Flat Earthers: You’re doing science wrong

While You Weren’t Paying Attention

Unless you’ve been in a cave for the last couple of years, like me you’ve heard of this rising sea level of jackassery known as the Flat Earth Movement. If you’ve been lucky enough to live in blissful ignorance of these low watts, I’ll do you the cruel disservice of explaining their beliefs.

At a glance:

1. The earth is not round.
2. The earth is, in fact, a flat disk, and that all the rules of science since the goddamn dark ages are all wrong.
3. Science isn’t just wrong, the science of “globalism” is a massive conspiracy to trick all of us into believing the earth is round. This, apparently, includes NASA and all other space programs, every scientist throughout the ages, from Pythagoras all the way down to Stephen Hawking, and every single satellite ever launched into space. That’s a goddamn impressive conspiracy.
4. This flat earth upon which we are supine, is surrounded by a giant ice wall, called Antarctica. What lies beyond the ice wall is up for grabs, but likely its something NASA wants to keep for itself.
5. For thousands of years, we’ve all been played for rubes, accepting this scientific mumbo jumbo like the sheep we are.
6. All of this “Round Earth” propoganda is ultimately aimed at turning us away from the Bible (uh…let’s just sidle past that stinky fart)
7. There is no gravity. Things just fall. (from their FAQ. I swear you can’t make this shit up)
8. NASA, the liberal media and, most likely, Satan have colluded to get us all to buy into this

Before you ask, yes. These people are real. They are not joking around. I’d love to tell you that this is a massive, world-wide troll, but no. This is actually a thing. And they actually believe it.

Are these people nuts?!

Well, if you’re like me, I’m assuming the first answer to pop into your head is yes. These people are escaped mental patients, or just haven’t been diagnosed yet. I mean, come on!

However, in an interview with Rachel Pick for Motherboard, psychologist Dr. Joel Gold has stated that he doesn’t believe this is delusion in the strict sense of the word. He theorises that delusion is likely brought from a deficiency in the brain’s basic systems, which he doesn’t feel fits the mould for so many people.

I figure there has to be something wrong with these people’s brains. Watching way too many youtube videos and reading way too many “truther” blogs, now they’ve mushed up the logic centres of their brains that they’ll believe anything.

However, to be fair, I figured I’d give credence to the doc’s opinion, and went looking elsewhere.

Conspiracy Theories Gone Wild

So I figured that since the Flat Earth movement is quite possibly the biggest conspiracy theory in the history of conspiracy theories (the idea that millions of people around the world for generations have been in on a planetary cover-up definitely qualifies as a doozy in my book), I figured I’d head down that road for answers.

Conspiracy theories are now a public menace, with a staggering % of people believing in at least one debunked conspiracy theory. It is no wonder that Flat Earth would somehow get itself in that mix.

(More conspiracy theories as we proceed)

The exact nature of how one comes to believe something which has been openly dismissed as nonsense for the last 500 years is anyone’s guess, but there does seem to be a circuitous route one can take. And,through hard work and tireless effort, you too can end up believing pretty much anything. Like, I dunno, say that the Earth is flat.

Celebrities on Pancake Earth

As is often the case, some of these geniuses are celebrities. Of course they are. What trashy pseudo-science don’t celebrities latch on to? How many of them are Scientologists? And if you’ll believe alien spirits are the cause of all your personal problems, you’ll believe just about anything.

Some celebrity Flat Earthers (read “dumbasses”) include:

Kyrie Irving (NBA Player)

The Cavaliers star player announced in a Podcast that “There is no conspiracy. The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat.” Backing with such clear facts as that, how can one argue?

To be fair, the man did state it is just his opinion, and that people should do their own research. One must wonder how he’d feel about the “Flat Basketball Movement”, where people proclaim all basketballs are actually pancakes, with he and every other player being in on a cabal to trick us.

B.o.B (Hip hop artist)

Some time in 2016, rapper B.o.B came out with the news that he is sure the earth is flat.

‘No matter how high in elevation you are…the horizon is always eye level…sorry cadets…I didn’t wanna believe it either,’ he wrote. He also said “Once you go flat, you never go back.” Dear gods.

