Study blames YouTube for rise in number of Flat Earthers | Hacker News Reader

Study blames YouTube for rise in number of Flat Earthers

theguardian.com

20 pointsmetaphysics14 comments

There are so many of these clowns now, why don't they put in the effort to walk to the edge of the world? I mean, what's the freaking problem here? They are so smart and clever to use lasers to measure curvatures and other laughable metrics.

Let's go. Get a fundraiser going, and solve this "mystery" once and for all.

Sadly, all flat-earthers can do is constantly find an argument that something "went wrong" or "something is rigged".

How pathetic must be your life when you believe in something that even if you had a chance to prove it's not real, you would still find ways to conspire against your shitty truth?

Because the various national military patrols the "wall" so no civilian can get close.

Ahh, thanks for clearing that up. I am a flat-earther now. Praise be, and let's rejoice in this revelation.

Well, did you personally prove that the earth is round? I suspect that most of round-earthers didn't prove it themselves as well.

The problem is infeasiblity; it's infeasible for a regular person to confirm most of the scientific findings.

For example, ~75% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They already have a hard time putting food on the table.

This kind of arguments against flat-earthers needs to be retired. It doesn't make sense to dare a person to confirm any scientific finding.

Let's just call spade a spade: Round-earthers believe the earth is round because they listen to the right experts. Flat-earthers believe the earth is flat because they listen to the wrong experts.

We are just listeners. Let's stop acting like we prove these scientific findings ourselves.

Unless you're in the 'all potential evidence is faked' groupd I'd say the imagery provided by the flock of geostationary meteorological satellites is enough evidence to prove the earth is anything but flat. How else would it be possible to piece the overlapping imagery of these satellites together into a flat surface? Any flat-earthers around here who want to give it a try can get some imagery at [1] and start puzzling it all together.

[1] https://en.allmetsat.com/

> Some said they watched the videos only in order to debunk them but soon found themselves won over by the material.

That’s the crazy thing about conspiracy theory videos. Fact is we cannot independently verify everything in life, at some point we have to trust someone else. So when we find people switching sides it’s not like science lost to conspiracy theories, it’s just that one popular set of ideas lost to another. What else can you expect when we pick and choose ideas based on social acceptance as one of the criteria (see psychology studies on anchoring effect of social pressure).

Why is this surprising? How is this much different from religion?

People are naive and perhaps that is the only thing that the flat-earth founder is trying to prove.

I suspect that almost all of these "believers" are simply trolling the normies, or enjoying their little pub clubs.

On the other hand, I don't completely rule out Dark City...

A comforting belief, the reality is that the scientific and rational literacy of vast numbers of people are basically non-existent. People can be convinced to believe anything, regardless of the evidence.

The corollary to this is that much of the current paradigm of anything even of all of society may be considered completely insane in a short period of time, say 100 or more years. There is no way for humans to know any truth, they simply have appealing rhetoric which according to current norms or methods of inquiry seems reasonable and believable. Many of them don't even currently stand up to scrutiny but that doesn't stop anyone from accepting them at face value.

this is sadly not the case. maybe 10 years ago it would have been, but plenty of people are now sincere flat earthers.

i suppose there are different degrees of belief and maybe on some deep level they realize it’s nonsense but they aren’t consciously trolling anyone.

sadly in my experience I've met a few true believers and youtube being the source doesn't surprise me as "look it up yourself on youtube" seems to be the go-to response to my questions about things like iridium satellites or how GPS works.

There are some interesting parts in the videos that remain suspicious (kind like a lot 9/11) like the restricted fly zones over parts of the north/south poles where they claim the world ends, however they then take the scary hair guy from Ancient Aliens approach and clap their hands shouting "Therefore... it can only mean one thing..."

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