An interesting insight into the conspiracist mind-set:

Those of us in the US are probably aware that a contestant on the TV game show "Jeopardy!" is in the process of shattering almost all of the show's records.

I frequent a forum devoted to discussions of Jeopardy. There is a horde of newbies at the forum, and a number of them are saying, in essence "I don't see how this guy can possibly know all that stuff, therefore the show must be rigged."

The parallel between that attitude and the one we here are so familiar with "I don't understand how Apollo went to the moon, therefore it must have been a hoax" is striking.

What is it in human nature that makes this kind of reaction so common?

--earendur

We are disinclined to regard ourselves individually as inexpert or uninformed. Thus if there is an apparent discrepancy between what we observe and what we believe, we naturally tend to try to discount the observation instead of the belief.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Ah yes. I suppose you could consider that as part of "cognitive dissonance" theory.

--earendur

It's the same as the people who insist that the ancient people of the world couldn't have built the things they did - Musta bin them thar "aliens".

Our ancestors weren't stupid - they just didn't have the sciences we do. It wasn't easy, but the Egyptians built the pyramids. There were lots of failures and lots of smaller ones leading up to the big one. But the people who WANT alien influence will insist on seeing only the big three... Facts are tough things for people to swallow when they've had unfounded speculation poured down their throats as "fact".

And there is also false ego (something I no longer have as i've been maried for a long time and the ego left back in 1989). They take a stand and then can't let go of that position-it's better to go down with the "unsinkable" shi than climb into the lifeboat if you have been saying all along that it's "unsinkable".

I have a friend who was on Jeopardy (came in second, blamed his buzzer), and it is simply a matter of memorization. The contestants are given study materials that prepares them for the show. It is not exactly giving the answers away, but definately narrows down the breadth of knowledge.

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Do try not to take me too seriously.

The contestant in question is a software engineer in the south end of the Salt Lake valley. I happen to work closely with the software engineering community in the south end of the Salt Lake valley, and it contains individuals that are some of the smartest people I've met anywhere in the world.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

You know, we've never seen this guy and Jay at the same time... :-k

Nah, Jay couldn't finish his answer within the time limit. :P :wink:

j/k

ROFL!

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I want to say this as politely as possible. (And I really don't want the thread to go off in this direction.) I am as certain as I can be (without having actually been on the show myself) that this is not true. The contestants are *not* given study materials. This is a case of me believing the several dozen ex-contestants I've communicated with who say they are not "prepped" vs. believing the one contestant you've talked to. Plus the knowledge that ever since the quiz show scandals of the 50s such "prepping" could very well lead to felony convictions.

If your friend can show us the study materials I might reconsider my position.

--earendur

Like I said, they didn't hand the answers to the competitors, mearly listed the topics that they should study. Get a grip.

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Do try not to take me too seriously.

Demigrog, all I know is what I see on the show, plus what I read on the official Jeopardy! discussion board, plus some material I once found on the web by a couple of people who were in the Tournament of Champions. Sorry, but I do see that a breadth of knowledge is required to do well on Jeopardy! Now, Mr. Jennings hasn't answered everything correctly, and he sometimes misses items that I think he should have known. But he has "cleaned up" in literature categories, and that has been a big help to him. Also, he has done well in "potent potables" categories. Maybe Jay can explain how Jennings knows so much about that. I think Jennings may have a near-photographic memory (I once did -- no more!), and that has helped him. Most contestants do reasonably well in geography categories, and nearly every show has some type of geography category, which any good contestant should take as a "gimme." Many people do well in pop culture (rock music, movies), but poorly in classical music and opera. These last two are interests of mine, and Jeopardy! contestants often miss some unbelievably easy items in those categories. Jennings has been so-so when those categories appear. Contestants repeatedly report that mastery of the button is crucial to doing well, and some never get the hang of it. Also, good contestants who do well avoid guessing when they don't have to (i.e., when it's not a "Daily Double"). Any fan of the show can think of otherwise strong contenders who ruined their chances by foolishly guessing something they clearly didn't know. Jennings has become more casual about the "no guessing" rule since it has ceased to matter.

