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America’s flat-Earth movement appears to be growing – Daily chart
- lawlessone 9y agoI blame facebook. Theres hundreds of these flat earth groups and other junk about vaccines and "gang stalking" . It's all completely unchecked filter bubbles.
- dragonwriter 9y agoFilter bubbles alone cannot explain an expanding movement (they can explain solidifying and radicalizing within a fixed-size movement, but not growth of the movement.)
- akuji1993 9y agoSite that I haven't visited in two months immediately hits me with a pay wall because I've "reached my article limit". Nice. The issue itself is, of course, ridiculous. I'd really like to read the actual article, but apparently, I'm not.
- miiiiiike 9y agoThere’s very little content or context in this article.
- nerbert 9y agoIt's just a comment of trends on google search.
- xelxebar 9y agoIn all fairness though, I don't have good reasons to believe most of consensus science other than appeals to authoritative sources. It gets me wondering how I could emperically test the things I supposedly know.
- krapp 9y ago> In all fairness though, I don't have good reasons to believe most of consensus science other than appeals to authoritative sources. In all fairness, flat-earthers do the same thing, they just substitute appeals to authority with denials of authority. Blanket skepticism no more intellectually valid than blind faith. Also, ironically, while there may be many scientific truths which are difficult for the lay person to understand and verify, the roundness of the earth isn't one of them[0]. [0]https://www.popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round https://www.popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round
- xelxebar 9y agoThat popsci article should really be "10 pieces of evidence that are consistent with the round Earth model". Most of them aren't super easy to reproduce either. > Blanket skepticism no more intellectually valid than blind faith. This sounds vaguely like a moral judgement to me. What does "valid" mean here? I find it less inciteful, and more useful, to take a pragmatist approach. Was Newton wrong and Einstein right? Even if we call Newtonian mechanics "wrong" it's certainly super useful. In the same way, thinking of the Earth as flat is pretty darn useful in daily life. I'd bet a pretty penny that almost everybody operates with an implicit "flat Earth" model in their head for mundane tasks. On the other hand, the Round Earth model is probably super useful to sattelite engineers. If the Flat Earthers start doing cool space science or something, I'm more than happy to encourage them.
- krapp 9y agoNewtonian mechanics wasn't wrong, it wasn't right enough at certain scales - AFAIK, it correctly predicted the orbits of all of the planets except Mercury, whose proximity to the sun was close enough that relativity had to be taken into account to explain it. However, flat Earthers aren't "wrong" in the same way that Newton was, they don't simply have an alternative model of reality which is useful in its own peculiar way. Newtonian mechanics and Einstein don't contradict each other, and one doesn't override the other. Flat Earthism, meanwhile, is like the crackpot who denies all this newfangled quantum timespace relativity mumbo jumbo and refuses to believe in anything but Newton, because Newton is simple and obvious. It doesn't refine and augment existing knowledge, it denies its validity altogether. Thinking of the earth as being flat at human scale is simple and obvious. Thinking of the earth in its entirety as being flat is simple and obvious and wrong in ways that even the ancients could figure out. There's no domain in which that's useful.
- exlurker 9y agoNeil deGrasse Tyson weighs in on this: https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/934906611088359426 https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/934906611088359426
- joshbaptiste 9y agoFlat earthers have an answer for every scientific question posed. Now suppose NASA Is faking every video etc.. There's no way Americas rivals Soviets, North Korea etc.. who have been or have satellites in space would collude with America to hide such information.
- derekp7 9y agoBut then they come back and try to say that the Russians are trying to tell them the truth, but the information is getting suppressed before it gets to them (after all, how many of them have personally spoke with a leader in a foreign government, and if so, how do they know that the person they spoke to wasn't a fake planted by the "establishment"?) I still think that this movement is a big gag, that 99% of the members are in on (something like the Church of the SubGenius).
- redblacktree 9y agoNot to mention that there is absolutely no incentive to fake round-Earth photos. What could anyone possibly have to gain from that?
- smashu 9y agoAmerica’s flat-Earth movement will soon become a global movement (LOL)
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago> "If schools were better at teaching analytical thinking, that might reduce the appeal of conspiracy theories. And it would not hurt if governments were more open and trustworthy." Two big if's.