Plausibility question

[Stuart]

Pretty well all the "evidence" that the HBs have produced seems to have been quickly and easily destroyed (mostly by the application of a little common sense).

Have they ever actually come up with an anomaly that took some head-scratching before the solution was found or have all their efforts been pitched on the same rather transparent level?

[GrapesOfWrath]

I think that they all take some head-scratching, it depends upon who does the scratching. Some things are obvious to some people, not so obvious to others.

The difference is the reaction when a solution is found--some people say "thanks guys that makes sense," others say "you IDIOTS, you're just buying into the sekret konspiracy skam!! Try thinking for yourselves sometimes!"

[Zathras]

On 2002-12-19 09:57, Stuart wrote:
Pretty well all the "evidence" that the HBs have produced seems to have been quickly and easily destroyed (mostly by the application of a little common sense).

Have they ever actually come up with an anomaly that took some head-scratching before the solution was found or have all their efforts been pitched on the same rather transparent level?


There has been a lot of head scratching over the Marfa lights over the last 50-130 years. Some have claimed that they are headlights, but the case is still not completely closed. Here are a few articles on these lights:

http://homes.sulross.edu/~bbaker/alpine/marfa_lights.html

http://www.lifeadventures.com/marfa.htm

http://www.spartechsoftware.com/dimensions/mystical/MarfaLights.htm

[JayUtah]

Have they ever actually come up with an anomaly that took some head-scratching before the solution was found or have all their efforts been pitched on the same rather transparent level?

Most arguments simply require grinding through the appropriate scientific analysis or computation. This can be tedious and time-consuming. Remember: conjecture is cheap; understanding is difficult. What takes a conspiracist sixty seconds to claim may take three days to refute. That's just the nature of this undertaking.

The one I scratched my head over for a longer time than I felt was necessary was Aldrin's boot highlight. It took relatively little time to shred Dr. Groves' case that it was a supplementary light. You just have to try to recreate his observations and computations and you soon see that he can't geometrically distinguish his "fill light" from Armstron'g suit.

The noodle-scratcher was why there should be a highlight at all. The silicone rubber from which those boot soles are made is a matte substance. I got an example of one of those boots (thank you, Hansen Planetarium) and shone every kind of studio light I could get on it. No highlight.

Then I rememberd some innocuous fact I had read: the astronauts trained with one set of equipment, then used a brand-new set for the flight. That means the boots Aldrin was wearing had just been taken out of the plastic wrapper an hour or so prior.

Connect that with something that plastic modelers know from experience, and we engineers deal with professionally. When you mold something like silicone rubber, you have to lubricate the mold. The lubricant sticks to the molded object. Plastic modelers have to wash the parts with detergent or else the joinery and painting is compromised.

Aldrin's shoes came out of the mold, were inspected, then sealed in a plastic bag ready for flight. The next time the world saw them, Aldrin was standing in them on the LM ladder. Nothing like making history in a pair of freshly shined shoes. Of course after cavorting about in the lunar soil for a few minutes the sheen would be entirely lost. That's why there are no hot spots in any other Aldrin shots, even those that are claimed to contain artificial fill lighting.

This is the nature of real research. You take a set of seemingly unrelated facts and put them together. James Burke has made a successful career doing this. It takes a lifetime of study, a thirst for understanding, and patience and perseverence. But the "eureka moment" is very satisfying.

[cable]

What takes a conspiracist sixty seconds to claim may take three days to refute. That's just the nature of this undertaking.

Agree. all conspiracists must take this asymmetry into account. and spend at least 4320 more time in analysing their own scenarios, before submitting them ....

[JayUtah]

all conspiracists must take this asymmetry into account. and spend at least 4320 more time in analysing their own scenarios, before submitting them ....

But this presumes too much.

It presumes that conspiracists understand how to prove a theory. It seems too many want to believe that if they prove it could have been done, that proves it must have been done. And they aren't even satisfied with that antecedent; many simply claim we can't show it was impossible to fake. That's a meaningless standard of evidence. True, if it were impossible to fake it then the question of whether it was actually faked or not becomes moot. But there is a big difference between arguing that something could be faked and showing that it actually [i]was[i] faked.

It presumes that conspiracists are skilled and conscientious researchers. I have yet to meet a conspiracist who had any appreciable knowledge of Apollo planning, technology, or the principles of science that applied to their arguments. They claim certain things can't be found when I can find them in minutes or even seconds. They claim to have performed exhaustive researcher when in fact they have seen relatively little of the material. And most importantly, they will not deal head-on with the objections to their theories: instead you get the whole gamut of evasion.

It presumes that conspiracists are genuinely interested in the truth. Most conspiracists don't veil their mercenary intent very well. They all have something to sell you, and it seems that once they've delivered their book or video to you, their responsibility has ceased.

They won't ever groom or revise their theories because they don't want to arrive at the truth. Their livelihood derives from ongoing controversy, not from resolution.