
Study blames YouTube for rise in number of Flat Earthers - metaphysics
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/17/study-blames-youtube-for-rise-in-number-of-flat-earthers
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skilled
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?

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baud147258
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.

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Yetanfou
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/](https://en.allmetsat.com/)

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chillacy
> 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).

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codesushi42
Why is this surprising? How is this much different from religion?

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

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towaway1138
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...

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InclinedPlane
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.

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devoply
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.

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adsadadsad
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..."

