I believe that if we follow the correct rules of critical thinking we should all arrive at the same conclusion with regard to a major event for which there is a huge amount of evidence to base judgement on.
Hi Petra. I appreciate your invitation to engage in a discussion. I think there are many things about the moon landing narrative that are ridiculous. If nothing else, the filmed documentation of the supposed landings and exploration is comical. Who filmed and panned up as the lunar module blasted off to meet up with the orbiter? Shadow angles that change as the astronauts move across the surface indicate stage lighting and not a stationary light source from the sun. The lunar module looks like it was made out of cardboard and tinfoil; hardly capable of rocketing through space and maintaining positive pressure in a vacuum without exploding. Here is an interesting video of NASA astronauts admitting we have never left low-earth orbit.
Sean, have you looked at all the debunking material? Now I understand you may have an allergy to the word "debunk" because so often alleged debunking is nothing of the kind, however, I think when it comes to the moon landings all the debunking I've seen is perfectly valid. So what I ask you to do is cast your eye over the debunking below as it addresses very core issues.
The COVER of the lunar module is similar to a dust cover of a car. Are you going to judge a Lamborghini by its dust cover?
Also, the Moon Machines series is fascinating (I've put a link in the post now). I really didn't have much interest in the moon landings until I thought I should determine if they happened or not but I couldn't but help get a sense of awe about them. They truly were an astonishing achievement and this series is wonderful. If it doesn't convince you they happened, nothing will! The link is to the first Moon Machine episode in the playlist, The Saturn V rocket, followed by the LEM, the Space Suit, the Rover and the Command Module. Each video is about 45m.
If I'm reading your critical thinking rules correctly, I think you're saying this first rule is simply 'look for anomalies'.
With regards to the alleged moon landings, the anomalies are legion. The continuity errors in the photographic record being the most obvious. Aulis has a lot about that.
Given that there are, indeed, anomalies in the official story, the question then becomes 'what is the explanation for these anomalies?'.
The two hypotheses I can come up with initially are either
1/ The moon landings didn't happen (or didn't happen the way we've been told they did)
or
2/ The moon landings did happen, but they deliberately created a massive amount of fakery - in which case, why? Is this a) to introduce and then debunk the idea of conspiracy theories themselves (there's something in that of course given the history of that decade/1960s, what with jfk and CIA memo 1035-960, if I'm remembering the number correctly)?
Or is it b) to fuck with us and just create so much cognitive dissonance that we can no longer trust anything, whether that be our own common sense or ANY evidence for or against anything. One can see how useful that would be for the controllers, of course.
A combination of the above is also possible, of course.
On another, more psychological note, two things to say:
1/ Whereas the personal attacks on 'conspiracy theorists' are usually 'you're a bunch of right wing bigots', sometimes, as is the case with the moon landing stuff, the personal attack is labelling conspiracy theorists as, ironically, just 'loonies'. This latter projection works really well - it took me quite a long time before I started questioning the moon landings, as, naively, I admit, I must've simply assumed they happened and didn't ever ask any questions. Notwithstanding the fact that I was preoccupied with other stuff, of course.
2/ Maintaining the 'moon landings really did happen' narrative is vitally important for the continuation of the American Hegemony - if the world were to discover that this is myth, then the Empire would collapse, both internally, and externally, because both their own citizens, brought up on the myth of American exceptionalism, and the rest of the world, fearing this Leviathan, would no longer have any respect for the Empire whatsoever. And that really would be fatal.
Ironically, one suspects that removing the Empire at some point may well be part of the endgame (in which case all these anomalies are simply planting those seeds for a later date). It'll be intriguing to find out...
The first rule is not to look for anomalies per se but to check the validity of your chosen hypothesis so if you think the moon landings were faked then you have to check everything you believe says they're fake to see if you're correct. The moon landings is where we need to be very careful of what we perceive as anomalies because space, space travel and the moon itself are completely alien territory for most of us and we certainly cannot simply turn to all those who've set themselves up as authorities on the fakery to see what they say. We need to see what is said in response to those who see themselves as authorities on the fakery too.
