Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

[Carrot Flower King]

Why is the larger part of the world's land mass mostly in the north?

(That thread started with those words, and ended with the words quoted below.)

Oh yes, that is the one.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

 

[Foster Zygote]

Again, the lunar rocks are rather like the reflectors, they don't actually prove the topic at hand.

If only all those geologists had thought to consult an expert such as yourself before writing papers about them.

 

[Vixen]

There is no thrust to the debate, just weakly aimed jabs with no force behind them. I am more than happy to agree that faith is no proof of anything. Science and engineering are not built on crossed fingers and wishes. They do not run on opinion polls.

Accepting Apollo's historical record as fact can be done by examining the wealth of internally and externally consistent evidence from a wide range of sources. No faith is required. Accepting the hoax claim requires that you ignore that evidence and instead unquestioningly take as gospel the words of liars, frauds and undereducated idiots.

It is very easy to debunk a liar, is it not? Yet, the debunks in the OP video don't quite work. If it is believed that all that is needed is a demo of 'how the human eye works' then who are the 'undereducated idiots' here?

Anyway, we'll soon have the Chinese and/or Artemis Crewed Moon Landings to compare and contrast. Let's revisit then.

 

[JayUtah]

Yet, the debunks in the OP video don't quite work.

According to whom? You didn't even pay attention to them until I embarrassed you into revealing you didn't know the extent of my contribution to it.

You belatedly realized that Marcus Allen's photograph claims are pure bunk, and that I had demonstrated as much in the video and again in this thread with actual demonstrations. Even now you can't bring yourself to admit the obvious. You're not a reliable judge of whether the hoax claims have been refuted. You're too poorly informed and too biased.

Anyway, we'll soon have the Chinese and/or Artemis Crewed Moon Landings to compare and contrast. Let's revisit then.

No.

We do not need to wait for more information to see that you and your sources are spewing ignorant nonsense.

 

[Vixen]

No.

The thing you're thinking of is not a "fallacy of credulity," but rather argumentum ad populum or the Bandwagon Fallacy. This is the fallacy that says that belief in a proposition on the part of some (usually large) number of people is not evidence of the truthfulness of the proposition.

The thing is, it's only a fallacy depending on the reasons for belief. If thousands of people say, "I believe a proposition because someone told me it was true," then it's most likely a fallacy. But if those people say, "I believe a proposition because I've carefully studied the evidence and have concluded that the proposition is true," it's not at all a fallacy. Instead it's a consensus regarding the credibility of the evidence. That's how juries work.

Here we take the next step. The thousands of people who say they believe this proposition are, in fact, the only ones in a position to know whether it's true or not. The people who best know whether the Apollo program's technology was capable of fulfilling its mission are in fact the people who built it. This thoroughly defeats the notion that their collective belief is a bandwagon fallacy. And yes, the unanimous consensus of relevant experts and witnesses is extremely strong evidence that the proposition is true.

Finally we have millions of subsequent highly-qualified people who have examined the evidence in retrospect and not only find nothing wrong with it, but they find it an exceptionally well-preserved, complete, and correct record. Their unanimous opinion is conclusive evidence that the proposition is true.

I was actually referring to a logical fallacy within a debate. Say you wanted to prove alchemy can turn lead into gold. The debate saying, oh look Francis Bacon is our top scientist so it must be true and because he has teams of scientists in his Royal Society who are experts and back him, does not logically prove that it must be so. It is assuming there is nothing to be debated. The correct way to look at it is to say, well let's look at the steps shall we because we can't see that this is necessarily true. Enter a bunch of outraged members of the audience declaring, 'How dare you p!ss on this man's life's works. He is such a fine fellow! How very dare you...you...blithering nincompoop.'

So this expression of endorsement - the most common we have seen here - is hardly a debunk.

 

[threadworm]

It is very easy to debunk a liar, is it not? Yet, the debunks in the OP video don't quite work. If it is believed that all that is needed is a demo of 'how the human eye works' then who are the 'undereducated idiots' here?

Anyway, we'll soon have the Chinese and/or Artemis Crewed Moon Landings to compare and contrast. Let's revisit then.

Yes. It is. Convincing their gullible marks that they've been had, on the other hand...

China you say? Why wait. How about this lovely image taken by China of Apollo 16's landing site, lunar rover and all.



Plenty more of that sort of thing available from them.

Chang'e 2

 

[zooterkin]

Yes. It is. Convincing their gullible marks that they've been had, on the other hand...

China you say? Why wait. How about this lovely image taken by China of Apollo 16's landing site, lunar rover and all.

View attachment 73367

Plenty more of that sort of thing available from them.

Chang'e 2

I'm sure it's authentic, but I'm not sure it's going to convince anyone of anything, except perhaps the lens needs cleaning.

ETA: I have honestly seen clearer photos taken using a mannequin's head as a pinhole camera. I don't doubt that these photos are, in context significant, if not impressive, but on their own, not so much.

 

[JayUtah]

I was actually referring to a logical fallacy within a debate.

These are all informal fallacies. A logical fallacy is something that exists only in formal logic, which is not what you think it is.

