<story><title>In defense of flat earthers (2020)</title><url>http://danboykis.com/posts/flat-earth/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>AlexTWithBeard</author><text>Belief is a keyword here. Most of &amp;quot;spherical earthers&amp;quot;, alas, also believe what they are told. They happened to pick the right set of beliefs - kudos to them - but there&amp;#x27;s no critical thinking whatsoever.&lt;p&gt;We watched some time ago a why-do-we-think-earth-is-flat movie with friends and I asked: okay, so what&amp;#x27;s wrong with their explanation? For an extra credit: how a layman like me can check what is the shape of the earth?&lt;p&gt;And suddenly it turns out that these questions are a bit harder than it seems.</text></item><item><author>titzer</author><text>This article is not a defense of flat earthers, it&amp;#x27;s an explanation for why they exist (that the educational system failed to teach them critical thinking).&lt;p&gt;Even then, I still do not think that&amp;#x27;s really it. Flat earthers are proof that some people will just obstinately believe in complete and utter horseshit. I&amp;#x27;ve seen dozens of flat earth videos. These people do not listen to reason; they didn&amp;#x27;t reason themselves &lt;i&gt;into&lt;/i&gt; the position and you cannot reason them &lt;i&gt;out of&lt;/i&gt; it. The flat earthers doing the &amp;quot;experiments&amp;quot; keep coming up with reasons to keep on believing, even when their experiments are so blinkered and janky they show either nothing at all or that they are, in fact, wrong. (I recommend &amp;quot;Behind the Curve&amp;quot; to see some of these people in action.) Some might just get bored and move on to something else, but mark my words, some people are just seriously &lt;i&gt;stupid&lt;/i&gt;[1] and will keep right on believing absurd crap to their graves, on faith alone. The universe will keep smacking them in the face with being wrong, but they&amp;#x27;ll only get angrier. Hopefully they get tired before they get dangerous.&lt;p&gt;[1] I mean something specific about &lt;i&gt;stupid&lt;/i&gt;. Not just wrong, not just ignorant, but actively and self-assuredly wrong, often to their own detriment. Beware stupid people in large numbers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TameAntelope</author><text>But here&amp;#x27;s the problem with this logic; I&amp;#x27;ve never been presented with &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; credible arguments that suggest Earth is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; round, and in fact have been able to use this knowledge of Earth&amp;#x27;s roundness to understand and accurately predict facts in my real life on a semi-regular basis.&lt;p&gt;* When I see my flight plan, I understand why it&amp;#x27;s curved.&lt;p&gt;* When I see clouds that a radar says should be a certain distance away, I understand what makes me able to see them.&lt;p&gt;* Where weather is moving, how it&amp;#x27;s moving, and why certain weather patterns even exist at all.&lt;p&gt;* When I see a landmass on water I can accurately guess how far away it is, and I can understand why moving even a small amount upwards lets me see so much more (and why it was such an advantage on ships to have a vantage point only 20 to 30 feet up in the air).&lt;p&gt;* How stars move in the night sky is predictable.&lt;p&gt;* Why the &amp;quot;north&amp;quot; star exists and is accurate as a directional indicator.&lt;p&gt;* Where constellations are, and how they&amp;#x27;re different depending on what latitude I&amp;#x27;m currently observing the night sky from.&lt;p&gt;* The fact that tides exist, and how they work.&lt;p&gt;* I understand how and what satellites are, when I can see them, and I can predict when I&amp;#x27;m going to lose signal from them given certain circumstances.&lt;p&gt;* Every other planet I&amp;#x27;ve observed is round.  The moon is round.  The sun is round.&lt;p&gt;None of this works if Earth isn&amp;#x27;t round, and that&amp;#x27;s just off the top of my head.  The point here is that so many things stop making sense if you don&amp;#x27;t accept the fact that the Earth is round, and so you&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;constantly&lt;/i&gt; failing to predict or understand a whole host of problems that, yes, do come up in my daily life.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t about &amp;quot;happening to pick the right set of beliefs&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s about matching what you&amp;#x27;re told with what you&amp;#x27;re observing and noting a singular and profound consistency across disciplines, uniformly converging on one single, basic fact; the Earth is round.</text></comment>
<story><title>In defense of flat earthers (2020)</title><url>http://danboykis.com/posts/flat-earth/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>AlexTWithBeard</author><text>Belief is a keyword here. Most of &amp;quot;spherical earthers&amp;quot;, alas, also believe what they are told. They happened to pick the right set of beliefs - kudos to them - but there&amp;#x27;s no critical thinking whatsoever.&lt;p&gt;We watched some time ago a why-do-we-think-earth-is-flat movie with friends and I asked: okay, so what&amp;#x27;s wrong with their explanation? For an extra credit: how a layman like me can check what is the shape of the earth?&lt;p&gt;And suddenly it turns out that these questions are a bit harder than it seems.</text></item><item><author>titzer</author><text>This article is not a defense of flat earthers, it&amp;#x27;s an explanation for why they exist (that the educational system failed to teach them critical thinking).&lt;p&gt;Even then, I still do not think that&amp;#x27;s really it. Flat earthers are proof that some people will just obstinately believe in complete and utter horseshit. I&amp;#x27;ve seen dozens of flat earth videos. These people do not listen to reason; they didn&amp;#x27;t reason themselves &lt;i&gt;into&lt;/i&gt; the position and you cannot reason them &lt;i&gt;out of&lt;/i&gt; it. The flat earthers doing the &amp;quot;experiments&amp;quot; keep coming up with reasons to keep on believing, even when their experiments are so blinkered and janky they show either nothing at all or that they are, in fact, wrong. (I recommend &amp;quot;Behind the Curve&amp;quot; to see some of these people in action.) Some might just get bored and move on to something else, but mark my words, some people are just seriously &lt;i&gt;stupid&lt;/i&gt;[1] and will keep right on believing absurd crap to their graves, on faith alone. The universe will keep smacking them in the face with being wrong, but they&amp;#x27;ll only get angrier. Hopefully they get tired before they get dangerous.&lt;p&gt;[1] I mean something specific about &lt;i&gt;stupid&lt;/i&gt;. Not just wrong, not just ignorant, but actively and self-assuredly wrong, often to their own detriment. Beware stupid people in large numbers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jakelazaroff</author><text>If you end your sample at N=1, sure, it might seem like “spherical earthers” just happened to pick the right set of beliefs by chance. But if you also consider things like 5G microchips, and chemtrails, and the moon landing, somehow the “spherical earthers” &lt;i&gt;consistently&lt;/i&gt; pick the right beliefs.&lt;p&gt;Sure, there’s no critical thinking for a lot of it, in the same way that I don’t think critically about all the physics and engineering before I step on an airplane. The entire point of living in a society is that you &lt;i&gt;don’t&lt;/i&gt; have to do everything yourself — you can outsource a lot of that critical thinking to other people who (are paid to) care more than you. You can just go with the flow and actually have a &lt;i&gt;pretty good&lt;/i&gt; track record for believing the right things.</text></comment>