4 ms·

While I don't believe the earth is flat, i haven't done any real research, and i assume that's true for most of the people laughing at flat earthers. Of course

While I don't believe the earth is flat, i haven't done any real research, and i assume that's true for most of the people laughing at flat earthers. Of course i believe in global warming, though ive never read a single paper / study on it. Of course i believe in evolution, i went to a school where they told me to believe it. Am I any more intelligent than a flat earther, or am i just a product of where i was born?

OscarCunningham 8y ago
Your nature is to trust the consensus, whereas flat-eathers' nature is to distrust it. Overall I'd expect this to lead to you having more accurate beliefs than them, since even though the consensus is sometimes wrong it's usually right.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  While there are issues with blindingly trust the consensus, I think that for most things you're better at least not being far from it (Not to say the 'science' people are always right, but vaccines were a revolution, GW/CC relies fundamentally on a few, very verifiable premises and FE makes as much sense as saying the sky is red)
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  For the record, I believe the earth is a sphere and that evolution explains the origin of all life on this planet. That being said, in my opinion, being distrustful of the scientific consensus in a given field is a reasonable stance, in and of itself (though possibly not, once you start weighing evidence). The fields of nutrition and exercise science are both fields where distrusting the scientific consensus is, in my opinion, the best epistemological stance. The reason being that researchers in these fields are making diet and exercise recommendations that cannot possibly be supported by the research they are doing. If you dig into these fields, you’ll find that the reason this happens is that scientists are just as susceptible to groupthink and politicization as any other group of people.
  - aaron695 8y ago
    > evolution explains the origin of all life on this planet. Not true. Cows are breed intelligently. They are intelligent design. Culture has changed the human genes. Humans have molded the environment/life on this planet. It's "possible" life on Earth came from Mars or vice versa. There seems there might be evidence parents can pass on traits to children outside of "evolution". There are other theories outside of Darwins evolution theory, like "Jump theory", although unlikely. To be honest, we seem to be re-defining evolution like we do what is AI.
deleted 8y ago
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wand3r 8y ago
The difference is that even though I didn’t study bird species on the galapagos I did have the high level concept of evolution explained to me. Pieces of evidence were presented and it made a pretty cohesive narrative in my mind and it is the scientific consensus of experts in the field. No aspect if flatearth theory hits this for me. Its not scientifically accepted, doesn’t make sense to me at all and there seems to be no evidence; flatearthers just reject all evidence presented
KallDrexx 8y ago
> While I don't believe the earth is flat, i haven't done any real research, and i assume that's true for most of the people laughing at flat earthers. The difference is that flat earthers have to go through such massive logical contortions to support their claims. Not to mention the idea that every technology company and government is coordinated on a massive cooperative conspiracy without any substantial leaks is laughable. I'm not sure what research you are referring to. There's plenty of research I have available to me about astronomy and past endeavors to not only prove that the Earth is round, that people have been off the planet and that we have explored the galaxy enough to prove the earth is not flat. The only research I have not done is personally gone to space. So are you saying that it's not real research unless I go to space and see for myself?
- cbluth 8y ago
  > logical contortions That's good, I might use it
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- skate22 8y ago
  Sounds like youre ahead of myself and many others if you've read existing research & formed your own organic oppinions from that. Im not saying people have to conduct the research themselves, though kudos to those who do
- mchahn 8y ago
  > are you saying that it's not real research unless I go to space and see for myself? I saw it for myself on a Concorde flight. The altitude was so high the horizon was bent. Not just a little but a lot.
another-one-off 8y ago
Flat earthing is maybe a little more extreme than I am comfortable with, but it is easy to see how the same psychological mechanisms that produce flat earthers would also produce some truly original research. The obvious parallel is the old story about hot water freezing faster than cold water [1]. An experimental character who notices this and gets laughed down by the vast and overwhelming majority of people who who only agree with consensus facts could logically end up in a /weird/ mental space. They'd basically discover that they are surrounded by people who don't assess the facts directly, but do so through a lens of other people's opinions. It wouldn't take much to push them into conspiracy theories - clearly no-one around them is dealing directly with reality. Any who didn't take to conspiracies would probably be grounded enough to drive real change in the world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect
