Schizo Posting
1 - Fun and Silly Conspiracies
I think it would be best to start off with plausible and not so plausible conspiracies that are more fun and silly. The more light hearted side of my research into conspiracies.
1.1 – Stevie Wonder is not Blind
Supposedly Stevie Wonder is not blind, or is less blind than he lets on. Evidence often put forth to corroborate this claim are as follows:
- Paul Mcartney knocks over a microphone, and Stevie Wonder catches it Clip
- Shaq tells a story where Stevie Wonder recognises him in the elevator and pushes a button. Clip
- Lionel Richie interview where he claims Stevie Wonder can see Clip
I think this is a pretty silly theory, which originates from the misunderstanding of how blindness works. Blindness exists on a bit of a spectrum, and many individuals who are classified as blind may still retain some degree of vision.
Supposedly, Stevie Wonder has Retinopath of Prematurity[1], which is an eye disorder caused by abnormal blood vessels in the retina. Now this eye disorder can leave some spots intact where the individual can see – this would explain how Stevie can spot falling objects to catch them – and how he can recognise people and even joke around in objects (though this story of Lionel Richies could be a big exaggeration for comedic effect).
It is kind of hard to absolutely prove my counter point however due to the lack of images of Stevie Wonder without his glasses – where his eyes are visible.
1.2 – The Moon Landing was Staged!
The title is self explanitary as to what this one is about (I will use NASA research as means of providing counterpoints – as should be quite apparent I believe that the missions occurred, and I as a Physics student am quite heavily into a lot of what this topic contains and consider NASA to be a reliable producer of scientific material. If you do not like this fact, I will again refer you to read this) – and the evidence given to corroborate this are as follows:
1.2.1 - Radiation and Cameras: Film behaves badly under conditions of radiation
I believe that it is pretty common knowledge that camera film (which was the primary form of taking pictures back then) was very susceptible to being damaged via radiaton. A very notable example of this is a batch of Kodak’s film being affected by radiation from the Trinity test.
From what I can find on the internet, the cameras used by the astronauts in the Apollo 11 mission were modified verisons of the Hasselblad 500EL - I would imagine that one of the modifications to help it operate in space, would also allow it to shield radiation. Additionally, Kodak provided a special type of film used. This seems to be the same type of Ektachrome film which was used in many spy satellites which were in operation around the same time.
Additonally, here is a fun paperfrom NASA about radiation effects on selected photographic film.
1.2.2 – “We cannot get through the van Allen Belts today !”
The van Allen belt is a zone of charged particles around the Earth – of which contains protons, electrons and other nuclei such as alpha particles. The van Allen belt seems to be misunderstood as this barrier that we can not escape. The truth of the matter is – we have sent objects into deep space (Mars rover, Voyager and Voyager 2 just to name a few examples). As well as this, activity in the van Allen belts tend to change over time – that is, there is a change due to solar-particle events occuring or not – that is phenomenon including solar flare and coronal mass ejections. These events can increase the number of high-energy particles in the belts – ultimately affecting the radiation environment and the saftey of objects passting through (and their payloads e.g. humans!).
Quite frankly, the an idea that we cannot pass it is baffling to me. During the Apollo missions, there were little to no solar-particle events occuring (or to be more specific, the solar-particle events were monitored and the mission was planned for when they would be at their lowest) – hence why is was relatively safe to pass through (that is, the astronauts onboard would have been exposed to radiation levels not too unlike what they are used to – that is to mention, we are actively being exposed to radiation most of the time on Earth – though we are somewhat safe due to our atmospheric protection, the astronauts onboard the Apollo missions would benefit from the protection of the rockets material, and additionally flight suits).
For further reading on this topic, NASA have a pretty good paper entitiled “Apollo experience report: Protection against radiation.
1.2.3 – “We don’t have the technology anymore !”
I believe that this statement, while provided by a NASA director, is grossly taken out of context.
The fact of the matter is that focusing on the Saturn V alone – it was comprised of somewhere over 3 million individual components. A lot of these specially made for the craft. Once the Apollo missions ended the factories making these specific components either shutdown or moved to making new things.
The next fact is that NASA attempted 17 missions in the Apollo program, of which 6 successfully landed on the moon (Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 in 1969, Apollo 14 and Apollo 15 in 1971 and finally Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 in 1972). They planned for 20 missions total, but due to dwindling public interest funding got reduced and the Apollo program got shelved.
