Faking Being Halfway to the Moon

[revmic]

Understood, and thank you. But is Scott committing the logical fallacy of Begging the Question if he provisionally relies on the evidence of his senses/common sense? A common CT argument is to 'trust your eyes', would Scott be logically wrong in doing so until greater evidence convinced him otherwise?

Perhaps put better: Would Scott be committing an error in logic by holding a belief based solely on his subjective standard of proof, barring any obvious superior counterargument?

[Jason Thompson]

I think he would, yes, becuse he has still made an assumption in order to contextualise what his senses are telling him. In this case, assuming that any similarity in movement of his jacket and Collins's must be due to their being in the same environment (1g). He has not considered any effects of materials, any kinds of movment that would be unaffected by gravity, or any movements in microgravity that might seem very similar to those in 1g at a glance. He begs the question because what he sees leads him (apparently) to a conclusion based on a premise he has not demonstrated: in this case that all movement in microgravity must look different from all movement in 1g.

[ka9q]

You have to be a little careful in accusing people of begging the question (i.e., circular reasoning).

In mathematics it is perfectly legitimate and quite common to assume the truth of what you're trying to prove and then to show that this yields a contradiction, thus disproving whatever it was that you originally assumed to be true.

Of course, this doesn't work the other way -- not showing a contradiction does not prove that the assumed conclusion was true.

A few hoaxers do try to find contradictions between various bits of the Apollo record. Problem is, even if it seems real a contradiction might well be the result of a simple error or omission in the record. They never try to rule these out before they jump to their preferred conclusion.

[Glom]

It doesn't help that their hoax based explanation for so called contradictions are non-sensical post hoc contortions to get the observation to fit a predetermined theory. Crosshairs being the most glaring example.

[revmic]

Jason Thompson: I follow your reasoning and agree that Scott failed to consider that material being moved by the astronaut in microgravity may have simply resembled being in 1G, making his argument fatally flawed. What I am not clear on is if he was committing a logical fallacy (thinking incorrectly) or was just wrong (incorrect information). If the latter, a reasonable debate can be sustained till a concession is reached. If the former, well, you can always shoot spitballs at the tinfoil hat. Am I off base in distinguishing between being wrong and thinking wrong?

ka9q: I admittedly wrestle with the Begging the Question fallacy, circular reasoning is straightforward enough but I always get twisted on what constitutes an objective standard for proof.

Glom:Yeah, what is with the crosshair claim? With all the expertise in photographic analysis these yahoos claim you'd think they would notice that scanning and copying images can cause bleed-out with fine lines.

[gillianren]

He was committing something by just assuming that the knowledge base he has is sufficient to make claims about anything?

[Jason Thompson]

Jason Thompson: I follow your reasoning and agree that Scott failed to consider that material being moved by the astronaut in microgravity may have simply resembled being in 1G, making his argument fatally flawed. What I am not clear on is if he was committing a logical fallacy (thinking incorrectly) or was just wrong (incorrect information). If the latter, a reasonable debate can be sustained till a concession is reached. If the former, well, you can always shoot spitballs at the tinfoil hat. Am I off base in distinguishing between being wrong and thinking wrong?

Surely the logical fallacy remains whether the person committing it is aware of it or not, and whether it is due to improper reasoning or inadequate knowledge or understanding? I agree that how far you can reason someone out of the logical fallacy depends on their own reasoning ability, but I don't think it matters how it came about in terms of simply identifying that it is there.

In this case, from experience with this particular HB, the problem is both. He is inadequately informed and inadequately willing to be informed (or at least he presents as such) about anything that contradicts his preconceived idea that Apollo was faked. So he may have committed the fallacy due to incorrect information but cannot be reasoned out of it anyway because his conclusion is not reached reasonably.

[revmic]

Gillianren: he certainly is committing something, astounding hubris at the least. My problem in more in the abstract here, Scott just reminded me of it: can lay observations be adequate to support a logical argument, or do they kind of automatically Beg the Question? Or is it a subjective whether the argument has merit, and by whose standard?


Jason Thompson: I think your assessment of Scott is spot on; his argument was perhaps not the best illustration of the issue I am trying to sort out. Let me try another favorite from the CT Hit Parade, the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7: WTC 7 was the first and only steel framed high-rise to undergo global collapse primarily due to fire. Evidence was removed from the site prior to performing a full investigation, so the NIST report is largely a model which was created to explain the observed collapse. Would a cynical CT guy be committing a logical fallacy by assuming the NIST findings were not a sound explanation , or would his lay observations be valid enough to logically debate them? In order to be logically sound, can one reject the findings of an expert in favor of evidence of the senses (then subject to debate), or is he automatically Begging the Question (thus logically unsound and essentially undebatable)?

[bknight]

One logical fallacy would be what I ran onto in YouTube.  There was a certain individual that observed that Shuttle astronauts experienced "flashes" in their eyes while the lids were closed, something that the Apollo crews noted and reported.  And this radiation is of course cosmic rays, one of the most energetic bit of radiation that exists.  Now the problem he stated that all space radiation is as dangerous, the logical fallacy is to blanket the amount of energies of one type of radiation to all kinds of energy.

[Count Zero]

He was committing something by just assuming that the knowledge base he has is sufficient to make claims about anything?

On Babylon 5 they called it "delusions of adequacy". 

[revmic]

Looked into it, I was remembering wrongly. Begging the Question is an informal fallacy, so it is logically sound but inherently unpersuasive