Imagine: you spent years training for a sojourn to the Moon, flew there on top of a Saturn V rocket as part of Apollo 16, to ultimately land on the lunar surface. You then spend the next few days on the surface, walking and skipping across the lunar regolith while setting up experiments and exploring per your mission assignments. Then, you pack everything up and blast off from the lunar surface to the orbiting command module before returning to Earth and a hero’s welcome. Then, decades later, you are told to your face that none of that ever happened. That’s the topic of a recent interview which [Jack Gordon] recently did with astronaut [Charles Duke].
None of these ‘arguments’ provided by the reality-denying crowd should be too shocking or feel new, as they range from the amount of fuel required to travel to the moon (solved by orbital mechanics) to the impossibility of lighting on the Moon (covered by everyone and their dog, including the Mythbusters in 2008).
Of course, these days, we have lunar orbiters (LRO and others) equipped with powerful cameras zoomed in on the lunar surface, which have photographed the Apollo landing sites with the experiments and footsteps still clearly visible. Like today’s crowd of spherical Earth deniers, skeptics will denounce anything that doesn’t fit their ill-conceived narrative as ‘faked’ for reasons that only exist in their fevered imaginations.
A common objection we’ve heard is that if we went to the moon back then, why haven’t we been back? The reason is obvious: politics. The STS (Shuttle) project sucked up all funding and the USSR collapsed. Only recently has there been a new kind of ‘space race’ in progress with nations like China. That doesn’t keep countless individuals from dreaming up lunar landing conspiracy theories to file away with their other truth nuggets, such as how microwaved and genetically engineered foods cause cancer, vaccines are another government conspiracy to control the population, and nuclear power plants can explode like nuclear bombs.
Perhaps the best takeaway is that even if we have not found intelligent life outside Earth yet, for at least a few years, intelligent life was the only kind on Earth’s Moon. We wish [Charles Duke] many happy returns, with maybe a casual return to the Moon in the near future as well, to frolic once more on the lunar surface.
Not that there hasn’t been a moon hoax, just not lately. If you want to watch the old Apollo video, it has been improved in recent years.
Now I wonder. Do such people also believe the moon and the sun are flat?
The biggest problem here I guess is that such people also have a right to vote. It’s also a simple failure of basic education, and that starts in preschool. But I want to stay away from politics, there are not many sensible thoughts in that direction.
Also reminds me of Capricorn One.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077294/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
And not going back to the moon for 50 years proves the whole thing was not much more then a dick measuring contest. I also never understood the space shuttle. On itself it is (was) an impressive piece of equipment, but even back then I realized that it is bonkers to attempt to make a reusable spacecraft while it was clear that technology had not advanced to a high enough level for that sort of magic just yet. I was about 15 years old back then. All spacecrafts were highly experimental in that time. If there is one thing you can trust NASA to do, then it is to make up any budget you allocate to them. Regardless of results.
As someone who followed the space program from Alan Shepard’s flight through to the Moon landings, I find it incredible that anyone could seriously believe that any of it didn’t happen. I’m pretty sure it’s just for the clicks and ad revenue that the deniers even exist. If you get popular enough, it sure beats doing real work :-)
Re: the Bible — I’m not religious, but even I teared up (still do) when the Apollo 8 crew did their Genesis reading on Christmas Eve. They were very brave men, balancing on a knife edge of success or failure, and supported by a ground team of engineers, scientists and contractors who were scrambling hard to meet a deadline. I’m pretty sure there are some very scary stories that haven’t been told about the hardware.
Was the space program worth it? Could the money have been better spent feeding, clothing and caring for people? Perhaps. But it does stand as a counterpoint to the insanity of Vietnam, and an example of how high we as a country can reach when we put our minds to it. Definitely a national accomplishment to be remembered and celebrated.
Not intending to be rude, but I find it incredible that anyone who has observed humans in action for any length of time could seriously believe that there is anything that humans would not believe if it suited them.
The money spent on the space program DID go to feeding, clothing and caring for people.
They didn’t launch the budget into space, the money all stayed on earth, and went to people working on the project. Thousands of people.
