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My Parents Are Flat Earthers

jameshfisher.com

51–60 of 216 posts

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#51
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just have to accept that most people are not rational . They don't experience reality through a scientific (for lack of a better word) perspective. Most believe in some sort of magical deities or spirits or life force or whatever. Most operate with a physical model of reality that's clearly pre-Galilean. So flat Earth? Why not?

My working hypothesis is that most people lack the intellectual capacity to understand these things, and they haven't the fortitude to accept that they don't understand or don't know something. So instead of attempting to understand they select some imagined model that does make sense to them and act as though it is truth. Challenging them is difficult since they are so invested in their fancies being true; the alter…

> My working hypothesis is that most people lack the intellectual capacity to understand these things, and they haven't the fortitude to accept that they don't understand or don't know something.

I don't think it is a lack of intellectual capacity, but it is more of nurture. In the sense of their community / groups do not put much focus / value on "intellectual" things.

Imagine it as currency, say you're surrounded by people using US$, you probably wouldn't collect Swiss Francs because it is not valued by your community.

So people in different communities value certain things (intellectual ability, social IQ, even knowledge about what fashion is in atm.) differently. Many communities do not see being adept in scientific reasoning and critical thinking valuable traits.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#52

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.

The vast majority of the world consists of things that the majority of people are incapable of creating from scratch if you gave them a thousand year lifespan and free food.

A minority actually adds to the world. What we call civilization is a giant corpus of knowledge, patterns of stimulus/response, methods of passing on minimum info required to navigate, but not understand the things others have made for them.

Rather like your dog can learn to bark at the door to get out but not build a different kind of house.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#53
post #26

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.

$10 bucks says you're talking about Pinker's Englightenment now

Factfulness by Hans Rosling, it's the book that Bill Gates donated to US students.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#54

I'm sure I believe some things that are wrong (everyone does)...but I hope my kids have the decency not to trash me in a blog post when they're older.

Such a post would be a huge opportunity to improve myself. I hope if I believe such things that anyone that cares about me will not only make such a post that they will share it with me as well.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite simply - there is much more land mass in the Northern Hemisphere, and flights, say from Moscow to Anchorage or Reykjavik to Toronto have great circle routes that traverse the Arctic circle. The Southern Hemisphere on the other hand, has no large land masses near it, and even the southern most points of Australia/New Zealand and South America are too far away for any great circle routes to cut through there with…

Something like PER–SCL or AKL–CPT would fly over Antarctica in strict great circle terms, but would require ETOPS-370 rules to fly. Also, I have no idea how prevailing winds would affect the optimal routing. And it's not like these are highly trafficked city pairs. I seem to remember that Qantas has had flights crossing Antarctica in the past; their point was probably to cross/sightsee Antarctica rather than be the o…

Just as an aside, no-one planning actual ETOPS routes would ever use IATA airport codes.

IATA codes are to ICAO as NetBIOS names are to DNS.

I wish we could stamp-out the casual use of IATA codes, they do have some internal admin uses within airlines but they only cover a subset of airports and they don't have any logical decoding sequence.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#56

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.

"What do you mean, 'we'? When I look through a telescope, all I see is a fuzzy dot. Scientists keep conveniently coming up with these photos that supposedly show the Earth and other planets to be round, but the rest of us have no way of verifying that they're anything other than pure fiction." Or something along those lines.

You can doubt anything given sufficient belief in conspiracies, but the most compelling evidence that the typical flat-earth theories are wrong for me, is a picture of Antarctica from directly overhead.

e.g. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/36839/antarctica

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#58
As a former Jehovah's Witness myself I can confirm that people from cults like JWs are very susceptible to believeing in conspiracy theories like flat earth, moon landing is hoax, etc. I personally know at least four ex-JWs and one current JW who all believe the Earth is flat. By contrast I don't personally know anyone who was catholic their whole life and turned to flat earth. Which is not to say that this doesn't happen, my point is that people who are extremely devouted to their religion are probably more likely to question everything, even the shape of the Earth, especially after they discover that their religious beliefs were not true.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#59
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…

Would it be fair to say the exact same thing about, say, Christianity, or any large scale religion? That, at it's core, it's a hack on the human mind, for people to feel important, to feel in control, when the world is so large and uncaring?

Because to me, this burgeoning conspiracy culture (chemtrails, 5G, flat earth, etc etc) just feels like people utilising the same brain space that was once more used for religion...

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#60
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 feel that you've nailed this PERFECTLY. These are also my thoughts after watching many hours of flat earth videos and talking in person to people who believe in flat earth. The discussion is always emotional and often ends with namecalling. It's really apparent that this is not only a discussion about facts, but something they are deeply invested in emotionally.
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