Flat Earth again

[maize]

Because sometimes I can't seem to look away.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-flat-earth-conference-where-the-worlds-oldest-conspiracy-theory-is-hot-again?ref=scroll

[Robin M]

That’s just bizarre. I have a theory, and my theory is this.  This is my theory.  Hee hee. Monty pythonish!

Edited November 18, 2018 by Robin M

[moonflower]

Well, I have a theory, Stella.  Maybe it's something like these: Western society has been trying to tell people, especially over the last two decades but in some ways for quite some time, things they consider pretty off the wall.  For instance, they tell us now that it is not only possible to cut off your body parts, sew others on, decimate your reproductive ability, and take drugs to change your appearance and voice and (to some degree) personality, but that we have to both allow people who want to do this to do it and pretend that it has actually changed them into the something they are not.  To some people, esp. on the Right I think, this kind of thing just seems as absolutely insane as a flat earth does.  I mean, you're telling me that this person, who is obviously a man - has male genitalia, has an X and a Y, is 6 feet tall, etc. - is now technically a woman because he's cut off his penis and taken drugs to grow breasts?  And that I have to not only accept that he's a woman, but be polite about it, and I'm a bad person if I don't accept what (to many people) seems like outright insanity?

And lest anyone think I'm picking on transgenderism, or whatever, I think many people on the Right feel this way about more than just that.  They see a lot of the leftist social push of the last 20-30 years, esp the last 10-15 years, as being really off the wall.

So for some of them (obviously not all, most people on the Right still have their brains), the flat earth thing isn't any crazier than letting someone choose their pronoun.  Do they believe it believe it?  Some of them do, yes.  They don't trust anything they don't feel like trusting from modern science or from society or from what everyone else things, because everyone else thinks things that seem to them like either Very Bad Ideas or just completely nonsensical.  

They're idiots in the way that Neo-Nazis are idiots - the world is not flat, and the Nazis lost, so why associate with them?  But I can see the appeal in both of them.

[Pawz4me]

It doesn't matter either way. We're all just a computer simulation.

[DawnM]

https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/01/24/flat-earth-what-would-happen/

There is a map on that site.

I have a friend who is a flat earth-er, and like most of these folks, there is a whole lot of of other stuff he believes that just makes me feel he is getting more and more mentally ill by the year (everything is a conspiracy by the government, etc....).

Edited November 18, 2018 by DawnM

[Mergath]

3 hours ago, moonflower said:

Well, I have a theory, Stella.  Maybe it's something like these: Western society has been trying to tell people, especially over the last two decades but in some ways for quite some time, things they consider pretty off the wall.  For instance, they tell us now that it is not only possible to cut off your body parts, sew others on, decimate your reproductive ability, and take drugs to change your appearance and voice and (to some degree) personality, but that we have to both allow people who want to do this to do it and pretend that it has actually changed them into the something they are not.  To some people, esp. on the Right I think, this kind of thing just seems as absolutely insane as a flat earth does.  I mean, you're telling me that this person, who is obviously a man - has male genitalia, has an X and a Y, is 6 feet tall, etc. - is now technically a woman because he's cut off his penis and taken drugs to grow breasts?  And that I have to not only accept that he's a woman, but be polite about it, and I'm a bad person if I don't accept what (to many people) seems like outright insanity?

And lest anyone think I'm picking on transgenderism, or whatever, I think many people on the Right feel this way about more than just that.  They see a lot of the leftist social push of the last 20-30 years, esp the last 10-15 years, as being really off the wall.

So for some of them (obviously not all, most people on the Right still have their brains), the flat earth thing isn't any crazier than letting someone choose their pronoun.  Do they believe it believe it?  Some of them do, yes.  They don't trust anything they don't feel like trusting from modern science or from society or from what everyone else things, because everyone else thinks things that seem to them like either Very Bad Ideas or just completely nonsensical.  

