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My Parents Are Flat Earthers

jameshfisher.com

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Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#41

Post by raverbashing »

mabbo wrote: post #33

I feel like the Flat Earth movement is, at it's core, a hack on the human mind. People want to feel important, and they want to feel in control. When the world is so large and uncaring, so horrible and meaningless, and people are so small and unimportant, a good conspiracy theory lets me be someone important . There are evil people out there who did this all to us, and now I get to know the truth . I get to be in bet…

"At its core" you're not wrong.

And I was going to say "and where people think a quick google search can debunk specialists" which I wish I was wrong, but there are so many "specialists" out there that fail on the basic level it's not even funny.

See all the climate deniers with PhD in their names, see all the "security specialists" that still think SSN and Mother's maiden name is worth anything for identification. The fear mongering of the past about Linux.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#42

Post by sorryforthethro »

Sorry again, of course the majority of FE are a bit cargo-cult; but the root of it is "fallacy of authority" no? There aren't many ways to tangibly justify the shape of the Earth to the average person. If all the images are photo-shopped and all the data is fraudulent, suddenly the world is a whole lot darker. And as much as it seems, the joke that the true edge of the flat earth is a mental illness diagnosis, says more about us than them.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#43

Post by oblio »

joe_the_user wrote: post #28
TomMarius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This society has increased both social isolation and material poverty over the last twenty years. Can you please support this claim with credible data? Sincere question - I'm just reading a book recommended by Bill Gates that claims that the world is way better today than it was 20 years ago.

Gates' claims are entirely concerning a world wide decrease in people living on "pennies a day". This is essentially just that group of people who lived outside the economy entirely now finally entering it. It really has nothing to do with the conditions of the average person already living in a money based economy. We have seen a decrease in US median income over the last however many years [1]. The way rent tends t…

One small remark: you say "fraction" of people living on pennies a day. To me, at least, "fraction" implies a small group. To an American, it might be a small group, but world wide they were still the majority until 30 years ago. Even now, they're probably 30-40% of them world's population.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#44

Post by tshaddox »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #9

How do flat earthers explain that the other planets are round and we see different sides of them all the time? Is earth flat and the rest of the planets are spheres??? Even in their bizarre world of logic this seems unassailable.

Well, yeah, flat Earth is explicitly about Earth being a special privileged spot in the Universe.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#45

Post by joe_the_user »

perl4ever wrote: post #38
joe_the_user wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates' claims are entirely concerning a world wide decrease in people living on "pennies a day". This is essentially just that group of people who lived outside the economy entirely now finally entering it. It really has nothing to do with the conditions of the average person already living in a money based economy. We have seen a decrease in US median income over the last however many years [1]. The way rent tends t…

"It really has nothing to do with the conditions of the average already living in a money based economy." I'm not sure the median American is representative of the global citizen "living in a money based economy". I have not read Gates' book, but I think it likely you are being overly dismissive. I think the average person in the world has an income of maybe $10K a year, which is not "pennies a day", but it's low by…

Life expectancy has been decreasing in other places besides the US. I was just reading an article that said it's down in the UK. Russia hasn't been doing so well either, I seem to recall. But I figure there is a biological limit and the newest medical tech doesn't have much effect in the aggregate.

Or actually quality of life for the working class world-wide could decreasing? Medical research has had an effect for quite a while most places, including the US. It seems like you are the one dismissing facts with unverified speculation.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#46

Post by tartrate »

pmontra wrote: post #24

I'm sure they have a good explanation for it that I don't bother to google, but how do satellites orbit a flat Earth to give us common experiences like satellite TV and GPS? And what about the moon.

According to the video, satellites simply don't exist. Satellite dishes read signals that have bounced off of a dome around earth. And the moon, well, the author quotes a book he received: “One day humanity will have to go back in time 4.6 billion years to build Earth’s Moon!”

