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The Flat-Earth Conspiracy Theory

Argus Skyhawk

Argus Skyhawk

Commodore
Commodore
Have you guys ever seen some of the Flat Earth discussions on the internet? It's the conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories. Apparently in the last few years there has been a resurgence of the belief that the Earth's surface is flat, the North Pole is at the center, the outer rim is surrounded by a huge ice wall we know as "Antarctica" which holds in our oceans, outer space does not exist (It's just a dome with starry lights on it), and that gravity does not exist. Heavy things just fall because they have density, not because any invisible force pulls them (Yeah, I don't get that explanation either).

To be fair, I think a lot of the flat-earthers are just trolling, but more than a few of them appear to really believe the nonsense they are spouting. If anyone is interested in checking out what the flat-earthers are saying, it can be quite entertaining. Or really aggravating.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1276465849031989/


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Next they'll be saying the Earth is the centre of the Universe and the sun revolves around the Earth etc..
 
I came across this article the other day, discussing why Trump's supporters don't care that he lies:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...ence-of-blue-lies-may-explain-trumps-support/

The idea is that there's something called "blue lies" -- somewhere between white lies, which are told to help others ("My, what a... lovely tie!") and "black" lies, which are told to hurt others. Blue lies are meant to help members of your own group and hurt members of other groups. Sometimes the political or ideological positions people take are things they know to be untrue, but they assert them as truth anyway because it hurts the other side.

The thing about the flat-Earth theory is that nobody with any observational skills or intelligence at all actually believes it. Anyone who's traveled more than a few kilometers from home has seen familiar landmarks sink below the horizon. As such, intellectuals have long used the alleged belief in a flat Earth as a way of mocking the ignorant. The old legend about Columbus sailing to prove the Earth was round is the most famous example of this. Everyone already knew the Earth was round; the Ancient Greeks proved that two millennia ago. The only debate in Columbus's time was over just how big it was, and Columbus made his voyage because he believed the wrong answer, thinking that the Earth was smaller than it actually is and that he could therefore sail west and reach Asia before his crews ran out of food and water. The only reason he survived his ignorance is because the Americas happened to be in the way, but he went to his grave believing he'd actually reached the East Indies, which is why the lands he discovered ended up being called the West Indies -- to immortalize the fact that Columbus was an idiot.

But it suited writers like Washington Irving to recast Columbus as a mythic hero of the Enlightenment, whose discovery of the Americas disproved the folly of the hidebound institutions back in Europe. In order to mock those institutions, they invented the myth that they'd actually believed the Earth was flat -- something that was obviously untrue and only an absolute moron would actually believe. It was pure propaganda. Ironically, later generations forgot that and it came to be taught as factual history, even though it makes no sense if you actually think about it.

Anyway, because of the Columbus myth, belief in a flat Earth became a common metaphor for mocking any belief system that's scientifically ignorant or out of touch with objective reality, such as creationism or climate denial. So what I believe is that the anti-intellectual, anti-science faction in America has consciously chosen to embrace the pretense of believing in a flat Earth as a blue lie, a way of expressing their hostility to science and reason and the political causes aligned with them. They know, on some level, that it's not objectively true, but they don't care, because it's not about objectivity, it's about ideology and defiance. If the other side derides it, then they embrace it.
 
Regarding 'Flat-Earthers'...

JsZbgOa.jpg
 
What I don't get about Flat Earthers is that they show a map bordered by the Antarctic coast but ignore the fact that Ice Wall has to be, what, 60,000? 70,000? miles long according to their scale. The expected rebuttal is "How do you know it isn't?", the reply is, "Because it's been mapped at 11,000 miles," and the comeback is, "You can't trust their maps."

They're willing to take on faith that Antarctica is there and is shaped exactly the way the map says it is, but the size must be a lie (by almost an order of magnitude) just because???

I know, "lack of critical thinking" and all, but sheesh.
 
They have video from the ISS (International Space Station, for those ISIS trigger happy people). It clearly shows the Earth rotation as a sphere.

Not only HOW but WHY would every mission perpetuate a conspiracy to make the Earth appear spherical in all the video? The effort... the extensive network of people able to keep a secret... But even if you then look at physics, a flat disc would not work right in space as a celestial body. Space is not 2 dimensional! Celestial bodies such as stars, planets, moons, comets... are all spherical. We've launched so many satellites. Their very telemetry requires calculations based on an orbit around a sphere. Why would every agency, every scientist that deals with satellites all subscribe to a conspiracy to make the Earth appear spherical when it is flat? Makes absolutely no sense.