- perl4ever 8y ago
  The temperature lines on the chart cross over, so at some point, if you test this, your samples will be at the same temperature however you define it. If one becomes frozen faster, then there must be a difference which by definition was not temperature. There was neither a hot nor a cold sample at that point, so it cannot be true that "hot freezes faster". It's not that the data is necessarily wrong, it's that the interpretation isn't coherent.
throwawayjava 8y ago
> i haven't done any real research You've seen pictures of the earth from orbit, right? You probably mean that you haven't engaged in all of the crazy theories and arguments put forth by flat-earthers. But that's doesn't make your very simple observation-based opinion any less justified. Direct observation can and should eliminate the need for lots of hemming and hawing. > Of course i believe in global warming, though ive never read a single paper / study on it. There are many accessible descriptions of global warming and the evidence for it written for different levels (uneducated/child; HS-level; university-level). > Of course i believe in evolution, i went to a school where they told me to believe it. That sounds like a bad experience, and maybe that explains some flat earthing. When I was in school we were presented with a lot of concrete evidence for the evolution of the species, and Darwin's original was even required reading.
olavk 8y ago
> Of course i believe in evolution, i went to a school where they told me to believe it. Can I ask in what country you went to school? Sounds like a strange approach to teaching biology.
mywittyname 8y ago
A good science education is supposed to give you enough background to understand why claims are likely true. You don't need to be an expert to understand the reasons why these are factual. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, meaning it prevents the Earth from radiating heat captured from the sun. We know this for many reasons, one of which is that Venus has an atmosphere that's high in CO2 and it's the hottest planet in our solar system: over 800 degrees F. We know that burning fossil fuels puts CO2 in the atmosphere and we can use CO2 levels in glaciers to measure historical CO2 levels. Given this, the statement that Earth's temperature increase can be contributed to pollution makes sense. We know that plants and animals can change their physiology over time through breeding. If someone continuously inter-breeds the largest dogs from packs, then over several generations, the average size of these dogs will increase. Expanding this idea from 10s of generations to millions of generations, it's clear that these genetic changes could get diverse enough to create a completely different animal. Given this, the process of evolution makes plenty of sense. Believing these things doesn't make you more intelligent. However, it does demonstrate that you were better educated and developed better critical thinking skills as a result. The definition of critical thinking is being willing to reject an assertion if the known evidence doesn't support it.
- deleted 8y ago
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grawprog 8y ago
Well...I dunno if this counts as scientific research but i've been high enough to see the Earth's curvature on the horizon. I've personally seen evolution happen in my kitchen. I created a generation of fruit flies that developed no wings because they lived in rotting garbage fluid I like to dub the devil's breakfast tea. Or at least that's my theory. They looked weird as fuck...I had no idea what they were at first. But there were hundreds of flies living under this garbage bag in brownish reddish ooze with no wings. They were definitely fruit flies. The bags had been there about two maybe three years by that time. And I spend enough time outside that there's definitely some kind of weird climate shit going on...I mean palm trees grow fine where I live now...they certainly never used to.
mcphage 8y ago
> While I don't believe the earth is flat, i haven't done any real research, and i assume that's true for most of the people laughing at flat earthers. I've gone up in a high building and used binoculars, which... honestly, is sufficient.
dogma1138 8y ago
You’ve never seen the horizon on the ocean, experienced time zones or flew cross continents on an airplane? And if you really want to do “research” you can disprove the flat earth theory with a buddy a few 100 miles away, 2 sticks a phone call and some sunshine.
a-saleh 8y ago
I think the smug "I am probably more intelligent than them" comes from seeing that the mental model, even though it is mostly product of my up-bringing, requires less mental energy than theirs. I.e. I had many friends in evangelical circles when I was younger, and "Is evolution a thing" was a topic of debate. But when somebody started to go through his/her convoluted head-canon to have history line-up with creation 6000 years ago, global flood as it happened in Noah's story and God somehow forbidding the process of speciation I can't help myself think that my model is just better.
perl4ever 8y ago
Maybe you shouldn't believe in that stuff if you genuinely never noticed any of the evidence. I've seen eclipses of the moon. I've traveled through time zones. I've been far enough south to see different stars. I've seen photos of Antarctica and the entire earth from space. I've seen data on temperatures and CO2. I've read the Voyage of the Beagle.

