Yeah but look at flat-earthers, how do you justify that?
I remember when the flat-earther movement was new, there were some people in it who claimed to be smart. They said they don’t really believe it, they just like to be sceptical… and contrarian. Basically they like to argue, for the sake of making people question what they’ve been taught and what they don’t know from their own personal observations. Like “are you really any better than us because you trust people who are more trustworthy?” I can almost see the point. But yes, that’s kind of how it works… I don’t need to be smart about some broad or niche category if people certified and well read on that thing who are accredited by reputable institutions tell me what it is and around the world, they agree, in different languages, it’s not a conspiracy. But I guess some healthy scepticism is good.
Now, these alt-right guys? Yeah, I don’t get it. They aren’t fulfilling promises on anything but making things harder for minorities. They are doing what they said there. You knew he was going to go after brown-skinned people and the gays, so no surprise there. Tearing down institutions, this hyper militant shit, yeah maybe he didn’t campaign on that but I feel like, if you didn’t go out and vote against him last November, you kinda did cosign on all this.
Fundamentally, I understand where the flat earthers are coming from.
In our day-to-day experience, the earth seems flat. While there are some things that could show that there’s a curve, none of them are easy or obvious. Like, if you live near a big body of water, you can see that as boats get farther away, you can’t see as much of them. But, a big body of water also tends to have waves, so it’s not obvious that the ships are being hidden by the curve of the earth, rather than by waves. On land, it’s even less obvious that the earth is curved because even small hills affect things more than the earth’s curvature.
So, for the most part, you have to trust experts who say that the Earth is curved. But, the world has been using so-called experts to lie to people for a long time. Commercials use people in doctor’s shirts to hawk medicines. Insurance companies use “experts” that say a treatment isn’t needed. Experts testify in front of congress that so-and-so is safe and won’t harm people, or won’t cost jobs, then it inevitably does. The whole opioid crisis was largely due to trusted “experts” (doctors) over-prescribing opioids and telling patients that they were safe.
“Doing your own research” seems like a smart thing. But, the people doing it don’t know how to do research. Ever since “No Child Left Behind”, American schools have only gotten worse. They don’t know how to read or interpret scientific papers. They don’t know how to identify high quality journals, or how to spot conflicts of interest, or how to understand if something is highly cited. So, they go with “Truthiness”, and are easily manipulated.
Flat-earthers are just religious nutjobs. They don’t really believe any of the pseudoscience in it, they believe it because it conforms with what their holy book says.
I’m sure some are, but I stand by my assertion that I’ve met flat-earthers who were simply sceptical and pushing that particular point of view.
This was also when they were new. I’m not sure if those people represent the whole or if I just met an outlier (and online, at that, where anyone can say/claim anything). I certainly don’t mean to speak about all of them.
I had a friend pretty into mysticism. She kept it at bay enough it was harmless. Then one day at her place, had a conversation with her 18 year old son. The first half of the conversation he said I need to teach my son jow to deal with a break up. He had just been dumped and clearly had feelings about it.
The second half of this conversation with this young person, he spent trying to tell me why the earth was flat. He used a split screen tictok as his reference material. I was taken aback by this, he just graduated high school… Another time not long after, he saw husband’s car with a behemoth sticker on it. He was clearly distressed, and asked me why we would have that, didn’t I know I will attract demons and negativite energy?
This was two years ago or so. Im not friends with her anymore, last I heard he was going to get a mining job down south. I was amazed and baffled by the words coming out this young person’s mouth.
I had a brief phase on Instagram where I followed some flat earthers, and there did seem to be kind of a range of beliefs on it. There were the ones that would use pseudoscience to debate people, and then it would go kind of in a scale from that, to people using examples from scripture about the firmament and how God made the earth flat and NASA has been trying to hide God from the world and it’s only 3462 years old or some shit like that.
This is not a definition of all flat earthers. By painting with such broad strokes, you’re spreading your own version of misinformation. Flat earthers can be people from any background. There are some flat earthers who have this view you mention, but hardly all.
Yeah but look at flat-earthers, how do you justify that?
