
Why do people believe the moon landing hoax or other conspiracy theories? - evo_9
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/07/20/why-do-people-believe-the-moon-landing-hoax-or-other-conspiracy-theories/
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logicallee
There isn't a single person here (including you, reader) who isn't absolutely
and correctly a conspiracy theorist.

Try to explain with a straight face that Nixon did not conspire on Watergate
(despite resigning over same), Snowden did not leak a mass surveillance
conspiracy (despite thousands of pages of documents), Russia does not have any
secret agents (despite all intelligence branches of the United States saying
they do). Explain that Caesar was not assassinated by senators who formed a
conspiracy against him and murdered him (to the chagrin of the common people,
with whom he was very popular). And the emissions scandal (dieselgate) over
which VW "spent $7.3B" in 2015 and CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned just didn't
happen.

Congratulations: unless you can do the above, you're a conspiracy theorist.
You believe people conspire.

It's really pretty much impossible not to be a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy
theorist in 2018. I mean go ahead and try, I'll read any replies.

~~~
igor47
Conspiracy theorists are not people who believe people conspire. They're
people who believe conspiracies without any evidence. Or worse, evidence
against their preferred conspiracy only serves to re-enforce their beliefs.
AKA, irrational people.

~~~
logicallee
(Edited).

>Conspiracy theorists are not people who believe people conspire.

I thought that by definition they were.

~~~
DannyB2
In that case it is called Fake News.

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amorphid
I really liked Joe Rogan's video on this topic, titled "Joe Rogan on Why he
changed his stance on the Moon landing conspiracy". [1] The short, short
version is that some training images got doctored and passed off as real space
images, which gave people reason to doubt more substantial claims of having
traveled to the moon. It was the first time a skeptics disbelief in our having
visited the moon seemed like a rational stance to me.

[1] [https://youtu.be/7mmlmxamw_k](https://youtu.be/7mmlmxamw_k)

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stuntkite
I was just wondering the other day if anyone has ever tried to "fake" the moon
landing with modern technology. Just see if you can pull it off. Hollywood
can't do it as far as I can tell. Space movies aren't believable as real, even
the best ones.

I think it would be an interesting mythbusters. I know they already did one on
it, but that's not quite the same thing as what I'm saying.

~~~
southern_cross
It's been a few years ago now, but as I recall Apollo 18 did a pretty good job
here.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_18_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_18_\(film\))

BTW, if I were one to believe that the moon missions were faked, then I might
consider the fact that we haven't been back in almost 50 years to be the best
evidence for that. As in, "The reason why we haven't gone back is because we
never went there to begin with!"

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jhallenworld
Dave Jones / EEVblog made an interesting video comparing the LRO photos with
Apollo 17 photos:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYPmitSg268](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYPmitSg268)

Spoilers: they match, we really went to the moon :)

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paulie_a
I generally assume it's because those people want to feel high and mighty.
That they are smarter than everyone else.

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igor47
> Conspiracy theories also supply a seductive ego boost. Believers often
> consider themselves part of a select in-group that — unlike the deluded
> masses — has figured out what's really going on.

> When such theories become entrenched in the public consciousness, however,
> they erode people's trust in authorities and the status quo.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how our institutions run on faith. One
of my favorite quotes from Sapiens:

> Sapiens have been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective
> reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined
> reality of gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined
> reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of
> rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as
> the United States and Google.

The thing is, we kinda need these imagined realities. We need them to continue
being collectively imagined in a positive light. I am from the Soviet Union.
If you think you have it bad, imagine not being about to drive for an hour
without getting pulled over and having to bribe a cop. Why do Russian cops
need bribes, while American cops will bust you if you try to bribe them? The
difference is entirely based on the cops' respective ideas about what they're
doing. The American cops believe that laws are important, that their jobs are
to keep people safe. When we punish people who stray from the ideal, we re-
enforce the ideal. Corrupt cops and politicians must be punished, if our
institutions are going to remain free of corruption. If we're cynical about
transgressions, and say stuff like "of course that politician took a bribe,
all politicians take bribes" then we actively re-enforce the negative model.
This is exactly what, e.g. Trump does when he says "you think our country is
so innocent?" He wants to normalize corruption because he himself is corrupt,
and if it's normalized he can get away with it.

Thus, this kind of thinking is a vicious cycle. If everyone is cynical about
institutions, the actors in those institutions will be enabled to behave more
badly, which justifies further cynicism. And cynicism is easy -- as TFA says,
it gives you an ego boost. You're hip, nobody is pulling the wool over your
eyes, you know what's really going on. The benefits are internalized, while
the costs are externalized.

I think conspiracy theory thinking is a harmful meme. It's a collective
disease of society that undermines our social institutions -- you know, the
ones we depend on to keep us safe and free from tyrants and corruption. I
treat friends who spread conspiracy thinking the same way I treat friends who
sneeze on shared food or have unprotected sex with an STD. If you believe
nonsense, that's your prerogative, but if you're going to spread it by talking
about it, I'm going to shut you down. If you agree with me, join me.

Tl;dr: friends don't let friends spread conspiracy theories.

~~~
imhelpingu
Are you essentially suggesting that because everyone depends on certain
institutions to be ethical, that's a reason _not_ to challenge them?

And you write your friends off based on this, regardless of whether you can
actually prove them wrong?

~~~
igor47
Thanks, great question.

It's one thing to challenge institutions to be better, and another to write
them off as bad. For instance, I want NASA's missions to succeed, and I want
them to be more bold and think bigger and be more effective advocates for
their own funding. I _do not_ believe that they're plotting to conceal the
truth of the moon landing, or are building and launching mind control
satellites. I want the police to hold officers accountable for deadly mistakes
-- I _do not_ think that all cops are racist assholes who cannot be trusted.

> prove them wrong?

You're actually a space lizard. Prove me wrong. You'll find it's harder than
you think.

What you can do, though, is ignore people who accuse you of being a space
lizard. Space lizardism is not a harmful meme. When my friends spread more
harmful memes, like 'you can't trust the government so it's time to build a
bomb shelter and stock up on ammo' \-- I don't write them off. I engage. At
the very least, they should know that I strongly disapprove even of this
strain of thinking/discourse. I don't want to hear it, much as I don't want
them to come over to my house and rub their cold sores on my cutlery.

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vokep
Paywall :/

~~~
igor47
The secret to WaPo articles: google for the headline and follow the google
link.

~~~
vokep
much appreciated

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imhelpingu
Yeah like those crazy conspiracy theorists who believe that if our government
is capable of mass surveillance, they might actually do it.

Or those conspiracy theorists who think marijuana is improperly scheduled and
there's been a decades-long campaign to lie to the public about its health
effects.

Or those conspiracy theorists who think photographic evidence is sometimes
widely misrepresented by the media.

Or those conspiracy theorists who think state actors sometimes astroturf
social media.

Or the conspiracy theorists who thought we facilitated the the Iran-Contra
weapons sales.

Or the conspiracy theorists who thought Iraq didn't have any WMDs.

Why on Earth would anyone distrust the government and Real News™?

