Notes from a Flat Earth Conference
willpatrick.co.uk
willpatrick.co.uk
1. These people are not idiots (at least the YECs aren't, I can't speak for the flat-earthers) and to dismiss them as idiots who will just go away is a serious mistake. They are very good at presenting convincing-sounding arguments, and refuting them can actually be quite challenging.
2. The root of their reasoning is a tacit acceptance of teleology, which cannot be logically refuted. They approach existential questions with the assumption that there has to be some kind of point to existence, some transcendent meaning or purpose. If you accept this premise, then there is actually a logically defensible line of reasoning that leads you to Christianity and thence to the inerrancy of the Bible, and thence to YEC (and even a flat earth if you're really being intellectually honest!) A failure to appreciate this is IMHO one of the reasons that the secular world is having such a hard time effectively resisting these movements. A life without purpose makes no sense to these people, just as a theory at odds with the data makes no sense to someone with a scientific mindset. So if science leads you to the conclusion that life has no transcendent purpose (and it does) then, on their world-view, science must be wrong, full stop. No amount of data is going to persuade them otherwise.
Inerrancy falls in that camp from my reading. There’s a single verse that the basis for the entire doctrine.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
This verse is interpreted to mean that it is inerrant. There’s a wide gap between inerrant and useful for teaching from my own reading. There are many people wiser than me who disagree on the subject.
My own interpretation is simply that Jesus constantly spoke in metaphor because it was more useful for teaching. Why would we assume that the creation of everything, that involves so many intricate details, would be any different? Would we expect books on microbiology and geology to accompany Genesis?
Of course not. Genesis, Revelation and Job are 3 books of the Bible that don’t document events as observed. I believe (not 100%) that all the rest do.
Bookenders as I call them, people who only want to argue about Genesis and Revelation, are a concern because they take away from the real message to pursue an argument that nobody can win. It’s not productive and it’s not useful.
If everyone was convinced that the earth was or wasn’t 6,000 years old tomorrow it wouldn’t change a single facet of life on earth for anyone. It would only remove one argument. IMO, that makes it a pointless subject to debate and only creates friction.
Romans 14 is pretty clear about this too.
It's also important to note that "inerrancy" means very different things to different people. I remember one evangelical preacher who informally explained it as essentially "God made sure that nothing got into the scripture that he didn't want in the scripture," which is a much weaker claim and is essentially synonymous with what it means for something to be scripture.
> Of course not. Genesis, Revelation and Job are 3 books of the Bible that don’t document events as observed. I believe (not 100%) that all the rest do.
The Book of Ezekiel has a lot of pretty wild stuff, but I guess you can say it's supposedly documenting Ezekiel's visions (but isn't that also true of The Revelation?). The Book of Daniel is also apocalyptic literature, much of which was likely not intended to be read as a document of observed events. There's also a ton of poetry (Psalms, Proverbs, etc.) that I wouldn't consider "documents of events as observed."
Prophecy falls into that camp. Much of the Old Testament prophecy is fulfilled by Jesus himself though.
Unfulfilled prophecy is tougher.
I generally refer to Bookenders as people who focus on creation and the end of the world.
The message is everything in between and fascinating.
That’s really the root of it. If you read the entire Bible, you’ll see common themes that are reiterated over and over. You’ll see patterns of human behavior that haven’t changed in thousands of years.
Reading the entire Bible provides so much more context. There’s not nearly as much left up to discussion after that because you’ll have a much better understanding of e everything.
I mean, nobody talks about it but one of the biggest themes of the entire Old Testament is idolatry. We think about that today as worshiping gold statues but it’s just as easy to frame in terms of political parties, our own anger and biases, etc.
Another is the dangers of pride.
Explanations of this form are extremely easy to vary, which is why they are not good explanations.
Sure, but I don't think the debate is over whether creationists derive a sense of purpose from their beliefs. I have no doubt that they do. You'd never need to discuss things like fossils or evolution or cosmology to determine whether one derives a sense of purpose from one's beliefs.
My assumption was that these debates are about the epistemological status of these claims, which is largely independent of whether one derives a sense of purpose.
If you're spending lots of effort making what appear to be good-faith arguments toward some conclusion, but that conclusion is in fact an axiom that you hold, then that's intellectually dishonest. If "Bible is true and scientifically accurate" is one of your axioms, then it's intellectually dishonest to provide some supposed piece of evidence that supports this claim (e.g. supposed missing links in the fossil record), because by definition 1) no evidence is necessary to support an axiomatic claim and 2) no evidence or explanation can possibly change your mind.