We also need to consider the value of the opposite of anomalies (which tend to undermine an hypothesis) namely the items that hug an hypothesis very tightly (is there a term for that?). For example, in high res photos only we see minute amounts of regolith particles in the creases of the mylar material covering the landing pads which can only be seen using the magnifier. This kind of subtlety is completely alien to fakery especially of the psyop kind and really favours the "real" hypothesis. Similarly, the hundreds and hundreds of hours of audio recordings of transmissions between the astronauts and mission control and between the astronauts themselves massively supports real. We would not expect even remotely this amount of material for faked moon landings and my claim is that it would be impossible to fake, however, I can't state that as a fact ... but nor can anyone who disbelieves the moon landings state as a fact that it could be faked without detection.
Disbelievers of the moon landings are very fond of the claim, "X could be faked," when what they really mean is "X could be faked without detection" which are two entirely different claims and in fact the caveat "without detection" means their claim is completely invalid unless they can prove that X can actually be faked without detection.
I thought of, or remembered, rather, another hypothesis which is far, far more sinister and which, as a speculative fiction writer, I find more exciting and appealing. Namely, the moon landings did indeed happen as advertised, and also the Martian exploration stuff, but that they 'discovered' things which, as per the Brookings report about concealing evidence of ETIs from the public, they've had to cover up. This explains the creation of fake evidence to create a conspiracy theory, which is in large part a misdirection.
By evidence of ETI I am absolutely not referring to the ridiculous Exopolitics Institute/Disclosure Project rubbish, which is an obvious psyop. And probably another misdirection (in a similar way to which the 'alien abduction' stuff is simply concealment for MK-Ultra subproject experimentation).
The other version of this hypothesis, which doesn't require extraterrestrials, is the 'secret space programme' version, using more advanced technology which they are likewise concealing from the public - partly because space exploration gives people hope for a better future and makes them much less easier to control - they want them crawling in the gutter, not looking up at the stars (this also explains the suspicious lack of progress in space exploration of course).
Miles Mathis (I'm assuming you're familiar with his stuff) has a lot to say about the fraudulent nature of a lot of modern science, and although I haven't yet fully immersed myself in his science writings, if his theories are true then we can assume that the spooks are also aware of this alternative science and would use it for practical purposes/research and development, which would, indeed, lead to advanced technologies which they would conceal. The ETI aspect comes in when we start thinking that the evil behaviour of the cabal would be considered a threat to any other lifeforms in the interstellar vicinity, and so their research and development would have to be sabotaged to prevent and contain this threat. That's logical.
So I think there is a lot more going on than people know about, and they love to create all these psyops simply to conceal it all. The moon landings would be a big part of that.
Anyhow, just a few more thoughts for an intriguing discussion!
I'm happy to accept any hypothesis ... if there's some reasonable evidence for it. The thing is I want to seem as credible as possible and as it is there's so many lies that we can clearly see that trying to even tell a fraction of those is hard enough let alone weird moon stuff.
I understand what you're saying. Hypotheses vs. anomalies. Firstly I was kind of coming at it from the opposite direction, I think - namely 'are there anomalies in the official hypothesis that the moon landings happened?'. The answer to this is a resounding yes - as I said, simply from the photographic record - it's not really shadows and dust and so on it's the blatant continuity errors, like objects being moved around and different foregrounds and backgrounds and anomalous footprints in impossible places and footprints starting at a particular location without evidence of how they got to that position, and so on. The other glaring one is the 'Earthrise' image from Apollo 8 - in which the planet is way too small given the perspective (it's, erm, a lot bigger relative to the moon than that), then there's the lack of stars and the astronauts not recalling any stars in that press conference etc. etc. etc.
But leaving aside all the science stuff for the moment...
The question then becomes 'what are those anomalies doing there?' So we get to two new hypotheses, as I suggested - either a) It happened as said, but these are added-on fakery or b) It didn't happen as described. Either hypothesis demands investigation, of course.
As I said though, I'm somewhat late to the moon landing stuff, and have only really briefly perused the Aulis site. It seems to me their hypothesis is that Kubrick (probably) filmed the whole thing at Cardington studios in England, but was probably forced to do it with some 'offer he couldn't refuse' - i.e. do it or your family will suffer or do it or you'll never make another movie again - so he puts a whole load of continuity errors in there and subtle references in his other movies. That's an interesting hypothesis of course, and if the landings were faked then that's really the only way they could've done it - by filming the whole thing in a seriously lavish, but secret, production.
