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My Parents Are Flat Earthers

jameshfisher.com

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Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#81

Post by javajosh »

jamesfisher wrote: post #65
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 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.

Haha I hadn't heard that one before, I like it! Interestingly this kind of one-upsmanship quite easily makes conspiracy theories self-fulfilling. Consider the secret club that defends against the Illuminati. Then, another secret club arises to defend against the excesses of the first club. Since they define themselves in opposition to the other, the second group may as well be the Illuminati, which justified the conspiracy theory of the first group all along! Lovely!

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#82

Post by markonen »

dingaling wrote: post #55
markonen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but we passengers use them regularly.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#83

Post by austincheney »

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…

Control is a faulty illusion resulting in really bad policy. Here is a video of explaining this in a popular cartoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StrbppmsZJw

Instead of exercising control rational people focus their energy on planning of attainment of a goal.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#84

Post by fsloth »

wizardforhire wrote: post #49
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 ad…

"spirituality - morality - control..."

I think one could add also social proof as fourth element.

As the mass of believers grows the phenomenon becomes self perpetuating up to a point as people are wired to imitate things they percieve in others - were that a belief or skill.

Control is partly caused by the group's self control, and partly by power hungry political figures at the "top" of the movement - leaders if the movement is organized, or just "thought leaders" if the movement is less organized.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#85

Post by medion »

javajosh wrote: post #74
medion wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I believe both you and the GP are correct. Moreover it generalizes even further and includes, for example, the identity politics dogma of the modern left. These beliefs about systematic injustice are more than just rational arguments, they are themselves an important component to an emotional identity, a key to understanding a complex, suffering world, and hence a way to see possible solutions to that suffering. (Als…

I struggle with Buddhism, only because while it is the only major religion that actually makes sense to me, I can't overcome the cultural disconnect as a white westerner, attempting to adopt ways of thinking which are so culturally different & abstract. Science at this juncture is the only method of looking at the world which appears rational to me, however unfortunately science doesn't have answers to the poetry of existence which religion attempts to mitigate.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#87

Post by svat »

I love this article: https://deansforimpact.org/why-mythbusting-fails-a-guide-to-... (“Why mythbusting fails: A guide to influencing education with science”) Narrowly, it's about “learning styles”, the idea that certain students are e.g. “visual learners” and would benefit from education geared towards visual learners. But more broadly, it's about science in general, about persuasion. In its second half (starting at “Is there any hope for change?”), it outlines an excellent approach for dealing with such cases — or really, any disagreements between people. Failure to follow a similar approach may feel good in the short term, but usually has tragic consequences.

And if it can happen with educated teachers, it can of course happen with flat-earth believers.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#88

Post by black-tea »

intothemild wrote: post #63

I 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 rei…

My dad has been a lifelong atheist and a generally rational person but recently, thanks to YouTube, he's discovered conspiracies and gone all in on just about all of them. 9/11, moon landings, crop circles are all definitely conspiracies. I'm not sure what he thinks about flat earth yet but he'll probably get there.

So it's not just pre-trained religious people who are susceptible. They're probably much more susceptible, though.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#89

Post by senectus1 »

M4v3R wrote: post #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 h…

yeah, years ago I went for a long bike ride (800km in two weeks) with about 2.5k other people. we all stopped at a town for a two day break called Manjimup and we all had to wash our clothes so you can imagine the line up to the public laundry... it went for blocks.

anyway, a nice old bloke walked up and offered his washing machines at his house for use. We didnt much like the idea of hanging around all day just to get into the laundry so we said yes.

He was a lovely old fella, and had a library room in his run down old place that was floor to ceiling, wall to wall filled with books, while our clothes washed he talked to us about god (our first warning sign) then about how the CIA was involved in all sorts of nasties (second warning sign) then I started to notice the titles on the books...

LOTS of JW stuff, Lots of conspiracy theory stuff, lots of antisemitic themed books.

the guy was completely bonkers, utterly up to his eyeballs in conspiracy stuff and somehow always linked it back to how the JW was there to protect themselves from them.

he was a very pleasant enough guy and old and alone but the JW sect seems to have fed him all sorts of bullshit.

Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers

#90

Post by pmichaud »

I read quite a bit of the discussion here, and I’m struck:

People railing against anti-scientific attitudes by spouting the first shit they made up that makes some intuitive sense to them about psychology and/or group dynamics.

I wonder if anyone else sees the irony?

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