I believe my principle stands. Your counterexamples are very different in several important dimensions.
You are forgetting context. This is not a covert operation, centered principally around CIA agents or other professionals committed to stealth and secrecy. Nor is it on some issue so obscure that you would have trouble getting a journalist to understand it if you leaked. This is a massive operation that would have involved a large number of scientists and technicians (and just civilians, generally), with several major observable events (i.e. the launch). I’m sure it also involved numerous corporations who had to build materials and keep some form of records. If any one of the doubtless hundreds of important players had come forward with any substantial, credible evidence or testimony demonstrating that the whole thing is a ruse, I imagine it would not have been hard to find a willing medium to communicate such.
Also, programs like MKULTRA have almost no visible effects. That is, no one working on MKULTRA would see it on TV with their family. No one involved would really realize that a ruse was being pulled. This is not at all true of something like a moon landing; numerous civilians would probably be aware of the fact that the government was trying to pull a fast one. It’s much easier to keep something secret when the people involved don’t know it’s newsworthy.
In other words: is it likely that there are particular government programs about which the public remains entirely ignorant? Yes. For any specific, conspicuous, high-profile government program or event involving large numbers of civilian participants, is it likely that the government managed to fool the public and then maintain perfect silence? No, no it is not.
This is not a covert operation, centered principally around CIA agents or other professionals committed to stealth and secrecy.
? A fake moon landing would be the very blackest of black programs/SAPs. Of course the people working on it would be committed to stealth and secrecy.
This is a massive operation that would have involved a large number of scientists and technicians (and just civilians, generally), with several major observable events (i.e. the launch).
I’ve already pointed out that the satellite programs like KH-13 involved at minimum thousands of scientists/technicians/civilians. So your point must solely be ‘my heuristic is valid when there is high profile media coverage’.
But what about the constant media coverage of nuclear explosions and the media assurance to civilians that there was nothing to fear, even though the scientists suspected or knew that the fallout really was dangerous? (You may remember the settlements made a few years ago to Nevadans). High profile events (nuke tests aren’t subtle), thousands of involved civilians, etc. Yet...
I’m sure it also involved numerous corporations who had to build materials and keep some form of records.
Yes, no doubt the corporations who consume $50 billion every year in the black budget, and who have consumed similar amounts every year since the Cold War started, have kept meticulous records. For all the good that has done the rest of us...
This is not at all true of something like a moon landing; numerous civilians would probably be aware of the fact that the government was trying to pull a fast one.
A Noble Lie as part of the Cold War against those genocidal atheist Communist foreigners. Where were all these civilians blowing the whistle in things like the Tuskegee experiments? (Murdering a bunch of black people would seem to not need be broadcast on TV before someone says to themselves, ‘Hey! Isn’t this insanely cartoon-cackling evil?’) The Tonkin Gulf? How many of the Plumbers (all civilians, all cognizant of their criminality) blew the whistle?
For any specific, conspicuous, high-profile government program or event involving large numbers of civilian participants, is it likely that the government managed to fool the public and then maintain perfect silence? No, no it is not.
I feel as if this is a good example of disagreements being dishonest. I’ve stuck only to highly mainstream, well-established conspiracies and systems of evil in just America, and haven’t even touched upon the ones which haven’t been definitively proven (even though basic logic tells me that some of them are probably true), but your position remains the same as ever. Someone is being intransigent here.
On review, I will admit my original point was framed somewhat imprecisely. I did not mean to imply that it is highly unlikely that the government can manage to keep any large projects secret. I meant (as I think was obvious from the context) that it is very unlikely that the government would be able to keep something as large-scale, civilian-intensive, public, and high-profile as faking a series of moon landings secret for four decades. This probability is particularly low considering the alternative of, “They just did it.” As my original point was a rather offhand comment, I did not bother going into this level of detail.
Someone is being intransigent here.
I will confess to not really giving a damn about the details up to now, because I thought my point was rather obvious. I see there’s a bit of an inferential gap. In short, I think you vastly underestimate the prior improbability of your own claim, and vastly overestimate the relevance of your counterexamples, all of which are substantially different on numerous dimensions. I’ll spell things out in greater detail.
[Having taken two minutes to look at wikipedia, there does seem to be rather solid evidence of its veracity, what with the fact that there is experimentally observable apparatus on the moon where Uncle Sam says we landed. That’s besides my point, since it was strictly on the implications of massive government conspiracies being unlikely.]
