I read his post AND looked at his linked page. From the convoluted and seemingly uneducated conclusions he made, I cannot find any reason to assume he has made ANY logical notations.
Agreed, but still kind of a
ad hominem. (Not in the malicious way, but just in the "logically sketchy" way.) That the claimant is evidently inept at visual reasoning does not compel belief that the annotations must be incorrect. The correctness of the annotations can be adjudicated on their own, irrespective of the traits of the author, and in fact are the primary evidence themselves of the traits we attribute to the author. The author is a nitwit because the annotations make specious claims, not the other way round. Moreover, viewing the gallery and the posted photos
in toto, one can make the case that "Izraul" didn't make any of the annotations or draw any of the conclusions himself anyway. The photos evidently come from a hodge podge of sources, at least one of which appears to be Jack White. Hence we have no reason to believe he is the author of any of them. The claim insinuated in his post is that the photos he presents are the result of his diligent research and investigative effort, including veiled claims of expertise in digital image analysis. But we know that to be false in at least some of the cases; the photos were identified, commented upon, and annotated by others. The best we can conclude according to the evidence is that Izraul has collected them and is now presenting them for some reason that continues to elude us. He has not returned to defend his claims against the criticism that has ensued. There remains some question whether criticism was a reasonable expectation to attribute to him. Others have come here mistakenly thinking it is where hoax claims are welcome and endorsed, rather than reviewed critically. One can view his post as postured to appeal to other hoax claimants: "I sought to debunk the hoax claimants and ended up agreeing with them."
The separate question of whether the annotations are clear lets me come clean. I didn't initially notice the annotation on the Earth. It was up near the top edge, and I extracted the claim regarding the photo entirely from the caption at the bottom. I did, however, notice the annotation in the center of the photo, in which the arrowhead seemed simply to indicate the lower half of the photo. When I went back later to pay closer attention to all the available information, I interpreted the top annotation the same way: that the arrowhead was meant to focus attention and not to indicate a direction. The arrows appear to be used inconsistently, and silly me tried to give them a consistent role. That in turn colored my interpretation of the text of the annotation, which does
not say, "This is the Sun."
As others came at the evidence with less bias, it became more parsimonious to interpret the annotation near Earth to indicate an inference of illumination angle. It is important in many cases to argue in a way that draws all inferences in favor of one's opponent. That makes it less credible for an opponent to dismiss your criticism as a straw man. Here it is more reasonable to say that the author has correctly identified the object in the photo as the Earth and has attempted intelligently to infer illumination information based on that correct identification, than it is to infer that the author is so inept as to be unable to distinguish the Earth from the Sun in a photograph.
But most of us here are used to proponents drawing preposterous conclusions and making claims based on confidently erroneous identifications or assumptions. The generous practice of drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the opponent bites us when we consider that quite a lot of the inferences that proponents rely upon are not at all reasonable. And, as I mentioned, there is the nefarious rhetorical practice of making ambiguous arguments in order to bait one's opponent to be the one to make the (intended) inference, only to tar him with the consequences of having done that. In the wake of so many such propositions, we have adopted a stern practice of requiring the proponent to make his inferences explicit. Hence I held my concession in abeyance pending a clarification from the proponent -- which is almost certainly not going to come forth.
"But Jay," one might ask, "did you abate the concession because of the rhetorical dilemma you identify, or instead to save face after having been thoroughly contradicted by other reasonable critics." Heh, probably more the latter. No one is immune to the effects of ego. The sting of probably having interpreted the annotation contrary to its reasonable intent gets blunted by being able to pivot to something I am still abstractly right about. This is why skepticism works. As careful as I often am in making criticism, there are still people who are simultaneously aligned with me ideologically yet committed enough to fairness to call me out on it. It's more important that we get it right than that we bludgeon proponents who have reached poor conclusions.
