On the one hand, yeah. Worrying about stuff that you have barely any control over won’t get you far. But on the other hand, that guy’s vote counts as much as yours. And if he already believes such silly conspiracy theories as the flat earth theory, he will be easily swayed by whoever is the loudest contrarian.
the challenge isn’t to let him enjoy life with his stupid ass conspiracy, it’s to get him to realize for himself that he’s been duped by both strangers on the internet and Conservative conspiracies. Deradicalizing and then radicalizing is hard as fuck
This guy’s vote counts as much as yours. I.E. next to nothing.
Depends on where you live. California, Texas? Yeah close to nothing in comparison with someone from Wisconsin. For some reason that I keep getting told isn’t political favoritism.
Yah, it’s not so much what he believes, but that he displays a lack of critical thinking skills or even common sense. That’s just how it came to the surface.
Right and that should be the target of our efforts. Not fighting over scientific research they’ve already decided to reject. Encourage them to think more critically. You can only encourage someone when you have their ear. You only have someone’s ear when they’re comfortable around you. Demeaning someone’s intelligence and telling them their world view is a toxic lie, is a quick way to convince them they’ll only ever be at odds with you.
The problem is that flat-earthers aren’t just that. They usually believe in all kinds of other kooky stuff as well, and some of those beliefs pose an active danger to society.
Exactly, the same mindset that takes you to “The entire geophysical establishment is wrong/lying about the shape of the Earth, so I’ll listen to this Youtube crank who says it’s a disc instead” will also lead you to things like “The entire medical establishment is wrong/lying about the effectiveness of masks & vaccines, so I’ll listen to this podcast crank hawking horse dewormer instead.”
There’s always an implied “them” hiding the conspiracy as well. It’s just a couple of short steps from flat earth to “jews will not replace us”.
To be fair, the medical establishment did lie about it, but not because of some weird “big mask” or “big pharma” conspiracy, but because they have a tangible impact when used by large groups and overselling them would have better outcomes than underselling them.
It’s a classic problem those in power have to deal with: tell the truth and get an underwhelming response, or oversell and get a better response.
Don’t take horse dewormers though, that’s just dumb.
Overselling something that is true is not the same as flat out lying about the efficacy of a random pharmaceutical. Not even in the same neighbourhood.
You can surely at least understand the mindset there. Basically, when party A is obviously lying, a party B that calls them out appears more trustworthy, and it’s easier to overlook the obvious flaws in party B’s alternative. Here’s the logic, specific to vaccines:
- group A claims vaccines are effective against contracting a given disease
- group B points to evidence of actual effectiveness, which vastly falls short of what the public thinks
- group B proposes an alternative to the vaccine, implying it’s effective and that group A doesn’t want others to know about it
- group A attacks group B’s alternative
This creates an us vs them situation, so if you already distrust group A somewhat, it’s easy to side w/ group B, assuming you have no actual knowledge to parse the available information. The same logic works with anything, you just need a little bit of distrust w/ some authority, evidence of false/misleading statements, and a seemingly credible alternative.
The trick is to not lie/be misleading in the first place so you don’t break the trust. Trust takes years to build and a moment to break, so you need a very good reason to break the trust.
No, I really can’t understand the mindset. Especially not in the face of the constant undermining of trust by certain elements of society, including when they’re in government. We didn’t just arrive here for no reason. The same people who have eroded the trustworthiness of government and authority (on purpose, see Reagan) over decades are the ones who now exploit the results of their actions, for their own gain.
If, in your scenario, group B was on the level, it would be a different story. But they aren’t. If A oversold their claim, B would have massively oversold theirs. And that was easy to prove and has been proven. B also just didn’t oversell their own claim, they also exaggerated the claim that they refuted to something that, in this form, was never said - standard MO.
There is no trick to this. Being factual and getting people to believe you is much harder than telling an easy but good-sounding lie and getting people to believ you.
If A oversold their claim, B would have massively oversold theirs. And that was easy to prove and has been proven
Right. But if A is supposed to be the trusted authority and B proves they aren’t trustworthy, you’re more likely to not believe criticisms of B because “the establishment” has already been proven untrustworthy. That’s how conspiracies gain traction, and any amount of hiding of information gives fuel to detractors.
So people are going to ignore criticism of B because they’ll feel that B is the “underdog” being attacked by “the establishment.” That’s how these things work.
There is no trick to this. Being factual and getting people to believe you is much harder than telling an easy but good-sounding lie and getting people to believ you.
Sure, but trust is earned. You can’t lie 5% of the time and expect people to believe everything you say, if they find out about that 5%, the other 95% will be called into question. So you need to reserve the lies for when they really count.
Lying will work in the short-term, but it has big consequences in the long-term, so if you’re a long-term entity (e.g. the CDC, FBI, etc), you need to be very careful about how people interpret your message.
