Claims of Lunar Anomalies/Structures and Examples of Pareidolia

Originally posted by The Shrike
One cannot wait to experience if Hoagland employs any common sense so I cannot have a clue as to why he makes the claims that he does such as claiming that he sees glass and/or crystal structures on some NASA lunar photos. I don't know if he is still making such claims from digital photos of the moon from the latest flights over the moon.

But in the beginning emulsion film was used and the one thing that you can count on with emulsion film negatives AND prints is that they're subject to scratching. If the emulsion is removed light comes through like a stained glass window. The negatives were handled by many NASA employees and the negatives were not always treated like the precious cargo that they were. So if they were mishandled chances are they got scratched up the wahoo. I don't think that Hoagland ever saw pristine negatives.

Hoagland's answer was not common sense at all. He claimed that the streaks in the black sky were remnants of glass cities. Positively hilarious.

The whistleblower did make a pretty good case for himself being legit and present in the photo labs during the moon landing. He continued to work for NASA for decades afterwards? He claimed the sky was blackened out from the video reels or photos (I forget which) by a full-time team in the lab. He also claimed he was the guy who ran the projector which showed a group of bigwigs the unedited version. He didn't attach himself to Hoagland's theories at all, he only talked about what he claimed to have seen in the photo lab.

The Moon's actually not there! It's just pareidolia.

Originally posted by yampa
Hoagland's answer was not common sense at all. He claimed that the streaks in the black sky were remnants of glass cities. Positively hilarious.

Hoagland & Bara both make much of the fact that things are seen in digitized copies of Ken Johnston's Apollo photo-collection that are not in the official NASA online library.

Let me suggest this as an explanation: The NASA images were created by a professional team in clean conditions working with excellent equipment and the original Ektachrome reversals, or possibly an internegative made from them. The "Ken Johnston" set was made by Hoagland himself using a consumer-grade scanner in an ordinary office, working with prints that had been handled many times. It is a fact that scanner dirt of any kind will show up in black areas -- such as, for example, the lunar sky. The "glass structures" sure look like dirty scanner to me. Is that a Hoagland beard hair I see, top right?

picasaweb.google.com...

Originally posted by The Shrike


www.abovetopsecret.com...
Have I caught Hoagland in a major blatant lie?

Well you have no chance of him telling the truth if I had to shake his hand (which I WOULDN'T) I would count my fingers after it!!!!

reply to post by The Shrike


Funny that you should post this, given Barra's outrageous, and enraged, claims that pareidolia does not exist. I suppose, according to Barra, if something looks like a face, it must be a face.

Originally posted by WingedBull
reply to post by The Shrike

 

Funny that you should post this, given Barra's outrageous, and enraged, claims that pareidolia does not exist. I suppose, according to Barra, if something looks like a face, it must be a face.

Here's an example of your words in action: 'Data's Head' image proved fraudulent
dorkmission.blogspot.com...

Some of you are not able to see the Jaguar's face in the marble panel so here's another attempt. On the left is the photo I took out of a calendar and shows the full reclining Jaguar. On the right is what I and others see as the head of a Jaguar partly hidden by "foliage". I put reference lines for the eyes and the nose using Paint but when I tried to process the image on Picasa the lines were not reproduced! Just remember, on the right all you see is a Jaguar's face, not the whole animal. The eyes, nose and mouth are easily imagined then you can see the face's outline. It's just a visual exercise.

I meant to use the 15" ruler for size reference but you don't see the bottom of the ruler which is resting on the floor.

Pareidolia is a good thing to understand around here. Our brains are totally wired to "complete" everything we percieve. We are not even aware that we do this constantly. I like the priciples of Gestalt Psychology to help explain some things.
en.wikipedia.org...

Reification is the constructive or generative aspect of perception, by which the experienced percept contains more explicit spatial information than the sensory stimulus on which it is based.

For instance, a triangle will be perceived in picture A, although no triangle has actually been drawn. In pictures B and D the eye will recognize disparate shapes as "belonging" to a single shape, in C a complete three-dimensional shape is seen, where in actuality no such thing is drawn.

Reification can be explained by progress in the study of illusory contours, which are treated by the visual system as "real" contours.

