Teachers: do you believe the moon landings were a hoax?

[noblegiraffe]

I was just on Teacher Tapp and found the results from this poll pretty horrifying: 15% of teachers polled don’t disagree with the statement “I believe the moon landings from 1969 to 1972 were actually a hoax”.

What now? Nearly 1 in 6 of us??

@farce

Knowledge only through personal observation and deduction is surely highly flawed?

Where do you stand on the concepts of a polymath and nanos gigantum humeris insidentes?

Biggreygoose

It's all Dutch to me.

Yes, my perception is inevitably flawed, but it is all I have.

How do you react to illusions?

I have seen incredible things happen, yet I know them to be impossible.

Biggreygoose

Me?

Yes

Biggreygoose

If I see something I believe to be impossible, I usually look for an explanation that demonstrates that I am not seeing what my senses perceive.

Surely there are teachers who believe in God...?
Quite.

I also saw the TV live broadcast. If it was fake, it was a damn good fake (and would have been found out by now!). Some people see conspiracies in almost everything.

@farce

And if that explanation must only rely on personal observation to be fact then you have two competing evidences that are fact. How do you decide?

Or do you rely on the observations and perceptions of others in looking for that explanation?

I really dread raising a child in this day, especially if you have a child who questions everything. Having a child that questions things is a good thing, right?

Farce Sounds like the sort of teacher that helps children question and think instead of just parrot.

Biggreygoose

Very much depends on what I thought I was seeing. I might choose to accept someone's explanation, or I might not. It's my choice.

Teachers are human.
Some of them are stupid.
Let's cling to Darwin long as we can, that way they'll eventually be weeded out - won't they?

Well I think there is a semantics angle here too- I think if you have a conviction something happened and treating it as a fact you may as well be certain. Also you’ve just called your point of view “factual” which is ironic.

And yes it’s very interesting philosophically and psychologically how we construct and experience ‘knowledge’ - seeing is a good example, there is so much stuff we do or don’t see depending on what we’re looking for, and that’s not namby pamby psedoscience, it’s well researched science. Your brain ‘interprets’ your senses - you are not just neutrally taking in everything around you.

Anyway, I lived in a place where conspiracy theories were rife and all knowledge was questionable and it was like falling through the rabbit hole, this is why, although I think your idea is a an interesting intellectual puzzle, it is absolutely not how I would like society to operate around me.

PinguDance

And generally I don't "operate" like that. I treat things as facts all the time that I do not know to be facts. That does not mean I am going to treat everything as a fact, just because I think it's probably true, and it certainly does not mean I am going to rule out the logical possibility that something isn't a fact, when it has not been demonstrated to me as such.

Irvine LEMtheoriginal, it's certainly important to the parents. If the teacher has a certain view which can change young child's mind, it's something we should be aware of.

I totally agree BUT a good teacher will have opinions on any number of things and shouldbe encoraging children/students to make up their own minds.

Where would the world be if kids were spoon fed "facts" and not encouraged to ask questions? Be is in humanities or the sciences. Accepted theories are being overturned all the time as our capacity to investigate improves. Overturned or improved upon.

If course i am not suggesting for one minute that the moon landings were a hoax, merely that the premise would be a good way of engaging children and getting them to reseach for themselves and to analyse what they are taught.

Caveat - i Dont think that was the OPs point and im not ateacher so what would i know

I think the issue with encouraging children to question everything is that in many cases it means encouraging children to draw equivalent value between poor quality information and good quality information. I think this happens a lot in media discourse as well, the media likes to create ‘a debate’ where often there is a predominant, well evidenced view and some poorly evidenced theories. I read an article about statins a couple of days ago in the guardian that covered this - making the argument that fringe theories that statins are bad which have been picked up by newspapers are irresponsible, which is definitely what I think ‘question everything’ can lead to - irresponsible obfuscation.

I think it’s good to focus on the quality of evidence rather than ‘question everything’, you could say - is there an awful lot of evidence that the Moon Landings happened, is it evidence from sources we trust, do we have good reasons to trust those sources? Yes? Ok so do we need to give credence to these conspiracy theories that are poorly evidenced and do not come form sources we trust? No.

PinguDance

I completely agree, and, in cases where I can say all those things, being familiar with the topic and evidence base, that is exactly what I would do.

Obviously also think we should change our thinking if new evidence emerges - so if someone from within NASA found a load of documents that were verifiable and showed the MLs were a hoax I’d be like - oh shit! This seems like good evidence. Also when it comes to improving theories on science I think these are normally tweaks that are made when new evidence/insight emerges- they do not come about by people being like ‘hang on I question everything about this’ without being well informed of the current state of research.

so if someone from within NASA found a load of documents that were verifiable and showed the MLs were a hoax I’d be like - oh shit! This seems like good evidence.

Fine, but that view is incompatible with a current view that it is not possible that it was a hoax. If something is not possible, there will never be evidence to the contrary. Ever.

Well, there will never be proof, I should say.

Well, nothing is absolutely impossible because there is always the chance that it might happen tomorrow. But some things are as near impossible as it is possible to say. And the moon landings being a hoax is one of those things. Like the sun rising in the East and a dropped object falling.

Fine, but that view is incompatible with a current view that it is not possible that it was a hoax.

But I don’t think it’s ‘not possible’. I think it is hugely unlikely that it was a hoax but if someone came up with actual verifiable evidence then I would change my mind.

Equally, I am an atheist. I have no belief in any god. However if I died and god was there saying ‘you got that wrong didn’t you’ then I’d change my mind.
I don’t believe it is impossible that there is a god, just extremely unlikely.

BertrandRussell

Now you are accepting at least the rational premise that nothing is absolutely impossible (you weren't before). I don't see the chances of a large-scale hoax (as slim as they might be) as being on a par with the Earth suddenly reversing the direction of its rotation in orbit. I'm not sure you really do, either.

VisitorsEntrance

That's a sensible position. Some people on this thread, however, were saying it was impossible, not that it was very unlikely.

"Now you are accepting at least the rational premise that nothing is absolutely impossible (you weren't before)"
Yes I was

Conversational convention uses "impossible" to mean "vanishingly unlikely". We all know that nothing is theoetically impossible.