Tag Archives: conspiracy

Flat earth and flight times

I’ve already shared this clip where you,

“just need to go to 5:46 of this video, and watch until 12:48.

https://youtu.be/JTfhYyTuT44?t=346

This 7 minutes is all you need to debunk Flat Earthers.”

But forget about the science for a moment, forget about the videos from space, and forget about what the shadow of the earth looks like on the moon.

What gets me is how flat earthers think time zones and plane travel work? We have decades of flight traffic data, and every day flights take off and land in predictable times between set locations. If the world were flat there would be some split in between 2 locations that would be impossible. Let’s say the split is somewhere between Hawaii and Japan. Take the globe and flatten it out with Hawaii on the Far West and Japan on the Far East. Then how can the flight between these two places be only 8.5 hours? Meanwhile, going the other way, it takes over 11 hours from Hawaii to Newfoundland… how could a plane go from one side of the flat earth to the other side so quickly?

No matter where you decide to draw the lines for a flat earth, we have flights travelling daily that would have to beat all airspeed records to accomplish landing on time, if they couldn’t go around the earth and instead had to fly the opposite way to avoid the edge. Put a flat earther on one of those flights, and that should defy any proof they think they might have. That should be the only evidence needed. Yet I guess it’s not enough.

That’s the weird thing about conspiracy theories like this… They don’t stand up to any evidence and yet people stick to them. To anyone who seriously and vehemently stands by the idea that the world is flat, do me a favour: draw the lines in the sand. Tell me where the edge is that separates east from west, then tell me how the flights between a city on the east and a city on the west can be achieved so quickly?

Not in our lifetime

We have an inherent bias that we believe things will happen in our lifetime, and conspiracy theorists are far more biased in this area than others. The next big event will bring the end of the world as we know it.

From the Bay of Pigs all the way to the Reagan era, World War III was inevitable. Y2K was going to send us back to the Middle Ages. Meteors, super volcanos, earthquakes, super floods, and yes, viruses, are all threats to humanity that will be the end of civilization as we know it…. apocalyptic threats to the human race that will happen any day now.

But the weird part is that somehow these are inevitable to happen in ‘our’ lifetime. We will bare witness. We will be the last generation to know what normal was.

Normal.

What is that? Normal as in a life of traveling by horse and buggy? Normal as in women can’t vote? Normal as in smoking in restaurants? Normal as in life before indoor plumbing, or before social media?

Our world advances in extremely fast and innovative ways, but somehow the human race will find its demise in our lifetime… or so conspiracy theorists believe. People will prepare for the end days, but they won’t live in the now.

“If I hold up this sign that says, ‘The world will end tomorrow’ long enough, one day I will be right.”

…that’s assuming the end will happen in your lifetime… but it probably won’t. We will see so many changes in our lifetime, but so will our grandkids… and maybe they will see the end times, but the simple reality is that it’s unlikely to happen in ours.

Humans, the earth, or the universe probably need a few more generations to really screw things up for us, for our planet, and odds are that this will happen after everyone living today is long dead. The end might be near, but it’s farther away than our short lives.

New conspiracy theory

I wish I saved the video clip where I heard this… it’s brilliant and I don’t know who to give credit to.

Here’s how you out conspire a conspiracy theorist anti-vaxer who talks about how the government is using vaccines to control you… you tell them this:

“You are right! And their plan is very clever. Vaccinate all the sheep who listen and comply. Then spread a deadly variant of the virus, and kill off all the unvaccinated who don’t listen. And further get the sheep to follow them by saying, ‘See, we told you the vaccine would save your life.’ Thus wiping out anyone that doesn’t obey and reinforcing the importance of complying.”

🤣🤣🤣

Now there is a ridiculous conspiracy theory that I’d like to see spread widely in the conspiracy theory circles.

The Great Reset or the Great Rethink?

I can’t believe how often good ideas get buried into conspiracy theories. See this article in the Nee York Times:

The baseless ‘Great Reset’ conspiracy theory rises again

A baseless conspiracy theory about the coronavirus has found new life as cases surge once again.

