I was watching a Moon hoax conspiracy theory video on YouTube, just for amusement, and because I hadn't watched any in a long time (I have watched quite a lot of them in the past, as well as related websites), and one of the comments to the video made me realize something. The comment was something along the lines of "my childhood is destroyed". My realization was: This is one of the reasons why conspiracy theorists are assholes.
The space program is one of the great achievements of humanity, a marvelous show of technology, progress and human courage, of people willing to go beyond, to surpass all previous limits. The Moon landings are among the greatest achievements of our entire history, and something that we can marvel and admire.
Then the conspiracy theorists come, confuse you and fill your head with all kinds of lies, misleading you into believing falsities. They use all the dirty tactics in the book to mislead you, and are preying on your gullibility and lack of experience on the subject. No matter what they claim, conspiracy theorists couldn't care less about what's true and what's not; the only thing they care is feeding their own desires to be "knowledgeable" and "in the loop", to know all the "secrets" that only very few other people know, and they don't really care if they have to fabricate non-existent "secrets" to fulfill this goal. Many conspiracy theorists might have fooled themselves into believing that they are only seeking the truth, but they are only deluding themselves; they are not seeking the truth, they are only trying to confirm what the want to be true, and they do this by distorting evidence, fabricating evidence, ignoring evidence, all with copious amounts of confirmation bias. They also feel the need to sell these lies to others in order to gain some personal satisfaction at being "smarter" than the average person (even if they would never admit this even to themselves.)
The sad side effect of this is destroyed admiration and awe, and unjustified disillusionment for the people who fall prey to the lies of the conspiracy theorist. As that commenter said, childhood dreams are destroyed. But it's not NASA or any government that's destroying them, it's the lying assholes that are conspiracy theorists.
The space program is one of the great achievements of humanity, a marvelous show of technology, progress and human courage, of people willing to go beyond, to surpass all previous limits. The Moon landings are among the greatest achievements of our entire history, and something that we can marvel and admire.
Then the conspiracy theorists come, confuse you and fill your head with all kinds of lies, misleading you into believing falsities. They use all the dirty tactics in the book to mislead you, and are preying on your gullibility and lack of experience on the subject. No matter what they claim, conspiracy theorists couldn't care less about what's true and what's not; the only thing they care is feeding their own desires to be "knowledgeable" and "in the loop", to know all the "secrets" that only very few other people know, and they don't really care if they have to fabricate non-existent "secrets" to fulfill this goal. Many conspiracy theorists might have fooled themselves into believing that they are only seeking the truth, but they are only deluding themselves; they are not seeking the truth, they are only trying to confirm what the want to be true, and they do this by distorting evidence, fabricating evidence, ignoring evidence, all with copious amounts of confirmation bias. They also feel the need to sell these lies to others in order to gain some personal satisfaction at being "smarter" than the average person (even if they would never admit this even to themselves.)
The sad side effect of this is destroyed admiration and awe, and unjustified disillusionment for the people who fall prey to the lies of the conspiracy theorist. As that commenter said, childhood dreams are destroyed. But it's not NASA or any government that's destroying them, it's the lying assholes that are conspiracy theorists.
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