When carried out effectively and without corruption, huge government programs like this are one of the best ways of redistributing wealth without giving people that unsavoury aftertaste of socialism.
I mean yes, you theoretically could have fed and clothed more people if you did it directly, but that is just never going to happen in the US unless there’s a pretty significant shift in the overton window.
To me the argument shouldn’t be the space race vs welfare, it should be the space race vs infrastructure projects. It’s not that I’m not against welfare programs, they are absolutely necessary and good. It’s that they should be a given. We need them, always have and always will. But to stimulate economic growth, nothing works quite like giving out a few billion dollars in government contracts that puts a wide swath of industry into hiring and training mode.
“Was the space program worth it?”
Yes
“Could the money have been better spent feeding, clothing and caring for people?”
Hell no, they can kick rocks. So sick of that noise
The shuttle made sense at the time we had it. There were no space stations available to the US during most of the STS mission history, the first one being available was the ISS itself which is what rendered STS obsolete. The shuttle was effectively a launchable lab and transport platform. Basically a temporary space station.
As a 90s kid that grew up 30 minutes from the cape and would watch the STS launches from my door step, I was sad to see it retired. However, given its shaky mission history and the fact it no longer served a justifiable purpose considering the ISS was now present by that point and had plenty of modules to perform science on, I understand why NASA had to retire it.
As for flat earthers and their belief about the shape of other celestial bodies, that depends on the flavor of flat earther. Some literally believe every other body in space is spherical, just not earth. Others attempt to use biblical doctrine to argue one way or another. Some believe space isnt real and the things we observe in what we consider “space” are nothing more than illusions. The only thing the flat earth community at large agrees on, is that the earth is flat, but beyond the earths boundaries, the community is very much split.
First: Charles and others DID go to the moon and I wish him well.
That said,
“Lunar Landing Deniers” amuse me.
“Lunar Landing Denier Haters” scare me.
Given a choice, I would prefer to be stuck in an elevator with the former.
Both need their heads adjusted, but the latter is more likely to be hostile.
Why do you think there is a connection between common sense and violence?
If I was stuck in an elevator with someone I’d rather have it was someone with which it was possible to have an intelligent conversation.
I bet you’re great fun at parties.
Despite not believing in bigfoot even one iota (I despise putting beliefs, labels, and the like on clothes) I regularly wear a hat that says “bigfoot is real”. I have gotten some absolutely hilarious (to me) looks of pure hatred. None have yet had the stones to say anything to me. On the other hand, I have had some great conversations with some absolutely fun people who saw the hat and wanted to tell me about when they personally saw sasquatch. A couple people have even told me they don’t believe in bigfoot but wear similar clothes just for the reactions.
I’ll take a weirdo over a normie any day.
I once wore a t-shirt to the mall (yeah I’m that old) with the phrase “Cat – the other white meat.” Nobody said a word about it.
“I bet you’re great fun at parties”
Another redditism that is more ugly and irritating than I can bear
“I bet you’re great fun at parties” <– Think of it as a badge of honor. It’s such a cliche. Imagine how stupid the poster looks by typing out such dribble. :-)
It’s usually an expression made by people with an emaciated sense of humor, mainly people who have forgotten what real truth is, only ideas dogmatically pushed by whatever power they respect.
Based on my experience regularly wearing a “bigfoot is real” hat I often get looks of pure vitriol when folks notice it, but none have yet been willing to say anything to me. I have had some awesome experiences talking with the Bigfoot weirdos, though.
If you’ve never worked night shift there is a chance you don’t know how much unbelievable stuff your brain can make up. I’ve seen stuff . . . That didn’t exist. So I don’t believe in it.
Anyone who claims they believe stuff they can see does not understand enough about how human sight and/or brains work.
Flat earth + Bible does not jive either: see Isaiah 40:22. The Douay Translation claims another viable translation of ‘circle’ in this location is ‘sphere’.
That does sound fun, but I’m usually too busy to spend the time doing it. :-(
theres not. there is a big difference from believing something inaccurate or completely wrong, and another trying to force someone to change their beliefs through applications of various forms of power. you see this in religious and political debates all the time. you are simply better off allowing people to their beliefs and keep your own to yourself. everyone is so busy trying to act smart that everyone forgets to actually be smart.