Now, I am not going to defend Kent Hovind's intellectual honesty. I think he does have a not-so-hidden ulterior motive (tax evasion). But you cannot legitimately accuse him -- or any YEC that I've encountered -- of trying to paper over the fact that he assumes the truth of the Bible.
But there is no intellectually honest way to reconcile that factual claim except to reiterate that it is an axiom (or, if you like, a trivial corollary from the axiom that the Bible is true). The supposed existence of missing links is completely irrelevant, because even if those links weren't missing, his conclusion would be that evolution is false. Ancient flood myths are completely irrelevant, because even if such myths weren't widespread, his conclusion would be that evolution is false.
To clarify, I'm not claiming that creationists conceal their beliefs about the Bible. I'm referring to intellectual dishonesty.
But like you said in (2), they start with different assumptions. Their logic is totally sound if you agree with the assumptions. I spent some time reading and watching YEC material to have a better understanding of their positions. While there were certainly some really stupid arguments, most were sound but based on either an assumption of the existence of God (unprovable either way) and some implications of that, or a flawed understanding of physics/chemistry/biology. The latter were the only arguments that could be refuted because they were the only ones where you could point out the specific flaw in reasoning.
Until you find the difference in assumptions, you can't effectively argue against their position. And, then, only by talking about the assumptions and not the conclusions/implications.
A lot of these beliefs arise from very fundamental axioms of belief that only show up through these high-order belief systems.
If you fundamentally believe you should follow the evidence no matter what and THAT is the highest priority of your belief, then you are (more likely) going to fall into the camps of hard science and nothing but the science.
Or perhaps in a different vein, do you fundamentally believe you are a good person fighting evil? Then anyone who disagrees is THE ENEMY and must be DESTROYED. And not only are they doing bad things, but they are fundamentally BAD PEOPLE. They're not just baby killers, they're Satanic Baby Killers.
Of course, we are all a vibrant mix of these beliefs, and some may change over time with enough exposure. And many often hold beliefs counter to other base axioms and a careful walk may help expose and nudge their higher-order beliefs. But recognizing that it isn't just about Evolution or just about the world being flat, it's actually built on layers and layers of logic from very low-fundamental beliefs is key.
Because even if you prune some of the top facts, the base layers will remain, and they'll adapt to stay aligned with their core beliefs.
And within the Christian communities I saw so much harm from the various biases and non-critical methods it was heart breaking. Sadly it can still be hard to leave when you're taught you're choosing pleasure, hell fire, selfishness, and abandoning absolute truth and love.
How does it lead to that? I feel like that's a false assumption that many people make, religious or not.
What I appreciate about your comment also is you mention the necessity to understand their presuppositions and reason that way (at least sometimes). I feel like the issue with many discourses going on right now is a lack of good faith understanding of the other "sides" presuppositions.
And yet, it can be so painful for someone to even pretend they can identify with the following belief for example this belief
> So if science leads you to the conclusion that life has no transcendent purpose (and it does) then, on their world-view, science must be wrong, full stop
The much easier tact for lets say a standard pro-science metropolitan is to decide the YEC-er person actually knows what is "true" (e.g. what the metropolitan thinks is obvious) but is actively choosing to do wrong. Then you can refute their point as purposely provoking _and_ also put them in the "bad people" box with one little mental facade.
I'm not trying to build a purposely weak example of either group, I think all humans have a simplifying mechanism when it comes to viewpoints/ideas and that we need that to survive in some sense- and that we do it all the time probably in benign ways. But acknowledging what other people believe is a great skill to build I think.
But in my experience, it nonetheless creeps out to affect other areas of their life. YECs are often afflicted with other conspiracy theories, not just flat earthers but also climate denialsm, and these days, COVID denialism.
I find that the assumption isn't so much the teleology as the group superiority. It's not so much that the Bible is inerrant as that they are the ones who hold the truth, and those who disagree must in all cases be wrong -- and not merely wrong, but out to get them. The appeal to teleology is more about literal divine right, that "God shed his grace on thee". That leads them to make alliance with those who don't accept young-earth creationism but nonetheless share their nationalistic, chauvinist, xenophobic aims.
That's because you find the data persuasive. They don't. That in and of itself does not make them idiots.
That makes them not merely wrong, but dangerous to me. They will go out of their way to make my life worse, without being able to judge the cost to themselves. Regardless of what derogatory name I choose to call it, our outlook is fundamentally at odds. They've shown repeatedly that they wish to use it to harm me, and my names for them are going to be negative.
The only solution, if any, is democratic: containing the damage and reducing the numbers. They cannot be persuaded, but other people can. And unfortunately, I don't think that's all that effective, either -- in part because they ally themselves with other conspiracy theorists who insulate them from some of the consequences of their actions. They may not agree, but don't attack each other, and bolster common causes. Enough to win elections, especially when geographic, demographic, and historic quirks assign more political power to some regions than others.