OscarCunningham 8y ago

Your nature is to trust the consensus, whereas flat-eathers' nature is to distrust it. Overall I'd expect this to lead to you having more accurate beliefs than them, since even though the consensus is sometimes wrong it's usually right.

raverbashing 8y ago
While there are issues with blindingly trust the consensus, I think that for most things you're better at least not being far from it (Not to say the 'science' people are always right, but vaccines were a revolution, GW/CC relies fundamentally on a few, very verifiable premises and FE makes as much sense as saying the sky is red)
toasterlovin 8y ago
For the record, I believe the earth is a sphere and that evolution explains the origin of all life on this planet. That being said, in my opinion, being distrustful of the scientific consensus in a given field is a reasonable stance, in and of itself (though possibly not, once you start weighing evidence). The fields of nutrition and exercise science are both fields where distrusting the scientific consensus is, in my opinion, the best epistemological stance. The reason being that researchers in these fields are making diet and exercise recommendations that cannot possibly be supported by the research they are doing. If you dig into these fields, you’ll find that the reason this happens is that scientists are just as susceptible to groupthink and politicization as any other group of people.
- aaron695 8y ago
  > evolution explains the origin of all life on this planet. Not true. Cows are breed intelligently. They are intelligent design. Culture has changed the human genes. Humans have molded the environment/life on this planet. It's "possible" life on Earth came from Mars or vice versa. There seems there might be evidence parents can pass on traits to children outside of "evolution". There are other theories outside of Darwins evolution theory, like "Jump theory", although unlikely. To be honest, we seem to be re-defining evolution like we do what is AI.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

wand3r 8y ago

The difference is that even though I didn’t study bird species on the galapagos I did have the high level concept of evolution explained to me. Pieces of evidence were presented and it made a pretty cohesive narrative in my mind and it is the scientific consensus of experts in the field. No aspect if flatearth theory hits this for me. Its not scientifically accepted, doesn’t make sense to me at all and there seems to be no evidence; flatearthers just reject all evidence presented

KallDrexx 8y ago

> While I don't believe the earth is flat, i haven't done any real research, and i assume that's true for most of the people laughing at flat earthers. The difference is that flat earthers have to go through such massive logical contortions to support their claims. Not to mention the idea that every technology company and government is coordinated on a massive cooperative conspiracy without any substantial leaks is laughable. I'm not sure what research you are referring to. There's plenty of research I have available to me about astronomy and past endeavors to not only prove that the Earth is round, that people have been off the planet and that we have explored the galaxy enough to prove the earth is not flat. The only research I have not done is personally gone to space. So are you saying that it's not real research unless I go to space and see for myself?

cbluth 8y ago
> logical contortions That's good, I might use it
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
skate22 8y ago
Sounds like youre ahead of myself and many others if you've read existing research & formed your own organic oppinions from that. Im not saying people have to conduct the research themselves, though kudos to those who do
mchahn 8y ago
> are you saying that it's not real research unless I go to space and see for myself? I saw it for myself on a Concorde flight. The altitude was so high the horizon was bent. Not just a little but a lot.

another-one-off 8y ago

Flat earthing is maybe a little more extreme than I am comfortable with, but it is easy to see how the same psychological mechanisms that produce flat earthers would also produce some truly original research. The obvious parallel is the old story about hot water freezing faster than cold water [1]. An experimental character who notices this and gets laughed down by the vast and overwhelming majority of people who who only agree with consensus facts could logically end up in a /weird/ mental space. They'd basically discover that they are surrounded by people who don't assess the facts directly, but do so through a lens of other people's opinions. It wouldn't take much to push them into conspiracy theories - clearly no-one around them is dealing directly with reality. Any who didn't take to conspiracies would probably be grounded enough to drive real change in the world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect

perl4ever 8y ago
The temperature lines on the chart cross over, so at some point, if you test this, your samples will be at the same temperature however you define it. If one becomes frozen faster, then there must be a difference which by definition was not temperature. There was neither a hot nor a cold sample at that point, so it cannot be true that "hot freezes faster". It's not that the data is necessarily wrong, it's that the interpretation isn't coherent.

