Why don't they all just get together and walk over to the edge of the planet and see if there is a cliff or not. Seems like a really easy "theory" to prove. A coupe hundred people walking together while live blogging there attempt to the world should be save from secret NASA police.
Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?
#12It's interesting to me that they use language superficially similar to the language of rationality and science to justify their beliefs. The belief is ridiculous, but how many people have opinions that they rationalize as scientific that aren't so ridiculous but still unjustified? It's easier to convince yourself that you're 'rational' than it is to be 'rational'.
Re: Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?
#13[deleted]
Probably going to get some hate for this.....
Honestly, I believe 9/11 was an inside job, but all the quacks that come along on the conspiracy train make all others look bad.
Re: Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?
#14I find these people particularly interesting, not because of the absurdity of their belief, but because of the certainty they have in their belief and how difficult it is to convince them otherwise. The article points out that "many Americans" hold some kind of wacky belief and strongly resist attempts to challenge it: vaccines cause autism, global warming isn't real, the moon landing was faked, the earth is 6,000 ye…
The big thing is you can't convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. They have already made up their mind, dug in their heels, and are willing to fight to the death.
In some cases they would consider themselves a bad person if they didn't defend their ideals to the death. This is especially true if there is a religious aspect to their view. They don't call it a "reasoned position" on religion, it is belief. Belief is strongest when you keep it despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This is a core tenet of Christianity and I suspect most other religions as well. Your faith will be tested by "deceivers" constantly and you must keep it.
It's impossible to use logic or science to convince someone of something when they think logic and science are tools of the devil.
It's also the Amiga effect. When a community grows smaller the remaining members are the most ardent. Once you are down to just a handful of remaining members all that is left are the die hard fanboys. All of the reasonable people left a long time ago.
Re: Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?
#15I find these people particularly interesting, not because of the absurdity of their belief, but because of the certainty they have in their belief and how difficult it is to convince them otherwise. The article points out that "many Americans" hold some kind of wacky belief and strongly resist attempts to challenge it: vaccines cause autism, global warming isn't real, the moon landing was faked, the earth is 6,000 ye…
The big thing is you can't convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. They have already made up their mind, dug in their heels, and are willing to fight to the death. In some cases they would consider themselves a bad person if they didn't defend their ideals to the death. This is especially true if there is a religious aspect to their view. They don't call it a "reasoned position" on religion, it is belief.…
"Belief is strongest when you keep it despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This is a core tenet of Christianity and I suspect most other religions as well."
Huh? This isn't true at all.
Re: Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?
#16Why don't they all just get together and walk over to the edge of the planet and see if there is a cliff or not. Seems like a really easy "theory" to prove. A coupe hundred people walking together while live blogging there attempt to the world should be save from secret NASA police.
Why bother? why would they want to prove themselves wrong?
Why don't you keep walking in one direction then tap them on the back when you've gone the whole way to prove tou're right?
When you argue against people who have no interest in evidence, it's really very tricky
Re: Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?
#17The explanation is a lot more simple I think.
Back in the old days, the way you showed you were better than everyone else was owning the nicest car, having air conditioning, or having a powered mower.
Now that more or less everyone has more or less everything, the only ways we can fulfill the basic instinct to be better than our neighbors is engaging in these kind of "all the sheep think this happened, but really..." ideas. Psuedo-intellectualism at it's finest.
You could show these people facts all day, it doesn't matter. Hell if you took one of them up in one of those Space Jets they'd probably swear you were faking it somehow, because the longer you hold onto a belief, the more invested in it you are, the more it's going to wound your ego to admit you're wrong. Most people would rather take a bullet than admit they were wrong (especially Americans and Brits) so that's how we end up with the Flat Earth people.
Re: Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?
#18I am trying to think of a way to prove without a doubt that the earth is not flat. I thought about sending them into space, and having them look through a window at the round earth suspended in the black. But then I almost know what they would say; the window is somehow distorting the true appearance of the earth. If it doesn't conform to their view, they will create reasons as to why. There are so many similar examp…
Don't be so hasty, I think sending them into space would be a good start.
Re: Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?
#19I find these people particularly interesting, not because of the absurdity of their belief, but because of the certainty they have in their belief and how difficult it is to convince them otherwise. The article points out that "many Americans" hold some kind of wacky belief and strongly resist attempts to challenge it: vaccines cause autism, global warming isn't real, the moon landing was faked, the earth is 6,000 ye…
The thing is, I don't think the "What would it take to convince you?" discussion is generally actually fruitful for beliefs like these. For example, Bill Nye posed this exact question to Ken Ham during their Evolution/Creationism debate and essentially his response was "Nothing, this is my belief and I'm sticking to it."
So, it seems like your best option is just to ignore those with decidedly unscientific opinions for the moment and attempt to instill more genuinely curious/less dogmatic thinking into those who have not already made up their minds.
Re: Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?
#20I've been perversely interested in this Flat Earth movement for a few months. There are a lot of long, stunningly stupid, vehemently argued YouTube videos out there from flat earthers. There are a couple of basic science-minded people who take them on, often with some pretty entertaining results. But one thing is clear is that the flat earthers simply aren't listening. It goes a lot deeper than misunderstandings of f…
It's not just flat-Earthers. I suspect this is reflective of some broader psychological phenomenon- what the article calls "conspiracy-theory psychology", but I don't think that quite covers it. I recently came across someone who was just as religiously convinced that JavaScript was not Turing-complete. No amount of mathematical argument could convince him otherwise. He didn't claim any conspiracy, just had an utter…
This is an interesting topic on it's own. I think it has to do with the hyper-connectivity that our modern digital world provides that allows us to self-segregate and form self-supporting echo chambers for just about anything we want to believe. So while the psychological underpinnings for people preferring their beliefs over objective truth is just human nature, I think the potency of modern day conspiracy-theory thinking is because we really can form an entire world ourselves, (print/visual media, online communities, higher ed) that supports our own thinking and it gets further embedded.