• onlooker@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    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.

    • Zozano@lemy.lol
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      9 months ago

      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.

      • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
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        9 months ago

        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.

        • Enkrod@feddit.de
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          9 months ago

          Meh, our esoterics are basically religious anarchists or spiritual hippies. They still fall into all the trapping of religion without the “organized” part of “organized religion”.

    • BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      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.

      • thesporkeffect@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        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

        • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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          9 months ago

          If I’m grifting people into giving me money to prove it’s flat I’ll keep doubling down until that teat runs dry.

          • Traister101@lemmy.today
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            9 months ago

            There’s a couple grifters who pretend (or are stupid enough) to think so yes. It’s like the “doctors” the anti vax guys point at

            • triplenadir@lemmygrad.ml
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              9 months ago

              yeah but… 0.01%? Maybe I’m delusionally optimistic but I can’t believe 1 in a 1000 people believes the earth is flat, let alone 1 in 1000 scientists

      • Baphomet_The_Blasphemer@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        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.