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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

While we laugh at skeptics, often they serve a valuable purpose. Skeptics have often revolutionized our understanding of the universe. Like Galileo.

We should be careful of unquestioningly believing "established" facts.

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It’s true that we shouldn’t just follow dogmas, but skepticism isn’t about simply being contrarian. It’s about only accepting evidence based claims and scrupulously and accurately evaluating the evidence. Conspiracy theory types typically fail badly at this because they usually don’t actually know how to evaluate evidence.

These people aren't skeptics. They aren't simply questioning and doubting accepted opinions; they are absolutely certain in their contrarianism. That certainty means they produce no actual value.

This isn't being skeptical, this is straight denial. The useful aspect of a skeptical approach would be to not be convinced until a very high level of confidence in a result is shown. The skeptic would be saying 'hmm, the evidence is mounting up, but i'm still not convinced'. Having people like this about when decisions are being made can be very useful, as they can help avoid expensive mistakes.

Unfortunately we're now using the word skeptics for 2 totally different things - questioning dogma with sound reasoning and reasonable first principles - trusting one's own belief against overwhelming evidence of the contrary.

Galileo squarely belongs to the former, while flat earthers and moon landing 'skeptics' belong to the latter. Let's not conflate the two.

I suspect you don't realize how firmly people at the time believed in revealed truth and the evidence of their own eyes that the sun revolved around the Earth.

There's intelligent skepticism, and then there's skepticism for the sake of skepticism. It's not that hard to tell apart the Galileos from the Kyrie Irvings. Skeptics deserve legal protections, but they don't deserve attention if they say things like the Earth is flat.

> It's not that hard to tell apart the Galileos from the Kyrie Irvings.

Easy to say that today since you've been taught from birth that Galileo was right.

Just the other day I confronted a person who insisted that Edison electrocuted an elephant. He dared me to look it up. I did, and presented irrefutable evidence that Edison did not. He was unconvinced - after all, it's common knowledge that Edison did the dirty deed.

Except he didn't.

We don't laugh at skeptics who doubt something because they have evidence to the contrary. But to believe in a conspiracy that, as Armstrong writes, would require hundreds of thousands of people to lie, without any evidence at all, is delusional.

Do you really think lunar landing conspiracy theorists are going to "revolutionize our understanding of the universe"?

There is room for subtly in these arguments, it is not an all or nothing proposition of listen to everyone, or listen to no one.

> Do you really think lunar landing conspiracy theorists are going to "revolutionize our understanding of the universe"?

No. But just be aware that ideas people laughed at as clearly wrong and absurd have sometimes turned out to be the truth. Some examples:

1. heliocentric solar system

2. evolution

3. Titanic breaking in half on the surface

4. quantum mechanics

5. all men are created equal

Again, there are specific, identifiable evidence based reasons you should listen to those theories, and you can do so without equating every lunatic with a pet theory to the popular image of Galileo.

People at the time thought the geocentric model was obviously, irrefutably true.

There is a difference between, on one side, questioning one's understanding of the universe, which is how science works and progress and, on the other side, being unable to accept facts, which is where moon landing skeptics are.

This guy isn’t a skeptic though, he’s a true believer. It’s just that his beliefs happen to be the opposite of established consensus, instead of being in line with it. That’s especially dumb, because if you’re going to blindly believe things you might as well blindly go with the flow, you’ll be wrong sometimes but right more often.

Actual skepticism requires a lot of intellectual effort and honesty. An actual skeptic on the moon landing/holocaust/global warming/Loch Ness monster/whatever would start from a position of genuine skepticism and curiosity, wedded neither to one side nor the other, and then carefully line up all the evidence on one side versus the other. That’s a valuable service; we don’t all have time to be genuinely skeptical about everything so it’s good to know there’s genuine skeptics out there doing the hard work for us; once in a while they’ll discover that the evidence for some popular belief actually isn’t as overwhelming as everyone believes, and that’s incredibly valuable. Genuine skeptics should be cherished and nurtured, but idiots who blindly take up contrary positions because they align with their worldview are of no value to anyone.

Thank you. Finally a sane comment, while other people only bashing the skeptics. I am not saying he is right or wrong, I am saying this are complex and we should not dismiss any theories.

He is 100% unequivocally wrong, and whats worse, with no strong evidence to support his position, I am dismissing his theory.

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