So how come people trust Donald Trump? How is it that he can get away with lying whenever he opens his mouth, how is it that people buy it when he pretends he’s the underdog and not part of the establishment? How is it his followers, who are so ready to believe that the government lies to them all the time, don’t call anything of what he says into question?
If we go by what you say then we’re basically fucked. Government and authorities can never regain trust because thanks to people like Trump, thanks to parties like the Republicans, who have spent decades undermining that trust, thanks to the mass media who are highly complicit, we live in a post-truth world, and it’s enough that a government wasn’t 100% truthful that one time, we can never trust them again.
Don’t need a podcast when the president at the time was telling them to take the horse dewormer.
Yup, the root of flat earth conspiracy y theories is that some group is fooling everyone to enrich themselves. If you keep scratching through the layers it’s always jews that are behind it.
It’s just antisemitism cloaked in a ridiculous conspiracy.
Weird that the OOP thinks it’s “intellectual superiority” to simply have your facts straight.
well, it is. I mean, it’s a low bar, but comparatively, yeah.
Like saying hygienic superiority is not being covered in feces. It is, but that shouldn’t be the contest.
I shall remember this comparison and use it at the most inappropriate situation. Thank you.
1: Why do you always have to be right?
2: You were literally bitching about getting a raise and losing money. That’s not how that works!
1: Anecdote lawyer politicians taxes useless idiot not even a Republican talking point drivel.
2: Stare and say nothing.
1: Implodes a month later by sending out emails to everyone across the company about work being work and gets fired.
2: Goes back to work short staffed.
Uh, what?
It’s a ‘made up’ conversation with a coworker.
I miss when people were ashamed of being stupid, now they feel proud about it.
Pointing out stupidity online is a crazy experience. Most of the time you get answers like “who cares?”, " you must be fun at parties.", “this isn’t a (relevant topic) test, I’ll make all the errors I want” etc. Not once in my life have I felt or thought like that, and I just can’t imagine how those proples minds work.
proples
?
“Who cares?” - People that upvoted them but downvoted you for doing what they talked about.
These people’s
“Who cares?” Anyone who isn’t a moron.
The thing is, in their eyes they aren’t stupid.
They think they have this secret piece of information, and everyone else is stupid for not knowing or understanding it.
But it is kind of narcissistic to think you found this extra information, which the people who have spend their entire lives researching the topic somehow have missed.
Like, I know people who claim the sea levels aren’t going to rise because ice melting doesn’t increase the water level. And claim all the scientists are wrong about climate change. When in reality the sea levels will rise because warm water expands.
When in reality the sea levels will rise because warm water expands.
Just FYI, sea levels are going to rise primarily because much of the melting ice is not floating in the water, but land based. Thermal expansion is definitely part of it, but secondary.
Nah, the amount of snow and ice on land like in Antarctica is extremely small to the amount of water in the sea, especially since it needs to expand outward and cover even more land.
With thermal expansion even only being a clouple of % is enough to rise everywhere multiple meters. Which is nothing compared to the +10km of dept at the Mariana Trench.
Of course, all of it adds together in the end. It will be bad for everyone no matter where it comes from.
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/faq/12/what-causes-sea-level-rise/
Might change when all of the ice melts, but to this point it contributes twice as much per year, per NASA. If you have some other source I would be interested in reading it.
It’s often that they think those people know but aren’t telling the truth. Then more and more people start agreeing. So they’re not the one person who figured it out, it’s a revolution!
See here’s the thing, if you believe silly stuff and keep it to yourself, that’s fine. People who believe in silly stuff never keep it to themselves though.
If you put information out there, don’t be mad when people put counter information back at you. I know far too many people who believe in alt medicine and talk freely about it, that it’s getting harder and harder to bite my tongue. I don’t care if you think Acupuncture works for you. The fruit diet worked for Steve Jobs until it didn’t.
Acupuncture is a bit of a different animal though, there’s been some research coming out that it triggers a different layer (connective tissue iirc) in ways that we don’t really understand but seem to promote beneficial responses through triggering various receptors and nerve responses. I would still group it closer to alt med but it’s one of the ones I think might have a grain of usefulness underlying a bunch of less helpful ritualism.
One of the claims with acupuncture is that everyone has Meridian Lines and master practitioners find and put needles in them to manipulate the body or something. Those lines are suppose to be constant for the same person. It’s been years, but someone decided to schedule several acupuncture appointments with several different masters and each master put needles in different points.
If any part of acupuncture turns out to have some real deep tissue therapy application, how it’s practiced would end up changing so much, it wouldn’t even be called acupuncture anymore. Shit like reusing needles or Punctured Lungs are not something that has any excuses to happen in real medicine.
Anyway, this group also likes to claim that cupping, reflexology, chiropractic, or any other “eastern medicine” is being kept down by racists in the American Medical Association.
