The problem is that flat-earthers aren’t just that. They usually believe in all kinds of other kooky stuff as well, and some of those beliefs pose an active danger to society.
Exactly, the same mindset that takes you to “The entire geophysical establishment is wrong/lying about the shape of the Earth, so I’ll listen to this Youtube crank who says it’s a disc instead” will also lead you to things like “The entire medical establishment is wrong/lying about the effectiveness of masks & vaccines, so I’ll listen to this podcast crank hawking horse dewormer instead.”
To be fair, the medical establishment did lie about it, but not because of some weird “big mask” or “big pharma” conspiracy, but because they have a tangible impact when used by large groups and overselling them would have better outcomes than underselling them.
It’s a classic problem those in power have to deal with: tell the truth and get an underwhelming response, or oversell and get a better response.
Don’t take horse dewormers though, that’s just dumb.
Overselling something that is true is not the same as flat out lying about the efficacy of a random pharmaceutical. Not even in the same neighbourhood.
You can surely at least understand the mindset there. Basically, when party A is obviously lying, a party B that calls them out appears more trustworthy, and it’s easier to overlook the obvious flaws in party B’s alternative. Here’s the logic, specific to vaccines:
- group A claims vaccines are effective against contracting a given disease
- group B points to evidence of actual effectiveness, which vastly falls short of what the public thinks
- group B proposes an alternative to the vaccine, implying it’s effective and that group A doesn’t want others to know about it
- group A attacks group B’s alternative
This creates an us vs them situation, so if you already distrust group A somewhat, it’s easy to side w/ group B, assuming you have no actual knowledge to parse the available information. The same logic works with anything, you just need a little bit of distrust w/ some authority, evidence of false/misleading statements, and a seemingly credible alternative.
The trick is to not lie/be misleading in the first place so you don’t break the trust. Trust takes years to build and a moment to break, so you need a very good reason to break the trust.
No, I really can’t understand the mindset. Especially not in the face of the constant undermining of trust by certain elements of society, including when they’re in government. We didn’t just arrive here for no reason. The same people who have eroded the trustworthiness of government and authority (on purpose, see Reagan) over decades are the ones who now exploit the results of their actions, for their own gain.
If, in your scenario, group B was on the level, it would be a different story. But they aren’t. If A oversold their claim, B would have massively oversold theirs. And that was easy to prove and has been proven. B also just didn’t oversell their own claim, they also exaggerated the claim that they refuted to something that, in this form, was never said - standard MO.
There is no trick to this. Being factual and getting people to believe you is much harder than telling an easy but good-sounding lie and getting people to believ you.
If A oversold their claim, B would have massively oversold theirs. And that was easy to prove and has been proven
Right. But if A is supposed to be the trusted authority and B proves they aren’t trustworthy, you’re more likely to not believe criticisms of B because “the establishment” has already been proven untrustworthy. That’s how conspiracies gain traction, and any amount of hiding of information gives fuel to detractors.
So people are going to ignore criticism of B because they’ll feel that B is the “underdog” being attacked by “the establishment.” That’s how these things work.
There is no trick to this. Being factual and getting people to believe you is much harder than telling an easy but good-sounding lie and getting people to believ you.
Sure, but trust is earned. You can’t lie 5% of the time and expect people to believe everything you say, if they find out about that 5%, the other 95% will be called into question. So you need to reserve the lies for when they really count.
Lying will work in the short-term, but it has big consequences in the long-term, so if you’re a long-term entity (e.g. the CDC, FBI, etc), you need to be very careful about how people interpret your message.
So how come people trust Donald Trump? How is it that he can get away with lying whenever he opens his mouth, how is it that people buy it when he pretends he’s the underdog and not part of the establishment? How is it his followers, who are so ready to believe that the government lies to them all the time, don’t call anything of what he says into question?
If we go by what you say then we’re basically fucked. Government and authorities can never regain trust because thanks to people like Trump, thanks to parties like the Republicans, who have spent decades undermining that trust, thanks to the mass media who are highly complicit, we live in a post-truth world, and it’s enough that a government wasn’t 100% truthful that one time, we can never trust them again.
There’s always an implied “them” hiding the conspiracy as well. It’s just a couple of short steps from flat earth to “jews will not replace us”.
Don’t need a podcast when the president at the time was telling them to take the horse dewormer.
Yup, the root of flat earth conspiracy y theories is that some group is fooling everyone to enrich themselves. If you keep scratching through the layers it’s always jews that are behind it.
It’s just antisemitism cloaked in a ridiculous conspiracy.
Normal day at the NASA factory
On the one hand, yeah. Worrying about stuff that you have barely any control over won’t get you far. But on the other hand, that guy’s vote counts as much as yours. And if he already believes such silly conspiracy theories as the flat earth theory, he will be easily swayed by whoever is the loudest contrarian.
