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Why do people make so many NASA conspiracy Theories?


fredinno

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There are actually stuff dropped from planes that vaguely resemble chemtrails- rain seeding, for example, which has existed since the Vietnam War, but generally only works if there is moisture in the air, and even then, has a 30% sucess rate- and a possible use of a massive air force to spray dust to mitigate climate change- but it's effects on the amount of radiation hitting Earth would be measurable.

Those random "colored rainfalls" probably haven't helped any either.

I'm typically pretty sensible and it takes a LOT to get me to consider extraordinary explanations, but if this had happened in my back yard, it would've scared the heck out of me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala

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Because it wasn't NASA, it was ESA. Problem solved...

@ Darnok : Well then, look at your surrounding. If chemtrails were real, everyone who lived around kennedy or vandenberg should've died. Not to mention poor chaps in China, for their inland launches...

If chemtrails were real, people living near airports or under common plane routes would be dead or sick.

- - - Updated - - -

Those random "colored rainfalls" probably haven't helped any either.

I'm typically pretty sensible and it takes a LOT to get me to consider extraordinary explanations, but if this had happened in my back yard, it would've scared the heck out of me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala

OMG!!!! NASA ALIEN CHEMTRAILS! !!111!!

:-p

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If chemtrails were real, people living near airports or under common plane routes would be dead or sick.

Well, the point was trails... Aircraft taking off doesn't leave visible trails, but rocket launches starts with enourmous trails.

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Oh, I've heard so many conspiracy theories- but even some are too absurd to get to Coast to Coast. Though, they did feature a theory that China's ghost cites are to save the population from Polar Shift- and that there somehow is a giant underground city being built underneath the entirety of the US (SOMEHOW....:D) I think some of the people who propose this stuff are trolls, doing it for the lulz and profiting off of people's naivety.

Also the theory that the Moon is fake.

Nothing will ever beat Mel's Hole for sheer lulz value.

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They're doing it because they are stupid. Stupid people usually have the tendency to go bold with their statements. They are usually very vocal. The smarter someone is, the greater the chance is that they will be careful about their claims.

Also, something very important - we aren't getting stupider. It's just that the average folks' access to WWW is getting easier than ever and therefore stupid folks have an ever easier way of displaying their stupidity. You can see how the emergence of moronic ideas (chemtrails, Nibiru 2012 crap) correlates with the increase in WWW accessability.

The stupidity level of the world is probably going down, if not being stagnant. I think it's going down.

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Also, something very important - we aren't getting stupider. It's just that the average folks' access to WWW is getting easier than ever and therefore stupid folks have an ever easier way of displaying their stupidity. The stupidity level of the world is probably going down, if not being stagnant. I think it's going down.

Ironic, isn't it? If you were able to describe what the internet is, to any famous philosopher in terms they could understand, they'd probably think it would usher in a golden age of understanding and knowledge. Instead, the opposite is happening.

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Ironic, isn't it? If you were able to describe what the internet is, to any famous philosopher in terms they could understand, they'd probably think it would usher in a golden age of understanding and knowledge. Instead, the opposite is happening.

The thing is though is that I don't think anyone could have anticipated the effect the combination easy mass exposure and anonymity would have, be it good or bad.

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Ironic, isn't it? If you were able to describe what the internet is, to any famous philosopher in terms they could understand, they'd probably think it would usher in a golden age of understanding and knowledge. Instead, the opposite is happening.

I wouldn't say the opposite is happening, I would say that the conspiracy theorism on the internet is a side effect of the increased access to information. If I had been born 20-30 years before I was born, I would probably know only half as much as I do simply because the internet has allowed me to look up and learn things whenever I want. Of course, what I do (looking things up and learning things) out of curiosity and interest in learning others do out of fear and ignorance, and while I try to learn useful things, they only absorb information that reinforces their limited worldview.

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Ironic, isn't it? If you were able to describe what the internet is, to any famous philosopher in terms they could understand, they'd probably think it would usher in a golden age of understanding and knowledge. Instead, the opposite is happening.

Indeed, most of them thought that will happen instantly and haven't predicted this period of enormous displayed stupidity.