On Monday morning, the phrase “The Great Reset” trended with nearly 80,000 tweets, with most of the posts coming from familiar far-right internet personalities. The conspiracy alleges that a cabal of elites has long planned for the pandemic so that they could use it to impose their global economic control on the masses…

The article then shared this tweet:


Now, moving away from crackpots that spread the idea of some ruling cabal planning to use the pandemic to bring in a socialist and controlling government to strip you of rights and freedoms… there are actually some very smart people looking for the opportunity in this crisis.

These wise thinkers and leaders are trying to rethink some of the idiocy of our pre-covid world, and take this opportunity to do a reset of some sort. That’s not a conspiracy, that’s leadership.

Check out this World Economic Forum happening now: weforum.org.

What’s on the agenda?

Sustainable production: Almost 50% of the world’s energy consumption and 20% of greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to the manufacturing sector. How can we accelerate sustainable production and make it a competitive advantage? 

New digital business models: While much of the physical world came to a standstill during the global pandemic, digital connectivity soared. How can new digital business models help companies provide value and build resilience? 

Urban infrastructure and services: Many cities face serious obstacles to providing basic services, and COVID-19 has made it even more difficult. How can urban innovations help cities improve quality of life, resilience and sustainability?

Keeping populations healthy: The pandemic has revealed the need to strengthen health systems and ensure that populations have better information and control over their health. How can technologies help to improve and maintain healthier lives? 

Financial innovation: New financial technologies are shaping how services are provided around the world. How can we ensure that they are accessible and deliver greater value and efficiency to all parts of society?

Frontier technologies: Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and synthetic biology, are heralding a global transformation. How can we create, scale-up and govern these technologies so they “do no harm” while delivering the value we need? 

New work models: New work models are essential to address the challenges created by a transforming labour market, new skillset requirements and globally connected technology-driven industries. How can we ensure that employees are able to keep up with the evolving demand for skills and have the opportunity to contribute purposefully to the workplace of the future?

Imagine that: smart people getting together to ask meaningful questions about how our world could be a better place! Of course some of the solutions will be ‘out there’, big audacious (and to some, scary) ideas. But I want to live in a world where people challenge themselves to rethink what’s not working and use times like this to reset how we do things. The fact that some people are afraid of change shouldn’t generate fear-mongering and stop us from making thoughtful progress during challenging times.

For example, as an educator I’ve seen remote learning catapult the use of technology in classrooms and many great educators are rethinking the way they interact with students, and the way they get students to interact with each other. If the pandemic ends and we just go back to the way things were before, we are missing out on using some valuable lessons learned. And, if we go forward haphazardly from here without educational leaders trying to parse what we keep and don’t keep, then we are leaving innovation to chance.

Within every crisis there is an opportunity, and now is the time to rethink and to reset the post-pandemic world we will live in.

In Search of a Flat Earth - QAnon-Part 2

Understanding QAnon

Here is an excellent video that helps us understand the lure and draw of QAnon, and it is better than any other video that I’ve seen. I’ve set the second video below up to play starting at 37:50, or Part 2 of the video.

The video is wrongly titled ‘In Search of a Flat Earth‘. The flat earth conspiracy is really just a metaphor for the bigger point about how bad ideas spread. If you want to see fantastic proof that the earth is round, you just need to go to 5:46 of this video, and watch until 12:48.

The 7 minutes of Part 1 you need to see! 

This 7 minutes is all you need to debunk Flat Earthers, then you can go on to the better part of the video, shared below. From the 37:50 point of the video, the really interesting discussion about QAnon begins:

This 30 Minutes at the end of the video is actually about QAnon

I’ll let the last 1/2 hour of this video speak for itself, other than to say that QAnon is not some little cult of no concern, it is a distributed, disruptive network of people spreading bad and dangerous ideas.

At the speed of lies

Conspiracy theories have been around for a long time. They have, for years, been spread in small circles, where they fester and rise to prominence every now and then. The first time that I really saw social media have an influence on a conspiracy theory was around the 9/11 tragedy. YouTube videos started to emerge spreading the idea that it was a planned event by US insurgents or a cabal of some sorts, and not just a foreign terrorist attack. I saw videos getting millions of views based on fictional theories and the cherry-picking facts to focus on.

