's kind of difficult to fake[0]. Hell, if they did film actors in a studio, how did they keep the Soviets from immediately noticing and embarrassing America over it? Faking the moon landings would be a pure ideological win for Soviet Communism. I think the most instructive example is Jeffrey Epstein. There is more conspiracy theorist interest in whether or not his prison suicide was a murder than the actual child sex ring he was running! The moment a conspiracy theory is proven, conspiracy theorists move on to something more farfetched, as if explanation destroys their power. So now that "a good chunk of US and UK politicians were organized pedos" isn't salient enough, now we have to invent rogue endocrinologists overprescribing HRT in the name of Satanists getting high off adrenochrome in the nonexistent basement of a third-rate DC pizza parlor. There is literally nothing scientific about this. Conspiracy theorists will never uncover a single actual conspiracy. The thing about conspiracies is that they tend to be frustratingly mundane: like, "Intuit pays off Senators to make tax filing difficult" levels of boring. If you want to keep that from getting out, what you can do is invent a more salient theory and deliberately leak that instead. How many actual conspiracies are being covered up by conspiracy theorists only chasing after the interesting ones? [0] Take the Apollo Guidance Computer, a luggage-sized electronic computer that actually did most of the mission calculations for spaceflight. There's about fifty of them, and they are fully working computers that collectors have even managed to restore to fully working order. Why waste the billions it took to develop such a thing if you're just going to film a few actors in a studio?

opportune 3y ago
There’s also a wide class of conspiracy theories that are the favorites of the mentally ill (mostly paranoid schizophrenics and those with delusions of grandeur) and the dimwitted (mostly about the government being all powerful and wanting to kill us with no rational motive, ie FEMA camp stuff, which then gets mixed into their personal politics). The government doesn't need to do anything to discredit legitimate conspiracy theorists, these types of people exist independent of the government. There are absolutely smart, open minded, intelligent “conspiracy theorists” but because they’re not obsessive whack jobs they are unrecognizable by that term.

JohnBooty 3y ago

Time, attention, domain expertise, intelligence: these are all finite resources. Most worthwhile questions require, at a minimum, a certain level of expert domain knowledge to resolve. If someone wants to question whether the US arrived to the Moon or not, let them, dont discredit them Let them look for evidence and present their case. What are we afraid of? Let competing ideas battle it out in the marketplace of ideas, right? This actually works really well in a lot of instances. The catch is that it requires the "consumers" in the "marketplace" to have the domain expertise to correctly judge which idea is best. And this is very often not the case. Particularly when we are talking about the general public. When the public can't accurately judge the merits of competing ideas on merit alone they will (of course) naturally gravitate to the ideas that are more slickly presented, the ideas that simply make them feel better, the ideas that don't challenge their existing beliefs, etc. There is also the issue of asymmetric information warfare. If you are slick enough you can wage a lopsided war of attrition against your opponents. It takes little effort to spread falsehoods, and it typically takes multiple times as much effort to debunk them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop Same happened with the WMD story... society has to learn to be more skeptic, and to value those that question and look for answers. This is an example of what I'm saying. The public initially largely supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan because they were not educated consumers: the public had no way of independently verifying the WMD claims. There was no marketplace of ideas, just a monopoly.

dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
Summary of what you said: A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on...

pawelmurias 3y ago

Most CTs aren't about asking questions but about providing often bullshit answers with no evidence. Being suspicious if things happened exactly the same official way is reasonable. CT "people" believe that some doubt about one thing or the other is solid evidence that the world trade center was demolished with a sledgehammer (or some other far fetched theory that would require a mountain of evidence)