16 thoughts on “Flat earth

  1. Trolls or believers; does it really matter? What matters is they’ve got your attention, and that’s something.

      • The human mind is fascinating for the positive things it can do, and for the level of understanding for which it is capable. Its capacity to be wrong is boring, and common enough in the Earth’s biosphere generally. Still, I suppose we must understand its various and sundry pathologies, lest they come upon us in the dark of night, or through the television networks and the “education” system.

  2. Free speech site in light of censorship on other platforms. You can say what you want. It’s p to the reader to decide validity.

  3. I recall that Art Bell did a Midnight in the Desert where he had a flat earther on, but I’m 99% sure it was Eugene Mirman trolling under a fake name.

  4. Pingback: Flat earth | Gunpon

  5. I am 99% sure the vast majority of them are trolls, in it to see how much attention they can get. They reinforce each others ideas and see how many people they can get to engage with them. They bloviate and theory craft just like mega-fans do with various fictional worlds, building out elaborate structures to explain various incongruities in the given world. They also fight exactly like various factions in those communities, with lots of infighting between proponents of mutually exclusive theories (after all, the more acceptance your theory has, the more people are willing to put time into it to flesh it out).

    There are a handful that believe it for real and their psychology probably runs towards “conspiracy as a reality coping mechanism.” Reality is hard, so believing that reality is not as it is helps dull the pain, and distracts them from real issues they would otherwise have to deal with.

    Either way the whole moment is frustrating as hell. They pop up all over legitimate discussion sites and can drown a conversion in redundant comments that have been addresses a million times before. For them it is not about making progress in a debate, it is about stalling things out and getting as many people to reply to you as possible. If they really were about finding understanding as most of them claim they would have abandoned the flat earth notion a long time ago. The shear level of the claimed conspiracy basically means half of the world population is in on it, and has perfectly maintained the fraud (with no leaks or continuity errors) on the other half. Hell, apparently even I am in on it, just because I had the gall to accurately report some at home citizen science that contradicted the theory.

  6. I expect you know this already, but scholars in the Medieval Ages knew well that the earth was spherical.

    • Hell, the ancient greeks knew that the earth was spherical. Eratosthenes calculated a rough estimate of its circumference circa 240BCE.

  7. I work with a man who believes in the flat Earth theory, along with the Queen of England owning Social Security, the Rothchilds starting the U.S. Civil War, etc.. He will turn the most ordinary conversation to these obsessions. My belief is the psychology is rooted in self aggrandizement, a need to see oneself as possessor of secrets ordinary (and thus stupid) people don’t; similar to involvement in religious or personality cults.

  8. IIRC, one of the proofs that earth is round is the inability to see the north star from south of the equator. There are others, but that’s probably the easiest.

    That said, such factual reality isn’t the point because it’s been decided, at least by some, that reality is neither factual nor consistent, but compliant with subjective criteria; in a limited sense, there’s little wrong with that as long as such subjective criteria is contained within defined parameters. IOW, if you wish to maintain a persistent belief in earth’s flatness based on your backyard in a Dallas suburb, there’s small opportunitty for harm. The problem we face is that we have allowed those so invested to venture well beyond their backyards and so easily contaminate a much larger domain.

    We have always had, and will always have, “crazy” in varying degrees. It’s only recently that we’ve given them unfettered access to the general population; I’m reluctant to blame the mentally infirm for being mentally infirm, depending, of course, on their method of such attainment, but it’s entirely our fault for allowing them a position on the stage.

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