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Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We should even respect flat earthers You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any fruitful debate
Literacy does not imply believing in the round earth. Proving the earth is round to yourself without trusting outside influences is not a trivial pursuit.
We should respect people questioning science as long as they are doing it in good faith and are showing willingness to learn. We should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers. They improve rigour and identify blindspots.
> We should even respect flat earthers You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any fruitful debate
This is directly analogous to how general relativity models spacetime as being intrinsically curved, and you need to be able to do the same sort of thinking without being able to immerse the manifold in a higher dimensional space.
So it's not exactly stupid to pretend to be naive.
Also, why and by how much is the sun bigger than the moon? How far are they away from earth? We've known for thousands of years. It's not exactly obvious to derive this purely from geometry.
We should respect people questioning science as long as they are doing it in good faith and are showing willingness to learn. We should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers. They improve rigour and identify blindspots.
> We should even respect flat earthers No those people need mental healthcare. They have a very debilitating dysfunction, an inability to see reality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an interesting thought exercise to take some belief and ask yourself how you know, and asking until you get to some first principles or axioms or articles of faith. Part of that exercise could include coming up with plausible alternate explanations for what you perceive. Flat earth is just a ridiculous version of such a thought experiment. It's a good exercise to make sure your understanding of the world around…
I actually love flat earthers BECAUSE it forces me to actually think about how "I Know" the world is round. I bet a majority of people who are anti-flat earthers could not actually "prove" the earth is round without immediately appealing to authority. I've talked to flat earthers, (both probably real and some probably trolling), and it can be a fun intellectual exercise to debate.
We should respect people questioning science as long as they are doing it in good faith and are showing willingness to learn. We should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers. They improve rigour and identify blindspots.
> We should even respect flat earthers You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any fruitful debate
We should respect people questioning science as long as they are doing it in good faith and are showing willingness to learn. We should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers. They improve rigour and identify blindspots.
> We should even respect flat earthers You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any fruitful debate
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literacy does not imply believing in the round earth. Proving the earth is round to yourself without trusting outside influences is not a trivial pursuit.
Take your next vacation at the sea, watch ships approaching the Harbour not just growing in size but also appearing to rise up from the water. Voilà
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We should even respect flat earthers You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any fruitful debate
You're saying you should only respect literate people. I say all people are fundamentally worthy of respect.
We should respect people questioning science as long as they are doing it in good faith and are showing willingness to learn. We should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers. They improve rigour and identify blindspots.
> We should even respect flat earthers No those people need mental healthcare. They have a very debilitating dysfunction, an inability to see reality.
But at the same time they're step ahead of majority of the population that just believed what they were told as kids and never, once in their life, expressed any doubt in it, or thought about how it was proven, or how they would be able to check that proof themselves.
We should respect people questioning science as long as they are doing it in good faith and are showing willingness to learn. We should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers. They improve rigour and identify blindspots.
> We should even respect flat earthers No those people need mental healthcare. They have a very debilitating dysfunction, an inability to see reality.
I'm struggling to find it, but an article I read and found enlightening explained how there was seemingly a uniform struggle with education in every story the author was told by the people she talked to at a flat earther's convention.
They all had some profoundly negative encounter with the education establishment, and usually as a result of a learning disability that they had.
It's anecdotal and not a complete view, but a mistrust of academia seems requisite for many of these conspiracies to take root in a person's mind, and that seems pathologic to me.