There are pretty much exactly two possibilities: (1) the events are true as they were told to us, or (2) there was an elaborate conspiracy involving, on the one hand, whoever faked the actual video, and, on the other hand, whoever built all of the equipment to fake the launch, and every single significant person involved to this date has remained dead-silent. Other evidence is of course relevant to the ultimate question, but I’m sticking to my specific claim.
It seems fair to assume that if the moon landing were not technically feasible, some reputable scientist would be able to point this out. Therefore, if it is technically feasible, the simpler explanation is that things happened as claimed—what’s the benefit of faking it, and burning enough money to actually do it, when you could just actually do it? The conspiracy theory requires, in addition to a massive, complex conspiracy, the total silence of people who would likely have realized the equipment they were making would not work, or who were not actually making equipment.
People wouldn’t be driven to blow the whistle due to moral concerns—they’d be driven to do so for pure self interest. They’d become rich and famous if they had credible evidence. This is absolutely not the case for any other conspiracy you have named. That is an enormous distinguishing fact that you haven’t appreciated. None of the examples you gave were such that people stood to become rich or famous by blowing the whistle. And the Cold War is over, and still no one came forward, so patriotism is a pretty unlikely explanation.
More importantly, every single one of the counterexamples you’ve given is a non-story. It’s a lot easier to convince my spouse I’m not cheating by saying nothing than it is to do so by explaining on how I went on a luxurious tour across South East Asia, complete with video and tchotchkes. In every example you cite, it isn’t that the government told us a story that happened, and that then got proven wrong. It’s that the government didn’t tell us there was a story, and then people figured out there was. (And how long did “Nuclear testing is perfectly harmless” last in practice?) There was no serious public question of, “Is the government honestly studying syphilis, or is something else going on?”
Getting the government to run a conspiracy of this magnitude with no credible leaks of any kind, despite massive personal incentives to leak, requires a whole lot of things to go exactly right. Actually landing on the moon, after developing a robust space program and spending enough money to develop landing on the moon and launching giant rockets into space and having videos of people landing on the moon, is not nearly so unlikely.
“The government, in the case of a very large and public project with substantial corroborating evidence, has in fact lied to us and the whole thing is fabricated” is an extraordinary claim that requires substantial evidence in the absence of major leaks. Or, at least some evidence. Without clear and powerful supporting evidence, it is rational to assume this claim is wrong, because it is really, really complicated and requires a lot of things to go right.
I don’t think any of your counterexamples contradict that.
I believe my principle stands. Your counterexamples are very different in several important dimensions.
You are forgetting context. This is not a covert operation, centered principally around CIA agents or other professionals committed to stealth and secrecy. Nor is it on some issue so obscure that you would have trouble getting a journalist to understand it if you leaked. This is a massive operation that would have involved a large number of scientists and technicians (and just civilians, generally), with several major observable events (i.e. the launch). I’m sure it also involved numerous corporations who had to build materials and keep some form of records. If any one of the doubtless hundreds of important players had come forward with any substantial, credible evidence or testimony demonstrating that the whole thing is a ruse, I imagine it would not have been hard to find a willing medium to communicate such.
Also, programs like MKULTRA have almost no visible effects. That is, no one working on MKULTRA would see it on TV with their family. No one involved would really realize that a ruse was being pulled. This is not at all true of something like a moon landing; numerous civilians would probably be aware of the fact that the government was trying to pull a fast one. It’s much easier to keep something secret when the people involved don’t know it’s newsworthy.
In other words: is it likely that there are particular government programs about which the public remains entirely ignorant? Yes. For any specific, conspicuous, high-profile government program or event involving large numbers of civilian participants, is it likely that the government managed to fool the public and then maintain perfect silence? No, no it is not.
? A fake moon landing would be the very blackest of black programs/SAPs. Of course the people working on it would be committed to stealth and secrecy.
I’ve already pointed out that the satellite programs like KH-13 involved at minimum thousands of scientists/technicians/civilians. So your point must solely be ‘my heuristic is valid when there is high profile media coverage’.
But what about the constant media coverage of nuclear explosions and the media assurance to civilians that there was nothing to fear, even though the scientists suspected or knew that the fallout really was dangerous? (You may remember the settlements made a few years ago to Nevadans). High profile events (nuke tests aren’t subtle), thousands of involved civilians, etc. Yet...