Getting back to the conspiracy theory (yet another one!) -- to me it's entirely plausable that Jennings knows this stuff, and it bothers me that somebody might think that everybody else should be as stupid as they are, else something sinister is going on. Bringing it back to Apollo, such people are startled and resentful (we see it over and over) when they come here and discover that someone actually knows more about Apollo and relevant sciences than they and their conspiracist authors do, sometimes a lot more. Their only available responses are to change the subject everytime the water gets too deep, or to go into insult mode. Sometimes, too, they don't recognize the image in the mirror as themselves (I'm thinking of the recent Sylvia in another forum).

Ok, to elaborate. Jeopardy does not give anything of real help to its contestants. "Study Materials" was a poor choice of words. The sample categories examples my friend recieved were not anything more than samples, and did not represent the categories that would actually appear on his show. What they did do is outline the style of questions (probably no better than watching a few hundred re-runs of Jeapordy would) and give a general feel for what to expect.

Sheesh.

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Do try not to take me too seriously.

It's certainly the case that the knowledge base needed to succeed on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? is very different from that for Jeopardy. The former has lots of questions about popular culture and such that the latter (fortunately) does not.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Well, then we all need an occasional dose of JayUtah, who has the ability to make almost anyone feel inexpert and uninformed -- on almost any topic!

j/k, Jay... :wink:

It's pointed out all through history, and all our disgusting mistakes:

If we don't understand something, we immediately turn against it. People are afraid of what they can't comprehend. Being afraid makes us feel weak, so we attack the thing we're afraid of in order to prove that we're NOT afraid of it. Ridiculous? Yes, but, unfortunately, humans are just like that by nature.

In these forums, I have seen so many open-minded people, it's renewing my hope for humanity.

On the subject, I recommend reading the "Rama" series by Arthur C. Clarke, he has a lot to say about human nature, and he illustrates it very well.

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"First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?" -- Hadden, Contact

I can bend minds with my spoon.

I think looking at Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance helps to understand conspiracy-minded people. Cognitive dissonance is about conflicting cognitions that cause the person distress or discomfort. If something conflicts with their belief(s), they either have to change their belief or find a new way to ease the discomfort. It’s a broad theory, but it’s behavior we see constantly, like in the first post and with the “moon hoax folks.” The theory is often applied to cult members, who upon hearing new information that conflicts with their leader’s prognostications, i.e. a huge meteor is coming on Jan 1st 2004 to destroy the earth, but then it doesn’t happen. They either have to admit that they were duped and ignorant (and some do) or convince themselves that their “meteor-prayer meetings” broke up the meteor and saved the earth. Since their original belief, i.e. the end of the world is coming…scientists are not telling us everything…the government is keeping it secret… is not rational, no amount of facts and evidence is going to change their mind. You can’t argue with emotion.

Here are two sites among many that explain Festinger’s theory:
http://www.apa.org/books/4318830s.html
http://www.colorado.edu/communicatio.../festinger.htm

Now, why these Jeopardy-watching people don’t want to believe that someone is smart enough to do this well is questionable. Maybe the guy’s knowledge seems incredible and since some game shows have been fixed, (just as the government or people in the government have lied), they must feel something incredible can’t be true. I read an article by a former Jeopardy contestant and it’s much more involved than what we see. First they have to be picked, they go through trial runs…I don’t remember all the details, but it wasn’t as simple as just getting picked and getting on the show. In addition, even the people who perform poorly are still incredibly smart—some people just don’t handle the pressure, the buzzer or being on TV very well. Therefore, part of a contestant’s success is confidence under pressure. My father has watched Jeopardy for years and he gets an awful lot of the questions correct—he’s has an incredible breadth of knowledge (and no, he’s not a software engineer or a scientist) because he knows a lot about many topics. To do well on Jeopardy you have to know a variety of topics and be clever with words and verbal puzzles too. I can point to several people I know that are like this, so those disbelievers have little reason to doubt the guy’s knowledge.

Jeopardy, like NASA, has a reputation at stake—why would they risk rigging a show when plenty of people have done well in the past, when there are people who really are this knowledgeable? And pay out more money too? Are Jeopardy’s ratings in uh, jeopardy? Do they have a motive to rig the show? Would they trust the guy not to tell anybody? His wife, his family, a friend and so on? All for a positive thing, like doing well on a show? If they were found out to have rigged the show, wouldn’t that just kill the show? Would hundreds of smart people want to play that game? How would these doubters answer those questions?