Simply put, NASA moved onto new projects – the Skylab and then onto the Space Shuttle program and then to the International Space Station.
As well as this, NASA do a lot of research into other areas which also ate up the budget they get – this is in the form of satellites and probes, as well as experimental aircraft, specifically X-planes(Specifically: X-24B, X-29, X-30, X-33, X-34, X-36, X-37, X-38, X-40A, X-48, X-53, X-54, X-59 (which is really fucking cool btw!) and some others way before the funding got cut or even before it was officially NASA) – all of which were concepts made to test capabilities for potential new projects like the Space Shuttle (which was a bit of a failure in on itself).
Basically what I am trying to say is – NASA does a whole bunch of stuff and has done a whole bunch of stuff since the Apollo mission got canned. The notion that they cannot do it, nor never have is too stupid to me.
To add futher, the moon is literally just a big rock that is close to us. Most of the research we want to do we can do from Earth. Samples of sediment have been brought back in the past and examined – so we do not really need to go for that reason again. Essentially NASA just focuses elsewhere in the galaxy. That being said, they are actively planning on going back to the moon soon and it has been in the works for a while.
1.2.4 – Evidence suggesting we have been there is visible from Earth
This one is just to put it out there, that with a good enough telescope (you can literally buy one that is good enough for this, you do not need to use an observatory grade telescope to see this) – you can see the actual landing sites of the various sucessful Apollo missions from the comfort of your back garden. As well as this, there have been missions by other space agencies such as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) which corroberate the fact we have been there. A lot of it is in this wikipedia article (inb4 muh wikipedia bad wah – touch grass, you melt).
1.2.5 – Closing words
I think this conspiracy theory is pretty idiotic and comes mostly from a contrarian point of view and/or a general disbelif in some government entities – which in fairness can be deserved (in regards to the CIA, NSA and FBI in many cases – some of which I will cover later lol). I think NASA generally is a pretty good organisation for their work both for Earth and in planetary sciences in general – as well as their contributions to aerospace and aeronautical engineering.
In my own experience – I have been to the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida – and I did think to myself that the supposed moon lander pod looked rather sketchy lol – but I do not think that this fact discredits the whole mission as a whole – the evidence is there that it did happen.
There are some points that I didn’t cover here – such as the Stanley Kubrick’s the Shining relation, how they streamed the content and other stuff that I think is just stupid. These feel like grasping for straws that are not really there.
1.3 – The Mandela Effect
This one has some overlap with some other theories – generally speaking these are simulation theory, the many worlds interpretation or even time travel (i.e. John Titor) in some regards. I think firstly we should say what this theory is about and then take a critical look at it:
The Mandela effect is a term coined by paranormal researcher Fiona Broome in 2009 – named after “false memories” of South African politician Nelson Mandela dying in prision some time in the 1980s. Now the truth of the matter was that Nelson Mandela didn’t die then – instead dying in 2013 after serving as President of South Africa in the 90s.
Since this case, there have been many other cases of “false memories” about a lot of things. Some of the most notable examples include:
- The Berenstain Bears series of children’s books being spelled as “Berenstein”.
- Mr Monopoly (of the board game) wearing a monocle
- Shaggy (from Scooby Doo) having an Adam’s apple
- Mickey Mouse having suspenders
- Tony the Tiger having a black nose
- Looney Tunes being spelled as “Looney Toons”
- Froot Loops being spelled as “”Fruit Loops”.
- A picture of King Henry VIII with a Turkey Leg in hand – not present in the real picture.
- Pikachu having a black bit on it’s tail.
- Fruit of the Loom having a cornocopia.
Now, in my opinion most of these are American centric – and as a British person I have no clue on a few. However, I have never had an experience of this. Most of this seems to be down to misremembering spellings of brands – and quite frankly it’s the brands own fault for doing it like that – i.e. froot is not how you spell fruit and toons makes more sense for a cartoon.
In the case of things like Tony the Tiger – I would imagine this comes from CRTs displaying the colour blue darker than it would be otherwise in some cases – in my experiences, CRTs tend to have a higher contrast than LCDs for example – the darker colours produced tend to be darker. CRTs were more common for a larger population of people’s childhood when this specific example started getting popular.
Anyway – I generally think that this theory is chopped up to the brain being bad at remembering. However – this has been related to other conspiracies which I will cover next.
1.4 – Simulation Theory
As the name suggests, this theory suggests that everything is a part of a simulation of sorts – a simulated reality.