throwawayjava 8y ago

> i haven't done any real research You've seen pictures of the earth from orbit, right? You probably mean that you haven't engaged in all of the crazy theories and arguments put forth by flat-earthers. But that's doesn't make your very simple observation-based opinion any less justified. Direct observation can and should eliminate the need for lots of hemming and hawing. > Of course i believe in global warming, though ive never read a single paper / study on it. There are many accessible descriptions of global warming and the evidence for it written for different levels (uneducated/child; HS-level; university-level). > Of course i believe in evolution, i went to a school where they told me to believe it. That sounds like a bad experience, and maybe that explains some flat earthing. When I was in school we were presented with a lot of concrete evidence for the evolution of the species, and Darwin's original was even required reading.

olavk 8y ago

> Of course i believe in evolution, i went to a school where they told me to believe it. Can I ask in what country you went to school? Sounds like a strange approach to teaching biology.

mywittyname 8y ago

A good science education is supposed to give you enough background to understand why claims are likely true. You don't need to be an expert to understand the reasons why these are factual. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, meaning it prevents the Earth from radiating heat captured from the sun. We know this for many reasons, one of which is that Venus has an atmosphere that's high in CO2 and it's the hottest planet in our solar system: over 800 degrees F. We know that burning fossil fuels puts CO2 in the atmosphere and we can use CO2 levels in glaciers to measure historical CO2 levels. Given this, the statement that Earth's temperature increase can be contributed to pollution makes sense. We know that plants and animals can change their physiology over time through breeding. If someone continuously inter-breeds the largest dogs from packs, then over several generations, the average size of these dogs will increase. Expanding this idea from 10s of generations to millions of generations, it's clear that these genetic changes could get diverse enough to create a completely different animal. Given this, the process of evolution makes plenty of sense. Believing these things doesn't make you more intelligent. However, it does demonstrate that you were better educated and developed better critical thinking skills as a result. The definition of critical thinking is being willing to reject an assertion if the known evidence doesn't support it.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

grawprog 8y ago

Well...I dunno if this counts as scientific research but i've been high enough to see the Earth's curvature on the horizon. I've personally seen evolution happen in my kitchen. I created a generation of fruit flies that developed no wings because they lived in rotting garbage fluid I like to dub the devil's breakfast tea. Or at least that's my theory. They looked weird as fuck...I had no idea what they were at first. But there were hundreds of flies living under this garbage bag in brownish reddish ooze with no wings. They were definitely fruit flies. The bags had been there about two maybe three years by that time. And I spend enough time outside that there's definitely some kind of weird climate shit going on...I mean palm trees grow fine where I live now...they certainly never used to.

mcphage 8y ago

> While I don't believe the earth is flat, i haven't done any real research, and i assume that's true for most of the people laughing at flat earthers. I've gone up in a high building and used binoculars, which... honestly, is sufficient.

dogma1138 8y ago

You’ve never seen the horizon on the ocean, experienced time zones or flew cross continents on an airplane? And if you really want to do “research” you can disprove the flat earth theory with a buddy a few 100 miles away, 2 sticks a phone call and some sunshine.

a-saleh 8y ago

I think the smug "I am probably more intelligent than them" comes from seeing that the mental model, even though it is mostly product of my up-bringing, requires less mental energy than theirs. I.e. I had many friends in evangelical circles when I was younger, and "Is evolution a thing" was a topic of debate. But when somebody started to go through his/her convoluted head-canon to have history line-up with creation 6000 years ago, global flood as it happened in Noah's story and God somehow forbidding the process of speciation I can't help myself think that my model is just better.

perl4ever 8y ago

Maybe you shouldn't believe in that stuff if you genuinely never noticed any of the evidence. I've seen eclipses of the moon. I've traveled through time zones. I've been far enough south to see different stars. I've seen photos of Antarctica and the entire earth from space. I've seen data on temperatures and CO2. I've read the Voyage of the Beagle.