Author Topic: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.  (Read 266502 times)

Offline Andromeda

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #240 on: June 19, 2012, 08:45:40 AM »
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Wow, you've given up here too?  You concede that we are right and you are wrong?  Great, glad to help out.   :)
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov.

Offline Tedward

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #241 on: June 19, 2012, 08:49:55 AM »
To add to the compartmentated thingamabob. If you had the engineers in your pocket, then no need to compartmental them shirley.


Offline ineluki

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #242 on: June 19, 2012, 08:57:17 AM »
Sure, when looked at superficially, which is the lens that advancedboy uses, Apollo seems unbelievable. The technical acheivements seem miraculous, impossible. 

It's not just a lens, it's also his special angle, which pretty much ignores all other technical achievements which existed already. It's a superficial look as well, but we had nuclear power (including nuclear powered ships), rockets,  Mach3-Airplanes, we started successful hearttransplants etc






Offline raven

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #243 on: June 19, 2012, 09:11:06 AM »
Apollo didn't happen overnight, advancedboy.

It did happen quite quickly, but when you have over 400,000 and over 170 billion dollars in today's money, things tend to come together.

There is a basic axiom of engineering.
You can do things quickly, you can do things with quality, or you can do things cheaply.
At best you can get two of the three, and Apollo went for the former two.

Its predecessors, Mercury and Gemini, showed that not only could humans survive and work in space, but also practised EVA, rendezvous, changing orbits, and docking, all of which were invaluable experience for Apollo.

Unmanned probes like Lunar Orbiter, Ranger, and Surveyor all gave much information regarding the lunar surface and scouted out potential landing sites.

While NASA had other scientific exploration programs at that time, like Mariner, Explorer, and Pioneer, much of their efforts were directed to the end of putting a man on the moon, all building toward that goal.

To quote Jim Lovell, "It's not a miracle, we just decided to go."

Offline Glom

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Re: Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #244 on: June 19, 2012, 09:16:42 AM »
Fine, don't let go of your hate. See if I care.


To quote Jim Lovell, "It's not a miracle, we just decided to go."

Did Lovell actually say that or was that just in the movie?

Offline raven

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Re: Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #245 on: June 19, 2012, 09:19:54 AM »

To quote Jim Lovell, "It's not a miracle, we just decided to go."

Did Lovell actually say that or was that just in the movie?
I've seen it quoted as him personally, though I don't know for sure.
It's a damn good quote though, laconic and to the point.

Offline twik

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #246 on: June 19, 2012, 09:22:52 AM »
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And, in keeping with other posts, an indication that he is more interested in science fiction than science.

There is, truly, no arguing with someone like this. They start, for whatever reason, from the absolute faith that Apollo is a hoax, and expect people to disprove it, while not understanding the science enough to comprehend any disproof.

As far as his obsession with American competitiveness, I suspect this is the "good friend in bad times" syndrome. He actually exults in anything he sees as a slap in the face for the US, but is trying to hide his bias by listing all the "failures" he can come up with, while adding, "And I'm SO SORRY to see this! What's wrong?"

Offline Echnaton

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #247 on: June 19, 2012, 09:26:11 AM »
No entry  to be validated. Log end.

And it was just getting to be fun!
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett

Offline Echnaton

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #248 on: June 19, 2012, 09:31:10 AM »
As far as his obsession with American competitiveness, I suspect this is the "good friend in bad times" syndrome.
Agreed, his supportive veneer was broken with a very light touch to reveal the rotten core underneath.
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett

Offline raven

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #249 on: June 19, 2012, 09:36:40 AM »
While not the most crash and burn ending I have seen on this forum by any stretch, that last post was a little odd to put it mildly. :o

Offline Echnaton

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #250 on: June 19, 2012, 09:49:57 AM »
Maybe he finally understood that his lack of a rational response validates our criticism?  Na!
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett

Offline Andromeda

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #251 on: June 19, 2012, 10:03:15 AM »
TBH I expect him to come back soon, as if nothing had happened, "And another thing...!"
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov.

Offline JayUtah

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #252 on: June 19, 2012, 10:33:39 AM »
Jay, it is the dwindling US precision manufacturing, that puzzles me.

I don't care what puzzles you.  You have no qualification or experience in the aerospace industry that you're willing to substantiate.  And none of what you've said has the slightest to do with your claims regarding Apollo.