Say you wanted to prove alchemy can turn lead into gold.

Straw man.

What if the people who say they can turn lead into gold do it right in front of you and present a complete, correct description of how they did it that's studied and approved by every other expert?

If some uninformed person comes along and says, "No, I don't believe they didn't do it," but presents only that incredulity, is that person likely to be correct, or is that likely to be an argument from incredulity?

If some uninformed person comes along and says, "No, they didn't do it because only the king knows it's impossible and he told me it can't be done," is that correct or is that an appeal to authority?

When the people who can demonstrate that they know how to do something further demonstrate that they did it and can tell you precisely how it was done, their belief in having done it has profound evidentiary value. It is not any kind of fallacy.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I was actually referring to a logical fallacy within a debate.

It's more polite to read a post before you reply to it.

 

[Foster Zygote]

I didn't say that at all. I just don't think it is a relevant argument. It is like saying entire countries, 66m Brits and 330m Americans believed Sadam had Weapons of Mass Destruction (= Iraq War). We now know that was completely false propaganda from Bush and Blair. So we have to reject the hypothesis that X no. of people believe it, therefore it happened.

Having actually paid attention then, I know that the Bush administration's claims about WMDs were far from universally accepted, even as they were being made.

You keep trying to conflate a global scientific consensus with public opinions based on limited information from a single source, and the sad thing is that, if you hadn't already put your ego on the line, I'm sure you'd be able to recognize the difference. But you've already weighed in with how wrong everyone else is, and you can't be the one who's actually wrong, so you need to find some excuse to hand wave away the annoying fact that among actual experts, including those with no patriotic motivations, there is no controversy about the moon landings.

So which is it? Are all those scientists and engineers, most of whom have been born outside the U.S. well after the Apollo Program ended, just too stupid to understand that weighing ¹/₆ your earth weight on the moon makes your muscles ¹/₆ as strong, or are they all in on the Plot® because they're all just such huge fans of Richard Nixon? The third option is, of course, that you have no idea what you're talking about, but there seems little chance you'll ever admit that.

 

[Foster Zygote]

All they show is 'glassiness' (rather like the perlite discussion we once had about the effect of explosives on steel), plus, they are more basic than Earth's rocks, i.e., it won't be comprised of certain elements we expect on Earth. But the Earth and the Moon once used to be the same body, so all a rock can tell you is its inherent structure and what type of temperatures it might have been subjected to. So volcanic rock shows the type of 'glassiness' we see in Moon rock. Plus as I said, we have rocks hitting Earth (and the Moon) from outer space all the time. In addition, there is no need to collect these rocks by hand, just as there was no need to leave reflectors there by hand, either. That is a diversion.

Vixen, you're not a geologist, either.

Not that that's going to prevent you from pretending to be one for at least five more pages.

 

[threadworm]

I'm sure it's authentic, but I'm not sure it's going to convince anyone of anything, except perhaps the lens needs cleaning.

ETA: I have honestly seen clearer photos taken using a mannequin's head as a pinhole camera. I don't doubt that these photos are, in context significant, if not impressive, but on their own, not so much.

The context is the important part. While China claims to have produced the most detailed complete lunar map (as opposed to the LRO's locally very detailed), the actual resolution is not great.

However, being dismissive of them because they don't meet a quality standard ignores the fact that evidence of human activity exactly where it should be can be found in orbital images taken by a nation with no vested interested in supporting the Apollo legacy.

 

[Pixel42]

I was actually referring to a logical fallacy within a debate. Say you wanted to prove alchemy can turn lead into gold. The debate saying, oh look Francis Bacon is our top scientist so it must be true and because he has teams of scientists in his Royal Society who are experts and back him, does not logically prove that it must be so. It is assuming there is nothing to be debated. The correct way to look at it is to say, well let's look at the steps shall we because we can't see that this is necessarily true. Enter a bunch of outraged members of the audience declaring, 'How dare you p!ss on this man's life's works. He is such a fine fellow! How very dare you...you...blithering nincompoop.'

So this expression of endorsement - the most common we have seen here - is hardly a debunk.

Once again: the sequence of events is actually

1. An exceptional achievement (contributed to by thousands of people) is made. There is a mountain of objective evidence of this achievement, which is freely available to anyone who bothers to look.

2. A few pig ignorant conspiracy theorists, based on nothing but lies, misinformation and manifestly bonkers speculation, deny the achievement was made, essentially accusing those thousands of people of deliberate fraud

3. Decent people rightly and justifiably complain about (2)

 

[Foster Zygote]

All they show is 'glassiness' (rather like the perlite discussion we once had about the effect of explosives on steel), plus, they are more basic than Earth's rocks, i.e., it won't be comprised of certain elements we expect on Earth. But the Earth and the Moon once used to be the same body, so all a rock can tell you is its inherent structure and what type of temperatures it might have been subjected to. So volcanic rock shows the type of 'glassiness' we see in Moon rock. Plus as I said, we have rocks hitting Earth (and the Moon) from outer space all the time. In addition, there is no need to collect these rocks by hand, just as there was no need to leave reflectors there by hand, either. That is a diversion.