But I remain open-minded. I just find it intriguing.
On a similar note - do you know anything about the sort-of-related 'Nasa doesn't have any rovers on Mars' theory? I find that one equally fascinating!
OK, well you'd have to point me to the alleged photographic anomalies - I've looked up countless alleged anomalies which have all been explained perfectly reasonably as far as I can tell.
The lack of stars is to be expected as the astronauts were on the moon during lunar day and their cameras were set so that stars wouldn't be visible (we don't see stars in the sky on earth during the day apart from the sun). Do you see what I mean about anomalies?
The lack of atmosphere on the moon means that objects look different than on earth so I really think it's difficult to judge exactly how the earth should look.
We really need to be careful of judging lunar stuff according to a terrestrial bias. We think we know how things should look and behave when we simply don't.
I strongly advise consulting the debunking material because:
--- It shows those who say we didn't go to the moon know far less than those who say we did
--- It's quite interesting and you learn quite a bit
Yes, it's always good to remain open-minded. Even though I'm utterly convinced astronauts landed on the moon and have no doubt whatsoever ... I still keep an open mind.
This is a fascinating video on the Lunar Rover, part of the Moon Machines series. I'll try to get links to all the videos and will put them in my post ... but here's the story of the Rover for the time being. Absolutely love the early prototypes - they're hilarious! I also love the way the engineers who built it got very excited about building it but were told there wasn't enough room. They were very disappointed but then they were told, "Well, actually, there's a little piece of pie shaped spot we could squash it into." Ultimately, however, it didn't go for the first four missions.
What I'd keep in mind is that, hypothetically, if there is a true improbable event, those in power will do their level best to push out propaganda directed to those who are disinclined to believe them to encourage disbelief of that event to create a Boy Who Cried Wolf effect. As much as possible they want to dupe everyone - the believers and the disbelievers alike. When I came to the conclusion that the moon landings were real and then tried to tell my disbelieving identical twin and friends, they wouldn't have a bar of it. This prompted the thought that there is a "disbeliever-by-default" profile that those in power would be well aware of and would target with propaganda to undermine them. I wondered if the first person to say we didn't go to the moon, Bill Kaysing, might be an agent and sure enough when I looked him up on Wikipedia all the signs blared out at me.
Reuters made lots of noise when the US military wouldn't release the video of Collateral Murder which allegedly shows US soldiers firing on unarmed Iraqi Reuters journalists. This is all a charade. That film was faked to infiltrate Wikileaks. So obviously within Reuters are intelligence agents spreading propaganda.
I'm not saying they didn't erase the tapes, I think they did, but the reasoning put forward isn't necessarily the best and easily encourages disbelief. It's a minefield out there, I'm tellin' ya! But then we always have "revelation of the method" to rely on.
If you read under The Missing Tapes on this post I think a pretty convincing explanation of the tapes is given.
The other thing is that the purported evidence gets first priority. Does the purported evidence stand up to scrutiny? And I think it does for the moon landings. The moon is so utterly different from the earth in that during lunar day the sky is black. This is very, very difficult to fake on earth and I think that all the imagery of the brightly sunlit moon against a black sky is internally consistent as well as being consistent with expectations.
They didn't take the lunar rover until Apollo 15 and I guess they simply wanted to go further afield in the limited time they had. I don't see that as something challenging credibility. Plus ... men and their toys. Come on.
Hi Petra. I appreciate your invitation to engage in a discussion. I think there are many things about the moon landing narrative that are ridiculous. If nothing else, the filmed documentation of the supposed landings and exploration is comical. Who filmed and panned up as the lunar module blasted off to meet up with the orbiter? Shadow angles that change as the astronauts move across the surface indicate stage lighting and not a stationary light source from the sun. The lunar module looks like it was made out of cardboard and tinfoil; hardly capable of rocketing through space and maintaining positive pressure in a vacuum without exploding. Here is an interesting video of NASA astronauts admitting we have never left low-earth orbit.
https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/nasadmits-we-never-went-to-the-moon/
Sean, have you looked at all the debunking material? Now I understand you may have an allergy to the word "debunk" because so often alleged debunking is nothing of the kind, however, I think when it comes to the moon landings all the debunking I've seen is perfectly valid. So what I ask you to do is cast your eye over the debunking below as it addresses very core issues.