State your qualifications.

Answer my questions.

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While Apollo proved it was quiet easily done, in a comparably short period of time.

No.  Apollo development was neither short nor easy.  You don't have the experience to make that judgment credibly.  And I have already exposed your willingness to ramble about engineering you patently do not understand.

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And considering todays computers offer so much  improvement over what was available then.

Irrelevant.  The 1960s is considered the golden age of aerospace, and much of it relied upon techniques developed during World War II and refined in the post-war Cold War era.  Little of that required computers.

Further, the narrowest designation of my field of expertise is computational tools for engineering.  This is what I do for a living.  You vastly oversimplify the industry.  Vastly.  Your toy notions of the aerospace industry do not support in the least your contention that Apollo was fake.

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And I don`t denounce astronauts as cowards or hoaxers, it was not up to them to decide.

They claim to have gone to the Moon.  You say they did not.  They would know whether they did or not.  Therefore you are calling them liars and hoaxers.

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And it was not up to many great engineers who contributed to that project...

Irrelevant.  You are saying they did not build the things they said they built.  Therefore you are calling them liars.  Trying to weasel out of the consequences of your statements does not soften them.

Kindly do not use your rambling "analysis" of the U.S. aerospace industry as a distraction from your libellous and ill-supported claims.  You have been asked several specific questions, in response to which you have simply referred to long-debunked conspiracy theorists, or simply ignored them.
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams

Offline sts60

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #253 on: June 19, 2012, 10:33:48 AM »
advancedboy, in reply 137 I pointed out the characteristics of a "strong" claim, namely that such a claim must:

1. Identify an actual anomaly (not an error of understanding, personal opinion, wishful thinking, or fabrication) and explain it in terms of contributing to a hoax.
2. Explain how the "hoax" interpretation is preferable to the conventional explanation.
3. Provide some kind of evidence for the specific hoax activity.
And, at a higher level, a strong claim that Apollo was a hoax needs to:
4. Explain how the hoax makes sense in the context of the Apollo record.  This not only include the technical context, but the scientific, historical, political, budgetary, and managerial contexts as well.

I mentioned that I've never actually seen such a claim, including any of yours, and asked if you intended to advance a "strong" claim per the title of this thread you started.

Unfortunately, not only have you not done so, you're actually going the other direction.  I shouldn't have to point this out, but an implicit condition of a "strong" claim is:

0. A strong claim must be coherent, and certainly not self-contradictory.

But that is exactly what you are doing.  You praise the Saturn V and "demand" it be built, then you disparage it by making dark hints about its "real" performance.  You hold up the 100% made-in-the-USA golden age US aerospace industry as the epitome of engineering capability, yet insist it was incapable of carrying out the Apollo project.  You say you are not trying to call the astronauts liars or "hoaxers", yet say they participated in the largest fraud in history.  You complain about Boeing outsourcing work to other countries, but don't seem to grasp that Airbus was "outsourced" from the beginning as a multi-national consortium. 

If you can't put together arguments that don't contradict themselves, you won't get anywhere.  And even where you don't contradict yourself, you're all over the map.   You don't really even have a coherent claim; you just have a mess of ill-informed notions cribbed from various conspiracists and overlaid atop your own ill-informed certitude.

And that's before even getting to all the individual problems with your claims.  In addition to the errors and logical fallacies I referenced in my earlier post linked above, you keep making additional mistakes, waving your hands about new sub-conspiracies, and in the midst of making some good points about competitiveness and innovation, demonstrate a failure to grasp how large engineering projects work, how market forces drive corporate strategies and mergers, how national priorities develop, and in general make a lot of noise about things you only partially grasp to pretend that they somehow support a hoax. 

Worse, you slavishly attend proven liars and incompetents - saying you'd literally trust them with your life - while dismissing actual experts, and instead of learning from your mistakes, you churn out hamfisted attempts at self-deprecatory sarcasm in an effort to cast yourself as the unfairly oppressed free thinker. 

Do you want to have an adult conversation or not?  Do you want to learn anything or not?

Offline JayUtah

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Re: Strong arguments versus weak arguments.
« Reply #254 on: June 19, 2012, 10:34:42 AM »
No entry  to be validated. Log end.

Are you resigning the debate?  If so, when you return we shall pick it up exactly where you left off.  No "fringe reset" for you.
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams