That guy has my utmost respect.
To admit he was wrong and change his worldview (quire literally) when confronted with evidence, this is not easy. Mad respect.
Have you ever had the change your fundamental understanding of the world? What if you found out today that our entire understanding of science and the universe was flawed due to the interference of some outside force that caused us to make all kinds of faulty observations.
Would you instantly accept it as fact when presented with evidence? Or would your lifetime of observations still carry weight?
I have been on both sides on this. I was trapped in a Buddhist group. Considering that the teachings where flawed or wrong would basically mean that I would lose out on that community. Believe me, the sense of belonging can be euphoric in a religion.
Of course, changing your view in isolation is quite easy. It becomes harder when a big part of your life requires you to believe.
Also, when I was younger my need to “be right “ was quite strong. I had severe self confidence issues, so “being right” was the one thing I latched on to. Admitting being wrong gets really hard once your self confidence is that shaky.
I am doing much better now.
Huh? What kind of Buddhist group requires you to be so in? Kind of antithetical to Buddhism.
Glad to see his views got more well rounded over time.
I feel like it’s been memory holed, but I remember 00’s flat earth being genuinely smart people using it to illustrate the ridiculousness of teaching creation beside evolution, which was a push around that time. It was a Church of Satan style mockery, but I guess the arguments were too convincing.
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.
This is what happened at the Donald on reddit. It was a place to meme Trump’s idiotic presidential bid. But as soon as he got real chance at the election it was soon overran by the MAGA crowd.
People keep saying this and I think it’s bullshit.
If anything, the fascists were so stupid from the get-go that sane people thought they were joking.
I’m kinda hoping for a Cthulu Church myself. Can you imagine how cool the aesthetics of the building would be?
Hopefully they stick to the 10 8 condiments
I recall it being an argument in a high school debate club or someother which made it’s way onto 4chan and found supporters, who then proceeded to do what 4chan does best, and troll people/targets of their derision. Basically they assumed no one was stupid enough to believe it and were shockingly surprised.
Has anyone seen Behind the Curve? Most of these flat earth people seem to possess some level of critical thinking, just… not enough. That, or their pride or obstinacy get in the way. At the end of the documentary, a team of flat-earthers perform an actual, well thought out experiment. It’s… well, just watch.
Best part? Immediately after this, they discard the results of the experiment saying the premise was faulty. Somehow.
The problem doesn’t stem from their critical thinking skills, but rather, a combination of indoctrination and religious beliefs which cause a series of presuppositions to supersede the conclusions the rest of us have taken as presuppositions.
In some sense I admire their dedication to challenge established facts about reality, that should be done in general.
To clarify the statement about indoctrination and religion: many people are not aware that flat earthers are religious wackjobs. Their thought process is as follows:
“If the universe contains trillions of celestial bodies and they’re all spherical, then we are inconsequential. It must be the case that we are special, and earth is not a sphere, but is flat.”
Some flat earthers will claim space doesn’t exist, even though their bible tells them God created other planets.
Well, Columbus, Galilei, Kepler & co. challenged what was considered “established fact” about the shape and place of the earth in their times.
It is not wrong to challenge what is considered “established facts”. Problem is when you discard results that are going against your preoposition. I wouldn’t consider flat earthers to be particular religious as a crowd though. At least in my country they mostl come from the esoteric scene, where you get a mixed bowl of esoteric nonsene, conspiracy theories, and fascist ideology.
One thing to point out is that Columbus wasn’t challenging established thinking about the earth’s shape, but rather its size. The educated populace at the time was on the ball with the earth being a sphere.
Try being in their shoes: you set up an experiment to prove the earth is not flat and is indeed round, you run the experiment and at the end you realise your experiment fail and would prove the earth is flat. Would you changwe your point of view ? I know I wouldn’t, I would immediately assume I am an idiot and messed up the experiment, because I am so much convinced it is round, it would be much more realistic to assume I messed up.
If I do it 10 times and each time the result is ‘flat’, and 99.99% of scientists in the field say it’s flat, at that point I would do some self evaluation to see why I was so hell bent on being wrong
you think there are 0.01% of astronomers, geologists, or any scientists, who think the earth is flat? 😂
This. This is exactly it. Commonly referred to as cognitive dissonance where when presented with evidence differing from that of one’s beliefs, they will discard said evidence as faulty and will double down going deeper into their wrongfully held beliefs. Cognitive dissonance can be overcome but it is very difficult to do so, especially if you aren’t willing to entertain the idea that your beliefs might be wrong.
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Good ending