This guy’s vote counts as much as yours. I.E. next to nothing.
Depends on where you live. California, Texas? Yeah close to nothing in comparison with someone from Wisconsin. For some reason that I keep getting told isn’t political favoritism.
the challenge isn’t to let him enjoy life with his stupid ass conspiracy, it’s to get him to realize for himself that he’s been duped by both strangers on the internet and Conservative conspiracies. Deradicalizing and then radicalizing is hard as fuck
Yah, it’s not so much what he believes, but that he displays a lack of critical thinking skills or even common sense. That’s just how it came to the surface.
Right and that should be the target of our efforts. Not fighting over scientific research they’ve already decided to reject. Encourage them to think more critically. You can only encourage someone when you have their ear. You only have someone’s ear when they’re comfortable around you. Demeaning someone’s intelligence and telling them their world view is a toxic lie, is a quick way to convince them they’ll only ever be at odds with you.
I believe in truth and that facts do matter. I also teach young people. Being a wage earner was not a bad thing, but I yearn for the freedom to live an easier life, eventually. I want that for everyone. False beliefs are traps that hold people back from being their best selves. Carry flat-earth beliefs as a core foundation and look at what differences it would make. Geostationary satellites, and all the tech jobs that go with servicing that sector, just disappeared. Ditto solar. Travel to distant places, and time zones, becomes an insolvable problem. Your co-worker is holding his life back by believing in medieval superstitions.
It is a kindness to challenge people to find what is true.
I agree with all this but want to gripe about the misconception that flat Earth is medieval.
People have known Earth is round since at least 350 BC when Aristotle wrote On the Heavens. And he didn’t come up with it there, he was explaining how others knew it.
In medieval times they had not lost this knowledge and it was still widely accepted that Earth is round. Flat Earth has been a fringe lunacy for thousands of years. In the 1800s it became popular for religious reasons and most flat Earthers today are actually creationists trying to dress up their beliefs as science.
This is the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.
remember that time you called health insurance “gambling”, which is why you refuse to get any? (or support universal basic health care)
ah, good times.
I’m flattered that you spend so much time things about the things I’ve said.
I’m writing a book of my thoughts, I’ll let you know when I’m done.
given you’re eating crayons at a faster rate than you can learn to write coherently, I’m not going to hold my breath.
I like how spicy you’re getting.
It means you care, friend.
not as stupid as some of your comments elsewhere.
More stupid than oceans on the underside of a ball?
😂
We used to make fun of people like this. Humiliate them. Alas, no more. Everyone’s opinion is now valuable.
I think that’s what the internet has done for us, it’s removed that sort “social immune system” that prevented crazy ideas from spreading. Before, if somebody had some crazy ideas, the most they could usually do was rant to people on the bus/subway, maybe make some pamphlets, or some other small-scale thing to spread the idea. At best you might find someone on AM radio broadcasting at weird hours. Individuals would get exposed to it, but would likely never pass it on, this contained crazy ideas and they rarely got traction to spread.
Now the internet comes along, and suddenly crazies are getting hooked up with impressionable people easier than ever before. Crazy ideas have an almost endless supply of rubes that will eat them right up. Our social immune system can’t protect society from all the insane things flying around at high speeds all over the place now. It’s intellectual chaos.
I mean the social immune system also prevented ideas like worker solidarity, gender equality, socioeconomic mobility, sexual freedom, etc. from spreading but I get your point. Opening Pandora’s box let the crazies out as well as the AOC/Bernie and free Palestine crowds.
The problem being, at least for the moment, the crazy is winning
Humiliating people does not help them grow, study suggests
it’s just as equally effective to break dumb beliefs like this as reasoning is, and both are far more effective than empathy, according to studies.
I’m going to need a source for those claims.
GIYF. the paper is out there, published and reviewed. circa 2021, I think.
You made the claim, you provide the source.
naw, I’m lying. it doesn’t exist. whatever you want to believe, I don’t fucking care about you.
If you want to look it up, look it up. if you don’t, don’t. I have zero interest in trying to convince retards.
Mmk and I have no reason to take anything you say seriously. Guess you’re just a lying sack of shit.
No, but it prevents other people from engaging with a topic to begin with
It’s not that their opinion is now valuable. We just figured out that Bullying doesn’t work.
except that it does
Sure, bud.
it’s like no bully ever got lunch money from another kid ever, because bullying doesn’t work?
the mafia/mob tried to run protection rackets, but were never successful because bullying doesn’t work.
🙄
jfc you people. 🤦♂️
Ok, bullying doesn’t work if you have “good intentions”
To supress elements in a herd? Sure it does.
Healthy for the individual? Not so much.
Anyone stupid enough to believe the earth is flat will kill you by accident.