They're idiots in the way that Neo-Nazis are idiots - the world is not flat, and the Nazis lost, so why associate with them?  But I can see the appeal in both of them.

 

Dear sweet forking Jesus. Can we not?

[Faith-manor]

There are some flat earthers that formed a little house church about nine miles from here. They often take to the streets of that town to proselytize. Ugh. What strikes me about them though is the sheer magnitude of conspiracies that this particular group believes. Chemtrails, RH- factor is reptilian and people who are rh- will rise up as lizard/aliens and try to take over the earth, vaccination is a government conspiracy to sterilize the masses - they even maintain that if their children were exposed to rabies they would not allow the rabies shots -  and the HAARP program (radio control equipment the government supposedly has) causes earthquakes...yes, they believe the government causes earthquakes.

Of course they home school their children, so their kids are being raised on this nonsense.

I really don't understand the pathology of the mind or personality that leads people to embrace so much paranoia. Thankfully the group is quite small so they level of angst they cause is just the occasional annoyance if they are on the streets trying to hand out pamphlets. When they aren't doing that, they do tend to keep to themselves. 

[Guest]

There seems to be a little “knot” of chemtrail believers in an area not far from me. There is some grafiti to that effect on stop signs. DH met a chemtrail believer in a parking lot there. The guy was staring into the sky and dh asked him what he was looking at. He pointed to two airplanes aloft and talked about how (I’m second hand paraphrasing, so not sure how accurate) “that plane has clouds coming from it but that other plane doesn’t...I think the cloud plane is spraying chemicals down on us.” Dh, being a pilot, explained some things about altitude and condensation (I also don’t know what I’m talking about, but anyway - stuff he knows which I do not) and the guy seemed to think DH’s explanation was pretty good. 

It was probably good that DH had never heard of chemtrails yet, so he approached the guy’s questions as sort of an honest question and not a “shew! Wacko encounter!” 

[....]

48 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

There are some flat earthers that formed a little house church about nine miles from here. They often take to the streets of that town to proselytize. Ugh.

 

It says in the Old Testament that the earth is a sphere.  *sigh*

[maize]

I saw a billboard while driving across Nevada last month promoting the chemtrail conspiracy. Something along the lines of "Look Up: the government is poisoning our air."

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, maize said:

I saw a billboard while driving across Nevada last month promoting the chemtrail conspiracy. Something along the lines of "Look Up: the government is poisoning our air."

Yeah, the afformentione graffiti says, “Look up! Stop spraying us!” 

[umsami]

You all laugh, but last time we were on a cruise we almost fell off the Earth into the void of nothingness.  If we hadn't seen the fierce sea monster guarding the abyss, we surely would have all perished. ?

[Mergath]

9 minutes ago, texasmom33 said:

That's a pretty impressive financial commitment on the part of the conspirists. 

Wait. Is it conspirists? What's the proper term there? 

 

I think it would be "conspiracy theorists," though I have a few alternate terms I prefer to call them. ?

Edited November 18, 2018 by Mergath

[Faith-manor]

The thing is, they simply cannot have ANY fundamental understanding of mathematics and human behavior. The sheer tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of individuals that would all have to keep their mouths shut and never leak any evidence of the cover up is just a virtual statistical impossibility. 

Have they even bothered to watch our government in action? Seriously, these people cannot keep their traps shut, nor can they stay off social media either. There is no way. None.

And frankly, one would have to expect that at some point a retired NASA employee or other such affiliated person would write the tell all book of the century, and retire in Brazil (no extradition treaty) with the cash cow that would be. 

Edited November 18, 2018 by Faith-manor

[PrincessMommy]

So I'm confused.  Are Flat-Earther's generally young-earth Christians too?

 

I guess I never thought of it that way... Of course, the whole Flat Earth movement is so bizarre .  I generally put those people in the same camp as alien abduction proponents.   I never associated either camp with any religion (except perhaps cults). 

