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Anti-science stupidity

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I was scrolling TikTok yesterday and I came across a live stream that was run by a flat earther talking about the firmament. I stopped to watch for a bit with a voyeuristic, macabre eye… the same way people slow down on a highway to take a better look at a car accident. It was painful to listen to. It baffles me to think that there has actually been an increase in the size of the flat earth community since 2015, as shared in a BBC report. This report puts the blame on the YouTube algorithm that focused more on engagement than on factual information.

I’ve already shared a fair bit about the flat earth conspiracy including “Flat earth and flight times”, “Not even wrong”, and “Understanding QAnon”, but I came across this next video today and it reminded me of just how long ago humans had already figured out that the earth was a globe.

Over 2,200 years ago Eratosthenes did some calculations based on simple observations, and was able to not just determine the earth was round, but he was also able to calculate its circumference. Carl Sagan shares the story of Eratosthenes’ discovery in this video:

We can split atoms, view the planets in our solar system and beyond, and even see photos of the earth from space, yet because we can’t see the curve of the earth from our own vantage point people are convinced it is flat. They will negate and dismiss overwhelming evidence while conspiratorially justifying impossible coverups to ‘fool the masses’, (with no logical/apparent reason to really do so). ‘They’ are keeping the truth from us. ‘They’ faked the moon landing. ‘They’ want us to believe that the earth is round. ‘They’ are afraid of us knowing the truth.

Imagine believing that every pilot, NASA employee, physicist, and for that matter scientist, is lying to you. Imagine disregarding 100’s, or rather 1,000’s of years of knowledge and following unscientific morons producing YouTube videos that just feed you validating evidence. Imagine being that stupid.

Yes, I called them stupid. The irony is that no one that is a flat earther will read this, and if they did, they would consider me stupid. Personally I’d rather be a stupid guy learning about the globe from Eratosthenes and Carl Sagan than a stupid guy learning about a flat earth from YouTuber Mark Sargent, who himself probably no longer believes, but is too greedy to give up his lucrative YouTube channel.

I hope the phrase “You can’t fix stupid,” is wrong, but in all honesty, the growth of flat earth believers makes me think this statement very true.

Not even wrong

“Not even wrong” is a phrase often used to describe pseudoscience or bad science. It describes an argument or explanation that purports to be scientific but uses faulty reasoning or speculative premises, which can be neither affirmed nor denied and thus cannot be discussed rigorously and scientifically… The phrase is generally attributed to the theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colorful objections to incorrect or careless thinking. (Wikipedia)

I love this term. A great example of where this applies is to flat earthers.

Another is deniers of the moon landing.

These ‘believers’ have to deny volumes of evidence. They have to believe that so many people are conspiring to lie, across political party lines, and across international borders… with the sole purpose of keeping a massive secret that doesn’t benefit anyone to keep.

What surprises me is the willingness of bright people to engage in debate with these pseudoscientists and crackpots. The reality is that these are such bad ideas that they do not deserve to be put on equal footing with good ideas.

Why argue with someone who is so intellectually dishonest that they aren’t even wrong?

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.