Yeah and those would be a lot of the less helpful ritualism described.
It may get a new name when the actual medical use is determined and demonstrated but for now it’s still acupuncture.
There’s a lot of terrible things that shouldn’t happen in real medicine (like pretending different races have different pain tolerances, or over prescription of medicines like opioids or even antibiotics) but we don’t blame the technique or medicine in those instances so much as we blame the individual doctors doing that shit and the groups that perpetuate it.Would I go get acupuncture treatment now?
Maybe if I had certain assurances like clean needle use and the use is limited to areas like joints but even then probably not until I see better evidence of cause and effect for the treatment. I just keep an open mind to avoid what could be inherent biases that would discount the idea in it’s entirety instead of trying to understand why there are some successes. Kinda like how I’m not going to go eat a bunch of herbs from traditional Chinese medicine but would be interested in understanding how the components of those herbs affect the body to see if there is something that can be pulled and enhanced to modern medical treatment.
How do you know? People could believe in all kinds of dumb shit and just not tell you.
The truth is darker: For everybody who talks about the silly stuff there are two who don’t, you just don’t hear them cuz they ain’t talking. Source: Closeted Quacko
I mean those types already gave us the Bible, how much worse could it get?
We used to make fun of people like this. Humiliate them. Alas, no more. Everyone’s opinion is now valuable.
Humiliating people does not help them grow, study suggests
it’s just as equally effective to break dumb beliefs like this as reasoning is, and both are far more effective than empathy, according to studies.
I’m going to need a source for those claims.
GIYF. the paper is out there, published and reviewed. circa 2021, I think.
You made the claim, you provide the source.
naw, I’m lying. it doesn’t exist. whatever you want to believe, I don’t fucking care about you.
If you want to look it up, look it up. if you don’t, don’t. I have zero interest in trying to convince retards.
Mmk and I have no reason to take anything you say seriously. Guess you’re just a lying sack of shit.
No, but it prevents other people from engaging with a topic to begin with
On the other hand, normalizing and allowing it just enables and validates it.
It’s not that their opinion is now valuable. We just figured out that Bullying doesn’t work.
except that it does
Sure, bud.
To supress elements in a herd? Sure it does.
Healthy for the individual? Not so much.
it’s like no bully ever got lunch money from another kid ever, because bullying doesn’t work?
the mafia/mob tried to run protection rackets, but were never successful because bullying doesn’t work.
🙄
jfc you people. 🤦♂️
Ok, bullying doesn’t work if you have “good intentions”
I think that’s what the internet has done for us, it’s removed that sort “social immune system” that prevented crazy ideas from spreading. Before, if somebody had some crazy ideas, the most they could usually do was rant to people on the bus/subway, maybe make some pamphlets, or some other small-scale thing to spread the idea. At best you might find someone on AM radio broadcasting at weird hours. Individuals would get exposed to it, but would likely never pass it on, this contained crazy ideas and they rarely got traction to spread.
Now the internet comes along, and suddenly crazies are getting hooked up with impressionable people easier than ever before. Crazy ideas have an almost endless supply of rubes that will eat them right up. Our social immune system can’t protect society from all the insane things flying around at high speeds all over the place now. It’s intellectual chaos.
I mean the social immune system also prevented ideas like worker solidarity, gender equality, socioeconomic mobility, sexual freedom, etc. from spreading but I get your point. Opening Pandora’s box let the crazies out as well as the AOC/Bernie and free Palestine crowds.
The problem being, at least for the moment, the crazy is winning
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I wonder if she’s pandering or if she’s a believer. Surely she’s been all around the world on planes.
I never liked her but I didn’t think she was a complete moron, just a shitty person.
Flat earthers generally vote for people who are hell-bent on erasing workers’ rights. That’s why I would be arguing.
Yeah, the whole “live and let live” movement has removed the social barriers to being a fucking moron. Ignorant people holding onto stupid beliefs should be made to feel bad by the people around them.
The whole “live and let live” movement normalized far-right talking points in my country, then the “live and let live” movement suddenly disappeared…
I don’t think one follows from the other though eh?
Anon wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with that argument anyways. If your goal is to make them stop believing then you have to ask questions without seeming like you’re leading him to a certain conclusion in any way.
This! I’ve had by far the most success by asking simple questions and having them come to the realization themselves. Forcing your view down their throat never goes anywhere. Their guard goes up and it becomes a matter of pride.
What are some good points to make them come to the realization themselves?
sorry, I wouldn’t trust anyone with those beliefs in any position of responsibility.
Same with religious people. They’ve already proven they lack in critical thinking skills/
I’m sure there have been plenty of times you have comfortably trusted a religious person with responsibility because most people are religious.
