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I feel like the Flat Earth movement is, at it's core, a hack on the human mind. People want to feel important, and they want to feel in control. When the world
by mabbo 8y ago
I feel like the Flat Earth movement is, at it's core, a hack on the human mind.
People want to feel important, and they want to feel in control. When the world is so large and uncaring, so horrible and meaningless, and people are so small and unimportant, a good conspiracy theory lets me be someone important. There are evil people out there who did this all to us, and now I get to know the truth. I get to be in better control of my life. I can keep reading and researching and with each step I feel more in control. I've got hope now because I know what's really going on!
Anyone who challenges this worldview is not attacking my logical argument, they're attacking my emotional investment in this hope, this piece of control of life. When you challenge me, you aren't debating what is and isn't, you're trying to take away this one little bit of control I have. Why would you do that to me? Perhaps you've been brainwashed by the evil people, or maybe you're part of the evil people who did this to us all.
- raverbashing 8y ago"At its core" you're not wrong. And I was going to say "and where people think a quick google search can debunk specialists" which I wish I was wrong, but there are so many "specialists" out there that fail on the basic level it's not even funny. See all the climate deniers with PhD in their names, see all the "security specialists" that still think SSN and Mother's maiden name is worth anything for identification. The fear mongering of the past about Linux.
- jogundas 8y agoI would say that putting climate change and flat Earth into the same category is not totally fair. While the geometry of the Earth has been pretty clear for millennia and the local CO2 level can be accurately measured, many more subtle questions on climate change still don't have clear cut answers.
- eesmith 8y agoIf you want to make that argument, then be aware that many more subtle questions on the Earth's geometry still don't have clear cut answers. That is, as "geometry" becomes more and more refined, there are questions of why the the continents are they way they are (Wegener's theory wasn't rejected until the 1900s!), why certain volcanoes exist where they are, why certain rock formations exist where they are, etc. That's why geology is still an active field.
- tntn 8y agoThere are no subtle questions about whether or not the earth is flat. Continental drift and geology are very much irrelevant.
- eesmith 8y agoI did not think that "geometry" meant only "is the earth flat or not".
- repolfx 8y agoGeometry, geography and geology are different things. There are no outstanding subtle questions about the Earth's geometry as far as I'm aware. It's not a perfect sphere but we have literally mapped the surface of the Earth with detailed 3D point clouds - we can model the geometry down to near arbitrary levels of detail, and we do. Look at Google Earth! Questions about how the Earth got into its current state and why it looks the way it does are not geometric questions.
- everdev 8y agoI remember a teacher in the 80s asking the class when humans proved the Earth was round. The correct answer for her was when an astronaut took a picture from outer space. While I'm sure your theory fits for some, there's also some misunderstanding of science that can be at play too. For me, there's little difference between a flat earther and believing we didn't know there Earth was round until we took a picture. Sure, one knows the Earth is round and one doesn't, but they both are missing the foundation to know _why_ we know the Earth is round. If you can't explain why, you don't really understand it. And if you don't understand it, you're susceptible to misinformation.
- ninguem2 8y agoEratosthenes not only showed that the earth is round but computed its circumference around 200BC by measuring shadows at two different latitudes.
- mabbo 8y agoAs I've read it, he got a very close estimate, but only because he made two errors that happened to cancel each other out. As well, he didn't actually measure the shadows himself, but heard stories about there being no shadow at a specific city.
- bjoli 8y agoWhat he did was simple geometry, and in a way he was the right man in the right place. He heard that the sun was in zenith during the summer solstice ina certain town. He had a good runner measure the distance between Alexandria and that town and then measured the angle of the sun during the solistice in Alexandria (for simplicity, say it was 6 degrees). To get the full circle, just multiple by 60. 6th graders maths.
- paradoxparalax 8y agoIs a pity that we have lost "his" library by human stupidity. There could have been a lot more to know about the state-of-art of astrography at his time.
