Excellent Reads

“It’s not really an education thing,” she says. “It really is about distrusting authorities and institutions. [It] seems to be based on both a conspiracy mentality and a deeply held belief that looks a lot like religiosity but isn’t necessarily specifically tied to a religion”.

[...] Their lack of trust in authority includes not just scientists but scientific bodies such as NASA, all of whom (they think) are part of a massive conspiracy to prevent the flat-Earth truth being revealed. “[They] view the world through this really dark filter where [they] assume that all authorities and institutions and corporations are just there to exploit you.”

Yeah that really resonates with me, an anarchist. You can't trust authorities, you have to find out things your own way. Especially this part:

Oddly, Landrum says that many flat-Earthers may distrust scientists, but they are not against the scientific method. “The majority of them put a lot of faith, for lack of a better word, in science. There’s a lot of curiosity and a lot of scepticism and a lot of the really good qualities that make scientists.”

how the physics community should best respond

These people haven't hurt anyone. Why won't you just let them believe what they want to believe?

gawd i love Cunk. best series's i just watched. i love not taking this stuff too seriously. like why would anyone, on any side, take this seriously. just laugh and enjoy life.

I consider the Earth more of a watermelon shape; complete with seeds

If you keep slightly rotating yourself as you go around the Earth, and are personally measuring from your perspective, the Earth is overall flat isn't it? Just like how doing a frontflip causes the entire earth to orbit u.

Do we have data on the prevalence of Flat Earth beliefs?

If they are so numerous we cannot ignore them, we must create scenarios where anti-intellectual leaders must successfully implement a different method of accomplishing something in physics or engineering, and when they cannot and are shown their errors, we have to discuss what that means and then have them disseminate that info to their sheep. Anti-intellectual cults only listen to their leaders, but also often will abandon leaders if they switch perspectives, which that is then a hopeless endeavor.

But there aren't any corners, you know, like the bible says.

Flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers and any other anti-common sense stupidity should be publicly shamed. No reason to be nice to the people who purposefully and are willfully ignorant. Uninformed and uneducated are fine, but these people pride themselves on being idiots. They belong in the trash bin of history.

We should encourage people. Welcome them to submit falsifiable hypotheses, and experimental findings that are repeatable, let them publish their data.

People going against the grain is totally fine, they just need to be experimental and prove it. Engaging with people in rhetorical debates is not productive. Say that's interesting, I'd love to see your data, what experiments have you done?

An interesting read, thx.

Flat-Earthers seem to have a very low standard of evidence for what they want to believe but an impossibly high standard of evidence for what they don’t want to believe (Lee McIntyre, Boston University)

This sums it up perfectly, for me. And not just for those flat-earthers. They don't want to discuss their ideas, they want to be right. There is no way we can have a sincere debate with any 'believer' (of whatever).

And why should we? Why should we do the work to prove them wrong knowing they will blissfully ignore any demonstration that does not end in 'omfg! You were right all the time! The Earth is indeed flat, and hollow, and reptilians are our true overlords, and the only time NASA send anyone to the moon is when they were all high!'

Why not let them do all the work themselves, instead? They seem to be so willing. I would even happily see some public money used to fund their 'space exploration' probes if I did not know for sure that the instant their stupid ideas would be proven wrong by their very own probe, the fact that any public money would have been involved in making it, they would argue it's one more irrefutable proof of the conspiracy against their (unshaken and unshakable) truth.

Imho, the real issues is not those people believing their moronic ideas. There always have been a bunch like them. Flat-earthers, doomsday believers, anti-vax, conspirationists of every single type you can imagine, and so on. We should be fine with them holding to their believes. Why? Because they should not matter, they should remain the statistically insignificant minority they are, no matter how loud. Also, we should not be afraid to call them for who they are.

Have we really become afraid of calling them by their name? Amusing morons at times, but morons nonetheless, and shameless assholes for those among them that take advantage of those people's gullibility for their own personal profit.

Have we become that fragile ourselves that we're afraid to simply ignore them when we're not frankly laughing out loud at their 'theories'? Because if we have, that bunch of eccentrics and their theories, is certainly not the issue I would worry about. We are.