I remember when the flat-earther movement was new, there were some people in it who claimed to be smart. They said they don’t really believe it, they just like to be sceptical… and contrarian. Basically they like to argue, for the sake of making people question what they’ve been taught and what they don’t know from their own personal observations. Like “are you really any better than us because you trust people who are more trustworthy?” I can almost see the point. But yes, that’s kind of how it works… I don’t need to be smart about some broad or niche category if people certified and well read on that thing who are accredited by reputable institutions tell me what it is and around the world, they agree, in different languages, it’s not a conspiracy. But I guess some healthy scepticism is good.
Now, these alt-right guys? Yeah, I don’t get it. They aren’t fulfilling promises on anything but making things harder for minorities. They are doing what they said there. You knew he was going to go after brown-skinned people and the gays, so no surprise there. Tearing down institutions, this hyper militant shit, yeah maybe he didn’t campaign on that but I feel like, if you didn’t go out and vote against him last November, you kinda did cosign on all this.
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Fundamentally, I understand where the flat earthers are coming from.
In our day-to-day experience, the earth seems flat. While there are some things that could show that there’s a curve, none of them are easy or obvious. Like, if you live near a big body of water, you can see that as boats get farther away, you can’t see as much of them. But, a big body of water also tends to have waves, so it’s not obvious that the ships are being hidden by the curve of the earth, rather than by waves. On land, it’s even less obvious that the earth is curved because even small hills affect things more than the earth’s curvature.
So, for the most part, you have to trust experts who say that the Earth is curved. But, the world has been using so-called experts to lie to people for a long time. Commercials use people in doctor’s shirts to hawk medicines. Insurance companies use “experts” that say a treatment isn’t needed. Experts testify in front of congress that so-and-so is safe and won’t harm people, or won’t cost jobs, then it inevitably does. The whole opioid crisis was largely due to trusted “experts” (doctors) over-prescribing opioids and telling patients that they were safe.
“Doing your own research” seems like a smart thing. But, the people doing it don’t know how to do research. Ever since “No Child Left Behind”, American schools have only gotten worse. They don’t know how to read or interpret scientific papers. They don’t know how to identify high quality journals, or how to spot conflicts of interest, or how to understand if something is highly cited. So, they go with “Truthiness”, and are easily manipulated.
obligatory link to the Folding Ideas video on the topic
related videos:
Flat-earthers are just religious nutjobs. They don’t really believe any of the pseudoscience in it, they believe it because it conforms with what their holy book says.
I’m sure some are, but I stand by my assertion that I’ve met flat-earthers who were simply sceptical and pushing that particular point of view.
This was also when they were new. I’m not sure if those people represent the whole or if I just met an outlier (and online, at that, where anyone can say/claim anything). I certainly don’t mean to speak about all of them.
I had a friend pretty into mysticism. She kept it at bay enough it was harmless. Then one day at her place, had a conversation with her 18 year old son. The first half of the conversation he said I need to teach my son jow to deal with a break up. He had just been dumped and clearly had feelings about it.
The second half of this conversation with this young person, he spent trying to tell me why the earth was flat. He used a split screen tictok as his reference material. I was taken aback by this, he just graduated high school… Another time not long after, he saw husband’s car with a behemoth sticker on it. He was clearly distressed, and asked me why we would have that, didn’t I know I will attract demons and negativite energy?
This was two years ago or so. Im not friends with her anymore, last I heard he was going to get a mining job down south. I was amazed and baffled by the words coming out this young person’s mouth.
The new ones are different.
I had a brief phase on Instagram where I followed some flat earthers, and there did seem to be kind of a range of beliefs on it. There were the ones that would use pseudoscience to debate people, and then it would go kind of in a scale from that, to people using examples from scripture about the firmament and how God made the earth flat and NASA has been trying to hide God from the world and it’s only 3462 years old or some shit like that.
It was weirdly interesting.
The only two flat-Earthers I’ve known irl were atheists
This is not a definition of all flat earthers. By painting with such broad strokes, you’re spreading your own version of misinformation. Flat earthers can be people from any background. There are some flat earthers who have this view you mention, but hardly all.
Every single flat earther is a fucking idiot.
Now this point, we can agree on.
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