775
Foolproof
(lemmy.world)
Truth. Just look at the world right now.
I wanted to see if this was really a quote by Mark Twain and found this article on snopes which states that there is no evidence linking this quote to Twain. Instead there is a quote from one of his books with a similar sentiment so its possible it was someone paraphrasing Twain
So, ironically, the quote is meta AF.
That quote originated from Michael Scott.
Who copied it from Wayne Gretzky
- Mark Twain
"To fool a person is easy; you just need to overcome their intelligence. To convince a person they have been fooled is difficult; you have to overcome their pride." I forget where I read that.
"If you want to be remembered forever, come up with a clever quote"
- Anonymous
A coworker of mine started falling down the YouTube conspiracy rabbit hole. He said something about the moon landing maybe being a hoax. I told him that when I was in college I used the big telescope to look at the moon landing site, so I knew for sure it was real. After that, he believed in the moon landing.
Now of course I was lying about seeing the moon landing site. Terrestrial telescopes can't see the landing site. I convinced my friend to believe the truth by countering a lie from a stranger with a lie from someone he trusts.
update us when he finds out terrestrial telescopes can't see the landing site and thinks you're a deep state cia agent trying to hide the truth lol
You used to be able to see it using a terrestrial telescope, until they put all the contrail crap in the atmosphere.
I love you.
I know.
I upvoted this, and then I was like "wait a sec... are they fooling us?" and had to look up if you can't see the moon landing site from Earth.
Of course you can see the site, but indeed no telescope has enough resolving power to see any items left there. So I guess you didn't fool us this time.
Pedantry alert, neerrrr:
You can see the moon landing sites easily enough if you know where to look, and can match up the geography easily. What you can't do from the ground is what a lot of folks expect, which is see any of the left behind equipment, rover tracks, boot prints, flags, etc. for a couple of reasons. First, the features are too small to be physically possible for a purely optical telescope to actually resolve. And even then, the random motion of the Earth's atmosphere would distort your image too much to make out anything that small at that distance.
It's less the motion of the atmosphere that causes the distortion, but rather differences in its temperature and hence the density of the air, which causes differences in the refraction index of the air along the way of the light.
The variable refraction index makes it look like the atmosphere is moving though.
But that's the effect of the light not going in a straight line and not the cause of it.
random motion of the Earth's atmosphere
Are you able to elaborate on what you mean by this at all please, or possibly suggest a direction to look in to find more about what this means and the implications?
Have you ever looked at something on the horizon and it's all shimmery and wavy and won't hold still? That's because air (and moisture in the air) diffracts light. And the air is not still, either. When you're looking an incredibly small object that's extremely far away the effect is rather like trying to see through one of those pebble textured glass shower doors, except if it were moving and the object you were looking at were the size of a gnat. And also several miles past the door.
Just to add to this, air at different temperatures and moisture levels bends light to different degrees, which is why the layers and pockets of air that form our atmosphere make stars shimmer. It’s partially why astronomers are so eager to get telescopes into space (like Hubble and the James Webb), since the lack of this effect lets them resolve much smaller light sources than you could hope to beneath the atmosphere.
That's basically how I've always pictured it, like in my mental physics playground or whatever, the many, many particles may not be dense when you take a small sample (like a cubic foot of air or something) but through miles of atmosphere it adds up and the light has lots to bounce around and off of before it gets to you. Do I basically have that right? That comment someone added makes me think im understanding it right but maybe not explaining my understanding quite right, but maybe you get what I'm trying to say.
Yes, and also different patches of air are different densities because of temperature, or humidity, and they're neither even nor consistent nor still. Convection makes the atmosphere bubble, wind makes it shear, and all the rest of it. The air itself acts as a lens, and a very inconsistent and unpredictable one at that.
Similar just the impact of dust over a large enough distance.
Try going up to the top of, say, a 50 storey building in a moderately polluted city during a fairly still, warm, dry spell of weather and look down at the ground.
It'll likely look a lot more dusty than from street level.
Have you been telling this story a while? Or are you intentionally taking credit for something you didn't do for meme cred?
Edit: actually double xp meme credit, including the OP meme cred of lying for the meme and also the meme-ness of telling the story as OC
I have told it a couple times in various places over the years. It's entirely possible you've read it before.
That's exactly the sort of thing I was thinking about. White lies to steer people away from fear and hate ... benevolent demagoguery?
In ATLA, there's an infamous episode called The Great Divide.
Aang tells a lie to get two tribes to stop fighting a pointless feud that's been going on a hundred years or so. And the fandom seems to get all huffy about that.
I think he did the right thing. If there's nothing to prove he's lying about how the feud began, then there's nothing to prove about why it should continue either.
Plot twist: there is no direct evidence that Twain ever said such a quote. Which is very fitting for this meme, its' very point itself.
You found the Easter Egg.
I hearby dub thee, @niktemadur@lemmy.world...
I'm convinced that you tried to fool me
... Fuck. Fine, I'll look it up.
...
...
...
Okay, he didn't use those exact words, but he said "How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!".
Source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/12/23/fooled/#180a2d81-ad60-4996-9c9a-3b9cd697903c
Which cites
https://books.google.com/books?id=Q6c2AQAAMAAJ&q=%22believe+a+lie%22#v=snippet&q=%22believe+a+lie%22&f=false
Wow, I expected it to be totally fake like most quotes on the internet but I 5d-chessed you into looking it up for me. Thanks!
~~Ethics~~ Quotes are relative
"All the conman did was take his money. You made him feel stupid."
Don't remember who that quote was from, and that's certainly not the exact quote, but I always liked it. If it rings a bell for anyone, I'd like to know.
Edit: CW: Reddit. It was David Frum, apparently. In spite of that I still like the quote.
All we have to do is fool them correctly then! Right?
Need to fool people into knowing that they've been fooled
Need to fool them into being critical thinkers.
Criticize fools, got it!
Need to fool them into thinking they are critical thinkers while controlling them
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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