The COVER of the lunar module is similar to a dust cover of a car. Are you going to judge a Lamborghini by its dust cover?
https://www.reddit.com/r/SensibleSite/comments/hs6zji/debunking_wagging_the_moondoggie_part_1/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SensibleSite/comments/eqfeqs/debunking_american_moon
https://www.reddit.com/r/SensibleSite/comments/i1rkbp/debunking_american_moon_part_2
I will read the material in the links.
Also, the Moon Machines series is fascinating (I've put a link in the post now). I really didn't have much interest in the moon landings until I thought I should determine if they happened or not but I couldn't but help get a sense of awe about them. They truly were an astonishing achievement and this series is wonderful. If it doesn't convince you they happened, nothing will! The link is to the first Moon Machine episode in the playlist, The Saturn V rocket, followed by the LEM, the Space Suit, the Rover and the Command Module. Each video is about 45m.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nLpMBpyw8I&list=PLZxCEYczpR2To4HoKnr7R8wfHUmcKP6bU&index=10
If I'm reading your critical thinking rules correctly, I think you're saying this first rule is simply 'look for anomalies'.
With regards to the alleged moon landings, the anomalies are legion. The continuity errors in the photographic record being the most obvious. Aulis has a lot about that.
Given that there are, indeed, anomalies in the official story, the question then becomes 'what is the explanation for these anomalies?'.
The two hypotheses I can come up with initially are either
1/ The moon landings didn't happen (or didn't happen the way we've been told they did)
or
2/ The moon landings did happen, but they deliberately created a massive amount of fakery - in which case, why? Is this a) to introduce and then debunk the idea of conspiracy theories themselves (there's something in that of course given the history of that decade/1960s, what with jfk and CIA memo 1035-960, if I'm remembering the number correctly)?
Or is it b) to fuck with us and just create so much cognitive dissonance that we can no longer trust anything, whether that be our own common sense or ANY evidence for or against anything. One can see how useful that would be for the controllers, of course.
A combination of the above is also possible, of course.
On another, more psychological note, two things to say:
1/ Whereas the personal attacks on 'conspiracy theorists' are usually 'you're a bunch of right wing bigots', sometimes, as is the case with the moon landing stuff, the personal attack is labelling conspiracy theorists as, ironically, just 'loonies'. This latter projection works really well - it took me quite a long time before I started questioning the moon landings, as, naively, I admit, I must've simply assumed they happened and didn't ever ask any questions. Notwithstanding the fact that I was preoccupied with other stuff, of course.
2/ Maintaining the 'moon landings really did happen' narrative is vitally important for the continuation of the American Hegemony - if the world were to discover that this is myth, then the Empire would collapse, both internally, and externally, because both their own citizens, brought up on the myth of American exceptionalism, and the rest of the world, fearing this Leviathan, would no longer have any respect for the Empire whatsoever. And that really would be fatal.
Ironically, one suspects that removing the Empire at some point may well be part of the endgame (in which case all these anomalies are simply planting those seeds for a later date). It'll be intriguing to find out...
The first rule is not to look for anomalies per se but to check the validity of your chosen hypothesis so if you think the moon landings were faked then you have to check everything you believe says they're fake to see if you're correct. The moon landings is where we need to be very careful of what we perceive as anomalies because space, space travel and the moon itself are completely alien territory for most of us and we certainly cannot simply turn to all those who've set themselves up as authorities on the fakery to see what they say. We need to see what is said in response to those who see themselves as authorities on the fakery too.
