Earlier today, I ran into a link on WUWT to this little article on Russia Today on an impressive fireball seen over there. Mostly interesting to people, like me, who like to sit out under a night sky. Perhaps with a telescope and perhaps just watching.
That's not why I'm here now.
The video was OK, but the comments were full of flat earth stuff. Which reminds me that I've been meaning to look into my crackpot idea: the flat earth stuff was started as an inside joke, like the way the weaponized autistics at 4chan made the centuries old OK hand sign into a racist White Supremacist hand sign.
Dated almost 3 years ago, I'd say the only thing that didn't work was the last paragraph about making the leftists dig so deep down into their lunacy that “the rest of society ain't going anywhere near that shit.” The media and some big organizations just seem to have run with the idea that the OK hand sign really was for white supremacy.
One day, it occurred to me that so many people who seem otherwise capable of moving around in life; working for a living, navigating a city in their car, and otherwise functioning adults, couldn't possibly be believing Flat Earth Theory. I just can't take it seriously. So I did a search on “4chan AND flat earth” with Duck Duck Go. I found a page on Quora - must be it. Uh, no. The question was “what 4chan post started the flat earth movement?” The answers uniformly don't credit 4chan. Several answers attribute the Flat Earth movement to one started in the late 1840s by a guy named Samuel Rowbotham. Several answers imply that it's done to get YouTube clicks and other hard-to-isolate sources of income for someone. Unfortunately, flat earth fanatics get into the answers and make it hard to take the page seriously.
Here's where I have to admit that I can't handle the stupidity. I just shake my head and go look at something more interesting. I have a hard time believing anyone could actually make the statements I read. “If space is a vacuum, why doesn't it suck all the air off the planet?” or as one of the comments on RT said, “This incredible power called 'gravity" , holding trees, planets, people, buildings and oceans down, and yet a little simple kid's balloon full of helium will defy this thing and rise as far as the eye can see.” Confusing weight with buoyancy. This can't be a functioning adult being serious, right? This is either someone crying out for attention, or someone trying to direct clicks to a video or webpage, right? RIGHT??
Well, you've got:
ReplyDelete1. The 9/11 truth movement
2. People who think measles and whooping cough are harmless diseases
3. People who think some events are false flags staffed with crises actors
4. The electric universe people
5. People who think Nikola Tesla's knowledge and inventions are being suppressed
6. People who think we can cause earthquakes and hurricanes (HAARP)
7. Alex Jones and Rick Wiles
8. Etc., Etc., Etc.
You'd like to think no one could be that ignorant, or stupid, but it is possible.
You can thank our wonderful public "education" system for people completely lacking even a rudimentary knowledge of science.....
ReplyDeleteLogical thinking is hard work. People are lazy. Most jobs involve performing rote steps, not thinking. Driving is just an advanced form of walking. Attention is more valuable to the animal than money.
ReplyDeleteMost humans can't think rationally -- what they do is a cargo cult simulation of thinking rationally.
ReplyDeleteI propose the idea that the 200-year cycle of history is caused because nobility fails to successfully teach kingsmanship to their children. The upper-middle class gets drawn into, and falls for, the lies designed for the middle class to believe. This is not a new problem. Consider the anti-thinking teaching that faith, belief contrary to evidence, is good.
No, really, they are that stupid. I don't mind the ones that are stupid because they have deficient brains (the IQ bell curve is shaped that way for a reason) any more than I can dislike dogs for being unable to read Schiller in the original German.
ReplyDeleteThe ones who bother me are those of average intelligence who actively deny education and truth, and are militant about it. Being around these aggressively stupid people saps my ability to play nice.
I think that's the "BINGO" comment. The one that really bothered me yesterday was some guy who claimed to be a pilot and yet said horribly stupid things. He said the curvature of the earth was 8 inches per mile squared, but that's not even the right units. It should be inches per mile. Then he talked about having to push down the nose of the airplane to keep it from climbing away from the earth, but that's not how any of that works. The balance of lift and gravity as vectors with magnitude and direction, and that gravity always acts toward the center of the earth.
DeleteEither the guy is too stupid to fly a plane and should have his license pulled, or he's lying, or he's just crying out for attention.
This isn't hard. If you go to the beach, you can watch boats with binoculars and watch them become less visible, from the bottom up. If your eyes are 6' above the water level, the horizon is three miles away. Yeah it's messy because the temperature of different air layers can introduce optical illusions, and waves can complicate things, but it's not like careful observation won't work.
If you figure out how this works then maybe we can move on to a working theory as to why we accept being ruled by approximately 550 of the most stupidly venal grifters humanity can produce.
DeleteTom S.
Can I still dislike dogs that can't even read Schiller in translation? :p
DeleteIf the Earth isn't flat, how come my soccer ball rolls to a stop in my yard? Huh? HUH?! If the Earth was round, it would just keep rolling until it fell off!
ReplyDelete(i.e. maybe the pilot was trolling the believers just for fun... I hope)
If the Earth isn't flat, how come my soccer ball rolls to a stop in my yard? Huh? HUH?! If the Earth was round, it would just keep rolling until it fell off!
DeleteThat is exactly the quality of arguments you get.
Tut tut! You shouldn't dismiss the Flat Earth believers out of hand. They have many, many members around the globe, don't you know? >};o)
DeletePhil B
Ah, the old Flat Earth nonsense. Everyone knows it's hollow #antarctica #agartha
ReplyDeleteIt's all an illusion anyway. We are just bits inside a Commodore 64.
ReplyDeleteThat explains the jagged, raggedy, block edges on everything in the world that I keep getting cut on. 8-bit graphics.
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