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My Father Firmly Believes the Earth Is Flat, How to Help

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Re: My Father Firmly Believes the Earth Is Flat, How to Help

#31

Post by throwawayay02 »

This is a tangent, but judging from the other comments here, I feel like everyone in HackerNews read the same set of articles saying facts don't matter - people are 100% emotional, and now never try to convince others of their beliefs.

This is obviously false, if it were true we, humanity, would have never developed and accepted new ideas. If it were true we wouldn't have communist, we wouldn't have advertising or propaganda or marketing or most fiction books.

The truth is as usual more nuanced, yes, with some effort you can convince your father that the Earth is in fact not flat, just like with some persuasion and skill you can convince people of anything you want, little by little.

It just isn't easy or fast and you cannot make appeals to authority.

Re: My Father Firmly Believes the Earth Is Flat, How to Help

#32

Post by bryanrasmussen »

throwawayay02 wrote: post #31

This is a tangent, but judging from the other comments here, I feel like everyone in HackerNews read the same set of articles saying facts don't matter - people are 100% emotional, and now never try to convince others of their beliefs. This is obviously false, if it were true we, humanity, would have never developed and accepted new ideas. If it were true we wouldn't have communist, we wouldn't have advertising or pr…

>This is a tangent, but judging from the other comments here, I feel like everyone in HackerNews read the same set of articles saying facts don't matter

good luck convincing them any different.

Re: My Father Firmly Believes the Earth Is Flat, How to Help

#33

Post by BenjiWiebe »

rdtwo wrote: post #30

If you get him on a flight that goes above 35,000 on a clear day you can visually see the curvature. Perhaps you could do that? I guess you guys could build a small home made rocket with a camera if you can get it over 35000 that might convince him.

Small homemade rockets with a camera do not go to 35k feet. My brother is into high-powered rocketry. It takes hundreds of dollars just to purchase the motors to get that high.

If you heavily optimized for weight and left out parachutes/trackers/cameras it might only be 100-200 dollars instead of 300+.

Re: My Father Firmly Believes the Earth Is Flat, How to Help

#34

Post by pdkl95 »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #33
rdtwo wrote: post #30

If you get him on a flight that goes above 35,000 on a clear day you can visually see the curvature. Perhaps you could do that? I guess you guys could build a small home made rocket with a camera if you can get it over 35000 that might convince him.

Small homemade rockets with a camera do not go to 35k feet. My brother is into high-powered rocketry. It takes hundreds of dollars just to purchase the motors to get that high . If you heavily optimized for weight and left out parachutes/trackers/cameras it might only be 100-200 dollars instead of 300+.

You don't need to send anything to 35k feet; you only need a camera with a decent telephoto lens and a long lake on clear day with calm winds. From one shore of the long lake, view objects at the far shore from normal standing height using the camera+lens. If you then carefully lower the camera to the ground, you can watch objects (boats! people! small buildings!) dissapear behind the curvature of the lake's surface.

Dan Olson ("Folding Ideas") demonstrates this experiment in the video[1] I recommended in an earlier post[2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24637001

Re: My Father Firmly Believes the Earth Is Flat, How to Help

#35

Post by bennyelv »

kiba wrote: post #25
bennyelv wrote: post #22

Call this a meta-conspiracy theory if you will, but I'm not convinced that flat-earthers actually exist in any kind of meaningful numbers. It strikes me as the kind of thing that's designed to stoke the fire of people on social media, which causes the "fight against flat earthers" to feature highly in everyone's consciousness, and make everyone believe that there's actually a movement when there isn't. Add that to th…

Meaningful numbers? There are billion of human beings, and then a fraction of these people with internet connection, and fraction that speak of the same language. The internet allow people to organize communities that would otherwise be impossible on a local level, giving to rise to possibly hundred of thousand or million of people who believe that the Earth is flat. Is that 'meaningful' amount of people? I like to t…

You still have the unsolvable problem of working out if they mean it or are just winding you up however :)

Re: My Father Firmly Believes the Earth Is Flat, How to Help

#36

Post by [deleted] »

kthartic wrote: post #5
LatteLazy wrote: post #2

Facts don't convince people. That's the problem with flat earth and trump and 1001 other issues. If your father believes in flat earth, explain how upset you are by that then get him some friends so he doesn't need to join fringe groups for a sense of belonging.

This is pure speculation on my part, as I haven't looked into any data to back this up, but I also believe that a lot of conspiracy theorists become conspiracy theorists, whether they realise it or not, for the sense of belonging and community that is perhaps lacking in other areas of their life. I mean think about it - if you don't have a satisfactory social group, what better way to fill that void than by joining a…

[deleted]

Re: My Father Firmly Believes the Earth Is Flat, How to Help

#38

Post by dllthomas »

chrisbennet wrote: post #17
LatteLazy wrote: post #2

Facts don't convince people. That's the problem with flat earth and trump and 1001 other issues. If your father believes in flat earth, explain how upset you are by that then get him some friends so he doesn't need to join fringe groups for a sense of belonging.

This is true. When you are younger and inexperienced, you believe fact will change people's minds. This is just not true. I didn't figure this out until I was in my 50's. It is very important for some people to convince others that their ideas are correct (which they very well might be). Let go of this "I need to convince people to agree with my view." Instead, love your father for his other qualities and allow him t…

> I didn't figure this out until I was in my 50's.

What changed your mind? :)

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