Hackaday comments need a Thumbs Up feature.
👍
Not nearly as desperately as they need a downvote feature so that whichever wacko gets in first with some awful take doesn’t get top billing forever.
This isn’t Reddit, and that’s a good thing.
He’s just saying he’d rather be around somebody with slightly quirky opinions than a raving redditor with derangement syndrome. He’s right
I mentioned “Lunar Landing Denier Haters”. Such people do exist and because they be hatin’ they might also be hittin’ (or worse) given a chance. It doesn’t take an Apollo rocket scientist to see the relationship. Also, haters generally hate more than one “type” of people including possibly the someone being trapped in an elevator with said hater…best to let the elevator go by instead.
I agree.
There is something so bizarre about “hating” something so peripheral to your world. The last mission putting men on the moon was 1972 (I think).
How worked up can you get about something that took place over 50 years ago?
I struggle to connect with it at all, and it’s one of the reasons I think a new mission to the moon will be vital to from a public relations standpoint.
Nice gaslighting tactic. Go ahead and hang out with Stephen Carpenter of the Deftones, and that professor from Ancient Aliens. Have fun you guys
“gaslighting”
Inigo Montoya: “You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means “
Nah, I lived through the “q” thing in 2020. The former showed up with guns.
Conspiracy theories were once fun, but now they’re eternally rabies.
Well well, speaking of unmasking, someone did it themselves right there!!
What does “quite” ineffective mean and were they ineffective from protecting the wearer or people around the wearer?
Here’s a tip: Find out actual facts because vague claims are never a good basis for an argument.
like an order of magnitude less useful than hand washing. i wouldn’t say it did nothing. but you have to admit proper fitting and mask discipline were all over the place. you could see that with your own eyes.
as for the narrative that mask wearing was supposed to protect others from you. knowing how pressure works, never bought it. when you put positive pressure in a space with a poor seal, it does not force the air through the fabric, instead it forms little jets of air along the edges turning you into a germ cannon. especially during a sneeze.
i did wear them initially and when required, and properly i might add. but so many regular mask wearers came down with covid that i figured it was becoming a false sense of security causing them to take bigger risks elsewhere. i also noticed people actually observed proper distancing when you didn’t wear one.
also if you actually read the papers they are very inconclusive. third party websites either claim that this means they work and others that they dont. i dont put much faith in third party fact checkers especially when i can do my own research.
Folks, this man single handedly debunked medical masks. A round of applause, millions of people didnt figure it out until this guy.
Nice anecdote
This man revealed scientific evidence masks are worthless. Fauci himself said masks were worthless, until the cultural and political winds changed. Social distancing was nonsense that ‘just emerged’. These are facts you could research yourself. There is nobody more blind than the one who refuses to see. Dissenting voices are vitally important.
Yeah, yeah, and something something 5G injections. Rabies.
i mostly dont use phones for these reasons:
horrible interface.
tiny screens.
privacy concerns.
people bugging me because they can.
terrible apps.
they can be easily lost or stolen.
questionable security.
extremely destructive to mental health.
bloody expensive.
short useful life.
in short they dont cause cancer, they are cancer.
pretty sure the moon landing actually happened. source: kerbal space program.
They were absolutely not ‘revealed to be quite ineffective’
They were ineffective in the US because ridiculous culture war nonsense fed to you by your cult leaders led to people refusing to wear them, wearing fake masks or wearing them in deliberately ineffective ways.
In parts of the world where people actually have some level of civic responsibility, they were extremely effective.
People seem to think things need to be 100% effective to help. They don’t. They never have. Wearing a mask was never going to prevent anyone from getting covid. It’s one of several methods used to reduce the rate at which it spreads. The entire purpose was to try and manage the spread until they point where we had effective treatments and to stop hospitals from being overwhelmed.
