9 ms·

We should respect people questioning science as long as they are doing it in good faith and are showing willingness to learn. We should even respect flat earthe

We should respect people questioning science as long as they are doing it in good faith and are showing willingness to learn. We should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers. They improve rigour and identify blindspots.

amelius 5y ago
I would respect flat earthers if they published in peer-reviewed journals.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  >I would respect flat earthers if they published in peer-reviewed journals. Except their peers would reinforce the anti-scientific superstitions rather than reject them. Not altogether differently than the way some recognized journals publish less-scientifically-sound output due to the credentials of the contributors rather than any conclusive results to report. Or more commonly than ever, complete non-progress being wildly exaggerated as if it was an actual finding. Even though there's more PhDs each year, you have to be more careful than ever what you want to regard as a science any more.
mmastrac 5y ago
> We should even respect flat earthers You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any fruitful debate
- thethirdone 5y ago
  Literacy does not imply believing in the round earth. Proving the earth is round to yourself without trusting outside influences is not a trivial pursuit.
  - nitwit005 5y ago
    It's much harder to prove the Earth is flat. You run into really basic questions like, where is the edge, and why does no one find it? The theory only "holds together", with the assumption that everyone that works in any field even vaguely related to travel or communication is part of a conspiracy to hide the truth.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    These days all you need is someone with a phone and a stick in another country to perform Erastosthenes's experiment, right?
    - 0x7E3 5y ago
      Doesn't Erastosthenes's experiment merely allow you to calculate the size of the earth if you already accept that it is spherical? As I understand the experiment it does not (nor was it meant to) prove that the earth is a sphere.
      - mhh__ 5y ago
        Can flat earth explain the phenomenon in a parsimonious way?
        0x7E3 5y ago
        It's probably going to depend on what you mean by 'the phenomenon'. Do you mean that the sun casts shadows at different angles at the same time of day based on your location? Then yes, it absolutely does. In fact some believers in the flat earth theory use the experiment to establish the distance of the sun from the earth. If you mean something else, then I have no idea. I'm not a proponent of the flat earth theory, nor am I a mind reader. The experiment you proposed does not disprove the theory of a flat earth though, parsimoniously or otherwise. It sounds like you may have rejected the notion of a flat earth purely on faith after all?
        mhh__ 5y ago
        What distance do they find? My googling yields nothing. The results must also be consistent with the "circumference" of the earth. And yes, I reject all other evidence but this.
  - 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
    The thing is that functionally speaking, the flat Earth movement isn't about proving whether the Earth is round or flat. It's about camaraderie in the quest for the hidden knowledge that "they" don't want you to have.
  - pintxo 5y ago
    Take your next vacation at the sea, watch ships approaching the Harbour not just growing in size but also appearing to rise up from the water. Voilà
    - marginalia_nu 5y ago
      If you drop water onto a flat sheet of glass, surface tension will give its surface a lenticular shape.
    - 0x7E3 5y ago
      If that's all it takes to prove the earth is round it seems consistent to accept Fata Morgana as proof that gravity can fail once you get far enough away from the coast.
  - PeterWhittaker 5y ago
    Fairly trivial: https://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dns/teachersguide/MeasECAct.html https://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dns/teachersguide/MeasECAct...
    - thethirdone 5y ago
      Unfortunately, atmospheric effects make it hard to completely remove doubt. This is definitely evidence that round earth is true, but not conclusive. It also requires you being able to derive those equations which is more than many people would be comfortable with. Especially if you think that "they" are lying to you, this could be a repeatable but cherry-picked piece of evidence that has a requires a more complicated explanation.
      - PeterWhittaker 5y ago
        The point is that there are many relatively straightforward ways to calculate curvature, from the sunrise/sunset technique to Erastothenes to watching sailing ships dip below the horizon and many more. The math may be beyond some people but the effects at play cannot be explained by a flat Earth. Part of the overall thread was along the lines of we should respect flat earthers, they improve rigour. It seems to me that the only sensible responses to that are the counter illustrations of just easily disproved a notion it is. Far more effort goes into supporting this ridiculousness than did into establishing rough shape and size.
- version_five 5y ago
  It's an interesting thought exercise to take some belief and ask yourself how you know, and asking until you get to some first principles or axioms or articles of faith. Part of that exercise could include coming up with plausible alternate explanations for what you perceive. Flat earth is just a ridiculous version of such a thought experiment. It's a good exercise to make sure your understanding of the world around you is based on some consistent logic and not faith. Those who reject the idea of the earth being flat just because "science tells us" have no intellectual high ground over devout flat earthers, if they exist
  - jimsimmons 5y ago
    Exactly. Believing in narrated science is no different than believing the mumbo jumbo they throw at you in scifi movies. For me the halting problem seems like common sense / basic science but it’s not for everybody. That’s where we need to recognise that what’s obvious or basic to us isn’t so for others. And that is a good thing!
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    I actually love flat earthers BECAUSE it forces me to actually think about how "I Know" the world is round. I bet a majority of people who are anti-flat earthers could not actually "prove" the earth is round without immediately appealing to authority. I've talked to flat earthers, (both probably real and some probably trolling), and it can be a fun intellectual exercise to debate.
    - dools 5y ago
