“The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” They just take out three little measly letters of that sentence, it’s not such a big leap. C’mon.
“Really, the comforting side in most conspiracy theory arguments is the one claiming that anyone who’s in power has any plan at all.”
– xkcd
The one dude I saw do it irl was trying to sound smart with that “question everything, never believe whatever you’ve been told without testing” attitude which I’ve seen answered with “ok, would you like to test if arsenic is good for you?”
There’s times a questioning attitude is laudable or even necessary and times it’s proof of imbecility. And there’s people who can’t tell those times apart.
Come now.
All of this so-called “evidence” supporting a moon landing comes from the government, government-approved sources and the mass media. No truly independent scientists vouch for it (any you could find are undoubtedly shills and trolls).
Our common sense and revealing photos trump your “science”.
Yup. Pretty sure that’s a large part of it: to a lot of people, living in a world controlled by some shady cabal/evil reptilians/whatever, something that could possibly be defeated is more comforting that the idea that there’s not really anyone in control, there is no plan, it’s just people trying to muddle through with varying levels of sense, ignorance and personal goals.
The plan the shadowy figures have to subvert our collective destiny may be evil, but if we can defeat it, the problem’s sorted, the world is fixed. If we’re all just bumbling along squabbling about everything and the world’s problems are basically because because we’re all just upright monkeys and no-one truly knows what’s going on, how is that fixable?
I think the weird conspiracy stuff is kind of a variant on the Just World fallacy; people aren’t getting what they really deserve, but it’s only because of them, whoever they are. Of course they don’t just convince people the world’s flat or the moon landings aren’t real, they’re controlling society in subtle ways too, and anyone who’s discovered the truth is going to be on their target list, so any crap that happens to those who uncovered ‘the truth’ is probably due to them. The big conspiracies are just what believers think is proof of the existence and power of them, whereas the subtle stuff is, well, subtle. Blaming stuff on them is always more comforting than blaming it on yourself, or just on shit happening.
I guess I’d rather people prone to beliefs like that blamed the ills of the world on imaginary shape changing lizards than actual groups of humans at least.
This whole thread is arguing details - it’s not about details. Pretty much all CTs share the same format. One CT may be about the moon landing, one about 9/11 buildings collapsing, one about the JFK assassination, even the evolution debate. But when you step back they are all the same shape, with the same moving parts. It is useless trying to argue the details.
All of these that I have mentioned are US-centric CTs. I would be curious if CTs exist to the same degree in other countries and cultures, as a common human condition.
IMHO CTs fit into the same brainspace as religion, an attempt to explain the un-explainable. To me a key difference with CTs is, as was described above, just because a CT-er claims something is “too complex” or “unexplainable” doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t studied and understood the subject and details and has an explanation.
I think you guys are close, but I disagree with the basis of your theory.
It’s not about people wanting to feel smart. It’s about people NOT wanting to feel powerless.
The basics of modern society is the fact that none of us is entirely in control of our lives. We’ve moved away - for mostly good reasons - from independent production family units into a more isolated and segmented family unit.
So each person is in much less control over their lives. Instead of dad’s grandparents, aunts uncles and such we have bosses, police, governmental bureaucracies and so forth in charge. That makes all of us less in charge of our lives to some degree. Those who can’t deal with it during their normal course end up attempting to artificially establish control or power by postulating that they’re not in charge because of active efforts to keep them down. It’s not their fault they’re not on top. Admitting that would be silly.
It’s the same sort of insecurity that leads bigotry and white supremacy. Those idiots in Charlottesville last year chanting ‘Jew will not replace us!’ are showing their own fear of their own powerlessness, not any higher aspiration.
That explains a lot of CT but the moon landing seems different to me. This is one that exposes the malfunctioning minds of the CTs in terms of disregarding facts, obsession, self importance and secret knowledge because the moon landing has no effect on their lives. They are arguing about invisible pink unicorns. Perhaps it is the impossibility of taking them to the moon to see the footprints that makes this attractive, they will never have to see direct evidence that they are wrong with their own eyes, it’s the safe conspiracy. Or in this case they are just nuts, unable to reason properly on this subject because it so removed from the real life that all but a few astronauts have experienced.