If it were just creationists, they'd be (relatively) harmless kooks. As it is, they're always a step away from theocracy.
Flat earth can be confidently debunked in quite a large number of ways, including direct experience.
YEC is, at its core, fundementally undisprovable. There really no way to prove that the universe wasn't recently created by some force with a consistent apparent history. Indeed, there are philosophers who have made strong arguments that we live in a simulation which makes such a "created with history" scenario seem more plausible.
> If you accept this premise, then there is actually a logically defensible line of reasoning that leads you to Christianity
I rather doubt that. You may be able to show that some of these beliefs are logically consistent given that premise, but that is a far cry from showing that they are logically derivable from that premise as you seem to be saying.
I do think there is data that will persuade these people, but nobody is willing to out the time and effort in to do so. (Since these are quite divergent beliefs, any education program would probably need to be customized on a per person basis.)
Neither of us are idiots, we both know what we're doing. The conflict is when I make an assertion about geometry (general) that doesn't hold for geometry (Euclidean) (or the reverse, the other person makes a general assertion that doesn't hold for non-Euclidean geometry). Unless we sit down and compare our base assumptions (axioms), we cannot resolve this apparent conflict.
I'm not saying this is universally the case, there are contrarian trolls and idiots out there, but oftentimes people are reasonably rational but are starting from different positions. This leads to conflicts in politics, economics, religion, and, yes, the understanding of the physical world. It's not helpful to call them all idiots because many times they aren't, they just have different base assumptions (or priorities, often, in the case of politics and economics). And calling them idiots only leads to an emotional, not rational, "discussion". Take a step back, don't be a jerk, and listen to them, work backward to the actual point of disagreement and then focus on it (or not, once discovered you may realize there is no resolution that will satisfy either or both of you).
As so, science doesn't have a "foundational" assumption (because it's willing to change its assumptions). Rather, science subjects assumptions to evidence - not the other way around...
Yes, it does: it assumes that evidence is a reliable guide to truth.
"evidence" and "truth" are very semantically related. By semantics, "evidence is a reliable guide to truth" is not nearly an assumption... as it is a logical definition.
It's a bit like saying: "it assumes reddish color indicates red".
EDIT: "Reliable" is the problem word here. Remove it from your statement, and it certainly is no longer an assumption. That said, I don't see where science inherently makes the assumption that evidence is reliable...
Your having to hedge with "nearly" is an indication of the weakness of your position.
First, there is no such thing as a "logical definition". There are only definitions. Perhaps you meant "logical tautology" but in fact the idea that evidence is a reliable guide to truth is neither a definition nor a tautology, it is an assumption. And it is an assumption that is open to reasonable doubt. To wit:
> it assumes reddish color indicates red
It is far from clear that this is true. What does "reddish color" even mean? How can you define it without begging the question? How do you know that your subjective perception of "reddish color" is the same as mine?
A better example: solid objects are in fact not solid, they are mostly empty space. So the assumption that "solid appearance indicates solid" is actually false.
Now, if you'd rather use "logical tautology" that's fine by mean. It's close to what I meant. "Evidence" and "Truth" are very semantically related... so much that your statement earlier is almost a definition, not an assumption. By definition, Evidence is something that indicates truth. Again I think the word reliable does make the statement an assumption. But again, I don't see where science ever made the assumption that evidence is reliable...
As for your second example, it is not much better. I will again attempt to show you the problem with your argument.
>solid objects are in fact not solid, they are mostly empty space. So the assumption that "solid appearance indicates solid" is actually false
For your argument to hold, your definition of solid in your second statement must be incongruent. I'll try to show how.
> solid objects are in fact not solid, they are mostly empty space
Here you've tacked on some definition to the word solid. That added definition being: "they are mostly empty space". Now let's look at your next statement
>So the assumption that "solid appearance indicates solid" is actually false
This only logically true if you use two different definitions of the word solid. Otherwise your statement is nonsense, when substituting your implied definition of solid:
something that appears as not empty, but is in actually mostly empty space appearance indicates something that appears as not empty, but is in actually mostly empty space is actually false
An argument I’ve heard before is that God made the universe relatively recently (10k years ago or so) but with the appearance of age. Something like God “fast forwarded” through time to skip to the part where humans started recording history. In that theory both the majority of modern science and a strangely literal interpretation of the Bible can both be true at the same time. The scientists are unable to measure that God “fast-forwarded” the universe because he didn’t leave any evidence of it.
