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There isn't actually such a big difference between flat earthers and other conspiracy theories. The common theme is that it's the opposite of science or the sci

by nsguy 2y ago

There isn't actually such a big difference between flat earthers and other conspiracy theories. The common theme is that it's the opposite of science or the scientific process. Conspiracy theorists filter out anything that doesn't align with their theory and go to extremes to support their world views. E.g. flat earthers believe that all airline pilots are part of the conspiracy to hide the fact that the earth is flat. The scientific process, to contrast, would drive you to try and falsify your theory via experimentation, and the flat earth theory is so easily falsifiable. If you look at vaccines, or climates, or 9/11, or those guys that believe nobody was killed in some massacre, they all use the same sort of logic (or shall we say non-logic). Despite overwhelming evidence they stick to their version of "reality", they never seek counter-evidence, they believe everyone but them is part of a ploy to hide the real reality from everyone. They don't trust experts or scientists. It's not impossible to have conspiracies in the real world. But I'd say those are rare. The more people are involved the harder it is to keep a secret. There are also situations where the evidence isn't necessarily pointing overwhelmingly one way or another, and there is science that later gets refined or even overturned as more data/knowledge is acquired. Science isn't necessarily absolute truth, it's just the model that best explains the observable phenomena.

roenxi 2y ago
> Despite overwhelming evidence they stick to their version of "reality", they never seek counter-evidence, they believe everyone but them is part of a ploy to hide the real reality from everyone. Yeah but you're basically describing ideologues here. This is how the vast majority of political activists approach the world where, last time I checked, parties even pretending to do things by scientific consensus are rare and they tend to not, in reality, refer to much science. > If you look at vaccines ... they don't trust experts or scientists. My mother just caught COVID last week. I was told - by people confidently claiming to speak for experts - that this wouldn't happen after she and the rest of the population were vaccinated because the spread would cease. I personally doubt the experts actually said that because they tend to be accurate in their field of expertise but good luck with that perspective around the time of the vaccine mandates. I suspect even more than lack of trust that the issue is experts are so rare in politics that people don't recognise them when they do turn up. There are a lot of unexperts playing pretend on such topics and expert opinions are subject to misrepresentation.
- nsguy 2y ago
  This is partly why I said science isn't truth. Science evolves. And the virus evolved. I don't recall any scientist promising Covid would be eradicated by the vaccines or that nobody would get sick. Even diseases for which really effective vaccines have been available for some time have not been eradicated. I'm pretty sure the scientific consensus at the time was not exactly "the spread would cease". There was some talk about herd immunity and what that means. Another problem is that experts aren't always the greatest communicators and the science is hard to communicate.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    You'd be unwelcome on a lot of social media platforms back in 2020-2021 for those vaccine conspiracies you're spreading. The issue is, all that was true for the entire pandemic. The science didn't "evolve" on the vaccines, where we ended up was the most likely outcome from the start. The scientists knew that, but the people who trusted experts didn't manage to figure it out. They were too busy panicking to listen to anyone.
    - nsguy 2y ago
      I agree public health officials in certain countries did a poor job. For the most part they were medical professionals who aren't necessarily experts (though some of them were and some countries had expert advisers to set policy). There were many unknowns and it wasn't clear what to optimize for. Public health is tricky and you might be faced with various dilemmas getting people to potentially do something that might not be beneficial for them as individuals for the (supposed?) sake of the community. Supposedly one reason why masks were not recommended, despite their sort of obvious effect on respiratory diseases, was to prevent a run on masks that are needed by medical teams. Is this sort of white lie ok? Would telling the truth result in a higher toll for medical professionals? This isn't simple. What I mind more is the sort of doubling down on the obviously wrong advice when the shortages weren't there any more, which seems to be an ego thing. I think the science was decent and there was access to most of it. There were real gaps in terms of where the virus was going to go and the new vaccines. What was lacking was not really science but rather common sense and maybe what we may call engineering. Science is too slow to react to emergencies. Clearly the pandemic was a traumatic event for humanity with long term consequences, including erosion of trust.
HyulianGrader 2y ago
[flagged]
- nsguy 2y ago
  9/11 deniers can tell you in great detail how it's impossible for airplanes to have brought down the towers and all sorts of other nonsense. The conspiracy theorists ignore the actual reality while making stuff up. It's not that the other people have never heard of stuff made up and would suddenly change their minds if they have. It's really about what version of reality explains the totality of known facts, and then ofcourse the evaluation of what's fact and what's not using some sort of standard or rational thought process. What is true is that the sense of trust has been eroded.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    > the actual reality > what version of reality This seems paradoxical. Thoughts? > What is true is that the sense of trust has been eroded. I agree. Do you think it is optimal that it should have been there in the first place? Something seems...off about this whole conversation, and lots of others, almost like Humans are missing something fundamental.