Now, over-the-top eye rolls aside, shortly thereafter, Neil DeGrasse Tyson joined the conversation, pointing out all the reasons B.o.B was engaged in spurious reasoning. At which point, the rapper decided to write a dis rap of the famed astrophysicist, which is, quite clearly, hysterical in its childishness, and so worth watching.

Prepare to giggle.

My stomach hurts from laughing.

Tila Tequila (Television “Personality”)

Happily, I haven’t a clue who or what a Tila Tequila is, but apparently she is “famous”, and is adamant that the Earth is flat. She had this dire prediction of her fate at the hands of the globalist conspiracy

Unfortunately for the rest of us, no one ever took her up on this, so we are stuck with her for the foreseeable future. The gods save us.

It’s important to note that Tila Tequila has about as much credibility as an expert on the sciences as I’m an expert on being a fir tree. The woman was a momentary flash in the internet pan, and has made it her goal since to selfie / tweet / gladhand any chance to return to her stardom. Again, as likely as me becoming a fir tree. And before we forgive her as Kyrie Irving with the “Everyone is entitle to their own opinion” arugment, remember this woman is a known Nazi sympathiser, makes patently racist comments about every people under the sun, including suggesting we should hunt illegal immigrants for sport.

Come on, globalist conspiracy. 2016 is past, but there’s still time in 2017! Don’t make Tila Tequila a liar two years in a row.

This woman is clearly a fame-digger (also a sickening example of a human being, but that is neither here nor there), someone so desperate to maintain her fifteen minutes that she will do or say anything to keep the light upon her. Her belief in flat-earth is dubious. More likely, this vampish goon simply hurls herself at any controversy as fast as humanly possible to ensure some bit of fame can be attributed to her.

In a way, believing in flat earth would be slightly less pathetic.Not as pathetic as her “NInja Dance”, but damn close.

How the Fuck did this ever come to pass?!

So we find ourselves with a minority of individuals who have somehow regressed to the scientific equivalent of the dark ages. Tag in a few celebrities who have about as much credibility as Drumpf University, and you have a movement which is gaining some ground, albeit slowly.

So how can this happen? How can even such a tiny minority of people in modern society buy that the world is actually a disk, and that all of us have been duped by some all-encompassing conspiracy? I’ve been asking myself this very same question since I first heard about these half-wits. Is this a support group for people who stuck pencils in their ears? Does the internet cause brain cancer? What would compel anyone with anything beyond a third grade education to accept such absolute crap?

Here’s what I’ve found in asking this question.

Conspiracy Theories: They’re not just for tin-foil hats anymore

First off, people love conspiracy theories. Far more people believe in conspiracy theories than don’t. According to political scientists Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent and presented in their 2014 book American Conspiracy Theories (Oxford University Press), about a third of Americans believe the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama is a foreigner. About as many believe that 9/11 was an “inside job” by the Bush administration.

Surveys by Uscinski and Parent show that conspiracy theorists “cut across gender, age, race, income, political affiliation, educational level, and occupational status.”

According to Uscinski and Parent: “Researchers have found that inducing anxiety or loss of control triggers respondents to see nonexistent patterns and evoke conspiratorial explanations”.

So conspiracy theories thrive in environments fraught with fear and lack of control. People who feel afraid and/or out of control are apt to take on beliefs which return them to a sense of confidence and control, irrespective of how ludicrous they may be.

Given how we are, more and more, inundated with information which leads one to a feeling that the world is a complete mess, it’s easy to see why some segment of society would be eager to embrace the idea that its all a great big scam, that there is someone to blame for this insane and dangerous world. So why not NASA? Why not re-imagine the world as a place well-understood by our ancestors, but which was taken away from us by a world conspiracy to show the world as something other than they can fully grasp?

Conspiracy theories give people a sense of belonging to something unique and outside the realm of the peasantry. Conspiracy theorists in any form see themselves as part of a select few. It provides them with a sense of superiority and uniqueness that one just cannot get from accepting reality as it actually stands.

