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"Believe in conspiracy theories? You're probably a narcissist: People who doubt the moon landings are more likely to be selfish and attention-seeking"
Hmm.. Seems there may be a narcissist component for the more intelligent conspiracy-theorists. Of course one could only prove that by getting a snotty reply to the previous post.
Kidding aside
I've been pondering this whole thing in the past few weeks as someone who works with me on homeless projects here commented on conspiracy discussions in workshops. Enough that it is causing problems with some who want to talk about nothing else (mostly the teenage boys). We give many re-homed families basic smartphones/tablets as it is essential for many reasons in modern times. Free WiFi is available everywhere in Medellin.
The Alex Jones' of the Latin world are pretty aggressive "performance artists" as Jones described himself in that custody battle. The amount of stuff in Spanish is really surprising.
Well it seems access to the internet brings conspiracy talk on pretty darn fast with some. It/they are like virus' spreading and replicating in human hosts so successfully that the parallels to a biological plague are striking.
@Rory , i sincerely love and appreciate our banter and do wish it continues for times to come.
Regarding the moon landing: i don't know if we went to the moon or not.
But i do know that it is open for questioning. As it should be.
To my beginner's mind the "facts" presented on the case by say NASA and friends are not empirical.
NASA and friends want me to believe in the moon landings.
When i started questioning the moon stuff, all i got out of it out was more questions! Answers simply did not jive.
NASA and friends should not ridicule and keep abusing anyone questioning these things, but help me understand it through empirical proof.
After all aren't we paying for NASA budget of 19 Billion per year ?
If the moon landings really did happen why is it so difficult to prove them ?
A very good place to start questioning for me was: https://apollo17.org/
What can i say, except that I was disappointed plenty by my parents lying to me about a tooth fairy and santa already
As far as the Alex Jones and friends question is concerned: (Controlled opposition comes to mind) Sometimes you really just can't help stupid.
Alex Jones and friends do sincerely place anyone questioning anything in the looney bin! And that is very very sad.
People such as him do not represent "the beginner's mind". Quite the opposite.
And yes he is an entertainer. Time Warner Inc. signs his paycheck.
@zmaj Why NASA especially? If you need empirical proof, i.e. will only accept things from direct personal experience (that you successfully interpret) it is a very very very very very long list. What about countries you have not been to? Is Colombia real, is Japan? (very long).
Why are you, an adult, suddenly a "beginner"? Most of us stopped being beginners at maybe 10? Then we became more professional about learning when one becomes aware that knowing stuff is important for making a living etc. Bit of a gap there boss? Are you a young kiddie?
When I was a kid my cousins told me that "sometimes the tooth fairly gets drunk and takes an eye by mistake" (a family "meme"). I'd never seen a tooth fairy but I slept with a t-shirt over my eyes until I was 26 to be safe. An author named Terry Pratchett used that line in a book years later.. You might have heard of the Discworld series of novels?
NASA do what they do, they really don't care about your personal knowledge gap as FE-ism is not about reality, it is a veiled justification/proxy for young Earth Creationism for most and they don't want to touch that for sanity/legal/hygiene reasons at the very least. Even Mr. Entertainment Ken Ham (Ken Ham! Kids + mechanical dinosaurs!!) says ok.. that FE BS is going to far now lads, your making us all look bad.
The problem NASA have is simple, 1. NASA is not a person who thinks etc., only corporations are people in the US (now there is some real alternative reality) so it can't want you to do anything but mostly 2. garbage in, garbage out is tricky. NASA's engineers would have to start at elementary school and that is not their thing, at least not the engineer's thing if avoidable. Its regrettable that 3. A lot of the US education system is also pretty crap. I recently won a $1000 bet with a retired US high school math teacher who after 30+? years had never once learned that you can have more that 180 degrees in a triangle. He welshed on the bet of course (that he proposed), no curiosity, no honor, teaching kids = bad.
People who are rushing hither and tither can't learn much as knowing stuff about the life the universe and everything is not all broad strokes. If people discussing something have significantly differing understanding of words you get that old "Babel" problem (Ken would be pleased). So you have a job to separate garbage from garbage using other garbage someone edited down to 1:30 from another video that was 6:00 hours.