It seems to have been first proposed by Nick Bostrom, a Swedish Philosopher whos work focuses on existential risk, human enhancement ethics, whole brain emulation, super intellegence risks and other such things.
This however may not be the first instance, as supposedly Aztec philosophical texts theorised that the world was a painting or a book written by their god like being Teotl (I don’t know much about Aztecs other than they sacrificed people – so I do not know how true this is).
I would argue that the main points of this theory are:
- A civilisation could have become advance enough to simulate a world on a super-powerful machine – such as that of video games, but more complex.
- This world we reside in is potentially that world.
- We cannot actively disprove the fact that this may be that world.
To counter this – simply how does one prove that we are in the simulated world? It is something that can neither be proved nor disproved well enough.
This theory seems to have gained some attention after Sci-Fi works like the Matrix gained commercial success. For the most part, I believe it to be a bit of a pretentious thought experiment by Sci-Fi nerds and philosophers alike.
I would assume that if this machine is real – and we are inside a simulated world, then surely it has some sort of limited amount of resources to allocate to the world – and you should be able to overlode it in some regard. That is – imagine exploding too much TNT in Minecraft. Your game will stutter. Now the next question would be – are we aware of that stutter if it were to happen to us? Maybe it happens a lot already? Maybe it happened when I was typing this out. Maybe that is why my spotify sometimes feels like it keeps stuttering. Who is to say. And why should it matter either way.
1.5 – The Many Worlds Interpretation
It is quite hard to write a summary of this which does it justice – but essentially the Many Worlds Interpretation posits that the universal wavefunction is fundamentally real and that wave function collapse does not occur – implying that all outcomes of everything are possible at any given time. That is – all possible outcomes are simultaneously possible – and exist and unfold in their respected seperate branches of reality.
This is in on itself quite a fun thought experiment in Quantum Mechanics, but it also lends itself – or provides similarities to some conspiracies that exist.
1.5.1 – Explanation for the Mandela Effect
The Mandela Effect can be explained through a few possibilities, one of which suggests that we keep moving between similar world lines of which some people keep their memories of the previous ones. For instance, person A comes from a world line where Shaggy’s Adam apple is real – and when they go to watch Scooby Doo, they then find it missing. Odd – but person B never saw Shaggy with his alleged Adam’s apple due to it not existing in this world line.
This raises a larger question - how is one able to hold these memories while others don’t? I personally believe that this misconception shouldn’t be able to coexist in this context. Each world line should play out independantly, and we should not be able to interact nor move between them.
However, say this is occuring – that tells us that what we may think we know about quantum mechanics is wrong – though we cannot say for certain as this is inherently unprovable. Ultimately, this entire phenomenon is easy to play off as the brain being flawed – and that is because it fundamentally is.
1.5.2 – John Titor and Time Travellers
“John Titor” is a supposed American Military personell and time traveller, who travelled from 2036 back to 1975 – in search of an IBM 5100, needed to debug various programs that exist in 2036, specifically to resolve the UNIX year 2038 Problem. The IBM 5100 is needed specifically because it runs a very specific programming language needed to resolve these bugs.
John Titor then travelled to sometime in the 90s – and was actively posting on web forums between 1998 and 2001 – stated for personal reasons.
Titor put forth the following predictions/claims:
- American Civil War, 2005 – 2015 – which really heated up ~2008.
- WWIII, 2015 – caused by border clashes and overpopulation.
- The many worlds interpretation is correct.
- Time Travel is discovered in 2034
- Devistation caused by Y2K bug.
Now, as someone from the future since these were declared – I can say that the majority of these have not happened – or if they are to happen, the timeline given was very off – maybe this is due to Titor announcing them (lol). Alternatively - as the many worlds interpretation is correct as he stated, Titor's original worldline has too great of a deviation to our own - as such these events never would have happened here.
Titor is said to have been a hoax by Larry Haber, a Florida man, and entertainment lawyer – in collaboration with his broter John Rick Haber, a computer scientist.
Anyway – Titor is not the only alleged Time Traveller of note.
Behold - The Time Travelling Hipster!
And some bloke who looks like hes on a phone – before phones were invented !!
Most of the other pictures of supposed time travellers are quite clearly bullshit – but these two are somewhat plausible in my eyes – that is, they don’t appear obviously fake. I’m sure there is a plausible reason as to the people being normal people from their time however.
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