      You are allowed to appeal to authority. The "Argument from Authority" fallacy only applies when you appeal to a false authority, such as listening to your yoga instructor's opinions on vaccination. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
      - GolangProject 5y ago
        There are clear cases where "true authorities", however defined, have been wrong about all kinds of subjects, so the fallacy still applies. If you can only justify a belief by appealing to the assumed superior knowledge of experts and specialists, you cannot justify that belief as strongly as someone who can argue from first principles or a clear chain of evidence. The appeal to authority is not necessarily fallacious, but it's more likely to be so.
- nimish 5y ago
  It's a rather enlightening exercise to work out how and why the earth is curved purely from the perspective of a human able to see maybe a small patch. This is directly analogous to how general relativity models spacetime as being intrinsically curved, and you need to be able to do the same sort of thinking without being able to immerse the manifold in a higher dimensional space. So it's not exactly stupid to pretend to be naive. Also, why and by how much is the sun bigger than the moon? How far are they away from earth? We've known for thousands of years. It's not exactly obvious to derive this purely from geometry.
- tarboreus 5y ago
  You're saying you should only respect literate people. I say all people are fundamentally worthy of respect.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Why? Why shouldn't respect be earned?
    - SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
      In my opinion respect should be granted by default, and rescinded if the person has earned that
      - guerrilla 5y ago
        Why?
        SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
        Seems like the decent thing to do
  - tremon 5y ago
    Are you saying there's nothing anybody can do to lose your respect?
- YEwSdObPQT 5y ago
- ravenstine 5y ago
  To many, though perhaps not most, organized religion is seen as equally ridiculous as flat-earth theory. Are religious people illiterate or not worth debating or worthy of some basic respect?
hhs 5y ago
Maybe, but many times media groups take advantage of this to create a false balance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
- kodah 5y ago
  I think the major hurdle to that statement is that false balances are hard to quantify in the moment. Worse, when "false balance" is claimed and it turns out that the popular belief at the time was both wrong and influenced in some way it damages public trust even further.
raziel2701 5y ago
> We should even respect flat earthers No those people need mental healthcare. They have a very debilitating dysfunction, an inability to see reality.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  I’m with the other poster, I don’t see how flat Earth is inherently crazier to believe than any of the large number of religions that people identify with.
- YEwSdObPQT 5y ago
- golergka 5y ago
  Those people are obviously less smart and educated than any rational man who seriously pondered whether the Earth's flat and could be bothered to do a couple of simple experiments. But at the same time they're step ahead of majority of the population that just believed what they were told as kids and never, once in their life, expressed any doubt in it, or thought about how it was proven, or how they would be able to check that proof themselves.
  - tempestn 5y ago
    Strongly disagree. Rational people do not feel the need to prove every fact independently for themselves. Instead, they develop a rational system of qualified trust. You don't blindly trust expert consensus, but you do weigh likelihood based on the source. Flat Earthers would be better off if they simply accepted the consensus rather than being mislead into believing they're coming to their own conclusions based on evidence.
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      But most people aren't rational and don't prove any fact independently for themselves, or have the capability to do so. They believe in what they're told. They were told god and heaven are real so they believe it. Their scientific beliefs are similarly founded.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mhh__ 5y ago
Climate Change "deniers" like Richard Mueller was, are useful, flat earthers and climate change grifters solely confuse the public and distract (usually extremely overworked and underpaid) scientists.
nitwit005 5y ago
The problem with the flat earthers, and the more conspiratorial portion of the climate deniers, is it's not clear even the people making the claims believe it. They don't seem to mind ideas that contradict theirs, so long as the central belief that there is some sort of vast conspiracy is upheld. You can't really engage with people who aren't all that interested in what's actually true.
- hammock 5y ago
  Assuming your premise is true, is a strongly held belief a prerequisite to conduct a scientific inquiry? Or couldn't it just be any hypothesis, however crazy? It seems to me you are imposing a constraint that doesn't need to be there, and parent is arguing it doesn't deserve to be there, either.
  - nitwit005 5y ago
    The assertion I was responding to was not about the general possibility of using science to test these ideas.
- woolion 5y ago
  >it's not clear even the people making the claims believe it. They don't seem to mind ideas that contradict theirs, so long as the central belief that there is some sort of vast conspiracy is upheld. That seems like a truly bizarre statement, how would that make sense? Some people would embrace ideas they would not believe in, to further the public's perception that there is an ongoing conspiracy? That seems perfectly lunatic. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to try to tie in that the conspiracy peddlers are incentivized to push completely insane theories in order to cover for other, true, conspiracy theories (e.g. the NSA's surveillance pre-Snowden leak). Some have mental issues, that is a given, but that is not generally seen as a valid way to discredit or validate a theory (e.g. cleaning OCD is not seen as proof that hygiene is bad).
  - nitwit005 5y ago
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235449075_Dead_and_Alive_Beliefs_in_Contradictory_Conspiracy_Theories https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235449075_Dead_and_...
watwut 5y ago
> We should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers. They improve rigour and identify blindspots. They don't. They add lies and manipulations into the mix. They force everyone to either step up their popular convincing political game or just drop out of discussion . These people don't improve rigor, they kill it.