Originally posted by yampa
My point is that pareidolia has no explanatory depth as a theory about why people attach design and causality to perceived objects (even when those objects are actually random).

Actually this is a part of the theory of pareidolia. One of the first predictable reactions an infant has is to smile at a human face, before the infant is a fully conscious human being. It's part of our wired-in neurological reactions to recognize faces (whether they're "really there" or not), likely as a function of our being social creatures.

There are two issues here: a) the natural tendency of your brain to match visual or audible input (even noise) to something which might make sense b) the tendency to look for authorship in your input.

The fact your brain is biased towards a) says nothing about the rationality of your assessment of b) and it says nothing about whether the input was intentionally designed or not.

That is exactly the point. Just because you might see a face in a rock does not mean someone put the face there.

Originally posted by yampa
Pareidolia is a fancy word which doesn't have much real depth. Have a look at the list of references on Wikipedia and see how many of them are scientific. Pareidolia is just your brain doing one of its normal tasks - face recognition from partial data.

So these people are saying 'I see a face on the moon!'

and you're saying 'haha, don't be silly, that's just your brain doing face recognition'

and then they say 'um, I know, I just told you I thought I recognised a face'

and you say 'but that's pareidolia!'

and they say 'I KNOW. I just told you I could see what looks like a face!



When you look at a smudged black and white picture of a human face in a newspaper, that's pareidolia. You aren't actually seeing a face, you are seeing a scattering of inked pixels. So I'm afraid simply saying 'that's pareidolia' doesn't add any authority to whether something was intentionally designed or not (not that I think any of those things on the moon are intentionally designed).

Yes, it is just a word to sum up a basic psychological process. Being aware of how our very own brains can fool us is key here and is completely missed. Pareidolia is just the tip of the iceberg.

Originally posted by yampa
My point is that pareidolia has no explanatory depth as a theory about why people attach design and causality to perceived objects (even when those objects are actually random).

I don't think it's a "theory". I think more of a concept or word for a known psychological process. Evolution would be a theory that would describe "why" we developed this way.

Gestalt psychology or gestaltism (German: Gestalt – "essence or shape of an entity's complete form") is a theory of mind and brain

Pareidolia ( /pærɨˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon

another favorite. Rorschach test aka, ink blot test

Originally posted by wirehead

Originally posted by yampa
My point is that pareidolia has no explanatory depth as a theory about why people attach design and causality to perceived objects (even when those objects are actually random).

Actually this is a part of the theory of pareidolia. One of the first predictable reactions an infant has is to smile at a human face, before the infant is a fully conscious human being. It's part of our wired-in neurological reactions to recognize faces (whether they're "really there" or not), likely as a function of our being social creatures.

Could you point me at where you're getting this 'theory' of pareidolia from? It seems you are adding the wider interpretation yourself? Something neuroscientific, preferably.

ZetaRediculian thinks that it isn't a theory, just a word attached to some behaviours. Although tbh he just referenced Gestalt psychology as an example of a theory about the mind, so maybe he's just making things up too.

What do you call 'finding more depth in process than is actually provided by science' - is that a form of pareidolia?

Originally posted by ZetaRediculian

Originally posted by yampa
My point is that pareidolia has no explanatory depth as a theory about why people attach design and causality to perceived objects (even when those objects are actually random).

I don't think it's a "theory". I think more of a concept or word for a known psychological process. Evolution would be a theory that would describe "why" we developed this way.

Gestalt psychology or gestaltism (German: Gestalt – "essence or shape of an entity's complete form") is a theory of mind and brain

Pareidolia ( /pærɨˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon

Originally posted by yampa

ZetaRediculian thinks that it isn't a theory, just a word attached to some behaviours. Although tbh he just referenced Gestalt psychology as an example of a theory about the mind, so maybe he's just making things up too.

not a "behavior" either. I quoted wiki. seriously? banging my head agaist the wall is a behavior. like "deja vu". not a theory or a behavior. it's a known phenomenon. do you have a reference to the "theory" of pareiodolia?

What do you call 'finding more depth in process than is actually provided by science' - is that a form of pareidolia?

