3 ms·

I wouldn't call this distrust but an extreme level of skepticism. I think being Skpetic means you're not supposed to believe anything just like that and always

by amrrs 9y ago

I wouldn't call this distrust but an extreme level of skepticism. I think being Skpetic means you're not supposed to believe anything just like that and always be willing to see the other side of the story in fact believing the there is another side to this story. But like every philosophical and religious institutions getting extreme believers and followers, Science Skeptics have also reached that point. This is very much like an Atheist seeing Atheism as a religion itself. Being Skeptic also means you gotta be ready to fix your belief when you get an alternative that could seems rational or right, if you are not ready to do that, you are not a skeptic

xelxebar 9y ago
It seems more like Highly Selective Skepticism at best to me. Straight naïve skepticism in the "question everything" sense tends to converge around scientific consensus unless you start from several wildly different and confident priors; however, the Flat Earth rhetoric seems to be quite satisfied with handwavy phyiscs when it comes to the sanctified Flat Earth Dogma. Personally, I like reading FE stuff if only because it gets me thinking about "how do I know what I actually know". I like trying to think up simple experiments that test my underlying trust in standard scientific explanations. Like, if I deeply mistrust data that's not my own, how could I convince myself that space has no atmosphere to speak of?
joshvm 9y ago
There is certainly scepticism, but there is also a huge amount of distrust. A large amount of flat Earth theory revolves (hah) around conspiracy theories. The two are probably intertwined though. Flat Earth theory doesn't work unless you assume that everyone (except you) is in on it - the government is in on it, airlines and shipping companies are in on it, the people who make the jets are in on it, NASA (et al) has been conning us for decades, the 'scientists' have been publishing false information for centures, and on and on.

by amrrs 9y ago

xelxebar 9y ago

It seems more like Highly Selective Skepticism at best to me. Straight naïve skepticism in the "question everything" sense tends to converge around scientific consensus unless you start from several wildly different and confident priors; however, the Flat Earth rhetoric seems to be quite satisfied with handwavy phyiscs when it comes to the sanctified Flat Earth Dogma. Personally, I like reading FE stuff if only because it gets me thinking about "how do I know what I actually know". I like trying to think up simple experiments that test my underlying trust in standard scientific explanations. Like, if I deeply mistrust data that's not my own, how could I convince myself that space has no atmosphere to speak of?

joshvm 9y ago

There is certainly scepticism, but there is also a huge amount of distrust. A large amount of flat Earth theory revolves (hah) around conspiracy theories. The two are probably intertwined though. Flat Earth theory doesn't work unless you assume that everyone (except you) is in on it - the government is in on it, airlines and shipping companies are in on it, the people who make the jets are in on it, NASA (et al) has been conning us for decades, the 'scientists' have been publishing false information for centures, and on and on.