In my experience the majority of Christians don’t hold that view, but instead see Genesis as metaphorical, and thus it actually fits in rather well with the current Big Bang model. So well, in fact, that early on a lot of scientists rejected the Big Bang as “creationist rubbish.”
So the first question is, "Is there something besides the physical world -- besides atoms and energy and time?" If you say "yes", then you've ruled out materialism (which some people confuse with science).
There are a number of things in our human experience which (in my opinion) are inconsistent with a materialistic worldview. The sense of meaning and purpose is one. Morality is another. (Not trying to argue this here, just trying to answer the question.)
Then you can say, OK, but that could be Buddhism or Shintoism or Islam or anything. So the next set of questions might filter out reincarnation-style religions and get you down to the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam); and then you might look specifically at evidence about Jesus' resurrection.
Not all Christians are Young Earthers; and Young Earthers are certainly not Flat Earthers. But there is this similarity: Christianity gives people something that atheism and materialism do not. And so when modern atheists say, "Belief in evolution is incompatible with belief in God -- you have to choose one or the other", then a lot of people will say, "Well if I have to choose, I'm going with God."
- https://www.livingwaters.com/why-christianity/ seems to short-circuit back into "god-given rule"
- https://carm.org/atheism/why-believe-christianity-over-all-o... assumes the Bible as a historical source of truth
- http://www.gospeloutreach.net/whychristianity.html - quotes beauty not present in atheism, otherwise Bible as a historical source
- https://creation.com/why-christianity says Christianity correctly diagnoses a humanity's fault (moral inconsistency), and then declares it superior because of which solution it chooses
They don't seem to answer "why is Christianity the source of meaning", but rather "why choose Christianity as religion", which is a different question, so I might have misrepresented them. Either way, none of them seem very logically conclusive to me.
That's right. The original question was:
> Why would some point of existence or meaning lead specifically to Christianity?
If you want to know "why is Christianity the source of meaning" that's an easier question to answer: it's because the omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent Creator of the Universe loves you, and will give you everlasting life in paradise conditioned only on your acceptance of His sacrifice on the cross. Or something like that.
"Why would some point of existence or meaning lead specifically to Christianity?" presumes starting with no preferred solution: "existence has a meaning. Who discovered it?". It's much more interesting than "Christianity says existence has a meaning. What makes it right?"
If you're looking for the Christian answer to this, it is: no one discovered it. The meaning of life is not discoverable knowledge. It is instead revealed by God.
In history there have been thousands of religions with various beliefs, many of which ascribed purpose to the actions of believers which was considered significant how specifically does the purpose given to those who follow Christianity provide "a logically defensible line of reasoning that leads you to Christianity and thence to the inerrancy of the Bible" over any one of those other religions?
And if every religion gains equal weight then why not follow all of them equally using that same rationale?
I mean I don't particularly care what people believe, but that's a pretty strong statement.
It depends on the country. These movements are non - existant in France for instance. When we hear of them or is usually about the ones in the US (I do not think I heard about another country).
When we hear of them it is because something happened (the death of one of the leaders who blew up in his rocket IIRC), never because we have a hard time resisting them.
Out of curiosity I search in French for flat earth. All the hits are about the US (and sometimes UK) based movement.
This is the same for the young earth one, and creationism generally speaking.
But fear not, we have homeopathy as a national sport (and plenty of other alternative "medicine", taken seriously here)
I think they exist but just have a different flavor. In the U.S. we have Christian extremists, in France you have Muslim extremists.
I was talking about either flat earth, or the idea that earth is young. These are concepts which are completely foreign to France and not even carried by the religious extremists (maybe someone is telling this, but they have zero traction).
Specifically, I was commenting on
> one of the reasons that the secular world is having such a hard time effectively resisting these movements
I'm sure there are many "genuine" flat earthers, but I suspect there are a lot of flat earthers like me as well. Of course, part of the "game" is pretending you really believe it, so good luck proving it.
From the Ancient Greeks to the 19th century, people believed the world was round. That story you heard in history class about how people in the 1400s were afraid to sail west because they'd fall off? Not true. They were afraid to sail west because they didn't know that the Americas existed, and without those they knew there was no way they'd survive a trip to China.
Flat earth in modern discourse was a strawman from the start. There may be some true believers - there always are - but it hasn't been a serious worldview in 2000 years or more.
Leader of the 'movement' selling books, youtube ads etc.
I had only once a pleasure to talk with flat earther, and apart from his flat theories, his view of how world works could be called... interesting, if not naive.
It reminded me of conversation with my primary school friends (back when we were 10), we tried to invent invisibility cloak by mixing 'chemicals' like sulpher, mercury and melted titanium (since those were the coolest substances we come up with) and coat a cloth with it. Kids stuff.