I don't understand the question. do you have an example? maybe this a psychological "projection" of yours?

Originally posted by yampa

Originally posted by wirehead

Originally posted by yampa
My point is that pareidolia has no explanatory depth as a theory about why people attach design and causality to perceived objects (even when those objects are actually random).

Actually this is a part of the theory of pareidolia. One of the first predictable reactions an infant has is to smile at a human face, before the infant is a fully conscious human being. It's part of our wired-in neurological reactions to recognize faces (whether they're "really there" or not), likely as a function of our being social creatures.

Could you point me at where you're getting this 'theory' of pareidolia from? It seems you are adding the wider interpretation yourself? Something neuroscientific, preferably.

www.biac.duke.edu...(2001).pdf

reply to post by yampa


www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

"we found that objects incidentally perceived as faces evoked an early (165 ms) activation in the ventral fusiform cortex, at a time and location similar to that evoked by faces, whereas common objects did not evoke such activation. ... Our findings suggest that face perception evoked by face-like objects is a relatively early process, and not a late reinterpretation cognitive phenomenon."

But this is all splitting hairs. No matter how or why it happens, we know we have a tendency to see faces where there are none (clouds, dirt, toast, etc.) For this very reason, we should not take "looking like a face" to be necessary and sufficient evidence that something was deliberately sculpted. Are you taking issue with this?

My link was broken above.

The Development and Neural
Bases of Face Recognition

What do you call 'finding more depth in process than is actually provided by science' - is that a form of pareidolia?

I thought about this some more and I think the proper classification would be "your opinion"

I also want to add that I found the link I provided in a matter of seconds by googling "facial recognition in infants"

Google results for "Pareidolia Theory" didn't return anything that I could find about such a thing. There was a lot about different theories that try to explain why we have such a thing.

Google results for "Pareidolia Behaviour" didn't return anything I could find either.

"Pareidollia Phenomena" produced a lot of relevant results.

In other words, it's all swamp gas.

Got it.

Originally posted by EvilSadamClone
In other words, it's all swamp gas.

Got it.

no actualy not. When you see something that looks like something, it may actually be something even though you may not see the whole thing. Our brains automatically process the partial data into "something" especially if it is something we are familiar with. I am always impressed with paleontologists who can look at a rock and "see" that it is a part of a dinosaur. To me that is a kind of pareidolia.

recognizing that a contour "may" not be a real contour is useful in identifying things. If you "see" something on the moon or mars or in the sky or whatever, you should ask yourself if that is something real or your brain fooling you. Being aware of how we percieve things is not a bad thing.

Originally posted by wirehead
reply to post by yampa

 

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

"we found that objects incidentally perceived as faces evoked an early (165 ms) activation in the ventral fusiform cortex, at a time and location similar to that evoked by faces, whereas common objects did not evoke such activation. ... Our findings suggest that face perception evoked by face-like objects is a relatively early process, and not a late reinterpretation cognitive phenomenon."

But this is all splitting hairs. No matter how or why it happens, we know we have a tendency to see faces where there are none (clouds, dirt, toast, etc.) For this very reason, we should not take "looking like a face" to be necessary and sufficient evidence that something was deliberately sculpted. Are you taking issue with this?

Can you give an example of someone who has purely used 'it looks like it has a face' as a reason why something is salient or worthy of talking about? As your paper proves, everyone sees faces in things, and everyone has their neurological attention drawn to these faces. But not every person talks about this and finds it worthy of further attention.

Nobody ~ever takes something 'looking like a face' alone as a reason they should fully attend and remember something (unless perhaps for a novelty/amusing internet meme). People pay special attention to these perceptions for cultural, religious and mystical reasons. Certain people attribute special properties to their natural, normal process of pareidolia for complex reasons. For far more complex reasons that can be explained by any existing theory of pareidolia alone.

As I said originally, 'sceptics' are far better off pointing out factual reasons why something can not be designed, rather than saying 'oh that's just pareidolia'. Using pareidolia as a reason for why somebody finds something remarkable makes you look stupid. Especially when, sometimes, the real and honest answer to 'is this designed?' is 'we don't know'.