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> I’ve always been mildly obsessed with the flat-earth truth movement, the sprawling network of people utterly convinced that... I can't help but feel a little

> I’ve always been mildly obsessed with the flat-earth truth movement, the sprawling network of people utterly convinced that... I can't help but feel a little bad for anyone who believes that flat-earthers are genuine. I've pretty much convinced myself that flat-earth groups are more like speculative fanfiction archives than churches. The people who come up with all of these theories and defenses do it because thinking about these things is fun, not because they believe it. And they feed the perceptions of true belief because that's fun too. And they form these little communities for the same reasons that people writing new fan stories about Harry Potter do, because it's more fun to do it with other people. The author here isn't uncovering some secret truth about the world so much as getting suckered into the drama, feeding it, and providing further joy and incentive to the players. And here I am possibly getting suckered into the author's drama. Maybe the author is just one of the players and doesn't actually believe that they believe.

comstock 10y ago
I've met someone who claimed he believed in the flat earth theory. I see no reason to believe he was misleading me. Not massively educated, not really interested in analytical games. I've met people who believed they could communicate with aliens by meditating under pyramids made of steal pipes. I've met people who believed that putting a crystal on a bottle of water will make it stay fresh longer. That they could charge batteries with their mind. Not sure what kind of proof you might want to be sure these people really believe what they say. And I'm not sure how meaningful that statement is. I never thought they were playing the mind of fan-fic games you suggest though. My observations lead me to believe people in general believe some pretty weird things.
Diederich 10y ago
Quite a few flat-earthers really do believe it, and they're generally not dummies. I've engaged in open-minded and friendly conversations with flat-earth individuals off and on for quite a few years. It's fascinating stuff; many are pretty chill and willing to chat if you go in with a positive affect. I think if you graphed the total number of people who truly believe the earth is flat compared to the number of people who profess that just for 'troll' purposes, the latter group would be growing rapidly, and the former growing very slowly. Why do I do this? Because the older I get, the more I realize that all of us, everyone, make a lot of choices every day that we think are based on logic and reason, but that are actually based on irrational experience and emotions. I think we tend to back-fill with logic and reason as much as we can. Many people get more things 'right' than others, but what's 'right' is damn hard to know, isn't it? This might seem like a wallow in all kinds of intellectual relativism, but it's really not. We should all strive for logical and rational thought and decision making, yet at the same time realize that we are all still fundamentally driven by forces that are quite the opposite, and that drive is largely invisible to us.
bastawhiz 10y ago
I think if you spend an afternoon watching their YouTube videos, you'll come away feeling like they really do believe what they're saying. Certainly some of them are weaving elaborate fan fictions of reality, but many truly believe what they're saying. Part of it is a lack of education about the natural world, part of it is mental illness.

comstock 10y ago

I've met someone who claimed he believed in the flat earth theory. I see no reason to believe he was misleading me. Not massively educated, not really interested in analytical games. I've met people who believed they could communicate with aliens by meditating under pyramids made of steal pipes. I've met people who believed that putting a crystal on a bottle of water will make it stay fresh longer. That they could charge batteries with their mind. Not sure what kind of proof you might want to be sure these people really believe what they say. And I'm not sure how meaningful that statement is. I never thought they were playing the mind of fan-fic games you suggest though. My observations lead me to believe people in general believe some pretty weird things.

Diederich 10y ago

Quite a few flat-earthers really do believe it, and they're generally not dummies. I've engaged in open-minded and friendly conversations with flat-earth individuals off and on for quite a few years. It's fascinating stuff; many are pretty chill and willing to chat if you go in with a positive affect. I think if you graphed the total number of people who truly believe the earth is flat compared to the number of people who profess that just for 'troll' purposes, the latter group would be growing rapidly, and the former growing very slowly. Why do I do this? Because the older I get, the more I realize that all of us, everyone, make a lot of choices every day that we think are based on logic and reason, but that are actually based on irrational experience and emotions. I think we tend to back-fill with logic and reason as much as we can. Many people get more things 'right' than others, but what's 'right' is damn hard to know, isn't it? This might seem like a wallow in all kinds of intellectual relativism, but it's really not. We should all strive for logical and rational thought and decision making, yet at the same time realize that we are all still fundamentally driven by forces that are quite the opposite, and that drive is largely invisible to us.

bastawhiz 10y ago

I think if you spend an afternoon watching their YouTube videos, you'll come away feeling like they really do believe what they're saying. Certainly some of them are weaving elaborate fan fictions of reality, but many truly believe what they're saying. Part of it is a lack of education about the natural world, part of it is mental illness.