Simon, what a difficult question to answer! And because of that a great one to ask.simonshack wrote:*
MY TRIVIAL LITTLE APOLLO POLL
I have a little question, trivial as it may be, lingering in my head these days. Let me just formulate it right here - for anyone who might care responding to it. Of course, it is just a mere thought exercise - as no one can possibly know the precise, thruthful answer to this statistical query, but anyway, here goes:
What percentage of this world's inhabitants do you personally reckon still, in 2015, firmly believe (that is, in REALITY, according to your personal / best estimation, and disregarding the various polls you might have bumped into here and there) - that men have landed on the moon?
Whether your answer is 99% or 1% - or anything in between - please elaborate shortly as to how you reached your own evaluation. By the way, I am still scratching my head as to my OWN reckoning about this - so please allow me some more time to think about it!
First of all; my motivation to start with -even reading- Cluesforum was Apollo itself, hence my name. Looking at my own life, I believed 96.7 % of my own existence on this beautiful planet that man went to Moon (including the years I was just crawling around in diapers ). So a mere 3.3 % of my life I am convinced "we" didn't. A pretty staggering number, I'd say. Purely ignorance by the way.
Then, looking around me, I did not ask any of my real life friends about their thoughts, but I'd say 90+ % or so believes "we" did.
On your question I'd like to make a geographical distinction, based on culture and my own perceptions:
1 - "The West" - Canada, US, Europe (excluding Turkey, let's say EU+), Australia & New Zealand
2 - Latin America & Caribbean
3 - Middle East (including Turkey) & North Africa
4 - Russia + former non-European FSU (Former Soviet Union)
5 - Asia (excluding Russia/FSU & Middle Eastern Asia, like Iran)
6 - Subsaharan Africa + island states etc.
Please do not hold this rough division against me, it's just for practical purposes.
Very hard to answer this, but I'll give it a try and hope to include some thoughts, in the end that's what you asked for.
Also, you specifically underlined "firmly believe" and I have to divert from that as well as it's very hard to say anything about "firm beliefs" of other people. Rephrasing the question to a black & white one would be:
"Did man land on the Moon" - only possible answers are yes or no, so there are no "I'm not sure" answers (~evenly distributed into both "camps"):
1 - West - 80% - the acceptance that (Western) media are telling the truth is so pervasive that I think this number is very high
2 - L-A+Carib - 70% - a little more people who reject the mass media stories
3 - ME+NA - 50% - much more resistance against the Western media, US-critical thinking more widespread, etc.
4 - RUS+FSU - 60% - although similar thoughts about the US are held, their own space propaganda works against them
5 - Asia - 80% - I do not know Asia that well from first hand, but I'd say a lot of people will follow more Western views on it
6 - Africa - 60% - main reason to put this lower than the other big numbers is that the people feel that all the space money is not well spent
Guesstimating (I didn't look up exact numbers, just a rough idea) the amount of people in each of the "regions":
1 - 1000 million - 80% = 800
2 - 800 million - 70% = 560
3 - 600 million - 50% = 300
4 - 300 million - 60% = 180
5 - 3700 million - 80% ~ 3000
6 - 600 million - 60% = 360
Total # of believers = 5200 out of 7000 ~ 74% of the world population does believe man landed on the Moon & 26% is on the right track, no matter their other world's views.
Selene
True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it
Karl Popper (1902-1994)