I wouldn't say the opposite is happening, I would say that the conspiracy theorism on the internet is a side effect of the increased access to information. If I had been born 20-30 years before I was born, I would probably know only half as much as I do simply because the internet has allowed me to look up and learn things whenever I want. Of course, what I do (looking things up and learning things) out of curiosity and interest in learning others do out of fear and ignorance, and while I try to learn useful things, they only absorb information that reinforces their limited worldview.

True, but their vigilance causes irritation among smarter people. Haven't you noticed the scientific skepticism getting bigger in the last five years? We're in a turbulent period. I think it will turn out fine.

Internet has partially catalytic function, and partially generates new phenomena.

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They're doing it because they are stupid. Stupid people usually have the tendency to go bold with their statements. They are usually very vocal. The smarter someone is, the greater the chance is that they will be careful about their claims.

Also, something very important - we aren't getting stupider. It's just that the average folks' access to WWW is getting easier than ever and therefore stupid folks have an ever easier way of displaying their stupidity. You can see how the emergence of moronic ideas (chemtrails, Nibiru 2012 crap) correlates with the increase in WWW accessability.

The stupidity level of the world is probably going down, if not being stagnant. I think it's going down.

Not really:http://www.naturalnews.com/037942_humans_devolving_brain_function.html

Though this has more to do with the way civilization is designed itself, than anything.

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Really if you think about it, there isn't much use for human ingenuity anymore. As individuals, our critical thinking is stunted. The only people who get much out of using their brains are thinktanks in the upper echelons of the business world, and a handful of politicians. The rest of us are just slaves who do what we're told. Sure, we can still use our minds for hobbies, and we can keep learning. But the equivalent of that in the physical is going to a gym and being a hamster on a wheel. Exercise for the sake of itself. For most of us, there is very little stimulation or reward for using our brains. Every once in a while an inventor gets lucky, but usually they just end up getting nowhere while some rich guy a few decades later gets the same idea but actually has the resources to make the dream a reality.

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Don't deprive employers of the chance to waste your brain by wasting it before you're out of school."

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Just a quick comment on the accessibility of information due to internet: The internet allows any person to have a very shallow understanding of a topic. That is the problem. Instead of having to educate oneself about something, from the basics untill mastery of the field, which requires dedication and effort, anyone can easily Google something up and talk as if they are experts of the field even though their understanding is merely superficial.

In a perfect world, unrestricted access of information, even if it gives shallow understanding of something of something should prompt curiousity and make people want to know more. But here, it makes people think they know "enough" and stick with their stubborn belief and biases instead of learning more.

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Really if you think about it, there isn't much use for human ingenuity anymore. As individuals, our critical thinking is stunted. The only people who get much out of using their brains are thinktanks in the upper echelons of the business world, and a handful of politicians. The rest of us are just slaves who do what we're told. Sure, we can still use our minds for hobbies, and we can keep learning. But the equivalent of that in the physical is going to a gym and being a hamster on a wheel. Exercise for the sake of itself. For most of us, there is very little stimulation or reward for using our brains. Every once in a while an inventor gets lucky, but usually they just end up getting nowhere while some rich guy a few decades later gets the same idea but actually has the resources to make the dream a reality.

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Don't deprive employers of the chance to waste your brain by wasting it before you're out of school."

It has never been much use for ingenuity.

Its far more need for critical thinking now than it was say 40 years ago as the number if information sources are far higher and many have low accuracy.

Previously you just had the traditional mass medias.

Far too many people falls for facebook scams simply as they believe anything who is written as long as it don't conflict with their knowledge. if their knowledge is limited they pretty much belive anything :)

And no, nobody really benefits from the conspiracy theories except some fringe groups its just that many people like to think they have some hidden knowledge.

Its also about trust, looks like conspiracy theories are more common in the US than in Europe as people trust the government less.

In the middle east its far more conspiracy theories and even wilder ones as you can not trust most governments at all.

An important difference is that politicians in the west rarely outright lie, at least about things who can be verified. Lots of dictators does this sort of things, North Korea is probably the parody here.

I don't have the impression that politicians use their head much, they go so much on autopilot you can pretty much predict that they are going to say :)

Again part of this is that they don't want to bee seen as unpredictable and they have a staff preparing that they are going to say both increases the boredom of listening to them.

