New forum by najak

[onebigmonkey]

Najak, late of this parish, has started his own forum to discuss Apollo matters.

The only thing there at the moment is an Apollo 13 post, where he concludes that a lack of evidence covering Apollo 13's re-entry means it is somehow fake.

https://apollogy.discoursehosting.net/categories

[TimberWolfAu]

Beat me to it.

I'm in 'Rasa's' Facebook group, so I saw the post. I was going to wait a bit to see if it got any footing before posting here, didn't want to give the impression his site was being picked on I guess.

One thing I don't get, he keeps going on about how he wants to present all this to engineers, to show them how Apollo was fake, but the docs that he builds are so..... unprofessional and scattered that there is no way anyone would take more than a glance at them and decide it's not worth their time.

[smartcooky]

Beat me to it.

I'm in 'Rasa's' Facebook group, so I saw the post. I was going to wait a bit to see if it got any footing before posting here, didn't want to give the impression his site was being picked on I guess.

One thing I don't get, he keeps going on about how he wants to present all this to engineers, to show them how Apollo was fake, but the docs that he builds are so..... unprofessional and scattered that there is no way anyone would take more than a glance at them and decide it's not worth their time.

In order to present documentation to engineers for appraisal, you at least need to have some engineering nous, or preferably, have passed some engineering qualification yourself, so that you understand the language, the terms, the mathematics and the form. Najak has none of this, nor any credibility, and won't be taken seriously. The result is, he won't get any serious responses (at least none that will tell him what he wants to hear) so he will call it a closing of ranks and a cover up.   

[Ranb]

So far some of the math on the site to support their claims is completely wrong.

https://apollogy.discoursehosting.net/t/apollo-13-splashdown-on-target/16/14

[bknight]

Beat me to it.

I'm in 'Rasa's' Facebook group, so I saw the post. I was going to wait a bit to see if it got any footing before posting here, didn't want to give the impression his site was being picked on I guess.

One thing I don't get, he keeps going on about how he wants to present all this to engineers, to show them how Apollo was fake, but the docs that he builds are so..... unprofessional and scattered that there is no way anyone would take more than a glance at them and decide it's not worth their time.

In order to present documentation to engineers for appraisal, you at least need to have some engineering nous, or preferably, have passed some engineering qualification yourself, so that you understand the language, the terms, the mathematics and the form. Najak has none of this, nor any credibility, and won't be taken seriously. The result is, he won't get any serious responses (at least none that will tell him what he wants to hear) so he will call it a closing of ranks and a cover up.

Well I remember him Gish Galloping along on too many threads and couldn't keep up the barrage of comments.  The engineers here attempted to provide engineering explanations that were merely hand waved away so any discussion on his forum should be met with the same hand waving BS shown here.  I don't do FB so anything posted there will be missed by me, luckily.

[jfb]

Najak, late of this parish, has started his own forum to discuss Apollo matters.

"Discuss."

The only thing there at the moment is an Apollo 13 post, where he concludes that a lack of evidence covering Apollo 13's re-entry means it is somehow fake.

https://apollogy.discoursehosting.net/categories

Gee what a shock.  Of course when you reflexively dismiss all evidence that doesn't suit your narrative as "fake", it's not terribly surprising you'd claim there's no evidence. 

[TimberWolfAu]

Gee what a shock.  Of course when you reflexively dismiss all evidence that doesn't suit your narrative as "fake", it's not terribly surprising you'd claim there's no evidence.

Najak starts with the conclusion the missions were faked, and all evidence must point to this. Several times he has accepted claims from other HB's with no checking, and only after the actual details are provided does he then admit that, maybe, perhaps, just possibly, they are not great evidences (and half the time, typically followed with a claim/request that the original poster should remove their post)....... but it was still fake and THEYᵀᴹ are covering it all up and presenting bad science to the world (which no one has ever noticed in over 50 years).

..................

Apparently his video dissection of the Apollo 13 re-entry will be available soon. If I see it first, I'll drop a link.

[TimberWolfAu]

Whoops, should have said the upcoming video is on the lack of cratering. No doubt it will be full of detailed analysis, reconstructions of events, and in depth explanations of the lunar surface prior to the arrival of the LM, all backed up by Najaks extensive area of expertise in, well, just about everything it seems.