Everybody who still exists on Earth is there because at some point their ancestors “showed up with guns.” Not to say the q guys are justified, just saying it’s very selective of you to disqualify for that. It has happened before and will happen again
What kind of drugs did you run through yours to miss that? Or did you just selectively try to rewrite history to help claim plausible deniability of your own beliefs in that weird little cult?
“Lunar Landing Denier Haters”
…don’t exist. But thanks for letting your bias be known clearly.
[LBJsPNS] meet Commenter [SETH] (above)
True dat!
Lots of haters in the science community I’ve found in my 60+ years….
I think moon landing deniers are silly but I am glad they exist. People should be able to believe in whatever whacky stuff they believe as long as they respect other people’s right to do the same.
Nope … overt ignorance should never be acceptable. For one thing, it carries over to other more harmful ramifications such as religious conflicts, race wars, science denialism (the list is endless) … and given that the basic requirement of a functioning democracy is an educated and informed populace, it gives us the kind of threat we see today.
the problem with this kind of argument is that it is physically impossible for everyone to know everything in exacting detail. suppression of free speech does more harm to democracy than ignorance does. shutting down conversations when they become uncomfortable will result in only trivial non-offensive subjects being discussed. then they start fighting over those and those in turn need to be censored. in the end you dont know what any candidate actually believes. debate is supposed to be about exchanging ideas and will do more to solve the ignorance problem than taking away the rights of people you dont agree with.
That is another big misleading falsehood. Nobody can know everything about anything, but for some kind of very weird reason there is a high social pressure to have an opinion about subjects you know nothing about.
It’s not about “shutting down conversations when they become uncomfortable”. It’s about encouraging people to use their own brain.
I don’t know whether it’s a conspiracy theory, but it looks like the whole schooling system is designed to fill peoples minds with irrelevant things and keep them ignorant of the important subjects.
You’re assuming that the debaters both speak truthfully. When one side will say anything to win, the debate is pointless or even harmful.
Well, the good thing about the USSR and communism was that it provided a counter ideology/concept to capitalism.
People had two systems rivaling each other and thus could compare the pros and cons of each.
Now that there’s just one system remaining, the “balance of power” is no more. Or we could say that the once “free market” of systems turned into monopoly.
Paradoxically, this exactly what capitalism tried to fix with its “the market decides” philosophy. Not sure if I should laugh or cry.
The fight between the US and the USSR during the cold war wasn’t a battle between communism and capitalism, it was a battle between two competing versions of communism. The current US does more downward wealth redistribution and more third-world redistribution than the USSR ever did in its wildest fantasies, it simply keeps a simulacrum of private capital alive for appearances. To understand why you need to dig through the Frankfurt school
Denying a voice to someone because you don’t agree with them is how scientific and political atrocities begin. If your truth is accurate, you need to believe it will stand up against the opposing voices. If a flat earther makes a more compelling argument, perhaps we need to rethink our view of the universe. So far, that hasn’t happened but their voices have done NOTHNG to damage science. Historically, idiots in the majority thinking they were right have caused much more harm.
So what do you plan to do with the unacceptable ignorant masses then? Maybe we can round up the holocaust deniers and put them in camps, that would be kinda funny at least
…rounding up and putting people in concentration camps because they disagree with you would be an atrocity no matter what that belief is….and I think you know it. You just haven’t thought it through yet or are in the habit of unreasonably volatile speech.
Oh gosh, no! This is about history. If we could rewrite it as we wish.. No, just no. It wouldn’t be fair to the people that lived before us.
Imagine if we Germans would deny the H.-caust or the WWs, that’d be a crime.
No, just no. By all means, that “no one has a saying in what I should do or think” mentality should have its limits.
Also, if the moon landings were fake, the USSR would have noticed the first.
The rest of the world had radio telescopes, too, by the way.
The doppler effect and the delay between the radio signals could be measured back then. There wasn’t just voice communications, but telemetry as well.
And it wasn’t just one moon landing (Apollo 11), but a couple of them. Each of them had been observed by the world. If something was fishy, there would be documents hinting about it.
The entire point of the “space race” was to be first, if there was any cheating the other side would have complained very loudly.