I did try to read as much of the article as  I could stand (about 3/4th).  From what I read- they don't all necessarily believe in a flat earth - but something like a flat earth inside a dome???!!   And they were excited to have a special guest who was some popular young youtuber (the one who got into trouble for filming in a Japanese forest where someone had committed suicide)... but then he actually doesn't believe it himself.  What the what??  Is this really a thing?

[Ausmumof3]

But it really is!  Plus if rides on the back of a turtle that sits on four elephants!  

The government really doesn’t want us to know because the turtle is sick from all the chemtrails they keep spraying around!

[maize]

I ventured down the rh- reptilian people bunny trail...

It's a good reminder that humans are not fundamentally rational beings.

[EKS]

10 hours ago, StellaM said:

Because how could an aware, non deluded person of the 21st C, in all seriousness, believe the earth is flat ? 

Most people's direct experience of the world is that it's flat.

[PrincessMommy]

34 minutes ago, texasmom33 said:

My guess is this generalization is about as easy to make as saying they are generally NBA players, or Joe Rogan guests, or any sort of group you want. It seems to be a pretty diverse group? Seems like crazy knows no bounds. 

Personally I had no idea this thing had any traction at all until Joe Rogan started interviewing people about it and my dd ran into a group of wing nuts on Twitter with some highly entertaining tweets about the horizon and failure to see "the curve". A huge part of me wonders if there isn't a group of teenage boys somewhere laughing hysterically after starting this whole thing on 4Chan or whatever......

I had similar thoughts while reading the article.  It feels like some kind of big joke that is pulling in the craizies.... either that. or some version of "The Producers" but it's Flat-earthers instead of "Springtime For Hitler."   It just feels so unreal. 

Edited November 18, 2018 by PrincessMommy

[Rosie_0801]

I'm Rh- and my mum used to say I had reptilian hands. ?

 

[maize]

10 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

I'm Rh- and my mum used to say I had reptilian hands. ?

 

YOU'RE ONE OF THEM!

I always knew there was something untrustworthy about you ?

[Farrar]

I'm pretty sure they started out trolling and then they attracted so many actual believers that the whole thing went awry.

[maize]

We have discovered that easy dissemination of information also equates to easy dissemination of misinformation, and it seems that the average human is not in fact well equipped to differentiate between the two.

Humanity is in an awkward place.

[TechWife]

Today I heard a new one. If you speak positive, loving thoughts to water and then freeze it, the ice crystals will be beautiful. If you speak negative hateful thoughts to it, the ice crystals will be ugly. Since the body is made up of so much water, we need to speak positive thoughts to ourselves. It’s true because the man who did the study published it in the NYC subway.

I’m still scratching my head over that one. Of course, I had to google it and it’s really a thing. Sigh.

[maize]

2 minutes ago, TechWife said:

Today I heard a new one. If you speak positive, loving thoughts to water and then freeze it, the ice crystals will be beautiful. If you speak negative hateful thoughts to it, the ice crystals will be ugly. Since the body is made up of so much water, we need to speak positive thoughts to ourselves. It’s true because the man who did the study published it in the NYC subway.

I’m still scratching my head over that one. Of course, I had to google it and it’s really a thing. Sigh.

I heard something like this in the homeschool "science" group a friend tried to get us to join. It was about how ice would freeze differently if you played classical music vs. rock music, with the same application stuff about the human body being mostly water.

The same day in that group another family presented their research about how the moon landing could not have been real.

We didn't join the group.

[EKS]

3 hours ago, StellaM said:

But most of these people have been to school!

Going to school is not direct experience.  

[EKS]

56 minutes ago, StellaM said:

Look, any sane person could work out that the chance of this being a huge conspiracy is very low. 

And conversely, the tests for a sphere are not that hard to find or understand. Greeks, sticks, shadows...

Trolls and weirdos, that's my conclusion. I'm assuming they've been to the beach, seen the horizon, looked at stars and planets, understand night/day, and if they want to ring me and have direct experience of me telling them it's spring here while it's fall there, that would also work.

Look?

I am not an idiot or a crackpot.  I've actually studied this stuff at the graduate level.  Yes, Flat Earthers are extreme, but just because someone tells you something is true doesn't mean that you think it's true.  

Edited November 19, 2018 by EKS

[maize]

1 hour ago, StellaM said:

 

Look, any sane person could work out that the chance of this being a huge conspiracy is very low. 

And conversely, the tests for a sphere are not that hard to find or understand. Greeks, sticks, shadows...

Trolls and weirdos, that's my conclusion. I'm assuming they've been to the beach, seen the horizon, looked at stars and planets, understand night/day, and if they want to ring me and have direct experience of me telling them it's spring here while it's fall there, that would also work.

 

I know lots of people who have never been to a beach. If you live in the interior of a continent beaches are far, far away.

Science classes in school expect us to accept as true a lot of things we can't directly experience or verify--such as all matter being made from invisibly small atoms, the Sun being actually much larger than the earth and very far away, illness being caused by tiny viruses, etc. We believe them because we have been taught them by a source we experience as credible.

I'm not sure this is so different other than going counter to the commonly accepted body of knowledge. To the common layperson most received information is accepted on faith.

[Farrar]

The thing is, most people HAVE had direct experience of the curve of the earth. Most people have been in an airplane, to the top of a tall skyscraper, or to the edge of the ocean. In all of these situations, you can see the curve of the horizon. If you've ever been at sea or at the edge of the ocean, you can literally watch the ships come over the horizon. This is why it's a load of nonsense that Columbus thought he was going to sail off the edge of the world. Sailors all know that there is no edge of the world.

[maize]

1 minute ago, Farrar said:

The thing is, most people HAVE had direct experience of the curve of the earth. Most people have been in an airplane, to the top of a tall skyscraper, or to the edge of the ocean. In all of these situations, you can see the curve of the horizon. If you've ever been at sea or at the edge of the ocean, you can literally watch the ships come over the horizon. This is why it's a load of nonsense that Columbus thought he was going to sail off the edge of the world. Sailors all know that there is no edge of the world.

Most people have been in an airplane? Or to the top of a skyscraper or to the ocean?

I am not sure this is true (though population density is greater near the coasts so maybe it does work out to most.)

But how many of those people were thinking "hey I can see the curvature of the earth from here"? I've been to the ocean and in airplanes and on top of mountains and don't recall ever noticing and thinking about the curvature of the earth. 

[Farrar]

21 minutes ago, maize said:

Most people have been in an airplane? Or to the top of a skyscraper or to the ocean?

I am not sure this is true (though population density is greater near the coasts so maybe it does work out to most.)

But how many of those people were thinking "hey I can see the curvature of the earth from here"? I've been to the ocean and in airplanes and on top of mountains and don't recall ever noticing and thinking about the curvature of the earth. 

I think most people on Earth have had one of those experiences, yes. I think most Americans (and that's really who we're talking about in terms of the Flat Earthers) definitely have had one of those experiences.

Yeah, I get that most people aren't thinking about it when they're standing on the beach. But the idea that none of us have been to space so we don't have any direct evidence is just untrue.

ETA: Apparently statistics say that 82% of Americans have been up in an airplane. I couldn't find stats for the world (apparently there aren't any, I found speculation) but nearly half of people in China have. If you assume that the American stat is probably close for the developed world in general, and you add in the ocean and the skyscrapers, heck yeah - most of the world's population has definitely had one of those three experiences.

Edited November 19, 2018 by Farrar

[KungFuPanda]

15 hours ago, texasmom33 said:

What’s a flat earth map look like? I want to know but am sort of afraid to Google. I’ll just add to the “wacky Christian flat-earther” analytic with that search it seems like. 

Duh!

 

[maize]

39 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

 

Re the bolded, obviously. I assume people who went to school learned some science, where their teachers didn't just tell them it was true, but more importantly, helped them understand WHY it was true.