- wizardforhire 8y agoIt’s religious gaslighting, part of a larger narrative from the same people who brought us pro-life bs and intelligent design. For the dogmatic, science presents an existential threat and they lash out accordingly. Strip away spirituality and morality and religions at their core are about control. As their rhetoric evolves I’m reminded of the visulazition in Neuromancer of how ICE would evolve and change shapes to adjust to different attack vectors. Just as ICE had the ability to kill, so do these groups as they become more and more threatened... and unfortunately their voice has only been amplified as a result of the internet. It’ll be 2200 and we’ll still have people arguing this bs. So yeah, core hack on human minds, religions have thousands of years perfecting it.
- fsloth 8y ago"spirituality - morality - control..." I think one could add also social proof as fourth element. As the mass of believers grows the phenomenon becomes self perpetuating up to a point as people are wired to imitate things they percieve in others - were that a belief or skill. Control is partly caused by the group's self control, and partly by power hungry political figures at the "top" of the movement - leaders if the movement is organized, or just "thought leaders" if the movement is less organized.
- medion 8y agoWould it be fair to say the exact same thing about, say, Christianity, or any large scale religion? That, at it's core, it's a hack on the human mind, for people to feel important, to feel in control, when the world is so large and uncaring? Because to me, this burgeoning conspiracy culture (chemtrails, 5G, flat earth, etc etc) just feels like people utilising the same brain space that was once more used for religion...
- OscarTheGrinch 8y agoHe he, had to look up "5G conspiracy", I hadn't gone down that intellectual black hole before. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evmzv7/alt-right-5g-nationalized-network-google-deep-state-conspiracy https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evmzv7/alt-right-... For anyone interested in a sympathetic approach to debunking fraudulent belief systems I recommend Carl Sagan's excellent book: The Demon Haunted World. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World
- paradoxparalax 8y agoCarl Sagan was a Master at detecting malicious manure. Should be read with maximum attention. Specially the juicy chapter: "the art of detecting baloney" or something like this.
- javajosh 8y agoI believe both you and the GP are correct. Moreover it generalizes even further and includes, for example, the identity politics dogma of the modern left. These beliefs about systematic injustice are more than just rational arguments, they are themselves an important component to an emotional identity, a key to understanding a complex, suffering world, and hence a way to see possible solutions to that suffering. (Also we aren't the first to note the interesting rise of various secular replacements for religion! Personally, my favorite is Buddhism because it is the most humane way to embrace the void that religion leaves when it goes. )
- medion 8y ago
- M4v3R 8y agoI feel that you've nailed this PERFECTLY. These are also my thoughts after watching many hours of flat earth videos and talking in person to people who believe in flat earth. The discussion is always emotional and often ends with namecalling. It's really apparent that this is not only a discussion about facts, but something they are deeply invested in emotionally.
- repolfx 8y agoNobody wants to be a nobody who goes to work every day, makes PowerPoints that nobody cares about every day, goes home every day, watches TV every day, and in the end amounts to nothing special, nothing memorable, because there's nothing interesting or unusual in life - just boring stagnant nothingness, no moral framework to guide you to heroic status, day after day until you croak. It's certainly the case that identity politics meets the same need, which is why adherents are so aggressive and get so emotional when the ideology is attacked. If you aren't religious then how do you know if you're a good person or not? Christianity is at heart a methodology for convincing yourself you're a good person, and getting back on track when you sin. Following Christ's teachings makes you good, and if/when you fall to temptation and don't, you can pray for forgiveness and restore your goodness. Pretty simple. The concept of original sin gets added on because otherwise there might be people who claim they aren't sinners, and that would annoy those who are taking it seriously and trying to genuinely be better people. It's quicker to argue "in fact we are all sinners due to the crimes of our forefathers" than to drill into that person's life specifically and try to identify specific instances of sinning, which is high effort and likely to upset people. By claiming everyone is tainted by original sin, nobody can opt out of the purifying rituals of praying for forgiveness - probably a good idea for community cohesion. But if you're not religious and nobody else is, then there's an absence of any philosophical framework to tell you what makes a good person good, vs just a morally ambiguous nothingburger. Unless, of course, you sign up to the tenets of identity politics and feminism, in which case goodness comes from supporting minorities and - if you are a straight white man - admitting to your original sin and going through various highly visible purifying rituals that stand in for praying for forgiveness, like stating you will definitely try to hire and promote more women in future. In the end the moral needs it all meets is the same. Take away the underlying ideology by pointing out its contradictions and flaws, and people are at risk of losing the feeling of goodness that is so important. So of course they go on the attack.