We also need to consider the value of the opposite of anomalies (which tend to undermine an hypothesis) namely the items that hug an hypothesis very tightly (is there a term for that?). For example, in high res photos only we see minute amounts of regolith particles in the creases of the mylar material covering the landing pads which can only be seen using the magnifier. This kind of subtlety is completely alien to fakery especially of the psyop kind and really favours the "real" hypothesis. Similarly, the hundreds and hundreds of hours of audio recordings of transmissions between the astronauts and mission control and between the astronauts themselves massively supports real. We would not expect even remotely this amount of material for faked moon landings and my claim is that it would be impossible to fake, however, I can't state that as a fact ... but nor can anyone who disbelieves the moon landings state as a fact that it could be faked without detection.
Disbelievers of the moon landings are very fond of the claim, "X could be faked," when what they really mean is "X could be faked without detection" which are two entirely different claims and in fact the caveat "without detection" means their claim is completely invalid unless they can prove that X can actually be faked without detection.
I thought of, or remembered, rather, another hypothesis which is far, far more sinister and which, as a speculative fiction writer, I find more exciting and appealing. Namely, the moon landings did indeed happen as advertised, and also the Martian exploration stuff, but that they 'discovered' things which, as per the Brookings report about concealing evidence of ETIs from the public, they've had to cover up. This explains the creation of fake evidence to create a conspiracy theory, which is in large part a misdirection.
By evidence of ETI I am absolutely not referring to the ridiculous Exopolitics Institute/Disclosure Project rubbish, which is an obvious psyop. And probably another misdirection (in a similar way to which the 'alien abduction' stuff is simply concealment for MK-Ultra subproject experimentation).
The other version of this hypothesis, which doesn't require extraterrestrials, is the 'secret space programme' version, using more advanced technology which they are likewise concealing from the public - partly because space exploration gives people hope for a better future and makes them much less easier to control - they want them crawling in the gutter, not looking up at the stars (this also explains the suspicious lack of progress in space exploration of course).
Miles Mathis (I'm assuming you're familiar with his stuff) has a lot to say about the fraudulent nature of a lot of modern science, and although I haven't yet fully immersed myself in his science writings, if his theories are true then we can assume that the spooks are also aware of this alternative science and would use it for practical purposes/research and development, which would, indeed, lead to advanced technologies which they would conceal. The ETI aspect comes in when we start thinking that the evil behaviour of the cabal would be considered a threat to any other lifeforms in the interstellar vicinity, and so their research and development would have to be sabotaged to prevent and contain this threat. That's logical.
So I think there is a lot more going on than people know about, and they love to create all these psyops simply to conceal it all. The moon landings would be a big part of that.
Anyhow, just a few more thoughts for an intriguing discussion!
I'm happy to accept any hypothesis ... if there's some reasonable evidence for it. The thing is I want to seem as credible as possible and as it is there's so many lies that we can clearly see that trying to even tell a fraction of those is hard enough let alone weird moon stuff.
Yes - it's the evidence thing. Otherwise, correct, we end up looking silly - which is what they want, of course!
I understand what you're saying. Hypotheses vs. anomalies. Firstly I was kind of coming at it from the opposite direction, I think - namely 'are there anomalies in the official hypothesis that the moon landings happened?'. The answer to this is a resounding yes - as I said, simply from the photographic record - it's not really shadows and dust and so on it's the blatant continuity errors, like objects being moved around and different foregrounds and backgrounds and anomalous footprints in impossible places and footprints starting at a particular location without evidence of how they got to that position, and so on. The other glaring one is the 'Earthrise' image from Apollo 8 - in which the planet is way too small given the perspective (it's, erm, a lot bigger relative to the moon than that), then there's the lack of stars and the astronauts not recalling any stars in that press conference etc. etc. etc.
But leaving aside all the science stuff for the moment...
The question then becomes 'what are those anomalies doing there?' So we get to two new hypotheses, as I suggested - either a) It happened as said, but these are added-on fakery or b) It didn't happen as described. Either hypothesis demands investigation, of course.
As I said though, I'm somewhat late to the moon landing stuff, and have only really briefly perused the Aulis site. It seems to me their hypothesis is that Kubrick (probably) filmed the whole thing at Cardington studios in England, but was probably forced to do it with some 'offer he couldn't refuse' - i.e. do it or your family will suffer or do it or you'll never make another movie again - so he puts a whole load of continuity errors in there and subtle references in his other movies. That's an interesting hypothesis of course, and if the landings were faked then that's really the only way they could've done it - by filming the whole thing in a seriously lavish, but secret, production.