How any of these people can brush off such statements and perpetuate their myth, pretty much labels them as extreme dunces. Not very flattering.
 
Silvercrest said:
What I don't get about Flat Earthers is that they show a map bordered by the Antarctic coast but ignore the fact that Ice Wall has to be, what, 60,000? 70,000? miles long according to their scale. The expected rebuttal is "How do you know it isn't?", the reply is, "Because it's been mapped at 11,000 miles," and the comeback is, "You can't trust their maps."
Click to expand...

Like I said, I don't think it's about actual belief. I think it's about a conscious rejection of fact-based reasoning and a refusal to compromise with ideological opponents.

I encountered the same thing sometimes with bullies in grade school -- like this one taunter who smugly insisted that a membrane was a kind of brain, no matter how I tried to point out the differences in spelling and definition. Even though I unambiguously had the facts on my side, he stubbornly rejected them -- not because he actually believed his absurd claim, but because it annoyed me. It wasn't about what he believed, it was about refusing to yield in a clash of wills.

As a general tactic of abuse, this is called gaslighting -- deliberately asserting an untruth as a power play over one's victim, insisting upon it until they begin to question reality, or at least refusing to grant them a foothold in the argument. A clear example is in The Taming of the Shrew, where Petruchio "tames" Kate by getting her to agree that the Sun in the sky is actually the Moon, just because he says so. Getting her to agree to what they both know is a lie gives him power over her.

So pointing out the logical and factual holes in the flat-Earthers' arguments doesn't matter, because they aren't interested in those. It's not about objective fact to them, it's about never backing down from their opposition.
 
What's the best way of countering gaslighting-type arguments? Don't bother, ignore them, and hope that sense will prevail? If the behaviour is akin to bullying, the "ignore them" tactic never worked very well. Violence was sometimes the only option that seemed to work.
 
Asbo Zaprudder said:
What's the best way of countering gaslighting-type arguments? Don't bother, ignore them, and hope that sense will prevail? If the behaviour is akin to bullying, the "ignore them" tactic never worked very well. Violence was sometimes the only option that seemed to work.
Click to expand...
The Scientific American article posted above had some thoughts:

This hints at the solution, which starts with the idea that we must appeal to the best in one another. While that may sound awfully idealistic, the applications of that insight are very concrete. In a new paper in the journal Advances in Political Psychology, D. J. Flynn and Brendan Nyhan, both at Dartmouth College, along with Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter in England, summarize everything science knows about “false and unsupported beliefs about politics.”

They recommend a cluster of prosaic techniques, such as presenting information as imagery or graphics instead of text. The best combination appears to be graphics with stories. But this approach runs up against another scientific insight, one that will be frustrating to those who would oppose Trump’s lies: who tells the story matters. Study after study shows that people are much more likely to be convinced of a fact when it “originates from ideologically sympathetic sources,” as the paper says—and it helps a lot if those sources look and sound like them.

In short, it is white conservatives who must call out Trump’s lies if they are to be stopped.

What can the rest of us do in the meantime? We must make accuracy a goal, even when the facts do not fit our emotional reality. We start by verifying information, seeking out different and competing sources, cultivating a diverse social network, sharing information with integrity—and admitting when we fail. That is easy. But the most important and difficult thing we can do right now, this line of research suggests, is to put some critical distance between us and our groups—and so lessen the pressure to go along with the herd.
 
I've gotten into arguments with some on Facebook. They're serious. One claimed Earth being a globe was due to NASA making so much money off fake launches. Any photo or evidence of a curve is photoshopped. You can't fly over Antarctica, they claim there is a law preventing it and that the ice wall has armed guards on it, so that's why they can't confirm it. There's no gravity, we're electromagnetically drawn to the Earth.

It's all bullshit with excuses to explain why they can never confirm it. Any evidence of Earth being a globe is fake and comes from NASA. They claim to have other evidence but a lot of it is a bunch of debunked experiments from the 1800s where they misunderstood what they were doing. One that comes up a lot is about how light proves the Earth is flat, but the experiment was about aether, the fictional substance that was once believed to make up outer space.
 
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