by nsguy 2y ago

roenxi 2y ago

> Despite overwhelming evidence they stick to their version of "reality", they never seek counter-evidence, they believe everyone but them is part of a ploy to hide the real reality from everyone. Yeah but you're basically describing ideologues here. This is how the vast majority of political activists approach the world where, last time I checked, parties even pretending to do things by scientific consensus are rare and they tend to not, in reality, refer to much science. > If you look at vaccines ... they don't trust experts or scientists. My mother just caught COVID last week. I was told - by people confidently claiming to speak for experts - that this wouldn't happen after she and the rest of the population were vaccinated because the spread would cease. I personally doubt the experts actually said that because they tend to be accurate in their field of expertise but good luck with that perspective around the time of the vaccine mandates. I suspect even more than lack of trust that the issue is experts are so rare in politics that people don't recognise them when they do turn up. There are a lot of unexperts playing pretend on such topics and expert opinions are subject to misrepresentation.

nsguy 2y ago
This is partly why I said science isn't truth. Science evolves. And the virus evolved. I don't recall any scientist promising Covid would be eradicated by the vaccines or that nobody would get sick. Even diseases for which really effective vaccines have been available for some time have not been eradicated. I'm pretty sure the scientific consensus at the time was not exactly "the spread would cease". There was some talk about herd immunity and what that means. Another problem is that experts aren't always the greatest communicators and the science is hard to communicate.
- roenxi 2y ago
  You'd be unwelcome on a lot of social media platforms back in 2020-2021 for those vaccine conspiracies you're spreading. The issue is, all that was true for the entire pandemic. The science didn't "evolve" on the vaccines, where we ended up was the most likely outcome from the start. The scientists knew that, but the people who trusted experts didn't manage to figure it out. They were too busy panicking to listen to anyone.
  - nsguy 2y ago
    I agree public health officials in certain countries did a poor job. For the most part they were medical professionals who aren't necessarily experts (though some of them were and some countries had expert advisers to set policy). There were many unknowns and it wasn't clear what to optimize for. Public health is tricky and you might be faced with various dilemmas getting people to potentially do something that might not be beneficial for them as individuals for the (supposed?) sake of the community. Supposedly one reason why masks were not recommended, despite their sort of obvious effect on respiratory diseases, was to prevent a run on masks that are needed by medical teams. Is this sort of white lie ok? Would telling the truth result in a higher toll for medical professionals? This isn't simple. What I mind more is the sort of doubling down on the obviously wrong advice when the shortages weren't there any more, which seems to be an ego thing. I think the science was decent and there was access to most of it. There were real gaps in terms of where the virus was going to go and the new vaccines. What was lacking was not really science but rather common sense and maybe what we may call engineering. Science is too slow to react to emergencies. Clearly the pandemic was a traumatic event for humanity with long term consequences, including erosion of trust.

HyulianGrader 2y ago

[flagged]

nsguy 2y ago
9/11 deniers can tell you in great detail how it's impossible for airplanes to have brought down the towers and all sorts of other nonsense. The conspiracy theorists ignore the actual reality while making stuff up. It's not that the other people have never heard of stuff made up and would suddenly change their minds if they have. It's really about what version of reality explains the totality of known facts, and then ofcourse the evaluation of what's fact and what's not using some sort of standard or rational thought process. What is true is that the sense of trust has been eroded.
- mistermann 2y ago
  > the actual reality > what version of reality This seems paradoxical. Thoughts? > What is true is that the sense of trust has been eroded. I agree. Do you think it is optimal that it should have been there in the first place? Something seems...off about this whole conversation, and lots of others, almost like Humans are missing something fundamental.