Yes, no doubt the corporations who consume $50 billion every year in the black budget, and who have consumed similar amounts every year since the Cold War started, have kept meticulous records. For all the good that has done the rest of us...
A Noble Lie as part of the Cold War against those genocidal atheist Communist foreigners. Where were all these civilians blowing the whistle in things like the Tuskegee experiments? (Murdering a bunch of black people would seem to not need be broadcast on TV before someone says to themselves, ‘Hey! Isn’t this insanely cartoon-cackling evil?’) The Tonkin Gulf? How many of the Plumbers (all civilians, all cognizant of their criminality) blew the whistle?
I feel as if this is a good example of disagreements being dishonest. I’ve stuck only to highly mainstream, well-established conspiracies and systems of evil in just America, and haven’t even touched upon the ones which haven’t been definitively proven (even though basic logic tells me that some of them are probably true), but your position remains the same as ever. Someone is being intransigent here.
On review, I will admit my original point was framed somewhat imprecisely. I did not mean to imply that it is highly unlikely that the government can manage to keep any large projects secret. I meant (as I think was obvious from the context) that it is very unlikely that the government would be able to keep something as large-scale, civilian-intensive, public, and high-profile as faking a series of moon landings secret for four decades. This probability is particularly low considering the alternative of, “They just did it.” As my original point was a rather offhand comment, I did not bother going into this level of detail.
I will confess to not really giving a damn about the details up to now, because I thought my point was rather obvious. I see there’s a bit of an inferential gap. In short, I think you vastly underestimate the prior improbability of your own claim, and vastly overestimate the relevance of your counterexamples, all of which are substantially different on numerous dimensions. I’ll spell things out in greater detail.
[Having taken two minutes to look at wikipedia, there does seem to be rather solid evidence of its veracity, what with the fact that there is experimentally observable apparatus on the moon where Uncle Sam says we landed. That’s besides my point, since it was strictly on the implications of massive government conspiracies being unlikely.]
There are pretty much exactly two possibilities: (1) the events are true as they were told to us, or (2) there was an elaborate conspiracy involving, on the one hand, whoever faked the actual video, and, on the other hand, whoever built all of the equipment to fake the launch, and every single significant person involved to this date has remained dead-silent. Other evidence is of course relevant to the ultimate question, but I’m sticking to my specific claim.
It seems fair to assume that if the moon landing were not technically feasible, some reputable scientist would be able to point this out. Therefore, if it is technically feasible, the simpler explanation is that things happened as claimed—what’s the benefit of faking it, and burning enough money to actually do it, when you could just actually do it? The conspiracy theory requires, in addition to a massive, complex conspiracy, the total silence of people who would likely have realized the equipment they were making would not work, or who were not actually making equipment.
People wouldn’t be driven to blow the whistle due to moral concerns—they’d be driven to do so for pure self interest. They’d become rich and famous if they had credible evidence. This is absolutely not the case for any other conspiracy you have named. That is an enormous distinguishing fact that you haven’t appreciated. None of the examples you gave were such that people stood to become rich or famous by blowing the whistle. And the Cold War is over, and still no one came forward, so patriotism is a pretty unlikely explanation.
More importantly, every single one of the counterexamples you’ve given is a non-story. It’s a lot easier to convince my spouse I’m not cheating by saying nothing than it is to do so by explaining on how I went on a luxurious tour across South East Asia, complete with video and tchotchkes. In every example you cite, it isn’t that the government told us a story that happened, and that then got proven wrong. It’s that the government didn’t tell us there was a story, and then people figured out there was. (And how long did “Nuclear testing is perfectly harmless” last in practice?) There was no serious public question of, “Is the government honestly studying syphilis, or is something else going on?”
Getting the government to run a conspiracy of this magnitude with no credible leaks of any kind, despite massive personal incentives to leak, requires a whole lot of things to go exactly right. Actually landing on the moon, after developing a robust space program and spending enough money to develop landing on the moon and launching giant rockets into space and having videos of people landing on the moon, is not nearly so unlikely.
TL;DR of my other response to this:
“The government, in the case of a very large and public project with substantial corroborating evidence, has in fact lied to us and the whole thing is fabricated” is an extraordinary claim that requires substantial evidence in the absence of major leaks. Or, at least some evidence. Without clear and powerful supporting evidence, it is rational to assume this claim is wrong, because it is really, really complicated and requires a lot of things to go right.
I don’t think any of your counterexamples contradict that.