I really don't want to talk about this any more, tbh. I'd assumed it was a light hearted thread; my mistake.

 

Oh, I intended it to be lighthearted.

I've been thinking though, there's potential insight here into the basic ways humans come to believe whatever we believe. 

[Ausmumof3]

What do they think actually happens when you get to the edge?

[Ausmumof3]

1 hour ago, StellaM said:

 

Isn't there some conspiracy about the edge being guarded, so no-one can actually get close to the true edge or some such ?

That’s giving me a headache trying to imaging that!

[DawnM]

1 hour ago, StellaM said:

 

Isn't there some conspiracy about the edge being guarded, so no-one can actually get close to the true edge or some such ?

 

Yup, and every pilot is taught in training that they are never to mention it.  It made me want to go to pilot training school and see if I could find out more! ?

seriously though, I keep asking my friend, "So if the world is flat, why is it a secret?"   It obviously makes no sense.

[Selkie]

5 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

What do they think actually happens when you get to the edge?

They think that the edge is made of giant ice walls that hold the oceans in. No one who has gone beyond the ice walls has returned.?

They also think that all the space agencies throughout the world are involved in a conspiracy to trick people into thinking space travel has occurred, when it really has not.

I know all this because ds18 and I were just recently perusing the Flat Earth Wiki. It's an interesting read!?

[PrincessMommy]

3 hours ago, DawnM said:

 

Yup, and every pilot is taught in training that they are never to mention it.  It made me want to go to pilot training school and see if I could find out more! ?

seriously though, I keep asking my friend, "So if the world is flat, why is it a secret?"   It obviously makes no sense.

I agree... why the conspiracy and secrecy?  

[Guest]

Belief is an interesting thing. We’re all pretty smart folks here, some extraordinarily smart, so of coure this flat earth thing sounds patently ridiculous. But people believe things, real or fantasy, ALLLLLLL the time with little or no logical support. The vast majority of people throughout history, in all parts of the earth (I almost said “every corner”, lol) have beliefs in the supernatural. Massive groups believe largely the same set of supernatural beliefs; it is how we can say a country is 82% Hindu or 78% Christian or 88% Muslim. So many millions or historically, billions of people believe God came to earth in the guise of a baby human, born of a woman impregnated by The Spirit. I mean, what logic supports this belief? There is less to go on than believing the earth is flat, yet it is a sacred belief for many millions of people. 

(I’m not weighing in on it, I’m just saying - see what we do?)

Oddly, my eldest son brought up this Flat Earth thing about a year ago and he was excited about it as something that seemed valid. I and his gf and my dh and my dd were all giving him the many obvious reasons to believe this is false. I don’t know where it ultimately landed and haven’t asked him lately, “hey son, you still thinking the earth is flat,” but at the time, he showed no signs of reconsidering the argument. He had watched some of these people on-line and he thought their arguments were reasonable. 

I also think there is a tendency in humanity to want to think we have the special knowledge that all those blinkered other silly people don’t have. I’m probably doing that, too. 

[unsinkable]

On 11/18/2018 at 7:46 AM, Mergath said:

 

Dear sweet forking Jesus. Can we not?

What a crude, disrespectful expression.

[EKS]

10 hours ago, StellaM said:

Re the bolded, obviously. I assume people who went to school learned some science, where their teachers didn't just tell them it was true, but more importantly, helped them understand WHY it was true.

My only point is that all of the reasoning in the world is not the same as direct evidence, and, if you really think about it, we have very little direct evidence for anything.

[regentrude]

19 hours ago, EKS said:

Most people's direct experience of the world is that it's flat.

but a horizon is a direct experience, too.

[EKS]

32 minutes ago, regentrude said:

but a horizon is a direct experience, too.

