Author: Mike Colagrossi / Source: Big Think
- Fifty years later after one of the greatest achievements of mankind, there’s a growing number of moon landing deniers. They are part of a larger trend of anti-scientific thinking.
- Climate change, anti-vaccination and other assorted conspiratorial mindsets are a detriment and show a tangible impediment to fostering real progress or societal change.
- All of these separate anti-scientific beliefs share a troubling root of intellectual dishonesty and ignorance.
We are living in an increasingly more complex world every day. This statement has seemed to become a modern maxim in our time. The many consequences that flow from this change are beginning to become evermore present and noticeable. Carl Sagan’s prescient quote sums it up nicely:
“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”
One such disconcerting trend is that this type of ignorance is being taken one step further. Rather than wanting to remedy this lack of insight or knowledge, it would seem that many people are doubling down and plunging headlong into even more idiotic beliefs.
Forget basic logic, deductive reasoning or stringing together comprehensive lines of thought. These are the four most prevalent and damaging anti-scientific beliefs held by people in the world. While reading, keep in mind this indispensable wisdom:
“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.” – Benjamin Franklin
Moon landing conspiracy
Image by NASA
Apollo 11 moon landing
Landing on the moon was a triumphant paean to the greatness of our human spirit and ingenuity. Between 1969 and 1971 we landed on the moon six times. Each landing carried down two astronauts, while one waited for them in lunar orbit. We brought down moon rocks, left behind many lunar modules (that can be pinged with lasers from the earth’s surface) and we learned a great deal about the Moon from these pioneering missions.
In recent years, talk about the moon landing being a hoax have begun to circulate and pickup more ignorant adherents. The fact that none of these deniers are scientists, astronauts or any of them have any advanced knowledge of engineering, rocketry, physics and so forth, should be telling enough. Even without going into the nitty gritty of the science, there’s enough places online to find simple arguments debunking the moon landing hoax.
Mathematician David Robert Grimes approached the idea of debunking the moon landing hoax and other associated conspiracies in a novel way through a mathematical model. The formula accounts for the amount of people involved in a supposed conspiracy and how long it would take to go on keeping the details hidden from the public.
He states:
“Even if there was a concerted effort, the sheer number of people required for the sheer scale of hypothetical scientific deceptions would inextricably undermine these nascent conspiracies.”
Grimes understands that even with such a compelling and logic based understanding of the phenomenon of conspiracy, those with these beliefs will likely never shake their convictions.
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“The grim reality…
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