As with the “moon hoax folks,” from all my recent reading on the matter, they don’t adequately answer to the whole lie aspect. They’ve been blown out of the water on facts-actual scientific explanations for phenomena-that I don’t understand their cognitive dissonance on the lie factor. The stars, the flag “waving,” the spread of lunar dust from the Eagle landing are obvious to a layman just watching the films and having a cursory understanding of physics.

A few years ago when that FOX program was on, someone, who I hardly expected to believe in conspiracy theories, told me they presented “very credible evidence.” I dismissed it immediately because I thought a lie such as that could not withstand the test of time and human nature, and promptly forgot about it. It was only recently, when I posted pictures from NASA that someone asked, “Did you take a picture of the sound stage?” that I looked into the hoax theories. What I don’t find really is how they explain that a small group of people in the know could maintain this lie? Assuming a very small group knew it was a hoax—the astronauts, higher-ups from NASA, let’s assume the smallest group of 10 or 20 people; do they really think these people could lie to other fellow astronauts, to the thousands of people that supported them (the engineers, the launch crews, etc.) their wives, their children, thousands of school children, the American public, the international public, the Russians, etc, etc? Most government lies have been found out—people just aren’t that good.

Then people like R. Rene point out things like this:

"Aldrin staggered to his feet and left the room crying uncontrollably. It would not be the last time he did this. "It strikes me he's suffering from trying to live out a very big lie," says Rene. Aldine may also fear for his life. Virgil Grissom, a NASA astronaut who baited the Apollo program, was due to pilot Apollo 1 as part of the landings build up. In January 1967, he hung a lemon on his Apollo capsule (in the US, unroadworthy cars are called lemons) and told his wife Betty: "if there is ever a serious accident in the space program, it's likely to be me.""
http://www.salagram.net/MoonLandingHoax.htm

I Googled to find something regarding Aldrin’s supposed crying and couldn’t find anything to corroborate this. Does anyone know about this? He also mentions that Armstrong had alcohol problems. Uh, I know plenty of people, successful and driven, who have had alcohol problems, let alone famous people. That’s pretty normal stuff, but does R. Rene admit the statistics of depression and alcohol, especially among famous people? I didn’t see it. I know from arguing on a board about politics, that many people just don’t like to look at the big picture…if their primary belief is, “The government always lies,” of course every little factoid will be contorted to support that. That’s cognitive dissonance. Whether this Rene guy really still believes it’s a hoax or not I wonder; certainly at this point some of these conspiracists have a cash cow in maintaining that lie with their books and movies. I haven’t decided what’s worse—if they really believe the hoax or know it and won’t admit for personal gain. It's probably the latter.



(Sorry, I'm a babbler and no time to proofread)

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The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity. We must learn by laughter as well as by tears and terror. ~ R. W. Emerson

Not to toot my own horn, he said loudly to overcome the volume of the tooting horn, but I've seen firsthand what can happen in circumstances like our Jeopardy contestant. I've been a voracious reader since I was old enough to know what a book is, and have had numerous hobbies, some of them rather esoteric. I can more or less hold my own at Jeopardy-style games, as long as they're the generic versions -- go to the sports edition, and I'm a lost soul.

But for those whose main claim to fame is how many Tall Boys they can drink before they pass out, someone who's usually got the answer to a trivia question (or even knows how to spell well) can be a threat. I've worked in a couple of places with folk like that, and I've learned to keep a low profile until I figure out who's who.

The idea that there's something funny with the local whiz (something's rigged, he's weird, they're possessed/MIB's/CIA/FBI/LSMFT/whatever) seems to come to mind faster than the concept that the other guy has a somewhat better memory/education/reading speed/etc...of course, heaven forfend that someone could be just flat out more intelligent, though...

And yes, I'm intensely aware of the fact that there's no way in h3ll I'd ever go up against anyone on this board in a game of Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit...I choose my battles and opponents carefully, wisely, and well. [-(

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"If a tree is cut down in the rainforest, and is used to make paper to print a book, and the book is really bad, and there's nobody that will read it, do you still hear a sucking sound?"
Charlie in Dayton, A.AsC.

Alex: "Jay, it's your turn."
Jay: "OK, Alex, I'll take orbital mechanics for $2000."
Alex: "Apollo 11's path to the moon can be calculated with this formula?"
"beep"
Alex: "Curtis!"
Curtis: "Uh, I pushed the button by accident."
Alex: "Oh, that's too bad, you drop into the red."
"beep"
Alex: "Jay!"
Jay: "What is %$#%$#$%&^%?"