There is however a need for something to collect the samples. Perhaps you would like to tell us: what missions did collect the Apollo moon rock samples, if it was not the people who exhaustively photographed themselves doing it?

Just before you don't answer, please take a moment to consider the mass of material Apollo collected, in contrast with the small amounts contemporaneous Soviet unmanned sample return missions collected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample-return_mission#First_missions

Luna 16 automatically collected 101 grammes of lunar material.
Luna 20 automatically collected 55 g.
Luna 24 automatically collected 170 g.

Apollo 11 crew collected 22,000 g.
Apollo 12 crew collected 34,000 g.
Apollo 14 crew collected 42,800 g.
Apollo 15 crew collected 76,700 g.
Apollo 16 crew collected 94,300 g.
Apollo 17 crew collected 110,400 g.

Do you notice the almost thousandfold difference in the mass of samples which could be selected and collected by human astronauts, compared to a robotic mission which grabs a sample of whatever it lands on? I do. How do you explain it?

I was just going to go there. You saved me the effort.

Ah, I'll add a little more:

The Chang'e 5 and 6 landers returned, respectively, 1,731 g and 1,935 g. That's a big improvement over the Luna landers of the '70s, but still less than 1% the mass of the Apollo missions. And landers can't sample anything that isn't within reach of the probe's sampling arm, whereas the Apollo missions had crews trained in geology, communicating with geologists on earth, and hand selecting samples from progressively larger areas of geological interest with each successive mission.

 

[Foster Zygote]

The thrust of the debate is that whilst millions may indeed believe in it, and that is the first 'debunk' in the OP video, it doesn't really work as a debunk, more of an appeal to faith.

Let me fix that for you.

The thrust of the debate is that whilst millions of experts in the fields of science and engineering may indeed believe in it, and that is the first 'debunk' in the OP video, it doesn't really work as a debunk, more of an appeal to faith.

That's the part you keep deliberately trying to ignore.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Vixen, you're not a geologist, either.

Not that that's going to prevent you from pretending to be one for at least five more pages.

I doubt that V knows why and how wrong some of that is.

*Wanders off to look at some of his very "glassy" obsidian, collected by hand from Iceland*

 

[Foster Zygote]

Oh yes, that is the one.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

Was it the Reptiloids from the Draco constellation living inside the earth?

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Was it the Reptiloids from the Draco constellation living inside the earth?

That would have made more sense than some of the tripe in that thread...

 

[Foster Zygote]

It is very easy to debunk a liar, is it not?

It was effortless to expose your lie about having photographed stars in a manner consistent with conspiracy theorist claims.

 

[JayUtah]

2. A few pig ignorant conspiracy theorists, based on nothing but lies, misinformation and manifestly bonkers speculation, deny the achievement was made, essentially accusing those thousands of people of deliberate fraud

...or of either dereliction or incompetence.

Unless those hundreds of thousands of people were part of the conspiracy, the argument has to be that they didn't know what they were doing—or more accurately, what they weren't doing. The proposal is usually that only a few people in this workforce knew that they weren't actually building working Apollo spacecraft. That's a complete reversal of how an engineering organization works. Operational understanding—including readiness and qualification—lives in the lower part of the organizational chart. It lives there collectively. Interoperation and integration happen there. Management has, at best, an incomplete knowledge of the details.

The companies who built Apollo won those contracts in part because of their proven track record of delivering similar technology, in some cases actual prior crewed spacecraft. Hoax claimants pretend that the contracting agency hands a design to the contractor and simply requires the contractor to build it. Therefore only the agency would know whether the design actually suits some objective.

This too is a complete reversal of what actually happens. The contracting agency issues general requirements. The prospective contractor develops enough of a design to convince the agency to award them the contract, on the way developing specific and intermediate requirements on its own. The expertise lives in the contractor, not the agency. Therefore the contractor, not the agency, knows best how or whether the design will work. And by "contractor" we mean collectively the people who work for the contractor, not some small subset of senior people who are purported to be the only ones who really know what's going on.

Further, there was a lot of cross-pollination among groups to facilitate integration. Lots of "familiarization" documents and training courses survive, showing that correct and capable details of one part of the designs was being loudly communicated to others with the expectation that the recipient would know and understand what they meant.

Did these people suddenly work sloppily or otherwise differently than they had for their entire careers before and after Apollo, such that they wouldn't have confidence in their work? Did they really not know their jobs, such that they could just simply be told something without having inherent understanding of the work they were being asked to do? Unless vast numbers of people were brought into the conspiracy, the hoax claimants have to invent a whole fantasy world to support their scenario.

3. Decent people rightly and justifiably complain about (2)

People who are not only decent and fair, but in many cases those who know what they're talking about. It's not some fallacy to reject an accusation that was based on a fantasy of how their part of the world is supposed to operate. We can know by looking at the copious records of their work products that the people who claimed to build the Apollo technology really did so, and that it really worked as shown. Therefore we can know that their belief in their own success is fully supported by evidence.

This is not blind faith. This is not some appeal to mass credulity. This is a unanimous consensus among all the people who can know the full truth, including in many cases those fully undisposed to hold up some bogus legacy claim.