What direct experience related to the horizon are you talking about?  The one with the ship's mast coming into view first?  I've actually never seen that, and I lived within a few miles of the ocean for the first 30 years of my life and spent an inordinate amount of time at the beach.  Or is it the one where you can see farther the higher you go?  I suspect that most people would not attribute that experience to curvature.

But these examples really miss the point.  Even if you do notice that the mast comes into view first, direct experience doesn't get you from there to the earth being a sphere.  

Anyway, I'm not arguing that the earth is flat.  I'm arguing that for most people, the belief that the earth is a sphere doesn't come from direct experience; it comes from being told by others that the earth is a sphere.  It is the same with practically every belief that we have, scientific or not.

 

[Lady Florida.]

On 11/18/2018 at 6:39 AM, Pawz4me said:

It doesn't matter either way. We're all just a computer simulation.

Do you want the blue pill or the red pill?

[Lady Florida.]

11 hours ago, StellaM said:

 

 

Re the bolded, obviously. I assume people who went to school learned some science, where their teachers didn't just tell them it was true, but more importantly, helped them understand WHY it was true.

I really don't want to talk about this any more, tbh. I'd assumed it was a light hearted thread; my mistake.

 

 

11 hours ago, maize said:

Oh, I intended it to be lighthearted.

I've been thinking though, there's potential insight here into the basic ways humans come to believe whatever we believe. 

It should have been a lighthearted thread. I don't know what was in the deleted posts by Stella and a few others but it sounded like it was lighthearted stuff. And then what? You were called out for making fun of something that's ridiculous?  We've known the earth is round-ish since ancient times. Without looking it up I don't know when it was discovered to be spherical rather than round, but the fact that it isn't flat is old news. Sorry but there aren't always "two sides" to everything. When something is known to be completely false and people cling to it, it should be called out. When the emperor has no clothes someone has to be the little boy who speaks up. Even if it hurts the feelings of people who believe nonsense. And flat earth is nonsense. 

Edited November 19, 2018 by Lady Florida.

[maize]

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

but a horizon is a direct experience, too.

Understanding why a horizon would be evidence of a round Earth though takes more than direct experience. 

[KungFuPanda]

12 hours ago, StellaM said:

 

Isn't there some conspiracy about the edge being guarded, so no-one can actually get close to the true edge or some such ?

I read about this edge in Hunger Games!

Couldn’t someone put this doubt to rest with a plane ride and a compass?  Or just the sun? Or are the sun and magnetic north both in on the conspiracy?

Is the sun also flat? Wait? Do we get a brand new sun every day because the old one falls away? Is the moon flat? How do we explain seasonal constellations?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, StellaM said:

 

It only takes a rudimentary knowledge of probability to know that out of two options - 1. there is an ongoing conspiracy to fool us that the world is round (for no reason, just 'cos) or 2. the world is actually round, that 2 is more likely. 

That's not exactly special knowledge.  It's Occam's Razor, innit ? But most people can intuit that, even if they can't put a name to it.

 

I don’t disagree with the conclusion. I do think it is Occam’s Razor-like. 

I was just making a further observation about belief. 

[TechWife]

1 hour ago, texasmom33 said:

There are no season constellations. The Russians got a hold of Mikkos Cassadine’s weather machine and now they control it all. I mean don’t you people watch TV?! 

One of the best date nights my husband and I ever had was eating dinner out and me regaling him with past plots of general Hospital. The weather machine stunned him so much! In fact, I should set the DVR for Thanksgiving and Christmas Day - those were always the funniest episodes! 

[MercyA]

8 hours ago, unsinkable said:

What a crude, disrespectful expression.

Yes. May I suggest Dear Sweet Forking Muffin as an alternative? Or Dear Sweet Forking [anything else]?

"Muffin" because when I was 3 or 4, I called my dad something Very Bad (I don't remember what) and got in trouble for it. He told me I'd better not use that word again, so I stamped my foot at him and yelled, "You...you...you...muffin!!!!"

Hi, by the way, Mergath! What a beautiful new baby!