That was when we were around 10, this guy was close to 30 and was basically using same level of understanding of how to do things.
Its hard to believe sometimes bu a lot of people grow up never questioning or poking at the reality surrounding them.
You don't need that to grow up and get by in life, but then you end up not being able to distinguish reality from snake oil.
And all of those snake oil salesmen know exactly what buttons to push.
"Secret knowledge", "hidden truth", offer them glimpse into world that secret cabal never wants them to see. Convince them how much smarter and cleverer they are for "figuring out" the reality that other are blind to.
And then the 'blind fools' come to try to convince them that the earth is round...
Believing in both at the same time is extra-tricky, and that's what caused me to get banned from the Facebook flat-Earthers. If the moon is flat, perspective distortion should make it disk-like, and nobody's observed a disk-like moon. So either the moon is round (and the fact it only shows us one face is some extra-fancy trickery with mirrors or lenses or something), or the moon is a flat disk facing Earth, but the Earth is a ball rotating under the moon.
(Clarification: none of this is things I believe. I spent time debating flat-Earthers as an exercise in logical consistency and alignment with observational evidence).
You don't even need to factor in the moon, this can be done with the stars. In a flat earth, the same stars would be visible when you're in the southern too of south America as in the northernmost top of north America. This isn't the case since the earth is spherical.
Heck, even just the timing of a sunrise is sufficient. In a flat earth the sun would rise simultaneously across the globe... er, disk. But of course that's not the case. It's daytime in half of the world at any given time.
So, measuring angles is off limits. Then they admit you cannot see things that are far away and close to the horizon, but not by curvature. By perspective: perspective laws, they say, mandate that far away objects become very small, too small to be seen. Do you basically can see only a limited part of the sky, at a sufficiently high angle from the horizon on the flat earth. That is why you can't see the whole sky.
I've been on the opposite of this debate. I don't know how much it compares to being on the wrong side of the debate, but I'd still say it noticeably honed my debate skills and it's humbling once you realize that you don't actually learn that much in school about how we can actually prove the earth is round and how to explain some of the discrepancies flat earthers use as arguments.
If you joined a group of YECs and participated in the community, you might consider yourself a YEC (group member) even though you never truly believed, but only argued and trolled. I do agree that it's a bit bizarre, but knowing many contrarian and troll types this seems a pretty consistent part of their MO.
The straw that broke the camel's back was when I tried to make up an obviously ridiculous constitutional legal argument as a joke and accidentally hit something where a court clerk told me sovereign citizens actually use the argument. If you can roll a d10 for the Bill of Rights and a conclusion you want and land on something that someone actually tries to argue, then... well, that's today's reality.
Maybe in fact you are the consummate true believer.
To possess something to the point it is the total sum of your knowledge, would that be belief? Or would that merely be a lack. No belief is required when there is no alternative.
So let us then imagine how many people 'believe' in exactly this same way about human rights or freedom or democracy, and perhaps suddenly the state of the world at any given time becomes much clearer.
Though having both witnessed and perpetrated the very real human damage that dishonest/irrational/delusional belief systems can and will do, you’ll forgive me if I do not congratulate you on the rest.
This seems to me to be the chief problem of social media. We live in a post-truth world that is more intensely tribal than ever before. Reason, and the ability to form consensus, seem to be dying or dead already. That worries me rather a lot, as it is the foundation of democratic society, and without it I’m not sure how long democratic society can continue.
In the authors description of the flat earth ers he says:
> ...you operate from a position where your worldview is driven by your identity, not from what can be scientifically or objectively observed, or what the experts tell you.
We can sit here and scoff at the tiny minority of fringe conspiracy theorists out there, but my observation is that people have taken this same approach to mainstream politics, deciding on an identity that aligns them to one side or the other, and then losing all ability to see that it is possible for their side to get something wrong, or the other side to get something right.
Where they deviate from rational is either failure to align to observational reality or an Occam's Razor argument (but be aware that Occam's Razor doesn't apply for a true believer; if something is true, it doesn't matter if it's complicated! ;) ).
I'd never really noticed before that no satellite dishes tuned to talk to geostationary targets point north in the northern hemisphere, or south in the southern hemisphere. A bit of thought immediately clarifies why, but the flat-Earthers have to imagine an incredibly large conspiracy of governments hiding radio towers taller than anything humanity has ever built to explain it.
Most flat-earth people I found online seem to be Americans. This is possibly anecdotal but I'm puzzled as to why they are all Americans. It is coincidence or there is something about America?
I mean, contrary to a popular parable, people knew that the earth is round for a very long time and Eratosthenes made an estimate of earth radius 2200 years ago.