Well, having acknowledged that the deniers are a group consisting of some mixture of stupid, crazy or trolls, it’s no surprise that their posited reasons for the conspiracy are also some mixture of stupid, crazy or trollish, and as such, have the sort of plot holes you’d expect them to have.
Some say we faked the Moon landing just to show up the USSR, as part of the cold war.
Some say we faked it because we realized we couldn’t make the end-of-the-decade deadline that Kennedy laid out, and no one wanted to be the guy who told the nation that we’d failed the late President.
Others tie it into the whole Illuminati/New World Order business: the elites are part of some satanic cult, and putting on these events serves some mystical purpose. Some even say that the more blatant the fake is, the better, because they get more mystical power out of getting people to believe obvious BS.
Considering how many of the deniers are obviously insane, I’m sure if you went looking, you could find almost as many such explanations as there are individual deniers.
Why? Maybe it’s just to feel better about themselves. If people really had gone to the moon, they’d have to be a whole lot smarter, understand all this science stuff instead of skipping it in school, more ambitious, just better all around. It may be easier to accept one’s own failures in life if all those others’ accomplishments were just fake news.
I think that’s probably the biggest reason. Even if they don’t truly believe everything they say, I think many of them are convinced if they say it often enough, more and more people will say ‘hmm, you make a good point’ and eventually it will be true. Other people, I’m sure believe many CTs regardless.
In the end, if you want to believe that the government adds fluoride to water or uses chemtrails to “control your mind”, you’re trying to say that you’re not responsible for your actions.
At least its a harmless delusion, unlike the anti-vaxxers (which my GP calls child abuse)_.
They are Lunatics!
Sorry, no, “deranged” fits him exactly. He is actually deranged, he doesn’t just “sort of seem like it” or something. The only issue is, what kind of deranged is it. (for example if he doesn’t believe the earth is flat, then there’s a deranged reason why he claims to.)
I’m not joking or messing with you.
It’s not entirely harmless. It spreads a distrust of and disdain for science that are detrimental to society.
On another note, Youtube keeps suggesting flat earther videos to me (might have something to do with the fact I occasionally click on them), and yesterday I saw one where the guy “proved” flat earth using Google Maps. You see, he plotted out a 600 mile bicycle trip and Google Maps told him the net elevation change was a mere 10 feet. But over 600 miles there should be 30 miles of drop due to curvature if the round earthers were right! :smack::smack::smack::smack:
And yet another guy today, on another Facebook post. At first he claimed the deadly Van Allen belts and then this:
“… think about this…
NASA claim the reason we can’t go back is because they “lost” all the data and technology from all the missions.
Do you really believe they sent man to the moon from computers with less capabilities than a calculator. ?”
There are plenty of technical articles and YouTube videos explaining the capabilities and construction of the Command and Lunar Module computers. They really didn’t need much computing power to accomplish the journey, and what they had was state-of-the-art in the day.
A little critical thinking and and an hour or two of time is all you need to realize how wrong you are.
I think there probably really was a moon landing, but I understand the doubt. The only way we know about it is thru the government and the media, so I think a healthy skepticism is not necessarily out of order.
Except that’s the only way we know about ANYTHING. Are you healthily skeptical whether Trump is president? Bet you haven’t been in the Oval Office to check for yourself.
Possibly relevant, I recently read of a psychological study which suggests the ‘conspiracy theory’ mentality is a binary-switch, either you’re a conspiracy theorist or you aren’t.
By this it meant that a conspiracy-theorist doesn’t pick and choose, say they believe the moon landing was faked but the Princess Diana crash really was just an accident. Nope they believe every conspiracy theory, it all goes into one big mental jumble in their head.
That also possibly explains why people who are and who aren’t conspiracy-theorists have such mutual incomprehension, for one group of people its obvious conspiracy-theories are real, for the other its obvious they aren’t.
And count me as someone who is surprised there are so many conspiracy-theorists out there in the real world and not just on the net.
You might as well think that there is probably really a Paris. I was there for the Apollo XVII launch. That was a real Saturn 5. The ground shook. There ain’t no way in hell Richard Nixon would spend all that money to enhance Kennedy’s legacy.