amelius 5y ago

I would respect flat earthers if they published in peer-reviewed journals.

fuzzfactor 5y ago
>I would respect flat earthers if they published in peer-reviewed journals. Except their peers would reinforce the anti-scientific superstitions rather than reject them. Not altogether differently than the way some recognized journals publish less-scientifically-sound output due to the credentials of the contributors rather than any conclusive results to report. Or more commonly than ever, complete non-progress being wildly exaggerated as if it was an actual finding. Even though there's more PhDs each year, you have to be more careful than ever what you want to regard as a science any more.

mmastrac 5y ago

> We should even respect flat earthers You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any fruitful debate

thethirdone 5y ago
Literacy does not imply believing in the round earth. Proving the earth is round to yourself without trusting outside influences is not a trivial pursuit.
- nitwit005 5y ago
  It's much harder to prove the Earth is flat. You run into really basic questions like, where is the edge, and why does no one find it? The theory only "holds together", with the assumption that everyone that works in any field even vaguely related to travel or communication is part of a conspiracy to hide the truth.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  These days all you need is someone with a phone and a stick in another country to perform Erastosthenes's experiment, right?
  - 0x7E3 5y ago
    Doesn't Erastosthenes's experiment merely allow you to calculate the size of the earth if you already accept that it is spherical? As I understand the experiment it does not (nor was it meant to) prove that the earth is a sphere.
    - mhh__ 5y ago
      Can flat earth explain the phenomenon in a parsimonious way?
      - 0x7E3 5y ago
        It's probably going to depend on what you mean by 'the phenomenon'. Do you mean that the sun casts shadows at different angles at the same time of day based on your location? Then yes, it absolutely does. In fact some believers in the flat earth theory use the experiment to establish the distance of the sun from the earth. If you mean something else, then I have no idea. I'm not a proponent of the flat earth theory, nor am I a mind reader. The experiment you proposed does not disprove the theory of a flat earth though, parsimoniously or otherwise. It sounds like you may have rejected the notion of a flat earth purely on faith after all?
        mhh__ 5y ago
        What distance do they find? My googling yields nothing. The results must also be consistent with the "circumference" of the earth. And yes, I reject all other evidence but this.
- 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
  The thing is that functionally speaking, the flat Earth movement isn't about proving whether the Earth is round or flat. It's about camaraderie in the quest for the hidden knowledge that "they" don't want you to have.
- pintxo 5y ago
  Take your next vacation at the sea, watch ships approaching the Harbour not just growing in size but also appearing to rise up from the water. Voilà
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    If you drop water onto a flat sheet of glass, surface tension will give its surface a lenticular shape.
  - 0x7E3 5y ago
    If that's all it takes to prove the earth is round it seems consistent to accept Fata Morgana as proof that gravity can fail once you get far enough away from the coast.
- PeterWhittaker 5y ago
  Fairly trivial: https://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dns/teachersguide/MeasECAct.html https://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dns/teachersguide/MeasECAct...
  - thethirdone 5y ago
    Unfortunately, atmospheric effects make it hard to completely remove doubt. This is definitely evidence that round earth is true, but not conclusive. It also requires you being able to derive those equations which is more than many people would be comfortable with. Especially if you think that "they" are lying to you, this could be a repeatable but cherry-picked piece of evidence that has a requires a more complicated explanation.
    - PeterWhittaker 5y ago