If a super intelligent AI came to me and said, "I'm going to take over the world and destroy humanity, but first I wanted to see if there was anything you needed." One of the things that I would ask it to do in order to buy time would be to annotate all the background details of every movie. For example, in Jurassic Park when Hammond is trying to get Dr. Grant to come to the park, the trailer they are in has a bunch of newspapers on the walls. What do those say? Who are all the extras that are hanging out at the dig site? Like who are the actors and can we give their characters any backstories that are consistent with the world of Jurassic Park.
I can't help but want the same thing from a story about a Flat Earth conference. How many other people went there just to see what was up. Who is there as a joke. Occasionally people send fake articles to journals to see if they can get them published. Does the same thing happen to Flat Earth conferences? People try to see how much of an outlandish presentation they can get away with? And finally, how many people go there, have a good time, pretend to buy into the whole Flat Earth business, but then when they get back and are cornered indicate that they only went because their friend went / to see what it was like / because they make fun of them later / etc.
Finally, this whole business feels very similar to me as the whole Evolution in education stuff. Sure people believe in the wrong thing, but at the end of the day very few people actually understand how the right thing works and even if they get that far they don't see what any of the implications are. Yeah, I would prefer people believe things that are true, but they don't understand it either way and they refuse to think about the implications.
I greatly appreciate the world building in things like Lord of the Rings or Avatar the last airbender. Everything works together in great detail to create a holistic world where actions have consequences that echo through the centuries. It feels like most people are just as happy to watch Michael Bay's Transformers. Maybe they like Avatar as well, but they don't understand why the shyamalan movie "adaptation" is bad. So I have a hard time caring that they agree with me that the cartoon was good as well.
The clear distinction is the absolute unwillingness to listen logic without screaming what-a-about conspiracy A, or conspiracy B, or C. Or the classic "your just a socialist" inbetween talking about their social security and medicare benefits.
There's clearly a segment of the population that has the inability to compute simple logic without triggering a fight/flight/amygdala response.
I used to think education was the problem.
But I'm starting to think this inability to control their emotional response when hearing anything that conflicts with their "belief system" is the hack that various organizations leverage to build a cult-like following.
Edit: thanks for all the fanfare(sarcasm towards the downvotes), I think that it proves my point.
Jonathan Haidt describes this as "morality binds and blinds". The full quote being:
"Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say."
I also like Haidt's interpretation of Hume's "reason is a slave to the passions". Haidt descibes logical thinking as like a press secretary of emotion; with as much power over emotion as a rider has over an elephant. - The elephant goes where it wants to.
This is what makes this "abuse of the amygdala" a hack. The flat-earthers/trump-supporters don't have anything "important" to say unless you want to give credit to their conspiracies.
That said, they are indeed screaming loud and clear that there is a significantly large segment of people with certain mental dispositions that are being abused by leaders in the top ranks of our government and society.
For example, they're not keen on a huge influx of foreigners from a different culture. Maybe you're dismissive of that, but it's because you're not listening.
Or, for example, they want to keep their jobs, e.g. coal miners. Maybe you're dismissive of that, but it's because you're not listening.
Or, for example, they're tired of politicians saying they'll do something but then nothing actually happening. Mainly because there are downsides to that action, e.g. because mass immigration now drives growth due to falling birth rates, there are no real attempts to stop it. Maybe you're dismissive of that, but it's because you're not listening.
Look at what happened recently in most western countries and it comes across as rigged. Mass immigration even though the population opposes it, no consequences for bankers in the 2008 crash, widening wealth inequality, falling wages when you take account of inflation. And America has really weird political dynasties, Kennedys, Bushes, Clintons. It's supposed to be a democracy and yet somehow you almost have feudal-esque ruler inheritance.
You can see why Trump's anti-establishment message worked.
These concepts aren't new. They're also universal truths about human nature.
Everyone wants to think that they're in control, at least in their head. But until they come to terms with the fact that they are not in control, they will continue to do detriment to themselves and others. See "alcoholics anonymous" (AA) for evidence of this.
I always thought it's a natural thing: once everybody matures they'll stop their knee jerk, emotional responses and only allow those well thought out, analytical ones.
It seems though, there is an opposing and totally intentional force to that.
Somehow I feel that removing the emotional reactions could lead to collapse of some bigger social structures, cause it seems that this is the main glue that holds them together
What is the implication here? Is it bad to have friends who are Trump supporters?
EDIT: I see my point of political bias proven, complete with intolerance, rationalization of said intolerance, gross assumptions, and overall it leaves me disappointed that the HN crowd allows this.