[Jason Thompson]

Najak starts with the conclusion the missions were faked, and all evidence must point to this.

Not only that, but he operates from a premise of 'if it was faked, these reasons and these methods explain it, and that's all the evidence we need for that'. He commits the complete logical failure of essentially charging someone with the means, motive and opportunity of murder, and concocting elaborate scenarios about how the murder too place, before taking the steps of verifying if the alleged victim is actually even dead in the first place.

Though he did give us a great laugh when he asked the only person in the world (literally, to my knowledge) to have written a couple of books on the subject of the development and functioning of the Apollo TV systems if he had 'any links' to back up his statement about how the TV worked on Apollo....

[JayUtah]

...backed up by Najaks extensive area of expertise in, well, just about everything it seems.

Indeed, his problem here seemed to be that he approached all the problems from the position that whatever he already knew about a subject was sufficient to determine questions of authenticity. Even his flounce entailed abandoning his specific claim in favor of preserving his belief in his own authority—i.e., to have proven his own claims false by his own acumen. When it became evident that he was not suitably proficient, he resisted being taught and instead tried to create a parallel narrative that only he controlled. This conforms to the hypothesis I have long held that conspiracy theories are formulated more to satisfy the ego of the claimant than to actually investigate the narrative.

Not only that, but he operates from a premise of 'if it was faked, these reasons and these methods explain it, and that's all the evidence we need for that'. He commits the complete logical failure of essentially charging someone with the means, motive and opportunity of murder, and concocting elaborate scenarios about how the murder too place, before taking the steps of verifying if the alleged victim is actually even dead in the first place.

Known succinctly as the "subversion of support." There is no obligation to explain something that didn't actually happen.

Though he did give us a great laugh when he asked the only person in the world (literally, to my knowledge) to have written a couple of books on the subject of the development and functioning of the Apollo TV systems if he had 'any links' to back up his statement about how the TV worked on Apollo....

It seems hard for some people to believe that actual professionals and experts will frequent places on the Internet where the subjects of their professional interest are discussed. In the larger sense, there is a general feeling among conspiracy theorists that no real expertise exists. I've been told many times that I'm just better at Googling than others, or just better at debate tactics than others. It never crosses their minds that they may be speaking with people who actually have years—if not decades—of real-world expertise. Even still, anyone dedicated to studying the materials with a broad interest is likely to acquire a better knowledge of the subject than one who studies only what's needed to inform the next day's "gotcha!" attempt.

[Peter B]

...In the larger sense, there is a general feeling among conspiracy theorists that no real expertise exists. I've been told many times that I'm just better at Googling than others, or just better at debate tactics than others. It never crosses their minds that they may be speaking with people who actually have years—if not decades—of real-world expertise. Even still, anyone dedicated to studying the materials with a broad interest is likely to acquire a better knowledge of the subject than one who studies only what's needed to inform the next day's "gotcha!" attempt.

That's why I like to throw it back to conspiracy theorists to consider how they'd respond to someone saying the same sorts of uninformed things about the work that they're expert in. I've never had anyone respond to that point, but I hope it at least plants a seed of thoughtfulness.

[Jason Thompson]

It seems hard for some people to believe that actual professionals and experts will frequent places on the Internet where the subjects of their professional interest are discussed.

It's an odd phenomenon, that people seem to think some kind of real world distinction exists geographically between professionals and laypeople. Someone I know was confronted with stark disbelief when recounting their tale of running into Orlando Bloom in Canterbury, with many people utterly disbelieving that a major movie star (this was right around the time of Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings being major blockbusters) would be in a city in Kent. The fact he is literally from there and his parents still lived there at the time seemed to pass many people by.

So it is here, with the utter disbelief in some quarters that you can come onto some internet forum to talk about aeronautics and spaceflight and actually talk to people who do it for a living. I do enjoy those 'get the popcorn' moments when a hoax believer asks 'and what are your qualifications, eh?' I remember in particular someone years ago asking regular Apollohoax contributor sts60 what made him such an expert in spaceflight....

In the larger sense, there is a general feeling among conspiracy theorists that no real expertise exists.

