Flat Earth

[Trekker4747]

I think this is a more appropriate forum for this as it's not about any "science" so it doesn't fit the the SciTech thread.

Anyway, I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole the other day and have been watching a series of videos of people expressing their thoughts on the earth being flat, and the particular tangent of us being inside of a dome on a flat earth. More specifically I've bee watching YouTuber SciManDan who makes fun of the flat earther videos.

For a long time I used to think it was all a joke and these people were just taking the piss to rile people up but it truly seems like there's people out there who believe this stuff, truly believe it, and can't grasp the concept of a globe earth, planets, stars and vast distances between everything, not believing in gravity, and all of this nonsense.

People who can't seem to grasp why we don't feel the motion of the Earth as it rotates and orbits at high speeds, or not getting the concept of gravity and why we're not flung off the planet as it rotates (which it's one rotation per day, hardly enough to fling you off like you were on a merry-go-round)

Then not getting gravity, and why people don't "fall off" the underside of the planet. And so may other aspects.

What the hell is wrong with people?

 

[Kai "the spy"]

There are some sociological studies into this, as well as other conspiracy theories. To sum it up, when some people feel like they have no control over their lives, they basically reject the reality that authorities, whether political, religious, social or scientific, are presenting as fact. It is about the loss of confidence in these authorities, as they view them as harmful to their own lives.

There are several social developments over the past few decades, including the coalascing of media into fewer and bigger corporations, the resulting tabloidization of media and politics, global economic crises at least once per decade now, climate change, which have laid the groundwork for this to happen, and social media has helped to spread the different conspiracy theories, as well as delivered respective communities for them.

 

[Velocity]

Some people tend to believe their own experience, their own eyes, etc, more than science because they didn't have a decent scientific education and don't understand scientific method. They just see that what scientists say often changes. This is due to new information, of course, but some people see this as being unreliable.
There is no need to vilify people for their strange but harmless ideas, we can just pity them and move on.

 

[Trekker4747]

No, many of the people in these videos I've seen absolutely need to be vilified because they're utter idiots.

Not pitying this man.

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[Locutus of Bored]

Some people tend to believe their own experience, their own eyes, etc, more than science because they didn't have a decent scientific education and don't understand scientific method. They just see that what scientists say often changes. This is due to new information, of course, but some people see this as being unreliable.
There is no need to vilify people for their strange but harmless ideas, we can just pity them and move on.

Except seeing the curvature of the Earth is something you literally can observe with the naked eye or binoculars relatively easily without significant expenditure, equipment, effort, experimentation, or education. If you're near an ocean or large body of water (like the Great Lakes or Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana) you can observe boats rising or sinking above the horizon or buildings, bridges, and electrical towers that are missing part of their lower levels beneath the horizon. You can take a jet flight that reaches 35,000 feet on a relatively cloudless day. When there's a lunar eclipse, you can see Earth's curved shadow on the Moon. There are endless free resources to educate someone on how to verify the curvature of the Earth on their own.

I don't consider that level of extreme cynicism in the face of peer-reviewed evidence and distrust of expert scientific consensus to be harmless. While Flat Earther rhetoric in an of itself might not be particularly damaging and easily ignored, it's frequently tied in with anti-vaxxers, anti-social distancing protesters, climate change deniers and other groups that do cause demonstrable harm to their fellow citizens by their ignorant beliefs and distrust.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Roswell 1946 has already proven that not only have aliens visted earth, but because the earth is flat they crashed into it like a bug on a windshield....there, i solved both, no need to thank me, just send your checks to......
H&T
123 Wibble house,
Wibble street,
Wibbleshire


Now!, what else would you like answered, meaning of life, what happens after we die, or do you add milk before or after you pour the tea?

 

[rhubarbodendron]

What the hell is wrong with people?

I think that this is not really a new phenomenon. At all times there have been people who believed the biggest nonsense. Just look at the Salem witch hunt, horoscopes, inquisition, life-threatening anti-corona recommendations like e.g. drinking bleach, McCarthy's communist paranoia, dozends of popes' opinions on safer sex or all the still very widespread prejudices against women or African people.
There will always be a certain percentage of people who's shoe size is bigger than their IQ or who are too lazy to think and rather follow others who think for them. The only thing we can do against that is to teach our children and grandchildren to use what brains they have and to keep those who don't as far away from influential positions in politics and schools as possible.

 

[Silvercrest]

Now!, what else would you like answered, meaning of life, what happens after we die, or do you add milk before or after you pour the tea?

I'd like to know if we're supposed to open our boiled eggs from the big end or the little end.

 

[StarCruiser]

From the side...silly!

 

[Awesome Possum]

One of the major reasons it's become widespread is due to YouTube's algorithm. It prioritizes videos that are watched all the way through and shows more engagement. So when you search for "Is the world round or flat?", Flat Earth videos show up 90% of the time and explain that it's flat.

This is also why we have Nazis again too.

 

[StarCruiser]

Strange - I've NEVER watched a Flat Earther video all the way through (it's usually pretty obvious very early).

 

[rhubarbodendron]

I'd like to know if we're supposed to open our boiled eggs from the big end or the little end.

That depends on whether you prefer to knock it open with your spoon or to decapitate it with a knife. In the first case it's less messy from the blunt end, in the latter case it's cleaner from the tip.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^The correct answer is............from the inside. lol

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Part of it is a combination of the culture of vanity of the Internet, and the total overload of information making people trust none of it. It's a perfect storm of hearing so many lies all the time, you feel perfectly validated in thinking everybody is stupid and you're the only genius on every topic no matter how little you've actually studied it.

In some cases, I can understand what would make people embrace he stupid. Some correct things just sound wrong if you don't understand science. Like, if there were a "Newtonian Universer" movement, at least I would get it.

For Flat Earth to be true though, so many people would have to be in on the conspiracy. Every single person who has ever been in space, or sent something into space, or created an image taken in space. All the people who build airplane windows would have to intentionally curve it to make the flat horizon look more curvy. Every person who has ever flown around the Earth would have had to secretly take the plane in a wide circle.

 

[Trekker4747]

Entire industries would have to be operating on a lie and present to the world a set series of physics and rules while working on a whole other set.

And... For what? The giggles of it? What is gained by presenting this concept of a globe Earth and a universe of stars and planets, when in reality that isn't the case?

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I'd like to know if we're supposed to open our boiled eggs from the big end or the little end.

From the side...silly!

Yeah, you make the pinhole in the big end.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Some people figured out Earth was round hundreds of years ago just by watching how stars move.

You don't need to kill yourself in a rocket to see the world is flat. Just watch the line the sun takes across the sky and do some trig!

 

[Trekker4747]

Thing is, Flat Earthets let optical illusions fool them. They talk about how across large bodies of water you can see an island or landmark that is supposed to be below the horizon.

This entire conspiracy they think exists can be undone by looking across Lake Michigan.

You explain to them refraction causes an optical illusion and what you're really seeing is mirage and not the actual object and they just roll their eyes and think you're making stuff up to fill a hole in the conspiracy.

Meanwhile they can't produce a working map that has both the positions, sizes, and distances of the continents AND has the position of the sun and moon that explains its phases and why we can't see the sun when it's on the "other side" of the disc.

 

[Silvercrest]

I'm curious if anyone actually got the boiled-egg reference?

All my literary allusions are wasted.

 

[Redfern]

Johnathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels", part one in the land of Lilliput where a civil war started over the "proper" way to crack open an egg.