You believe so many things that are obviously not true. We all do. Have some compassion.
Nope, I’ve tolerated the stupidity of these kinds of idiots long enough. I’m done with wasting compassion on the hopeless.
Exactly. Tolerating the stupid is currently having us regress in society and basic human rights.
Do unto others, friend. They tolerate your BS, why don’t you do the same?
sorry, I wouldn’t trust anyone with those beliefs in any position of responsibility.
i see you still need to assert intellectual superiority :)
Yes they do, in the same way I wouldn’t hire someone who thinks the Internet is run by Santa’s elves. There’s a bar.
Same with religious people. They’ve already proven they lack in critical thinking skills/
I’m sure there have been plenty of times you have comfortably trusted a religious person with responsibility because most people are religious.
Most people are not religious - https://news.gallup.com/poll/511133/identify-religious-spiritual.aspx#:~:text=WASHINGTON%2C D.C. -- Nearly half,say they are neither religious
“nearly half” is not “most”.
You’re going to nit pick spiritual vs religious? If we’re being pedantic, you’re citing us population, the world is much different. Also even if we accept it’s only about half, my point still stands.
I think spiritual vs religious can be an important difference. Generally speaking it’s organized religions that are causing major harm not the individuals who believe their is something beyond our physical reality.
But isn’t the argument about critical thinking skills? I’m sure it’s nice to believe in Gaia but there is demonstratively no evidence for it.
The question of harm done is independent to that of gullibility.
Isn’t manipulating and preying on the gullible the main way that religion causes harm?
Gulliblity isn’t binary. I’d argue that those buying into organized religion are more gullible than people who identify as “spiritual.” If I asked you to rank people from least to most gullible based only on their religion, would you not rank a person that considers themselves spiritual but not drawn to a particular church higher than a member of a pentecostal church that regularly attends faith healing events?
Finally, this part is anecdotal but, the majority of people I know that consider themselves spiritual but not religious are people that attended one or more churches for a while but questioned or took issues with parts of those churches teachings. They may believe that there is some form sky daddy watching over us but, by they have displayed a degree of critical thinking. I can’t present concrete proof that sky daddy isn’t real so, as long as they aren’t using that belief to cause harm, I see no reason to immediately distrust someone simply for considering themselves spiritual.
That’s if you’re including spiritual as non-religious.
Only 18% of people in that poll were described as neither (Atheist).
I believe he was getting at religion as the problem, not spirituality. If you look at the BITE model, which is used to determine if a group displays cult like behavior, both flat earthers and many religions fall into the category of cults. Spirituality does not, as it is not organized.
Spirituality does not, as it is not organized.
As someone who grew up in a part spiritual household I heavily disagree. Flat earthers and traditional spiritualists like Neo-Pagans, Wiccans, etc, have the exact same amount of organization, if flat earthers are a cult, then so are most spiritualist groups.
Most flat earthers aren’t in some organized cult, they get their misinformation from Facebook posts and YouTube videos, with there being a couple of small actually organized groups. The exact same can be said about spiritualists, just generally they used to get their spiritual beliefs from books instead of the internet (though that’s changed now for spiritualists too).
If anything, I’d bet there’s more people in actually organized spiritualist groups than there are in actually organized flat earther groups.
Yes, that’s still and organization. Wicca is a religion, by definition.
Also, cults do not have to be organized by a leader, they can simply be a loose group. The BITE model accounts for this.
I suppose what I was getting to is personal spirituality. Any group that is working to push/enforce their ideas and world view could easily become a cult. Flat earthers, yoga moms, whatever.
Given that stupid and uninformed (or misinformed) people get a vote on topics that affect me, no. I’m not gonna let slide that people believe outright provably wrong bullshit. It’s still a problem.
Political scientists get the same one vote as some Arkansas inbred
Fortunately those people got to see Biden-the-corpse for themselves in the last debate. I thought it was hopeless too, but the tide is turning. Hopefully we can blast through the deep-state/election fraud wall in November.
You want to put Trump back in…? Did you forget how he ran things 2016-2020, plus Jan 6th, a literal (but horribly executed) coup attempt?
Given the rulings from the recent rulings from the Supreme Court, Trump will be emboldened to do whatever he wants “with immunity”. I just can’t wrap my head around how anyone thinks this is a good idea.
You still believe the Jan 6 hoax?
It’s clearly not a hoax.
[lemmy disliked that]
Weird that the OOP thinks it’s “intellectual superiority” to simply have your facts straight.
well, it is. I mean, it’s a low bar, but comparatively, yeah.
Like saying hygienic superiority is not being covered in feces. It is, but that shouldn’t be the contest.
I shall remember this comparison and use it at the most inappropriate situation. Thank you.
1: Why do you always have to be right?