      The point is that there are many relatively straightforward ways to calculate curvature, from the sunrise/sunset technique to Erastothenes to watching sailing ships dip below the horizon and many more. The math may be beyond some people but the effects at play cannot be explained by a flat Earth. Part of the overall thread was along the lines of we should respect flat earthers, they improve rigour. It seems to me that the only sensible responses to that are the counter illustrations of just easily disproved a notion it is. Far more effort goes into supporting this ridiculousness than did into establishing rough shape and size.
version_five 5y ago
It's an interesting thought exercise to take some belief and ask yourself how you know, and asking until you get to some first principles or axioms or articles of faith. Part of that exercise could include coming up with plausible alternate explanations for what you perceive. Flat earth is just a ridiculous version of such a thought experiment. It's a good exercise to make sure your understanding of the world around you is based on some consistent logic and not faith. Those who reject the idea of the earth being flat just because "science tells us" have no intellectual high ground over devout flat earthers, if they exist
- jimsimmons 5y ago
  Exactly. Believing in narrated science is no different than believing the mumbo jumbo they throw at you in scifi movies. For me the halting problem seems like common sense / basic science but it’s not for everybody. That’s where we need to recognise that what’s obvious or basic to us isn’t so for others. And that is a good thing!
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  I actually love flat earthers BECAUSE it forces me to actually think about how "I Know" the world is round. I bet a majority of people who are anti-flat earthers could not actually "prove" the earth is round without immediately appealing to authority. I've talked to flat earthers, (both probably real and some probably trolling), and it can be a fun intellectual exercise to debate.
  - dools 5y ago
    You are allowed to appeal to authority. The "Argument from Authority" fallacy only applies when you appeal to a false authority, such as listening to your yoga instructor's opinions on vaccination. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
    - GolangProject 5y ago
      There are clear cases where "true authorities", however defined, have been wrong about all kinds of subjects, so the fallacy still applies. If you can only justify a belief by appealing to the assumed superior knowledge of experts and specialists, you cannot justify that belief as strongly as someone who can argue from first principles or a clear chain of evidence. The appeal to authority is not necessarily fallacious, but it's more likely to be so.
nimish 5y ago
It's a rather enlightening exercise to work out how and why the earth is curved purely from the perspective of a human able to see maybe a small patch. This is directly analogous to how general relativity models spacetime as being intrinsically curved, and you need to be able to do the same sort of thinking without being able to immerse the manifold in a higher dimensional space. So it's not exactly stupid to pretend to be naive. Also, why and by how much is the sun bigger than the moon? How far are they away from earth? We've known for thousands of years. It's not exactly obvious to derive this purely from geometry.
tarboreus 5y ago
You're saying you should only respect literate people. I say all people are fundamentally worthy of respect.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Why? Why shouldn't respect be earned?
  - SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
    In my opinion respect should be granted by default, and rescinded if the person has earned that
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      Why?
      - SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
        Seems like the decent thing to do
- tremon 5y ago
  Are you saying there's nothing anybody can do to lose your respect?
YEwSdObPQT 5y ago
ravenstine 5y ago
To many, though perhaps not most, organized religion is seen as equally ridiculous as flat-earth theory. Are religious people illiterate or not worth debating or worthy of some basic respect?