Most people are not religious - https://news.gallup.com/poll/511133/identify-religious-spiritual.aspx#:~:text=WASHINGTON%2C D.C. -- Nearly half,say they are neither religious
“nearly half” is not “most”.
That’s if you’re including spiritual as non-religious.
Only 18% of people in that poll were described as neither (Atheist).
I believe he was getting at religion as the problem, not spirituality. If you look at the BITE model, which is used to determine if a group displays cult like behavior, both flat earthers and many religions fall into the category of cults. Spirituality does not, as it is not organized.
Spirituality does not, as it is not organized.
As someone who grew up in a part spiritual household I heavily disagree. Flat earthers and traditional spiritualists like Neo-Pagans, Wiccans, etc, have the exact same amount of organization, if flat earthers are a cult, then so are most spiritualist groups.
Most flat earthers aren’t in some organized cult, they get their misinformation from Facebook posts and YouTube videos, with there being a couple of small actually organized groups. The exact same can be said about spiritualists, just generally they used to get their spiritual beliefs from books instead of the internet (though that’s changed now for spiritualists too).
If anything, I’d bet there’s more people in actually organized spiritualist groups than there are in actually organized flat earther groups.
Yes, that’s still and organization. Wicca is a religion, by definition.
Also, cults do not have to be organized by a leader, they can simply be a loose group. The BITE model accounts for this.
I suppose what I was getting to is personal spirituality. Any group that is working to push/enforce their ideas and world view could easily become a cult. Flat earthers, yoga moms, whatever.
You’re going to nit pick spiritual vs religious? If we’re being pedantic, you’re citing us population, the world is much different. Also even if we accept it’s only about half, my point still stands.
I think spiritual vs religious can be an important difference. Generally speaking it’s organized religions that are causing major harm not the individuals who believe their is something beyond our physical reality.
i see you still need to assert intellectual superiority :)
Yes they do, in the same way I wouldn’t hire someone who thinks the Internet is run by Santa’s elves. There’s a bar.
This is the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.
More stupid than oceans on the underside of a ball?
😂
More stupid than the earth being millions of years old? Everything would be old and rotten if that were the case.
remember that time you called health insurance “gambling”, which is why you refuse to get any? (or support universal basic health care)
ah, good times.
I’m flattered that you spend so much time thinking about the things I’ve said.
I’m writing a book of my thoughts, I’ll let you know when I’m done.
given you’re eating crayons at a faster rate than you can learn to write coherently, I’m not going to hold my breath.
I like how spicy you’re getting.
It means you care, friend.
not as stupid as some of your comments elsewhere.
But he votes and talks to other voters. Our lives are in their vocal minority hands.
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Just because they set the bar low, doesn’t mean it’s not still intellectual superiority to step over it. The fact of the matter, as you pointed out, is that they were taught everything you’re about to say in elementary school. The fact that they didn’t learn the earth is round implies there’s more going on in their head than a lack of information.
I’m inferring from your tone that you’re not planning to compassionately listen to their perspective to provide constructive criticism. So yeah, it sounds like you’re going to spend a few minutes calling them stupid. Which has no benefit other than stroking the intellectual part of your ego. It actually will likely make the world a worse place, because you’ll present yourself to them as someone they don’t want to be like. Further entrenching them in their views.
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Yeah, same respect. I get it. But do you think you are the first person to tell them the earth is round? What are you actually attempting to accomplish when you speak to this person?
Anyone stupid enough to believe the earth is flat will kill you by accident.
You believe so many things that are obviously not true. We all do. Have some compassion.
Nope, I’ve tolerated the stupidity of these kinds of idiots long enough. I’m done with wasting compassion on the hopeless.
Exactly. Tolerating the stupid is currently having us regress in society and basic human rights.
Do unto others, friend. They tolerate your BS, why don’t you do the same?
Weak.
Normal day at the NASA factory
I believe in truth and that facts do matter. I also teach young people. Being a wage earner was not a bad thing, but I yearn for the freedom to live an easier life, eventually. I want that for everyone. False beliefs are traps that hold people back from being their best selves. Carry flat-earth beliefs as a core foundation and look at what differences it would make. Geostationary satellites, and all the tech jobs that go with servicing that sector, just disappeared. Ditto solar. Travel to distant places, and time zones, becomes an insolvable problem. Your co-worker is holding his life back by believing in medieval superstitions.
It is a kindness to challenge people to find what is true.
I agree with all this but want to gripe about the misconception that flat Earth is medieval.
People have known Earth is round since at least 350 BC when Aristotle wrote On the Heavens. And he didn’t come up with it there, he was explaining how others knew it.
In medieval times they had not lost this knowledge and it was still widely understood that Earth is round. Flat Earth has been a fringe lunacy for thousands of years. In the 1800s it became popular for religious reasons and most flat Earthers today are actually creationists trying to dress up their beliefs as science.
