A recent example of this was a video of a little single-engine airplane that suffers an inflight wing failure. You’ve probably seen it. During its aerobatic routine, the plane pulls up and the right wing suddenly snaps clean off! After momentarily losing control, the skillful pilot manages to somehow land, apparently unscathed.
It looks so convincingly real that many non-pilots believe that it actually happened. (Spoiler alert: It did not.) The video is a masterpiece of editing. The camera is shaky as you would expect it to be, and the image goes in and out of focus the way a lot of camera phones do these days. But it’s totally fake. It’s a very stark reminder that images can be manipulated and we must not ever take them at face value until they are proven true.
In the case of this famous airplane video, when you look a little closer, there are glaring inconsistencies between the radio-control model and the real airplane on which it was based.
In the case of this famous airplane video, when you look a little closer, there are glaring inconsistencies between the radio-control model and the real airplane on which it was based.
After right the wing breaks off, the airplane rolls to the left. Whaaaaat? This is a dead-giveaway that it's fake. Think about the physics. With only the left wing still attached and producing lift, the airplane would roll to the right.
In fact, the airplane would roll uncontrollably to the right and, unable to sustain controlled flight it would crash unceremoniously (and fatally) into the ground. There would be no saving it. But people believe what they want to believe. Strong is the urge to think that such a thing could happen. ”Hey, it did happen…I saw the video of it on YouTube!"
(If you're interested, HERE is a pretty good (and short) analysis video done by an aviation website called Avweb.)
I often have to resist the urge to debunk things like this for impressionable young people. But I don’t want to always be the spoilsport…the negative, jaded, seen-it-all guy who rolls his eyes with that, ”What are you, stupid?” expression on his face.
And so most of the time I just bite my tongue and let the believers believe. Sometimes I’ll add a word of caution that things might not always be what they seem, but I usually leave it at that unless the offense is especially egregious. People need to discover things on their own – you know, find out for themselves what’s real and what’s not. And they will, I trust. The world is already chock-full of skeptics and cynics. I don’t have to add to that mix…as much as I sometimes want to.
I often have to resist the urge to debunk things like this for impressionable young people. But I don’t want to always be the spoilsport…the negative, jaded, seen-it-all guy who rolls his eyes with that, ”What are you, stupid?” expression on his face.
And so most of the time I just bite my tongue and let the believers believe. Sometimes I’ll add a word of caution that things might not always be what they seem, but I usually leave it at that unless the offense is especially egregious. People need to discover things on their own – you know, find out for themselves what’s real and what’s not. And they will, I trust. The world is already chock-full of skeptics and cynics. I don’t have to add to that mix…as much as I sometimes want to.
6 comments:
People are going to believe what they want to believe.
Ed, while what you say is true it does not mean that we should not at least try to get people to think objectively and skeptically (if not cynically) and not just blindly accept everything as being true. I get my news from a number of different sources. Some of the are far-left and some of them are far-right, politically. I'd like to say that one side or the other has a lock on truth and objectivity...but neither of them do. They all have their agenda, and it's very difficult sometimes to sort through all the noise and figure out what's really going on.
Ha! I missed this video, but can assure you I would have known it was fake... just based on logic and common sense (though it helps that I earned my single engine license several decades ago). Then again, I've learned that there are plenty of folks making their way through life devoid of any common sense at all. Given a choice of that or book learning, I've always thought I'd prefer the former.
You have a knack of sucking me over from Ed's sidebar by the titles of your posts.
Thanks for you comment, Kelly! As you know, common sense ain't so common.
Oh and by the way, yours wasn't the first comment I've gotten that my blog sucked. But thanks for noticing :-/
I definitely agree with you Bob. I do teach my kids often that they can't believe everything they hear, especially in these days of internet news. And although I don't try to convince some people of their error, because they wouldn't listen anyway, there are a few people whom I will point things out too because they have a more open mind. But those with open minds, like yourself and I include myself in the group as well, seem to be fewer and fewer.
By the way, had I watched the video first (and not being a pilot), I probably would have believed it up until the last second when he landed. That was obviously manipulated.
Also, I'm sure you know about Snopes.com. I use that resource quite a bit in trying to point people back on the straight and narrow.
Yeah Ed, Snopes is good, but it is not always the final arbiter of The Truth. They have an agenda as well...although they keep in check most of the time. There are a couple of other fact-check websites too.
Just the other day, a Facebook friend of mine posted an "article" stating that Lou Dobbs had broken a story about how the "Mexican drug cartels" had paid Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer millions of dollars to keep the border open, and that's why they are so opposed to a bigger, better wall.
Some might desperately want to believe that such a thing did happen - but it actually did not as far as we know. The story was made up, obviously by someone who knew that a certain segment of the population would believe it without questioning, and then post it on their Facebook page. Which is exactly what happened. With very little research I was able to determine that the story was a fake, and had to deliver the bad news to my very right-wing, conservative friend. Oh well, the truth sometimes hurts :-/
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