To put it bluntly, you are judging yourself when you take yourself to be judging others, you claim an excuse that associating with others leads to your own self-admitted "badness"... You judge yourself, and rather than taking sentence with those aspects within, you externalize it and make assumptions based upon comparisons of your ideal shitty person, which deep down we both know that we are our own worst critics.
This only leads down one road, self-annihilatory behavior.
Learn to love yourself completely, you are not lacking, and to be honest, you taking yourself to be one that thinks of others or yourself as a shitty person is one of the most lovable parts about you.
It reads very similar to a response I received from the owners of a fishing website that I used to frequent when I questioned them about BLM.
Nice, novelty accounts on hn.
That's lovely. I accrue some great insights from this sites river, but I should probably start curating my own river again. The insightful:judgemental signal-noise ratio is trending in a direction I simply fine unstimulating of productive discourse.
I think that's a worldwide phenomenon, not just HN.
Further reading: https://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/node/69.html
That you'd ask yourself if this reply is coherent is a function of your own mind seeking meaning from what appears to be unresolved processing of a response you received from the owners of a phishing website. Given you used to frequent said site and received a text you deem similar when questioning them about BLM, is understandable, given that the narratives and subtopics generated are still in flux, history is continuing to be written and the echos of the past keep crowning into our collective reality by the mere attention placed upon them.
A world where one loves themselves completely and thoroughly is often seen as incoherent due to the limitations one finds themselves confined in--usually in the form of narratives, beliefs, values aka the "already dead driftwood" of the mind--by taking themselves to be other than what they are, the past self in cahoots with the present self vying for the spotlight of consciousness, really just another form of communication, really.
Where it breaks down and a text seems incoherent is when such attention is placed upon a text... perhaps you've been looking for incoherence ever since you received that response on that website you spoke of and couldn't bear the mind to let it go, so you carry it with you everywhere, perhaps not realizing that this gets triggered every time a text taps on the walls of your own self constructed limitations--in this case it's one of inner reflection and unconditional love for oneself in a world where everyone and everything is interconnected.
That or you can call me a bumbling idiot.
May you be Loved. <3
In other words, your understanding of coherence is that it is subjective.
Is that right?
Coherence arises out of Love.
Nah, you see, promotion is very much based in spacetime, a fourth dimensional manifold. The speed of light in this system is much too slow for my preference. And the desire systems to ride those rainbows of light are very rudimentary and will never fulfill their sirens promise, no matter where you look.
May the Sun Open upon you, May it fill your Heart with a radiance so brilliant that it breaks infinitely only to fill the cracks with the Love that is you, May You Be Love.
I would expect such a strong statement like this to be better explained.
What has confirmed what? What is the logic behind your conclusion? Please share.
I'd love to hear from a credible left-leaning person about an example of intelligent discourse they had with a trump-supporter(not just a conservative, there's a difference).
This morning, I walked pass a Trump 2020 campaign flag with the slogan "No more bullshit." What kind of intelligence went into displaying that kind of message in public?
I think this causality is backwards. These people already feel that the social contract has been broken, and then FE falls into their lap as an explanation for what they're feeling.
The disillusionment with our modern social structures is entirely valid and personally healthy. The real question is how to keep that feeling from collapsing into simplistic red herrings like FE, "jet fuel can't melt steel beams", or Trumpism. It's more difficult to hold nuanced anti-mainstream-propaganda opinions in your head, than to rally around a counter-fiction.
Then again, maybe this has been the genesis of all religion - reassuring narratives to assuage cognitive dissonance between what the rulers say and how you're actually treated. And the ones that end up being memetically successful are the ones that at least inspire people to do productive things.
Anyone subscribing to any of this conspiracy nonsense, especially as an identity is (pardon the language) too effin stupid to work in any serious technical endeavor - if they're deeply willing to ignore those facts & reason, what will they ignore on your project?
Plus, their deeply ingrained ideas that any authority is trying to control them has a high probabilty of turning against any employer lie a rabid dog, creating at least a costly series of problems and toxicity.
I'd even filter them out for manufacturing or fast food work.
edit: should add I'm talking about willful stupidity - deliberate cultivation of ignorance, as distinguished from naturally low intellectual horsepower
Fields that require carefully examined beliefs about almost everything (physics for example) are a lot harder to pull that off in.
The irony happens when it is education itself that compromises the critical faculties of someone, as the article mentions.
Intelligent people are sometimes loyal to an ideology built during their upbringing and belong to their circle. Sometimes the exact opposite happens and drives them to a complete rejection of said ideas. Religion, culture, and politics are prone to create blind spots, where otherwise critical, highly educated, and intelligent individuals don't question specific biases because they are too closely related to their identity.
If it encompasses the inability to reliably connect thoughts to reality, inability to trust anything other than naive constructs and actively distrusting others (which will certainly limit the problem space in which they can work), then it serves as a good shorthand.