Yikes.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#47

Post by michaelmrose »

TomMarius wrote: post #15
joe_the_user wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the success of these off-kilter theories is strongly connected to many people's lives becoming off-kilter. This society has increased both social isolation and material poverty over the last twenty years. Moreover, most people depend on the relative sanity of others to balance their own impulses and so a decline in rationality can have cumulative effect.

> This society has increased both social isolation and material poverty over the last twenty years. Can you please support this claim with credible data? Sincere question - I'm just reading a book recommended by Bill Gates that claims that the world is way better today than it was 20 years ago.

You could easily find lots of ways to find that fortunes have improved while objectively the majority wholly in the US have seen theirs decrease.

- The gains of a larger number of very poor much more than offset losses by a relatively smaller number.

- The total value of wealth can increase substantially even if almost all of it sticks to a minorities hands total/population still gives a higher number.

- The relative price of many goods could have fallen leading to more buying power ergo more stuff you don't objectively need to live while the cost of stuff you vitally need like a home and medicine have gone way up. Therefore you are more "wealthy" and worse off.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#48

Post by everdev »

mabbo wrote: post #33

I feel like the Flat Earth movement is, at it's core, a hack on the human mind. People want to feel important, and they want to feel in control. When the world is so large and uncaring, so horrible and meaningless, and people are so small and unimportant, a good conspiracy theory lets me be someone important . There are evil people out there who did this all to us, and now I get to know the truth . I get to be in bet…

I remember a teacher in the 80s asking the class when humans proved the Earth was round. The correct answer for her was when an astronaut took a picture from outer space.

While I'm sure your theory fits for some, there's also some misunderstanding of science that can be at play too.

For me, there's little difference between a flat earther and believing we didn't know there Earth was round until we took a picture. Sure, one knows the Earth is round and one doesn't, but they both are missing the foundation to know _why_ we know the Earth is round. If you can't explain why, you don't really understand it. And if you don't understand it, you're susceptible to misinformation.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#49

Post by wizardforhire »

mabbo wrote: post #33

I feel like the Flat Earth movement is, at it's core, a hack on the human mind. People want to feel important, and they want to feel in control. When the world is so large and uncaring, so horrible and meaningless, and people are so small and unimportant, a good conspiracy theory lets me be someone important . There are evil people out there who did this all to us, and now I get to know the truth . I get to be in bet…

It’s religious gaslighting, part of a larger narrative from the same people who brought us pro-life bs and intelligent design. For the dogmatic, science presents an existential threat and they lash out accordingly. Strip away spirituality and morality and religions at their core are about control. As their rhetoric evolves I’m reminded of the visulazition in Neuromancer of how ICE would evolve and change shapes to adjust to different attack vectors. Just as ICE had the ability to kill, so do these groups as they become more and more threatened... and unfortunately their voice has only been amplified as a result of the internet. It’ll be 2200 and we’ll still have people arguing this bs. So yeah, core hack on human minds, religions have thousands of years perfecting it.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#50

Post by mirimir »

seer wrote: post #25
cyberferret wrote: post #3

Increasingly with life these days, I feel like I am an actor in a play where the producer sees less and less of a role for me in the production as the curtain keeps raising on increasingly chaotic scenes - so I end up feeling disconnected and distant from something that I was immersed in and enjoying, and am now just an increasing befuddled and alienated observer. The uptick in flat earth theories among other things…

I recently had a chat with a “flat earther”, well not really but a ... believer in the same conspiratorial vein. It was quite fun to suggest that chem trails flat earth etc might be a anmerican corporate conspiracy to extract woulrd dominance. Once you put it in a langugage they can understand, a real conversation can be had. I did not convert him or anything but at least managed to make him ask real questions. And t…

> It was quite fun to suggest that chem trails flat earth etc might be a anmerican corporate conspiracy to extract woulrd dominance.

It's more likely a Russian plot to damage US scientific and technical capability. Why else would RT feature so much of that stuff?

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