2: You were literally bitching about getting a raise and losing money. That’s not how that works!
1: Anecdote lawyer politicians taxes useless idiot not even a Republican talking point drivel.
2: Stare and say nothing.
1: Implodes a month later by sending out emails to everyone across the company about work being work and gets fired.
2: Goes back to work short staffed.
Uh, what?
It’s a ‘made up’ conversation with a coworker.
I can totally understand not really wanting to engage with these stupid people but to suggest that it doesn’t matter that he believes that is disingenuous.
If he’s stupid enough to think the Earth is flat then he is stupid enough to do other things in his actual job wrong or in a dangerous manner.
It doesn’t matter in the context of effort/reward. He’s not gonna listen, you lose cohesiveness, and there’s just added stress overall.
And the job isn’t exactly rocket science you can literally have downes and still stock shelves. Flat earthers are more about desperately wanting to believe in something that places you in an exclusive ingroup, not about legitimately proving something.
it’s anti science, it’s dangerous, and i won’t condone anyone giving them a pass
Yeah, this is one of those stupidity litmus tests. Believing that the Earth is flat vs. round does appear at face value to be consequential, as the average person never actually has to care about the curvature of the earth. However, it’s not really about the curvature of the earth, it’s about critical thinking, listening to evidence, and having a sane and rational worldview.
There is physical evidence that the earth is round, and you can even test it yourself. Flat earthers will run these tests themselves (watch “Behind the Curve”) and will still convince themselves that the tests are flawed and the Earth is flat.
And being a flat-earther isn’t just a simple difference in belief about the natural world. It comes with the belief that most of society is brainwashed into believing in a round earth, that the governments of the world are all colluding to keep the truth a secret, and that there exists some great truth about the “Firmament” (the dome above the flat earth) that those in power benefit from denying society.
So it’s not just some simple difference in belief. Flat earthers think you’re a stupid brainwashed rube controlled by a global cartel of godless governments colluding to blind the world to the existence of God by denying the existence of the Firmament and and spreading the Satanic evil of scientific knowledge that suggests that all things in the solar system trend spherical and orbit one another.
Flat earthers hold roughly the same beliefs that the people who imprisoned Galileo, and they would do it again if given the chance because they are overwhelmingly MAGA-types, at least in the USA, where lunatic conspiratorial beliefs are quite common.
At the wage-slave bit, I was hoping that anon would try to raise the coworker’s class-consciousness.
In a sense, they are on the same side.
It’s flat, we all are.
Man, a lot of comments on here are giving me reddit debate lord vibes. People talking about “the truth matters”, but the way a lot of them are saying, it sounds like they just want to ego boost and dunk on/bully someone that they perceive as inferior; which I suppose could also be called “asserting intellectual superiority”.
Chances are that any argument you use on them is something they’ve already heard, and the more you push and demean them the more defensive they will probably get, and the harder it will be to convince them. And even if you did manage to pressure and shame them into believing the earth is round, that won’t suddenly make them good critical thinkers.
The best way to convince these people of reality is to just say “You really believe that?” and “That sounds complicated” when they talk about it. Or you can laugh in a friendly way and say “Who told you that? They’re trying to trick you.”
These people respond to emotions, not facts. Just tell them someone is tricking them. They want to have friends and special knowledge.
I love how it is considered to be intellectually superior even though you’re stating easily verifiable facts that we also should have learned while being kids.
Fuck that. You’re wrong, and here’s why.
Just because they set the bar low, doesn’t mean it’s not still intellectual superiority to step over it. The fact of the matter, as you pointed out, is that they were taught everything you’re about to say in elementary school. The fact that they didn’t learn the earth is round implies there’s more going on in their head than a lack of information.
I’m inferring from your tone that you’re not planning to compassionately listen to their perspective to provide constructive criticism. So yeah, it sounds like you’re going to spend a few minutes calling them stupid. Which has no benefit other than stroking the intellectual part of your ego. It actually will likely make the world a worse place, because you’ll present yourself to them as someone they don’t want to be like. Further entrenching them in their views.
While I understand where you are coming from, and respect you for your perspective, I disagree.
See, science does not care about feelings. It’s not that it makes me feel smarter, as I probably learned 90% of the things I know the hard way. I learned the hard way, because I USED to think I was smart or clever. Now, I don’t think like that any more. Now, I realize that every day I can learn something new and that I will never know anything expertly.
If someone calls you out, because you’re clearly saying stupid things, you should probably realize that maybe you ARE wrong and to maybe educate yourself further, so the next time you don’t look like a fool.
It is not my responsibility to baby an adult who has never had their beliefs challenged.
Yeah, same respect. I get it. But do you think you are the first person to tell them the earth is round? What are you actually attempting to accomplish when you speak to this person?