I left a very big hint about this on that post a bit back:
Shimmer... shimmer.. time travel old memory flashback effect..
Back in the early '90s someone thought it would be a good idea if I was taught how to shoot people and things a long way away and sent me to a place called Fort Polk.
A horrible place with boiling steam instead of air and between the steam, rain. So Rory is thinking about this "Coriolis effect" stuff that his eventually a friend but then mortal enemy master sergeant was going on about that day. I remember well lying in my fetid bunk thinking .. "Whatever the feck it is it is not the "Coriolis effect" that makes a bullet rise or fall depending on East/West shooting, he has the wrong effect". The next day I drew a diagram for him in the dirt with a stick.. it did not go well for me. He was aggressively disinclined to accept he had told everyone the wrong thing for all those years. Funny day I can tell you, now we laugh about it.
So if everyone is a galloping horse and even gun shop guy like in that video I posted with above names the wrong effect, no wonder your a bit confused. And that is just the beginning. Also no wonder that the link (another hint.. Beuller...) to the FE site where some completely fail at the tiny tiny mental hurdle of disentangling Coriolis and Eotvos. Knowing the difference can save lives, ok probably not but it can be the difference between an effect at the pole and more around the equator. Maybe the FE guy was thinking of sending the smart guy on a 10 mile run with no clean water and had no curiosity about the mysterious Eotvos effect.
I am however flying to a place tomorrow and if you want empirical proof, this is as good as it gets that the world is round (if your a kid). Pereira Airport's flat runway on a curving Earth. Beat that. I'm a bit scared of falling off the edge
Only rarely are there better substitutes than learning how to spell 'physics' and 'cosmology', then working stuff out with a pencil. A lot of mathematicians got rid of a lot of crap doing that. About 75% of the internet would then disappear, hard disk makers could return to building chairs, folks could relearn how to make eye contact, and the carbon footprint, in fact all hot air problems, would disappear at a stroke.
you are familiar with "Allegory of the Cave" ?
A classic commentary on the human condition. A story of open-mindedness and the power of possibility.
you seem to have misinterpreted the "Beginners Mind" reference
An attitude of Mindfulness!
Taking any information @ face value is not very empirical!
I mention NASA cause the very first empirical question for any globe believer is:
How do you prove you live on a globe without NASA ?
Funny enough enough, the common sense tells us all that the earth is flat. Why ?
Because we all experience it as flat everyday.
Now, when someone comes along and says: No, it is not flat it is a ball. We live on a ball!!
Then the most logical thing would be to prove that claim, that we live on the ball, right ?
So, can you prove that you live on the ball, a physical, empirical proof ?
I'm asking, because i can prove in a physical empirical sense that i do live on a flat plane.
Example of other questions needing an empirical answer:
1. How does the water curve and stay on a ball ? Has anyone ever done that anywhere ? Physically kept water on a ball ?
2. How does anything happen in the vacuum of space ? Don't we need air to transmit radio signals and to move air ships ?
3. NASA says that the earth is spinning @ 1,000 mph and that the earth's atmosphere is spinning as well @ 1,000 mph ?
And yet somehow we can experience different winds and currents moving about different directions every day all over the world.
And not to mention the worlds oceans. How is all this water not being affected at all by that 1,000 mph spin ? How come ?
Yes, i'm not as smart as them NASA scientists, but common now, some of these claims are moving toward pseudo-science
Pseudo-science as i recall is the claim that we are unable to substantiate, only theorize.
A Lamp In The Dark:
Included in this Film:
1) The history of the early Church, with the warnings from Jesus and the Apostles about "grievous wolves" and apostasy.
2) How the Inquisition began for the purpose of silencing Christians and outlawing the Bible.
3) The Bible translations of John Wycliffe and William Tyndale, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, and finally the King James Version.
4) The Protestant Reformation and the reasons behind it.
5) Key doctrines confronted by the Reformers (i.e. Indulgences, Inspiration of Scripture, Salvation, Transubstantiation, Veneration of Mary, and Papal claims of authority).
6) The Counter Reformation which began with the founding of the Jesuit Order in 1540.
7) The Vatican's involvement with the Critical Text and their influence over world-wide biblical translation in the 20th century.