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Yes, the flat-earthers are indeed shown as relatable, flawed, silly human beings, but the show is still driven by scientists. Imagine how _Behind the Curve_ wo

Yes, the flat-earthers are indeed shown as relatable, flawed, silly human beings, but the show is still driven by scientists. Imagine how _Behind the Curve_ would have played if it had instead shown those astronomers as being part of a secretive conspiracy to conceal the real geometry of the world. That's what Netflix is playing now.

SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
I expect it would have played a lot like What the Health, a similarly buzzy documentary from 2017 making ridiculous false claims about the health benefits of a vegan diet. It got a lot of attention, and people talked passionately in major outlets about how wrong it was, but as far as I can recall (and as far as I can tell from a Google search) the idea that Netflix had some responsibility to downrank it or attach a "fiction" tag was never part of the conversation.
- 1attice 4y ago
  I've never heard of this documentary, but if it makes false claims, then, yes, it should be labelled fiction, and possibly downranked. This seems so morally obvious to me, and the converse so plainly wicked, that I'm going to assume I've hit one of those issues where there is some deep-seated worldview-differences that say as much about me as they do about my interlocutor. If I'd hazard a guess, it would be that I believe that there is some sort of fact of the matter, and that people -- even large groups of people -- can be actually very wrong, in fact, and this wrongness counts again listening to them in the future, or valuing their opinions the same as those which are not wrong. This is a belief I hold and I know it is unpopular ;) The alternative, often expressed on the right as a 'marketplace of ideas' and on the left as 'values-alignment', is that there are multiple competing ways of assessing the worth of an idea, and an idea's wrongness might (say) be counterbalanced by its congeniality, its convenience, or its usefulness, and therefore that it's mean or base of me or anyone else to complain about someone pumping falsehood into the ears and eyes of the planet. But at the risk of being melodramatic, I say: this is a hill I'm ready to die on. Or not; but definitely not both at once.

SpicyLemonZest 4y ago

I expect it would have played a lot like What the Health, a similarly buzzy documentary from 2017 making ridiculous false claims about the health benefits of a vegan diet. It got a lot of attention, and people talked passionately in major outlets about how wrong it was, but as far as I can recall (and as far as I can tell from a Google search) the idea that Netflix had some responsibility to downrank it or attach a "fiction" tag was never part of the conversation.

1attice 4y ago
I've never heard of this documentary, but if it makes false claims, then, yes, it should be labelled fiction, and possibly downranked. This seems so morally obvious to me, and the converse so plainly wicked, that I'm going to assume I've hit one of those issues where there is some deep-seated worldview-differences that say as much about me as they do about my interlocutor. If I'd hazard a guess, it would be that I believe that there is some sort of fact of the matter, and that people -- even large groups of people -- can be actually very wrong, in fact, and this wrongness counts again listening to them in the future, or valuing their opinions the same as those which are not wrong. This is a belief I hold and I know it is unpopular ;) The alternative, often expressed on the right as a 'marketplace of ideas' and on the left as 'values-alignment', is that there are multiple competing ways of assessing the worth of an idea, and an idea's wrongness might (say) be counterbalanced by its congeniality, its convenience, or its usefulness, and therefore that it's mean or base of me or anyone else to complain about someone pumping falsehood into the ears and eyes of the planet. But at the risk of being melodramatic, I say: this is a hill I'm ready to die on. Or not; but definitely not both at once.