The 'anti-intellectualism' lamented by Isaac Asimov in his oft-repeated quote. My knowledge is just as good as yours and academic or professional qualifications don't mean a thing. Patently absurd when it comes to engineering, since physics has a habit of slapping you into next week if you don't actually take the time to understand it.

Even still, anyone dedicated to studying the materials with a broad interest is likely to acquire a better knowledge of the subject than one who studies only what's needed to inform the next day's "gotcha!" attempt.

I'm pretty confident that my 20+ years of entirely amateur interest in spaceflight has led me to a far sounder understanding of the subject than any hoax believer, along with a confidence that I have seen more of the actual record of at least the first two decades of spaceflight than they even know exists. And I'm also aware, unlike many HBs, that there is always still more to learn about it. There's a particular type, it seems, who genuinely believe there is some endpoint to learning.

[jfb]

I'm pretty confident that my 20+ years of entirely amateur interest in spaceflight has led me to a far sounder understanding of the subject than any hoax believer, along with a confidence that I have seen more of the actual record of at least the first two decades of spaceflight than they even know exists. And I'm also aware, unlike many HBs, that there is always still more to learn about it. There's a particular type, it seems, who genuinely believe there is some endpoint to learning.

And that they reached it when they graduated high school. 

But there's another aspect at play here, I believe.  You and I can defer to people we don't like very much, or even downright loathe, on matters where they are real experts and we are not.  We may not like it (as the meme goes, "the worst person you know is right about something"), but we can deal with it.

Guys like najak can't deal with it.  Your expertise and knowledge are irrelevant if they don't like you.  And a lot of the time, they don't like you because of your expertise and knowledge.  I don't know if it's just deep-seated insecurity or genuine pathology, but the simple fact that you know something they don't bugs them. 

It is better to be confidently wrong than to admit someone you don't like is right. 

Of course, we can't ignore the brain damage caused by the internet over the last few decades.  That's a factor, I just don't know how big. 

[onebigmonkey]

Beat me to it.

I'm in 'Rasa's' Facebook group, so I saw the post. I was going to wait a bit to see if it got any footing before posting here, didn't want to give the impression his site was being picked on I guess.

One thing I don't get, he keeps going on about how he wants to present all this to engineers, to show them how Apollo was fake, but the docs that he builds are so..... unprofessional and scattered that there is no way anyone would take more than a glance at them and decide it's not worth their time.

I'll give him his due, he does at least try and correct things that are very obviously wrong, even when it's his elders and betters on the hoax side like Jarrah and Rasa. His approach is baffling though. on one hand he's desperate for engagement from people who oppose his viewpoint, allegedly so he can be "neutral", yet when people do he's dismissive and offensive. He then whines when people have better things to do than continue to engage with him. He's keen to explore evidence, but doesn't seem to want it. He's the annoying kid tugging on the grown-ups' sleeves for attention.

Case in point: I've been looking at is his examination of terminator footage. He's decided that the various 16mm films taken by a number of missions as they cross what appear to be the terminator are somehow faked because the actual terminator line isn't where it appears to be on the footage, and some bright features (ie crater walls lit by oblique sun)are visible when if they are in true darkness shouldn't be there. That alone ought to be a clue, but what he hasn't done is wonder to himself "is it the camera and/or film that's the issue?". In his example from Apollo 10, the footage he shows was taken from the LM that approaches "Landing site 2" towards the end. It is indeed dark in the film when it should be lit. If he bothered to check, there are Hasselblad images taken at the same time in which the surface features are easily made out. Gee, do you think it might be possible that the 16mm footage isn't responsive enough to the relatively low light there?

[Jason Thompson]

on one hand he's desperate for engagement from people who oppose his viewpoint, allegedly so he can be "neutral",

Yes, but this is a person who said if this site was neutral it would work against NASA. Yes, he literally defined neutrality as firmly one-sided. It's the same delusion that 'free thinking' means 'disbelieve everything the establishment says', or that people are 'sheep' for all saying 2+2=4 rather than saying it because it is objectively true.

If he bothered to check...]

And there's the crux of so many hoax believer positions. They never check. They never look in depth. They never consider that different media produce different results. They just grab their one bit of 'evidence' and cling to it like a lifebelt.