Must say, I wouldn't find it fun - I had a similar experience with my own folks when I found out they were avid Trump supporters. I was stunned at first, then I thought "nbd, I'll change their minds next family get together". Nope, every time we discuss it, we both double down, stop listening to each other, let our emotions run high, and get nowhere. Very stressful, we now try to avoid the subject altogether.
My Parents Are Flat Earthers
61–70 of 216 posts
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#62I feel like this whole flat earth craze is more like tide pods than anything else. There are very few people who actually believe the earth is flat just like there are very few people out there who were accidentally eating tide pods. Its a practically nonexistent problem that everybody can't seem to stop talking about. Everybody who seems to talk about it that I ever see mostly do so as a gaff or some other reason. I guess the flip side of that is how many people actually believe there are large groups of the public who do or believe these sorts of things?
For me, where this type of stuff come from is more interesting. Is it pure trolling at its core or is there another reason for spreading the idea that these are problems? Is it some kind of experiment to see where the masses are at psychologically? Is it purely something crazy to talk about to provide revenue from advertising? I doubt we'll ever know who puts forth all the effort or why. But I do bet it will become a thing of the past as the catalysts move on and the cattle get over it.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#63I got to the part where his parents were jehovas witnesses, and realised that perhaps people who are gullible enough to believe dumb shit like flat earth, are probably wired to believe dumb shit.
I’ll explain, my grandmother is a jehovas witness.
She believes any dumb shit she reads and hears, no matter how easily one could refute it. She will argue black and blue, and if you try and tell her she’s wrong, it only reinforces that she’s right and onto something “big” since we have to refute it.
Thing is about Jehovas witnesses is they believe that there’s a limited number of places in heaven, and only the truly devout will get a spot. There’s two real good ways to earn yourself a spot.
1. Donate a lot of money to the church over a lifetime. 2. Convert as many people as you can.
It is in essence a pyramid scheme.
No mattter how many times I’ve told her that she won’t earn one of the ~200,000 spaces in heaven (it’s really what they believe) because there’s easily a few million members of the “church” globally, and they would all be as devout as her... so if they all die before her surely they would get one of the 200,000 spots. Then what happens? Does their god say to person number 200,001 “oh shit man sorry we just sold out of spots in heaven. clicks teeth”
She will retort with “those other people have probably sinned and won’t get a spot.” Alluding that she’s better than people she doesn’t know. Which I’ll turn around on her and tell her that kind of thinking is probably a sin.
She will get up and walk away and we will begin this again next year.
Flat Earthers to me are similar to this kind of mindset. To hear that his flat earther parents were also Jehovas Witnesses... just wow.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#64I 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. Sur…
Eratosthenes not only showed that the earth is round but computed its circumference around 200BC by measuring shadows at two different latitudes.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#65I 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 think there's a symmetry between conspiracy theorists and conspiracies. It's a kind of jealousy. They want to feel like they're in on a secret club. You can go one better than joining the Illuminati by instead joining the secret club that exposes them.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Sur…
Eratosthenes not only showed that the earth is round but computed its circumference around 200BC by measuring shadows at two different latitudes.
As I've read it, he got a very close estimate, but only because he made two errors that happened to cancel each other out.
As well, he didn't actually measure the shadows himself, but heard stories about there being no shadow at a specific city.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#67I used to think that Flat earthers and anti-vaxxers were really weird until I encountered the situation where AQI was bad in Seattle.
It was around 170 AQI that day. Less than 30% of people on the street wore masks. Nobody cared about Science or warning around bad AQI.
I've learned one life lesson:
When I brought up this topic about wearing masks, people got defensive. Now they claimed that bad AQI didn't affect them.
Well, this pm2.5 is not visible to our eyes, and the health impact isn't immediate. It's kinda analogous to anti-vaxxers, when you think about it.
The takeaway is to never point out about a slow fatal condition that people are in. People will get defensive. I'd love some suggestions here on how to subtly suggest it.
I wonder how many anti-vaxxers unconsciously know they are wrong but stand their ground anyway because someone close to them points out how dumb they are or how soon they will die.
Note that flat earthers are fundamentally different from anti-vaxxers in the way that believing the earth is flat doesn't have any impact on their livelihood.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Sur…
Eratosthenes not only showed that the earth is round but computed its circumference around 200BC by measuring shadows at two different latitudes.
Aristotle's proof was less mathematical but to me more surprising: "you can see Earth's shadow on the Moon and it's always a circle" which point to a great deal of understanding of planets, lightning and orbital mechanics.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#69This is the first time I'm hearing about Flat Earthers so a couple of questions according to these people, if anyone knows - genuinely curious (I don't want to search since then Google will start showing me some ads related to FE):
1) if the Earth is flat, then what is on the other side of the flat Earth - do people live there?
2) I'm assuming it's like a thick cylinder, if so how thick is the Earth?
3) depending on how thick it is, what is on the sides - do people live there?
OR, do these morons don't care about these things?? Again, genuinely curious if anyone knows.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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
> 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.
Unfortunately this still applies. It’s very hard to “prove” this to people, space travel being expensive and all, but until they can experience it themselves it’s easy to keep coming up with reasons why scientists are misleading you.