- jamesfisher 8y agoI think there's a symmetry between conspiracy theorists and conspiracies. It's a kind of jealousy. They want to feel like they're in on a secret club. You can go one better than joining the Illuminati by instead joining the secret club that exposes them.
- javajosh 8y agoHaha I hadn't heard that one before, I like it! Interestingly this kind of one-upsmanship quite easily makes conspiracy theories self-fulfilling. Consider the secret club that defends against the Illuminati. Then, another secret club arises to defend against the excesses of the first club. Since they define themselves in opposition to the other, the second group may as well be the Illuminati, which justified the conspiracy theory of the first group all along! Lovely!
- csa 8y agoBoth groups are the Illuminati — that’s how we planned it (obviously).
- austincheney 8y agoControl is a faulty illusion resulting in really bad policy. Here is a video of explaining this in a popular cartoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StrbppmsZJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StrbppmsZJw Instead of exercising control rational people focus their energy on planning of attainment of a goal.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- spinach 8y agoI don't think it's about control as it is about conceit. I don't think human conceit can be underestimated. This really became clear to me from reading The Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. Humans want to believe everything is created for them, the universe was created for them, it's at the basis of a lot of the beliefs people hold. Then they want to cling to this belief of superiority. And because they came there through emotion, it's harder to reason them out of it. "You can't reason somebody out of a stance they weren't reasoned into in the first place. If you can't address the emotional pains and the emotional tumult and the emotionality that brought people to where they are and some of our worst ugliest moments, rationality isn't going to get them into a different spot than that." - Robert Sapolsky (https://youtu.be/61tChpN3lhY?t=2756 https://youtu.be/61tChpN3lhY?t=2756)
- coldtea 8y ago>I don't think it's about control as it is about conceit. I don't think human conceit can be underestimated. This really became clear to me from reading The Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. Humans want to believe everything is created for them, the universe was created for them, it's at the basis of a lot of the beliefs people hold. Then they want to cling to this belief of superiority. The thing is, for Carl Sagan and his proponents, proving others wrong is also their way to feeling superior. It's very common to the whole "sceptic", "mythbusting", etc crowd. It's like the verity of the fact doesn't matter, it's all about feeling better than others. In my theory, the "control group", a normal person, would say, ok, the earth is round, but wouldn't care to convince other people either way, nor to make it into some kind of campaign to get them to see the light.
- kthejoker2 8y agoCarl Sagan's proponents, perhaps, but not the man himself, who was exceptionally patient in the face of illogic and unscience.
- rollthehard6 8y agoI think Mark (Sherlock, League of Gentlemen, Doctor Who) Gatiss put it quite well - http://thebarofgold.tumblr.com/post/100646665073/gatissed-i-find-conspiracy-theories http://thebarofgold.tumblr.com/post/100646665073/gatissed-i-... The problem with this stuff is it's all very amusing and cute until you end up with people that irrational making decisions about millions of people's lives.
- walrus01 8y agoFeeling like you're the part of an elite group of people who have "discovered" the truth of a conspiracy theory makes people feel important and inflates their sense of self worth. Whether it's moon landing hoax, flat Earth, anti vaccines, whatever.
- rayiner 8y agoThis is a great explanation for anti-vaxxers as well.
- threatofrain 8y agoAnother possibility is that among the many beliefs a person has, focusing on belief perfection is "over-fitting" (as we are always accumulating more knowledge), and that some misfit beliefs just happen to be really socially detrimental despite that many kooky beliefs don't cause people to exercise violence or harm against their neighbors.