Now, Facebook groups form and millions of people join them. That’s worse than a video, because Facebook groups are not just about watching a single video, but about creating a continual stream of propaganda that feeds the beliefs of a growing community. As seen in this NPR article:

Social media groups have quickly sprung up in the days since voting stopped, to spread disinformation about supposed cheating on the part of election officials, and in some cases organize in-person protests.

“This is the most intense online disinformation event in U.S. history and the pace of what we have found has only accelerated since [Election Day],” said Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and Facebook’s former chief security officer.

Meanwhile, as I write this, Twitter has put this notice:

On 9 of the last 10 tweets of the sitting President. This notification links to the following statement:

It’s good to see that social media companies are stepping in to try to combat the spread of dangerous propaganda/fake news/lies. Counter to this is the argument of, ‘Who gets to decide what is true and what is not? Is this itself a form of censorship?’

I think there are definitive lines that can be drawn and social media sites do need to act. For example, when an idiot like Alex Jones decides to call a school shooting fake and declare that parents of dead children are actors, he deserves to be silenced on social media. The line is simple: fake and false claims (especially by people of influence) should be immediately flagged, or removed. Immediately.

One of the challenges of dealing with fake news and miss-information is that arguments against it are a win for the propaganda spreaders. The moment a credible person argues the point(s) they either legitimize the value of the opposing points as something worth arguing, or they feed into the conspiracy that they are hiding the truth, or they are widening the platform by bringing attention to it. It’s a losing scenario even if the argument of the credible person is factually sound.

When lies can spread so easily, when they can build momentum, and develop communities around them, they become very dangerous. Especially when the slick videos and arguments are well designed to ‘sell’ ideas, using the same convincing strategies that advertisers have honed for years, to sell products… but these strategies are being used to sell ideas that polarize opinions, anger and enrage, and ultimately brainwash people.

We are living in an era when social media is being used to undermine social cohesion. Lies travel fast and build momentum. Truth won’t slow this down without putting a few walls in the way. We can debate about what those walls look like, but we can’t wait until those walls are perfect before we start putting them up. Kudos to Twitter for doing what they are doing!

NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

It’s sad that fake news is spread so easily that this even has to exist! The Associated Press has started this report: “NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week“, to debunk fake and even harmful, made-up news reports that have gone viral on social media.

Here is an example:

“CLAIM: The new vaccine for COVID-19 will be the first of its kind ever. It will be an “MRna vaccine” which will literally alter your DNA. It will wrap itself into your system. You will essentially become a genetically modified human being.

THE FACTS: Experts say mRNA vaccines do not alter your DNA. As researchers work to test vaccines to stop the spread of COVID-19, social media posts are sharing misinformation to sow doubt even before they become available to the public. The posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram suggest that a new coronavirus mRNA vaccine will genetically modify humans…” — Beatrice Dupuy

This fake story feeds perfectly into the narrative of anti-vaxers and conspiracy theorists that believe Covid-19 is not serious and/or part of a plot to control the masses. It will be shared and re-shared, being passed off as facts and evidence on discussion boards, in Facebook groups and on Facebook timelines. It will be shared with hashtags on Twitter that will point this fake news to the right audience, who will believe it.

How did we get here? The sad thing is, the people that most need to see this Associated Press report are the people who would say that what’s written in this report is fake. They won’t do the research. They won’t check any sources. They won’t change their minds. They will spread the fake news and keep it alive long enough to fool more gullible people into believing what they want to believe, despite factual data and evidence to the contrary.

Worse yet, we are heading into the world of deep fakes, where video ‘evidence’ can be fabricated so well that it is indistinguishable from reality. Make no mistake, we need news websites like this to help us recognize viral fake news. We also need everyone to think twice before sharing controversial and click-bait like articles, unless we’ve done the work to ensure we aren’t perpetuating fake news.

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Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

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Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck