What's with all this flat earth crap I've been seeing?

[Scarim Coral]

All I can remember from a tumblr post is basically they are persistant into trying to proved they are right. Example about how the photo into the atomsphere shies should be rounded if they were that high up. Also I think some semi famous person was a believers so I guess some people joined the bandwagon?

 

[King Billi]

Its impossible to argue against a conspiracy theorist since any evidence or logic you present to them can be easily countered with "That's what they want you to think!", alternately they could just be faking it to try and piss off condescending "intellectuals".

Either way you're the one wasting your time if you try and engage with such people in any kind of rational way.

 

[Breakdown]

Flat Earthers don't really operate in echo chambers, they're too individualistic.

 

[Laughing Man]

The internet has enabled crazy minorities to pile in to echo chambers and whip each other up in to groups of crazy that seem bigger than they are.

Exactly the internet has given everyone and anyone a grand stand from which they can shout about any theory or idea they have.

For many I believe they only do it so that they can say that they stand out side the idea and norms of the conventional society / thinking. I.e boring people who rather than just getting on with their boring normal lives have to highlight themselves to everyone by not conforming, kind of the exact opposite of the people who post every single mundane thing they do on Facebook or Twitter.

Normal folk post about the fantastic egg they had for breakfast the nutbars post about their belief that the Earth is flying round on the back of a giant space banana.

What gives these folk validity in what they are doing though is the responses they get, what WE should be doing is just ignoring them, the guy who had a fantastic egg, so fucking what? The guy who believes in planets flying round on giant space bananas, so fucking what? We don't though, we comment, criticise, give our own opinion, tell them what we think or tell them why they are just wrong. WE give them the attention they want and THAT is why we are seeing more and more of this crap.

If WE just shrug our shoulders and move on without passing comment, guess what, the guy posting about his god damn eggs sees no one gives a fuck and stops posting about them, the same happens for the space banana nutbag, ok the nutbag is maybe a little more desperate for attention so is more likely to stick at it longer but once they see no one cares they'll give up as well.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I don't know, I haven't personally encountered any Flat Earthers. However I just chalk it up to "people are stupid."

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Maybe they looked at a picture of Earth on the internet and forgot non-Euclidean is a thing?

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

the nutbars post about their belief that the Earth is flying round on the back of a giant space banana.

My sides. My SIDES. Ow.

I laughed so hard I'm in literal pain. The mental image is just too funny. XD

 

[Basement Cat]

I actually think its a joke that everyone is in on.

There is an organization called "Man Will Never Fly", or something along those lines. Its members believe that all flying is an elaborate hoax, and its members include former pilots!

Its been speculated that its all just a huge joke and they do it for a laugh, I'm inclined to agree. It's just too far fetched.

This flat Earth thing is probably the same deal.

There is a huge amount of truth to this.

Back in the 80's my late father--who was in the space and aeronautics business and, among other things helped design NASA stuff--laughed and told me the inside scoop about the "Flat Earth Society".

According to him--and remember my father was in the space industry--a bunch of the members in the "Flat Earth Society" were NASA and non-aligned scientists who made a hobby of coming up with as many convoluted semi-plausible explanations for how and why the world was NOT round but FLAT.

Mind you this was long before the internet came into being and before the US Republican party spent more than twenty years poisoning a large portion of the US public into distrusting science in general.

Still, it's a true story: A lot of Flat Earthers were knowledgeable scientists just having silly fun with each other. In fact, at least back then, perhaps most of the Flat Earthers were on board with the joke.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I actually think its a joke that everyone is in on.

There is an organization called "Man Will Never Fly", or something along those lines. Its members believe that all flying is an elaborate hoax, and its members include former pilots!

Its been speculated that its all just a huge joke and they do it for a laugh, I'm inclined to agree. It's just too far fetched.

This flat Earth thing is probably the same deal.

There is a huge amount of truth to this.

Back in the 80's my late father--who was in the space and aeronautics business and. among other things helped design NASA stuff--laughed and told me the inside scoop about the "Flat Earth Society".

According to him--and remember my father was in the space industry--a bunch of the members in the "Flat Earth Society" were NASA and non-aligned scientists who made a hobby of coming up with as many convoluted semi-plausible explanations for how and why the world was NOT round but FLAT.

Mind you this was long before the internet came into being and before the US Republican party spent more than twenty years poisoning a large portion of the US public into distrusting science in general.

Still, it's a true story: A lot of Flat Earthers were knowledgeable scientists just having silly fun with each other. In fact, at least back then, perhaps most of the Flat Earthers were on board with the joke.

So if I'm understanding you, the whole flat-Earth movement, much like Trump's Presidency, started as a joke?

 

[Basement Cat]

Still, it's a true story: A lot of Flat Earthers were knowledgeable scientists just having silly fun with each other. In fact, at least back then, perhaps most of the Flat Earthers were on board with the joke.

So if I'm understanding you, the whole flat-Earth movement, much like Trump's Presidency, started as a joke?

Not the whole, as I said. Plenty of people are either crazy (I've a Paranoid Schizophrenic for a brother so I know real and genuine CRAZY all to despairingly well) or just trolls.

On the other hand...as for those who did believe the earth was flat...well, here's another true story to help put things into perspective:

My father was in the space industry, as I said, but his father (who'd worked as a plumber or something for the Manhattan Project back when they were helping to build The Bomb out of Oak Ridge back in the day) was basically a layman carpenter/farmer/plumber/whatever. He'd worked near high science but didn't begin to have the exposure, learning or personal background to understand the science, etc, involved. He was just another patriot who unknowlingly helped make a bomb--the biggest the world had ever known, yet.

A side true story: A British officer in India came out of the bush after Hiroshima and found himself being asked by local near-stone-age natives if he knew about "THE BOMB". He didn't have a clue what they were talking about, but this points to the contemporary reactions to the bombing of Hiroshima: How swiftly word of the ability of a single bomb (remember the world didn't have a clue about radiation or fallout then) being capable of destroying an entire city was sudden, terrifying, WORLD NEWS.

Okay. But my grandfather was basically a mature country fellow just doing his part. The rest of it...what resulted from it...was just too big for him to truly grok.

That leads to this topic related key point: My paternal grandfather knew America landed men on the moon--more than once--but for his personal background the reality of men landing on the moon was just too big to truly absorb. It was real and had happened--his own son was in the space business and talked shop about this and that and how, etc.

Grandpa never doubted that it had happened but it was too big to ever truly sink in. He died when I was just 7 months old so I never knew him but by all accounts he was a solid, practical man.

Side Note: For anyone who wants to say the moon landing was a hoax you may rest assured that if the US tried to fake it the USSR would have instantly cried foul.

OT: Basically, back then when the space industry was still "A Thing"--


--Does anyone else here remember when and where they were when news of the space shuttle Challenger's exploding after launch occurred? I do. I'm that old. *sighs*--

--there were some folks to whom the world being flat might have been a real thing BUT the science types were just treating it as a joke and having fun.

TL/DR: The science types were trolling the real Flat Earthers decades before "trolling" was a common term.

^_^

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

It's gone beyond placards now. We may need to break out a... a... banner.

Banner? No, we need to break out the big guns here. I propose a major leaflet campaign. We need to form an anti-flat earth movement. I would suggest the name; The Committee for Logic and Intelligence Together as One and their Recognition In Society. I know, it has an unfortunate acronym. Can't be helped.

 

[renegade7]

I just can't believe this. In the year 2016 with all the scientific evidence proving otherwise there are still people who believe the world is flat

You've answered your own question. This kind of personality doesn't believe that the world is flat in spite of the fact that scientific evidence shows ludicrous that is, rather they believe that the Earth is flat precisely because that's what the scientists say. In the view of a person with this kind of worldview, scientists are just another type of power-grubbing elite who wants to control everyone.

This is currently the consensus view among social scientists of how anti-science conspiracy theories are formulated: the scientists are framed as a political or social enemy, and therefore anything the scientists say is not to be trusted. It is discussed in the paper NASA Faked the Moon Landing (Therefore) Climate Science is a Hoax. [http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/03/25/0956797612457686.abstract]

The other reason is that without training in critical thinking, the human brain rejects information that is more difficult to acquire and prefers to acquire information that is easier to process. That is to say that people gravitate towards explanations that are simple and avoid information that seems more complex. It's much easier to process anti-science beliefs into catchy one-liners, ie "You can't create something from nothing!", than it is to do the same with scientific theories, ie "There was never really 'nothing' since spacetime has an open topology and in any case spontaneous symmetry breaking allows for the temporary violation of conservation laws and is fully compatible and in fact implied by the conclusion of Noether's theorem that conservation laws are physically meaningful". The rebuttal just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? And at worst, you risk offending your audience when a proponent of anti-science beliefs argues that you're using a bunch of egghead mumbo-jumbo to make yourself look smarter than your audience.

 

[Avnger]

The other reason is that without training in critical thinking, the human brain rejects information that is more difficult to acquire and prefers to acquire information that is easier to process. That is to say that people gravitate towards explanations that are simple and avoid information that seems more complex. It's much easier to process anti-science beliefs into catchy one-liners, ie "You can't create something from nothing!", than it is to do the same with scientific theories, ie "There was never really 'nothing' since spacetime has an open topology and in any case spontaneous symmetry breaking allows for the temporary violation of conservation laws and is fully compatible and in fact implied by the conclusion of Noether's theorem that conservation laws are physically meaningful". The rebuttal just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? And at worst, you risk offending your audience when a proponent of anti-science beliefs argues that you're using a bunch of egghead mumbo-jumbo to make yourself look smarter than your audience.

This is one reason why I like Bill Nye's recent work and speeches. He's very good at breaking down these ridiculous concepts to the level that even those purposely non-educated in the discipline (ie: some U.S. homeschooling) can understand the basics.

His debate with the nutter Hamm was good, but I feel that sometimes anti-science people are given almost too much validity for how purely fictional their beliefs are.

 

[Cycloptomese]

Because it's true.

Don't ask about the flat earth, rather ask why so many believe its round.

Yeah, all Educated Adults will know that Earth is actually a cube and there are 4 simultaneous days going at the same time, because of that [http://wayback.archive.org/web/20160112193916/http://timecube.com/].

(original timecube.com website seems to be down, interestingly, but Wayback Machine is there to the rescue)

Nothing has ever made more or less sense.

"Word God is Bad Math"
"Honor the 4 days, or you should die."

But wouldn't it be 6 days? A cube has 6 sides... I'm confused.

 

[hermes]

I've had a few conversations with Flat Earthers. They always stop talking once I bring up the logical point that every other large body in the heavens is round and that logically gravity would form any large body into a ball.

Pft, they aren't trying. How do we know that the other large bodies aren't round but flat, that is, disc shaped?.

Because we can see them? Ancient civilizations knew the earth was round for millennia because they could see the shadow of the Earth on the moon was always disc shaped. If the Earth was also a disc, the shadow would change shape as the moon moved in the sky. The only way something projects a round shadow from every angle is if it was round from every perspective, i.e., a sphere.

Conspiracy theorist need to try harder, if they latest theory can be debunked with "just look up, moron"