People often forget about Luna-15, where the Soviets tried to do a lunar sample return before Apollo 11. It crashed a few days before the USA landed. There was nothing secret about it, they let the Americans know exactly where it was going as to not cause any problems, as well as pointing out “well we’re going to be the first to get some Moon dirt!”
The whole “Fake!” claims are just dumb.
The problem is when the ppl that are wrong because “we believe this and that” got power in anyway. What happeneds if flat earthers are elected and decide that, against scientific evidence, are trying to push their agenda.
In 1800 the US congress was close to vote that PI is 4. Enough said.
Okay, the last five were real, but the first one was definitely fake.
As for vaccines, I’ve gladly had my share but I’m old and my skin is cold, miles long, and I draw the line at any new-fangled vaccines. HPV? If I’m gonna get it I’ve already got it. COVID? After you, Alphonse.
“Joshua says:
August 25, 2024 at 2:09 am
…
Imagine if we Germans would deny the H.-caust or the WWs, that’d be a crime.”
That’s a defect in German law and nothing to do with what is true or false. Why anyone would want to deny either World War escapes my ken.
“make piece not war says:
August 25, 2024 at 8:07 am
…
In 1800 the US congress was close to vote that PI is 4. Enough said.”
That’s simply not true. You’re thinking of a state legislature, I want to say Indiana, and 3.
nice doors reference.
People in power already have all kinds of harmful delusions, I don’t know if joke beliefs like “flat earth” would be a high-priority concern at this point.
What we see today is a war of competing delusions. Nobody lives in reality anymore. Of course some factions are closer than others, but every reality tunnel is now filled with simulacra
You guys can have the moon and its gritty dusty surface, to argue about slogging around in.
I’d just like to have my 17 year old body back and a trip to the space station for about a month or so.
Just Long enough for the distractions to keep the claustrophobia at bay and then I’m ready to come home.
Aurora Borealis , sunrise/sunsets about 90 mins apart. Watching thunderstorms and tropical storms. Maybe Volcanoes erupting?
To simply see a candle flame in zero/low gravity. and so on..
Plus all of the humankind visuals back on earth.
That iconic earth view, down through the bore, of the rocket stages separating has just awed me ever since I first saw it.
Agree!
Ironically enough, current NASA is too incompetent to even transport people to and from that hulk anymore, let alone a moon mission. So that might be to blame for some of the skepticism
“NASA is too incompetent” … I SO wish you were wrong there, but I think you are correct.
During the last Artemus mission if you took a shot of whiskey every time they used the word “inclusive” or “diversity” you would be dead-drunk before the news feed was over. Not so much for the words “skill” or “excellence”. The old rotting “space-trees” are corrupt incompetent grift-machines. It’s up to the newer young “saplings” like SpaceX to do the fantastic things now….and they will. :-)
We landed on the moon alright, we just landed on the wrong one.
titan or bust!
By the way, the observatory in Bochum had recorded radio signals of the Apollo missions. About 150 magnetic tapes.
https://tinyurl.com/4kwj2tet
It’s a lost battle. Most Moon landing deniers, just as flat earthers, will never ever ever change their mind, and those who do will never admit that.
The former could easily use a telescope to spot gear and rover tracks left on Moon surface, and the latter could even more easily pick two boats and experience themselves Earth curvature, still both refuse to do that because they need to believe. This is not about science and knowledge anymore but became close to a religion, and that’s the same principle used to subtly manipulate voters in politics so that they turn their political views into beliefs with the purpose of owning their preference forever: you can change an idea but you can’t do the same with faith.
So it’s a lost cause, really. Ditto with the few who start to realize they were gamed by smarter crooks who sold them books, merchandise and convention tickets. They also will never admit that because after years if not decades spent believing that nonsense they don’t want to be ridiculed so they’ll slowly tone down their presence among other deniers and will assume a close to neutral behavior, but again they’ll never admit having been wrong.
Oh, and by the way, many of the deniers with a YouTube channel probably know they’re telling bullshit, but what do we expect from a platform that is built to monetize on number of views rather than on quality?
