Flat earthers are just rebels that don't want to listen to modern science for various other reasons, business backing, lack of trust etc
My Parents Are Flat Earthers
91–100 of 216 posts
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#92How 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 earth isn't a planet.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently had a chat with a “flat earther”, well not really but a ... believer in the same conspiratorial vein. It was quite fun to suggest that chem trails flat earth etc might be a anmerican corporate conspiracy to extract woulrd dominance. Once you put it in a langugage they can understand, a real conversation can be had. I did not convert him or anything but at least managed to make him ask real questions. And t…
> It was quite fun to suggest that chem trails flat earth etc might be a anmerican corporate conspiracy to extract woulrd dominance. It's more likely a Russian plot to damage US scientific and technical capability. Why else would RT feature so much of that stuff?
Both pro- and anti- flat earth content attracts views, which translate into ad hits and money. Some outlets will push anything for money.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#94I 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…
It's shocking to me how many people don't realize that a great deal of flat eartherism is pure trolling.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#95Interestingly, it's the same problem than to determine if live in a flat or curved space(-time). You can determine curvature by intrinsic means. I you go from north pole to Ecuador painting your direction, turn 90º, advance a quarter of the equator, turn 90º still, and go home the Pole, your arrival direction is at still 90 degreess relative to your starting direction. the angles sum 270º! Instead of the 180 that should sum in flat Euclidean space. IIRC Gauss went to the mountains with ropes and instruments to verify things by himself, in a striking display of intelectual independence, defying any common sense of the time, and in fact he was shown right by the physics of last century. His shitty ropes just hadn't enough measuring accuracy.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
'Being in a club with secret knowledge' doesn't fit the description of 'religion' very well, though there some aspects of cults for which the description may allude. But that said - this is a hard one, much different than 'aliens' or 'arcane knowledge' because the simple truth is actually evident for everyone to see. It's the craziest of all conspiracy theories because it's so utterly deniable. I mean ... I don't thi…
> 'Being in a club with secret knowledge' doesn't fit the description of 'religion' very well, Why not? (I debated whether or not to include "religion" in my comment because the word is so laden with baggage, but ultimately decided that it was apt, so I am prepared to defend it if you really want to go down that rabbit hole.) > But 'flat earth' has to be the dumbest of all. Not even close. (Go read some Scientology l…
+ ~90% of the world's population are religious (depending on how you look at it) and they mostly grow up in communities wherein everyone is basically the same religion, ergo, they are not generally 'missionary' , 'proselytizing', nor do they feel they have access to 'special information'.
In fact, it's the total opposite: for most of the world's religious, 'religion' is just part of every day, normative culture in most places. It's kind of mundane, actually.
Jehova's Witnesses, referenced in the article, are a totally different ballgame. They are 'default proselytizers' and have a substantially different world view than most folks directly around them.
+ As for why 'Flat Earth' is considerably dumber than Scientology:
'Dianetics' - the Scientology predicate is very close to psychotherapy. Scientology itself is bizarre, but also very interesting 'armchair philosophy'. For example, I think Hubbard's concept of 'tone scale' is brilliant, though it belongs in a blog of ideas, obviously not an institution.
But Scientology is very complex, there's a lot going on, many levels. I can see how it is 'rational' for people to get caught up in it, eve if it's crazy. Scientology leaders are not stupid. There are tons of otherwise very smart people caught up in Scientology ... it's not just full of idiots and crazy people.
But 'Flat Earth' is utterly stupid. It's like saying 'the sky is not blue'. It's the denial of a simple, almost arbitrary fact and it makes no sense at all. I don't think regular people get trapped in 'Flat Earth' conspiracies. Something has to be almost 'wrong' I think to fall for this one.
I think the term 'deprogramming' would be apt for a regular person caught up in a cult.
For 'Flat Earth' - I don't know what one would do with one of those people.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
"At its core" you're not wrong. And I was going to say "and where people think a quick google search can debunk specialists" which I wish I was wrong, but there are so many "specialists" out there that fail on the basic level it's not even funny. See all the climate deniers with PhD in their names, see all the "security specialists" that still think SSN and Mother's maiden name is worth anything for identification. T…
I would say that putting climate change and flat Earth into the same category is not totally fair. While the geometry of the Earth has been pretty clear for millennia and the local CO2 level can be accurately measured, many more subtle questions on climate change still don't have clear cut answers.
If you want to make that argument, then be aware that many more subtle questions on the Earth's geometry still don't have clear cut answers.
That is, as "geometry" becomes more and more refined, there are questions of why the the continents are they way they are (Wegener's theory wasn't rejected until the 1900s!), why certain volcanoes exist where they are, why certain rock formations exist where they are, etc. That's why geology is still an active field.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#98Increasingly with life these days, I feel like I am an actor in a play where the producer sees less and less of a role for me in the production as the curtain keeps raising on increasingly chaotic scenes - so I end up feeling disconnected and distant from something that I was immersed in and enjoying, and am now just an increasing befuddled and alienated observer. The uptick in flat earth theories among other things…
Yesterday I found a post about electric universe or so. Boy, that thing seems to get traction is right on the level of flat earth... They think math is wrong and not needed and everything is based on electricity...
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#99Increasingly with life these days, I feel like I am an actor in a play where the producer sees less and less of a role for me in the production as the curtain keeps raising on increasingly chaotic scenes - so I end up feeling disconnected and distant from something that I was immersed in and enjoying, and am now just an increasing befuddled and alienated observer. The uptick in flat earth theories among other things…
now get others videos in that channel as 'suggested videos'. FWIW, you can always remove that video from your history, so you won't get those recommendations anymore. Well, assuming you were logged into a Google account when you viewed it. Visit https://www.youtube.com/feed/history and use the smaller search bar to find any "questionable" videos and then you can delete them from your watch history. Another option is…
I have youtube history disabled but still get "recommended" videos.
I'm thinking reinstalling greasemonkey to find a script that get rid of them.
Re: My Parents Are Flat Earthers
#100I 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…
This will be controversial, but IMO also related is Jan Assmann's work on “monotheism” (a poor term, as what's intended here includes atheism, as polytheists generally understand): the prevailing meme in (especially) Western culture that “the truth to be proclaimed comes with an enemy to be fought” — i.e. too much concern about what is “true” and wariness about people happening to believe in untruth, regardless of their actions. (The fact that this is on the front page of Hacker News is itself evidence.) This leads to certain… problems.