Do you have any better suggestions (that aren't full sentences or paragraphs)?
> people want some understanding of what's happening, but they're not getting it from the media, they're not getting it from the intellectual classes, they're certainly not getting it from the government
[..]
> it's happening all over and I think you can trace a good deal of it to the effect of neo-liberalism. It had a goal remember: the goal of neo-liberalism was to transfer decisions away from the public to the hands of private power and to atomize the population.
-- Noam Chomsky, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCeqySVhCE&t=20m55s
> the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act - but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid.
-- Erich Fromm, https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll...
Religion is too broad a term to sweep everyone under. It’s very diverse.
Now creationists, who believe the world is 5.000 years old - yeah, that’s a whole other bag-of-fish.
https://enki.org/2018/07/30/things-i-learned-in-elementary-s...
The belief on the creationist side is that this original event must have a cause, because everything else in the universe that we can empirically study obeys that principle.
The belief on the atheist side, for lack of a better label, is that the universe was/got created out of nothing. It must be possible for it to occur without God, in the purest sense of the word atheist.
But whether God created it or it created itself, there are only interpretations and no direct empirical evidence.
Yes, one can be a creationist and choose to believe that God created the universe with a big bang. But some creationists literally believe that the Earth was created in six days.
Since you're willing to deny people's basic rights such as "working", following your logic, someone could argue that you obviously lack empathy and shouldn't be in a managing position or anywhere above the very bottom of the hierarchy ladder
No matter how smart you think you are there will always be someone who think you're as dumb as a rock, hopefully they're not in a position to chose if you're allowed to get a job or not
In general, the two are not the same. And if they are in a given society, in this age, that society is in need of help. Nobody in a modern, healthy society with ample resources should have to work to be allowed to live.
In countries like the US or third world countries you're in for a pretty miserable existence if you don't have a job. I'm not saying it's good, but it's reality
No argument there, but we should do something about our barbaric local culture.
Barking insanity. You've just suggested sending people with completely harmless beliefs to the gulag. Either that or starving them to death; feel free to clarify how you expect these people to live. What would you consider appropriate treatment for people with what you consider actively "harmful" beliefs? Pull their fingernails out until they agree?
Intolerant assholes who would cashier harmless nincompoop flat earthers are the ones who should be unhirable outside of shoveling holes in the ground and scrubbing pots and pans: nobody wants a tin pot fascist in a management chain -for liability reasons if nothing else. This level of intolerance for nonconforming beliefs would have suggested burning Giordano Bruno or Galileo at the stake for their heresies in a different era, for precisely the same "reasons."
Would shoveling manure be a fitting enough means for them to earn their living in your eyes or is there something even lower that you think would be appropriate?
What an awful approach to hiring. But, perhaps you see it as a good way to make sure that all of your colleagues are the "right" sort of people and that you never have to work with someone as lowly as a manufacturer or restaurant server.
The point is that if I'm hiring for manufacturing, or restaurant, I don't want someone in a shop with many hazards who makes a major practice in their life to 1) ignore actual facts, and 2) actively foment mistrust of any 'authority'.
The first qualification of the "right" sort of people is integrity and an ability to trust them.
As Warren Buffet said:
"Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy."
Deep belief in conspiracy theories demonstrates maintained willful ignorance in the face of overwhelming facts -- i.e., a complete lack of intellectual integrity
It also shows an overwhelming distrust of anyone in authority, which would include an employer. A persons ability to trust shows their own trustworthiness - and in this case, it is for all practical purposes, zero. The second the conspiracist perceives that you are somehow slighting him, he will turn on you.
Why would anyone pay a person to work alongside them when their ability to think is self-constrained, they lack intellectual integrity to think clearly, and they are actively working to mistrust you?
It has everything to do with the person actively maintaining willful ignorance and complete distrust
If you don't see how this kind of system would be abused you have a very peculiar perspective on life.
It is a specific employer choosing to question someone on their voluntary relationship with facts.
How is it that people insisting on believing in provable falsehoods (not religious beliefs) is somehow a protected class?
There is also nothing preventing a flat-earther employer setting up the same filter with the opposite polarity, i.e., filtering out people who actively work with scientific principles, perhaps because he considers that science-minded people are less likely to follow direction. It's his choice.
Real example, a lawsuit in Connecticut affirmed that a police department was within its rights to deny employment to a candidate who scored too HIGH on their intelligence test.
And yet there are & have been brilliant engineers with uncommon beliefs, e.g. Terry Davis.
And at the end of the day, his operating system is an interesting novelty and little more. Manic obsession and technical skill aren't equivalent to genius.