Youtube at least lets us see both sides and decide for ourselves whose arguments are more convincing. This requires thinking, and for some that’s a problem, but only when they learn that skill the world will have a chance of peacefully becoming a better place. There are much bigger and more important subjects we need to think about and decide than the lunar landing, and for those Youtube is infinitely better than TV, whose BS is almost uniformly onesided when it comes to the stuff that really matters.
No, YouTube promotes what it wants to promote.
You’re making the argument Fox news makes about their “fair and balanced” news coverage. There are not two sides to every story. There’s truth and whatever lies they want their ignorant viewers to believe. When one side is fact, the “other side” is “alternative facts” – i.e. lies.
Legitimizing falsehoods as an alternative to reality is how we got into the mess we’re in.
Arguing that we didn’t land on the moon is not an equally valid argument to stating that we did. It’s just wrong and stupid.
That’s a a good point. It’s also related to fear, maybe.
Space seems so vast and too big to comprehend that some people are afraid and want things to be simple.
So they fall for conspiracies and alternate facts. It’s same reason as to why religion is so appealing to some. It simplifies.
Which is sad, because not all religions are about power.
Some religions (say Confucianism, Buddhism) are more about spirituality, which involve forms of meditation and reaching a higher state of mind.
These are positive examples of religion, which can lead to progress of a society.
By contrast, the catholic church knew about heliocentric model for ages, but let people continue to believe that earth was the centre of everything (geocentric model).
It even threated (more or less) astronomer Johannes Keppler when he spoke about his research, despite he himself being a Christian believer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler#Astronomia_Nova
Galileo Galilei had it worse, though. He wasn’t employed at court and wasn’t being protected from church, thus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
So it’s all a bit relative, maybe. Religion often is being misused or religion tries to manipulate, despite the whole principle about religions being the search for truth.
Who the hell cares if those guys believe it or not? It doesn’t matter, it changes nothing
The problem is ignorance spreads like a disease. It has now infected about 1/2 the US population. That changes election results. And now there are enough of them that they’re meddling with the election process.
If the people who are trying to limit voting rights now were doing things to keep stupid people from voting, I might be tempted to go along with them. But they’re not. They’re the stupid people trying to keep people with functioning brains (and/or brown skin) from voting.
You know, you are making a case against safety features….and I’m OK with that. The unnecessary/product-diminishing actions have gone too far.
The fact that you actually believe what you are writing tells me that ignorance truly is spreading like a disease.
Or just check out the landing sites with a cheap telescope.
Also we should colonize the moon first before mars..
I doubt “a cheap telescope” would resolve any man-made device on the lunar surface.
“A common objection we’ve heard is that if we went to the moon back then, why haven’t we been back? The reason is obvious: politics.”
And the reason we’re going back to that dead, dusty ball is politics, but possibly not in the way you meant. It was a political PRESTIGE contest back then and it is once against in race to the moon v2.0, a “race” as directly stated by the NASA Administrator, but this time it’s with China. SPAM in a CAN in SPACE is SO 1960s and is a horrendous waste of money for science vs cost. Book: The End of Astronauts: Why Robots are the Future of Exploration (2022)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxG0WAwwrGk
The question here might be what’s better (or worse) – doing it for prestige or doing it for money ?
Money seems more reasonable at first, but what’s the meaning of life anyway ?
Earning some money all for your life and then die and be forgotten ?,
be it as a single person or a nation of citizens.
Or do something silly and costly because of national pride ?
Seriously, what’s “the purpose” of citizenship or a nation ? Is money the big answer ? I think such a question isn’t being asked often enough.
Also, institutional rot and decline in human capital means that we probably are incapable of doing it again today.
Nobody wants to talk about that. I think that’s the real reason we will soon see moon landing denial become fairly mainstream, even accepted. It’s too awkward to acknowledge our extreme decline since the peak of the mid-20th century, so we will do what every embarrassed country in decline does: we will revise history
Flat earthers, moon landing deniers, anti-vaxxers.. these are all people that have trouble accepting their own lives so must create some great conspiracy to explain their failures.
Whether they live in a basement somewhere, or massively overpaid for a micro-blogging website.