Much the same in the business world

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Its also about trust, looks like conspiracy theories are more common in the US than in Europe as people trust the government less.

In the middle east its far more conspiracy theories and even wilder ones as you can not trust most governments at all.

You're wrong on this one. The less a society is developed, the worse and the more widespread the conspiracy theories will be because they correlate with ignorance and average poorly civilized behaviour. Don't judge the presence of a nationality on an English-speaking part of the Internet as an indicator.

Why do we see lots of US American conspiracy quack sources? Because US American content dominates no matter what the topic is. Other nationalities that use English or are fluent enough in it are relatively smaller in size.

Do we (or Google Trends or whatever) have an accurate measurement of these things on the Internet in the Middle East? No. Different language, even different scripts! Internet is a much, much larger place than we are aware of, but we just don't see it because the links between these areas are very poor. We have enormous lack of awareness for online volume written in Cyrillic, all sorts of Chinese characters and their derivatives... That's an enormous amount of material, volume and social network communities that simply have low interconnectivity.

These online worlds touch at places like certain Facebook pages by people who use both languages and Latin script. With that in mind, one can notice the enormous amounts of conspiracy theories and general hatred coming from certain areas, which is caused by current events, as well.

I can ensure you that, if one would randomly probe opinions of statistically significant quantities of people in each country, that things like creationism, antivaccine ideas, NASA conspiracies like "Apollo hoax", general and specific superstitions, hatred and discrimination of minorities, disagreement with acceptance of human and civil rights, would be absolutely enormous outside urbanized, Western societies. It's nothing weird. It's just how things always worked.

The reasons we see the popularity of it in the West is awareness and presence of nutty people who have enough access on the English speaking, Latin written parts of the Internet.

I come from a country that uses Latin script, but one of Slavic languages. Trust me, more than 90% of the user generated comments are drenched in stupidity and hatred. It just gets worse the less socially developed a country is. The Internet allows us to have a peak in the reality because anonimity gives confidence to people. Behind tourist offers, nice smiles, great food, you'll find biggotry, stupidity and brutality.

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For those of you who dwell on Facebook, check out the NASA's official page. I think either a troll party has started or the insane people have escaped some asylum. Most comments are accusing NASA of hiding the "truth" about "flat Earth". It's incredible. Almost all of the comments. They've taken over. :confused:

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Probably involves the general American distrust of government, but NASA probably isn't the best target for this distrust

I once read government related conspiracies are welcomed by the various agencies that are involved. Always because it makes them look big and powerfull.

NASA, being a governmental agency and frequent publisher of pictures of alien worlds, not free from jpeg-artifacts, stitching errors and whatnot, is the embodiment of all that is conspiracy worthy.

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I once read government related conspiracies are welcomed by the various agencies that are involved. Always because it makes them look big and powerfull.

NASA, being a governmental agency and frequent publisher of pictures of alien worlds, not free from jpeg-artifacts, stitching errors and whatnot, is the embodiment of all that is conspiracy worthy.

It doesn't help that people tend to think NASA is larger than it actually is. Take the widespread urban myth of NASA destroying the Saturn V blueprints; it only works if you assume they built it on their own, with internal resources. In reality, most of those documents would've remained with the contractors who actually built it, and are now at Boeing and LM.

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Yes, the NASA's Facebook page is under attack, folks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SmarterEveryDay/comments/3p6tjm/destin_here_if_youre_up_for_it_lets_take_a_minute/

It started with one video and now their entire page is being attacked. Do not engage in discussions with them. Use the report link and report it for spam or scam.

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Yes, the NASA's Facebook page is under attack, folks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SmarterEveryDay/comments/3p6tjm/destin_here_if_youre_up_for_it_lets_take_a_minute/

It started with one video and now their entire page is being attacked. Do not engage in discussions with them. Use the report link and report it for spam or scam.

Huh, I saw that video a few hours after it came out, and while I don't quite like it because it is not a very informative video as I had came to expected from their other videos, I didn't think it would warrant the kind of reaction that would need people going up in arm about it...

It is like they have nothing better to do...

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