But I remain open-minded. I just find it intriguing.
On a similar note - do you know anything about the sort-of-related 'Nasa doesn't have any rovers on Mars' theory? I find that one equally fascinating!
OK, well you'd have to point me to the alleged photographic anomalies - I've looked up countless alleged anomalies which have all been explained perfectly reasonably as far as I can tell.
The lack of stars is to be expected as the astronauts were on the moon during lunar day and their cameras were set so that stars wouldn't be visible (we don't see stars in the sky on earth during the day apart from the sun). Do you see what I mean about anomalies?
The lack of atmosphere on the moon means that objects look different than on earth so I really think it's difficult to judge exactly how the earth should look.
We really need to be careful of judging lunar stuff according to a terrestrial bias. We think we know how things should look and behave when we simply don't.
I strongly advise consulting the debunking material because:
--- It shows those who say we didn't go to the moon know far less than those who say we did
--- It's quite interesting and you learn quite a bit
I've republished some debunking material here:
https://petraliverani.substack.com/p/american-moon-2017-superficially
Yes, it's always good to remain open-minded. Even though I'm utterly convinced astronauts landed on the moon and have no doubt whatsoever ... I still keep an open mind.
Here's a link to the Aulis index of essays on the photo record:
https://www.aulis.com/investigation1.htm
I haven't looked at all of it mind. And I will certainly be having a look at your own link...
They reused the original tapes of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, which documented the most amazing achievement in history, "to save money." Is that believable? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nasa-tapes/moon-landing-tapes-got-erased-nasa-admits-idUSTRE56F5MK20090716
Why would you take a lunar rover on such a trip? What was its purpose?
I think they faked it.
This is a fascinating video on the Lunar Rover, part of the Moon Machines series. I'll try to get links to all the videos and will put them in my post ... but here's the story of the Rover for the time being. Absolutely love the early prototypes - they're hilarious! I also love the way the engineers who built it got very excited about building it but were told there wasn't enough room. They were very disappointed but then they were told, "Well, actually, there's a little piece of pie shaped spot we could squash it into." Ultimately, however, it didn't go for the first four missions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DwBlVM39Jg
What I'd keep in mind is that, hypothetically, if there is a true improbable event, those in power will do their level best to push out propaganda directed to those who are disinclined to believe them to encourage disbelief of that event to create a Boy Who Cried Wolf effect. As much as possible they want to dupe everyone - the believers and the disbelievers alike. When I came to the conclusion that the moon landings were real and then tried to tell my disbelieving identical twin and friends, they wouldn't have a bar of it. This prompted the thought that there is a "disbeliever-by-default" profile that those in power would be well aware of and would target with propaganda to undermine them. I wondered if the first person to say we didn't go to the moon, Bill Kaysing, might be an agent and sure enough when I looked him up on Wikipedia all the signs blared out at me.
Reuters made lots of noise when the US military wouldn't release the video of Collateral Murder which allegedly shows US soldiers firing on unarmed Iraqi Reuters journalists. This is all a charade. That film was faked to infiltrate Wikileaks. So obviously within Reuters are intelligence agents spreading propaganda.
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/wikileaks-controlled-opposition.html
I'm not saying they didn't erase the tapes, I think they did, but the reasoning put forward isn't necessarily the best and easily encourages disbelief. It's a minefield out there, I'm tellin' ya! But then we always have "revelation of the method" to rely on.
If you read under The Missing Tapes on this post I think a pretty convincing explanation of the tapes is given.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SensibleSite/comments/hs6zji/debunking_wagging_the_moondoggie_part_1/
The other thing is that the purported evidence gets first priority. Does the purported evidence stand up to scrutiny? And I think it does for the moon landings. The moon is so utterly different from the earth in that during lunar day the sky is black. This is very, very difficult to fake on earth and I think that all the imagery of the brightly sunlit moon against a black sky is internally consistent as well as being consistent with expectations.
They didn't take the lunar rover until Apollo 15 and I guess they simply wanted to go further afield in the limited time they had. I don't see that as something challenging credibility. Plus ... men and their toys. Come on.