The article above describes them well – “reality deniers”.
I often play along but try to escalate.. if they say “you don’t believe in the moon landings, do you?”, then I’ll reply “wait, you think the moon is real?!” – otherwise they get aggressive.
Nutters.
How quaint
The conspiracy claim (they’re not theories, not even hypotheses) about the 2020 election has muddied the water for other elections. Likewise, every conspiracy claim about some aspect of science weakens science as a whole, and the web has made it possible for many deniers to join the bully pulpit and make the claim seem more believable.
Thirty years ago, any claim of fake lunar landings disappeared in the dust, because any attempt to gain voice of the claim was ineffective. Everyone knew that Capricorn One was simply horsesh*t made into a fun movie. Science deniers were few and largely harmless. Today, with the promotion of such claims, many scientific truths are called into question. Nonscientific claims about ivermectin and vaccines containing electronic trackers are responsible in part for the deaths of over a million Americans from COVID.
Ironically, everything you mentioned is a political talking point. By near definition, Politics is the art of lying to groups of people. Wile on one side there are people with crazy or unpopular opinions, there are others who are captured by a set of opinions. Those people won’t look for alternate evidence and will never believe such evidence if it’s presented. As these people connect themselves to their opinions, they will even try to censor differing opinions, often in the name of the greater good, which of course is nonsense.
What makes you think that the ‘lab escape’ theorem hasn’t been investigated? We got a whole stack of reports that did exactly that. The conclusion is that based on the initial spread, it was most likely that the wet market was the source. Additional research (earlier this year, IIRC) showed that the bats in the region where SARS-CoV-1 & -2 originate have quite similar virus forms, and it’d match the way that SARS-CoV-1’s patient zero became infected, as well as MERS.
As people force animals into ever smaller areas, increase their stress levels, rate of infections among each other, and then start living and spending time among them (‘natural parks’, ‘bush meat’), we have pretty much created the ideal conditions for GoF, without needing any kind of laboratory.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” – Isaac Asimov
The moon had non-intelligent life on it too: the bacteria on the unmanned probes we sent there.
While it’s apparent we actually did go to the moon, I value those with a different opinion. If NOBODY ever questioned the landings, I might be inclined to think there was something there. Listening to the best evidence of deniers (Spoiler alert – it’s flawed), I can come to a more informed conclusion. As for Microwaving, GMO, Vaccines, etc., The jury is still out on much of that. Again, I welcome those with a different opinion, as well as their evidence. For someone like RFK Jr, the evidence seems to be compelling. Simply believing what you’re told is not how the truth is found.
“For someone like RFK Jr, the evidence seems to be compelling.”
Brain worms can do that.
Reality doesn’t care what people believe. That’s why it is a false equivalence to say that someone’s belief/opinion that we didn’t land on the moon is equally valid as someone else’s belief/opinion that we did. The two are not the same. One has reality on their side. the other has nothing. Maybe that’s too subtle an example for you.
How about this: Person A “believes” that people can’t breathe underwater without scuba gear. Person B believes that people can breathe underwater. Are the two opinions/beliefs equivalent in value? Both people decide to open underwater restaurants. Person A provides scuba tanks to all patrons. Person B does not. Which of the two is more likely to be successful in the restaurant business? Now are the two beliefs/opinions about breathing underwater equivalent?
Person B utilizes a military surplus submarine, no soggy food, and no SCUBA mouthpiece interfering with eating.
Urgh, it’s stupid. There’s too much 3rd party evidence even from hostile states.
The only argument which makes any sense (not that it holds up) is that the first one was faked, to beat the Russians, with subsequent landings providing the evidence we now rely on. But yeah, even that doesn’t hold up.
you cant fix stupid, stupid should hurt and eventually it probably will. you cant reason with them they just bring you down to their level. The moron level.
+1 …… it’s just amplifying social media crap.
Just to nitpick, when nutters believe those absurdities it’s very likely that someone hacked into their brains for financial and political advantage. But yeah, I agree that is not the ideal place to discuss such topics.
1++
Agree.