hhs 5y ago

Maybe, but many times media groups take advantage of this to create a false balance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance

kodah 5y ago
I think the major hurdle to that statement is that false balances are hard to quantify in the moment. Worse, when "false balance" is claimed and it turns out that the popular belief at the time was both wrong and influenced in some way it damages public trust even further.

raziel2701 5y ago

> We should even respect flat earthers No those people need mental healthcare. They have a very debilitating dysfunction, an inability to see reality.

edgyquant 5y ago
I’m with the other poster, I don’t see how flat Earth is inherently crazier to believe than any of the large number of religions that people identify with.
YEwSdObPQT 5y ago
golergka 5y ago
Those people are obviously less smart and educated than any rational man who seriously pondered whether the Earth's flat and could be bothered to do a couple of simple experiments. But at the same time they're step ahead of majority of the population that just believed what they were told as kids and never, once in their life, expressed any doubt in it, or thought about how it was proven, or how they would be able to check that proof themselves.
- tempestn 5y ago
  Strongly disagree. Rational people do not feel the need to prove every fact independently for themselves. Instead, they develop a rational system of qualified trust. You don't blindly trust expert consensus, but you do weigh likelihood based on the source. Flat Earthers would be better off if they simply accepted the consensus rather than being mislead into believing they're coming to their own conclusions based on evidence.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    But most people aren't rational and don't prove any fact independently for themselves, or have the capability to do so. They believe in what they're told. They were told god and heaven are real so they believe it. Their scientific beliefs are similarly founded.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mhh__ 5y ago

Climate Change "deniers" like Richard Mueller was, are useful, flat earthers and climate change grifters solely confuse the public and distract (usually extremely overworked and underpaid) scientists.

nitwit005 5y ago

The problem with the flat earthers, and the more conspiratorial portion of the climate deniers, is it's not clear even the people making the claims believe it. They don't seem to mind ideas that contradict theirs, so long as the central belief that there is some sort of vast conspiracy is upheld. You can't really engage with people who aren't all that interested in what's actually true.

hammock 5y ago
Assuming your premise is true, is a strongly held belief a prerequisite to conduct a scientific inquiry? Or couldn't it just be any hypothesis, however crazy? It seems to me you are imposing a constraint that doesn't need to be there, and parent is arguing it doesn't deserve to be there, either.
- nitwit005 5y ago
  The assertion I was responding to was not about the general possibility of using science to test these ideas.
woolion 5y ago
>it's not clear even the people making the claims believe it. They don't seem to mind ideas that contradict theirs, so long as the central belief that there is some sort of vast conspiracy is upheld. That seems like a truly bizarre statement, how would that make sense? Some people would embrace ideas they would not believe in, to further the public's perception that there is an ongoing conspiracy? That seems perfectly lunatic. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to try to tie in that the conspiracy peddlers are incentivized to push completely insane theories in order to cover for other, true, conspiracy theories (e.g. the NSA's surveillance pre-Snowden leak). Some have mental issues, that is a given, but that is not generally seen as a valid way to discredit or validate a theory (e.g. cleaning OCD is not seen as proof that hygiene is bad).
- nitwit005 5y ago
  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235449075_Dead_and_Alive_Beliefs_in_Contradictory_Conspiracy_Theories https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235449075_Dead_and_...

watwut 5y ago

> We should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers. They improve rigour and identify blindspots. They don't. They add lies and manipulations into the mix. They force everyone to either step up their popular convincing political game or just drop out of discussion . These people don't improve rigor, they kill it.