If that happens I think you might be in England’s group again.
Nobody is an actual flat earther. It’s a joke thing isn’t it?
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It’s tough to tell. The main guy in that Netflix documentary struck me as a little disingenuous. I think maybe he just wants to start a church and sees FE as his in. But I mean, you’ve got Young-Earth Creationists and whatnot, at least a flat earth is immediately intuitive, even if the intuitions aren’t that hard to overcome.
Yes… Is that the group of death atm, if we join it will be the group of who beats us 5-0 1st 
Here’s hoping… As England would rather face us than Russiansondrugs🤣
This is it. Religious or spiritual people wrestle with doubt and uncertainty, but they forge ahead with reaffirmations from an inner voice, both in times of depression and mania. It’s a cross they bear and biblical passages chronicle such struggling from key players:
The devil is ever-present and always efforting to misguide. etc., etc.
So they comment that they’re praying, while often ambivalent.
Flat-earthers have to do the same thing, if they aren’t completely insane. So I dunno where this leaves us lmao
The percentage of people who believe in evolution for valid scientific reasons is vanishingly small. A lot of intelligent-design type arguments against evolution are basically sound arguments that just happen to be wrong due to the mindboggling fact that the earth has been in existence for billions of years, which is nuts.
Evolution is even a bad example, because the theory itself is basically plausible. Think about what well-informed people believe about cosmology, which is broadly speaking this:
- The universe is extremely old (OK!)
- The universe didn’t always exist, and it started out smaller than a single atom. (Wait, what?)
- Virtually instantaneously (i.e., expansion time: human lifespan << human lifespan : total age of the universe), the universe expanded to something close to its current size due to something called an inflation field (Don’t ask what an inflation field is, because no one has any idea)
- After that, the universe evolved according to the normal physical laws we see on earth, although the scales are very different. (Whew, glad that weird shit is behind us)
- Except also, the only kind of matter we have any direct experience of is basically insignificant, and a solid majority of the stuff in the universe is invisible fairy dust that no one has ever seen or has convincingly explained the nature of. (…)
- Also, there is a mysterious energy that permeates the universe that makes gravity work backwards for no known reason. (You’re the guys who say that flat-earth makes no sense?)
Again, I’m not saying that fairy-dust theory is false, it’s apparently true (or true-ish, or a stand-in for the truth). The point is that virtually everyone who believes this crazy shit doesn’t believe it for well-justified empirical reasons. The explanation for inflation has to do with a mathematical property called “anisotropy” that can be sussed out only through an exhaustingly precise examination of the static you see when you tune an old-fashioned radio or television to a dead channel. (<-- This is precisely true!)
What actually happens is that people’s empirical beliefs are obtained, in almost all cases, by ingesting the pronouncements of authoritative figures. There are many excellent reasons why science guys are a much better source to obtain scientific beliefs from than the Pope, but it’s a serious error to assume that a person’s choice of epistemic authority figure tells you much about that person’s character. For the most part, people just follow the authority figures that their social context tells them to follow. The only people you can really get some information about is people who were born into one social context but chose to adopt the epistemology of another–people who deconverted from a serious religious sect (not Episcopalianism) or joined a cult.
Flat-earthers are remarkable not because their beliefs are weird (the earth does look flat!), but because they are unsanctioned. The strangeness isn’t what they believe, it’s that they came to believe something that is unsanctioned by all elements of society.
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HONG KONG election results in with 90% Pro democracy Party wins.
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That would be great nice if those elected had any real power. They don’t.
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At the top probably, at the core, probably not. Unfortunately, that group is also growing every day.
The internet, all the information at your fingertips and instead we as a society seem to be getting dumber.
To be fair, elections are inherently biased against the anti-democracy party.
I didn’t fully understand this but the BBC said they have a 10% say in who is actually running things.
…and the CCP has a majority that makes the decisions. Those 10% mean nothing.
not in this country
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I agree with the general sentiment but not the final conclusion.
People don’t believe in the scientific worldview solely due to authority figures. They believe if for two other very important reasons,
First we all saw these principles in action and we understood them on a basic level in school. Your examples are among the most abstract in science. Most of science is not nearly as complex or difficult to understand.
Second we can all see science work every day when we use our phones, go to the doctor and weed our gardens. We can see science work everyday. There is no science version of “God works in mysterious ways”.
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Bad Bobman post.
Dial it back a little and describe faith in democracy, government and the rule of law as believing in fairly tales and you might have something.
The people who have “faith” in the consensus explanation for the creation of the universe among cosmologists, physicists, and astronomers don’t need to do the math. They are making rational assumptions based on good judgement and the best info they have.
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State Senate leaders are backing a bill that would limit the governor’s power to name a Kentucky Transportation Cabinet secretary, essentially shifting that role to a citizen board nominated by influential business and government groups.
The newly created board would develop the first draft of the state’s two-year road budget and base it on an “objective scoring system.” The governor’s administration now creates the plan sent to legislators.
The gov is Democrat, the legislature Republican. The same thing that happens in all these gerrymandered states. A Democrat wins in a popular vote contest and the gerrymandered legislature that won a majority through a minority of votes strips him of power.
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I am actually on Team Fairy Dust Theory Is Wrong. I don’t have a good competing theory, but it would not be the first time in the history of physics that a mystery mass has been postulated and assumed to be true when the correct answer was instead that there was simply physics we did not understand.
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After careful consideration
And conceding some of what you said is not yet persuasive to Wookie and flat earthers
I nominate this for @BestOf
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