Stuff like this is just emotional reaction cickbait. This is true both of this article, and of the type of content you find on a YouTube channel of a conspiracy theorist.
No better than most of the stuff on YouTube, or on most of the internet tbh.
Here’s an idea for everyone: build real relationships with actual people, rather than feeling justified at feeling manufactured outrage at what other people you’ve never met think.
The world is made a better or worse place by how we treat each other, not by what opinions we hold about each other. Get out and actually live life for real, which means having meaningful interactions with people who you know.
most useful post here.
I believe we landed on moon. But I can really understand people who don’t. It’s not like flat earth – you can actually repeat many experiments with fairly low cost to check if earth is flat. With moon landing you have few people, videos and photos but since when those can’t be faked? You can’t independently make and experiment that proves moon landing was real. Someone mentioned to “just use a telescope” to see it. But can you? Is there any telescope that you can buy, set in a garden and just fine tune angles to spot lunar gear? Because if you need to depend on space telescopes than you checked nothing – someone else did (or didn’t). Many people could be convinced that earth is round but they don’t know anyone who could show the proof other than “it’s in a book stupid” (many teachers are like this).
This achievement was so huge and effort so vast that most people don’t even realize how far that “space plane” flew. The route, the precision, the amount of money and tech applied – it really is hard to get because numbers are big. Meanwhile education system sucks, scientists lost their trust and all media is just propaganda tube presenting facts out of context or straight lies. It really is not surprising that once you need to make a decision and you miss data and tools to process it, you choose intuition.
And that particular movie also sucked as it didn’t go deeper. No one asked more detailed questions.
I think a big part of it is that those people no longer see such great and ambitious projects from the USA, which causes a certain form of psychic pain. Denial is a coping mechanism
I think it’s worth pointing out that a lot of moon landing deniers also think the ISS is fake and by extension I’m guessing they won’t believe the footage from the orbiters or at the very least will say the stuff on the surface was planted later by rovers or something.
The moan hoax believers do bring up some compelling issues that are never addressed. How do you lose the original plans to the CM or Lunar Lander? Or the original video of the landing? NPR covered this over a decade ago. What about the astronauts of that time all Free Masons? Oh, nothing to see here, right? It’s remarkable statistics that a rocket was launched, made it to the moon, landed on the moon, men walked and reconnected with the CM, and returned to Earth. This was done six times plus the three missions that did not land. Richard Hoagland, who believes the landings were real, brings up some interesting things in his book The Secret History of NASA.
Better watch out! You and Richard might wind up on the denier list being prepared by some of the crazy folks on this thread that want to disallow ANY questioning of what the government says happened with the moon landing. They are the type of folks that seek to jail (or worse) deniers of any government operation, like the landing, Covid response, JFK assassination, etc…. They are also the ones that want to limit freedom of speech.
hackaday, what has happened that you let these types run rampant on here?
Yes, Hackaday is not always read by those who can question or have critical thinking skills. I hated every day of my dozen years of ‘pubic’ education and read a lot on my own. I have a couple engineering degrees and worked in a university system as a staff person, and let me tell you, most people with Phds are not really that smart in some ways. I’m a true lifelong cynic of these systems. Oh, and these people who want to stifle what you mentioned also get an equal vote.
I’d be curious to know the success/failure rate of unmanned versus manned missions since the launch of Sputnik. Six flawless manned missions over thousands of miles of space is almost too good to be true.
Let Buzz hit them. I’ll pay to watch.
Truth.
Of course, as the joke goes… Stanley Kubrick was hired to film fake moon landings, but he was so much of a perfectionist that he filmed on location.
I used to work with a “Lunar Landing Denier”. He was a gentle, level headed, hard-working, problem-solver and a good manager. He just didn’t have any confidence in the credibility of outside authorities that told him things. Naturally saying that people went to the moon is going to require some obvious evidence for such a reasonable person to believe in it. There is no obvious evidence, even now, without having to appeal to authorities. I suppose there will be when the moon is re-landscaped to look like a Coca-Cola logo….That would be obvious evidence. :-)
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Of course we did go to the Moon. Some of the authorities do know what they are talking about.