Regressive thinking is the modern psychic dysfunction

Back in 1970, Alvin and Heidi Toeffler wrote the book “Future Shock”, which describes a psychological state of individuals and entire societies. This term is a defined as a personal perception of “too much change in too short a period of time”.

While the Toefflers got many things wrong, they also got many more things right. There are people who are overwhelmed by the ever-expanding influence technology has on our societies. For many, this is seen as natural, the progress from A to B. For some people, unfortunately, too much change does indeed lead to fear and confusion.

When too much change is put upon people, there will be a backlash by those who want to revert to more known forms. As a whole, they are known as “Traditionalists”. Traditionalists are a varied group, some focusing on religion, and others focused on society, government, and so forth. Yet, they all share a common thread. There is a wish to return to traditional cultural norms (aka those ascribed to by our great grandparents). Traditionalism has gone through many iterations, with Neo-Traditionalism being the most recent.However, all of them ascribe a decay in our society due to ever-changing technology, social norms and cultural attitudes, which they see as “destructive”.

Traditionalism, in one shape or another, has been on the rise for some time. The lunatic philosopher Alexander Dugin (also known as Putin’s Rasputin) is a very strong advocate of returning to “traditional” values, as is the Christian right of the US and the UK. Drunken misanthrope and Drumpf “advisor” Steve Bannon is another. They are not alone. There has been a sharp rise in Traditionalism in recent years. And why not? For those who feel powerless in the modern world (or wish to control those who feel powerless), Traditionalism gives them a great weapon against everything changing around them. A regression to older forms, older thinking, older ways of life. How better to combat excessive change than by retarding it wherever possible?

Traditionalism is a form of regressive thinking on a societal scale. At its heart, Traditionalism is little more than Rosy Retrospection, the belief that things were better in the past than the present, and that getting back to the “good old days” is the only course of action.

Donald Drumpf’s election was founded purely on this notion, as was the foundation of Brexit. Any number of hard-line conservative politicians now tout Traditionalism in one form or another, and the frightened, change-weary of their electorate flock to their banner in the hopes of putting things back to where they were.

Flat Earthers are the ultimate in Traditionalism. They are seeking to regress the progress of science by any means necessary, even at the cost of human cultural and scientific evolution. They see science programs (like NASA, other space programs, and basically everyone from Galileo on down through history) as suspect. Actually, worse than suspect. Every science organisation is essentially criminal conspirators, participating in the biggest swindle that the world has ever known.

Talk about Future Shock.

A little ignorance goes a long, long way

I guess it goes without saying that ignorance plays a major role in the Flat Earth movement.

Ignorance of how science actually works

Reading the posts of the Flat Earthers, it becomes immediately apparent that not too many of them have gotten far beyond 6th grade science. When you read these people’s posts, you’re met again and again with some of the most hackneyed, half-considered and unscientific “logic” ever to try and expose the Round Earth conspiracy Check out this doozy. It’s a great example of what I’m talking about.

My head hurts just looking at this.

(Oh, and if it requires explanation, the lowest point to which water flows is not the bottom of the planet, it’s the bottom of the ocean. The earth is not a beach ball sitting on a coffee table. It’s a massive spherical body spinning in space. The gravity is pulling the water towards the center of this mass, towards the GRAVITATIONAL CENTER).

Our scientific knowledge is complex and varied, built up over the generations through strict controls, independent observation and verification. We know the world is a globe not from one or two people, but from millions of people verifying this fact again and again.

Ignorance of the sheer scale of the Earth

One of the things the Flat Earthers’ big sticking points is that even from an airplane, you can’t see the curve of space.

Here’s one of their priceless gems.

“You see,” they explain. “There’s no curve it sight. I can’t see a curve high up. So how can the earth be anything but flat?”

Let me see if I can explain this as simply and as slowly as possible: The Earth is big. I mean BIG. It’s really, really, REALLY big.

How big?

Let’s set a sense of scale. An ant is roughly 10–3meters in length and the average human 1.7 meters. How many times longer is a human than an ant?

10–3= 1/103= 1/10001.7 / 1/1000

1.7*1000 = a human is 1700 times bigger than the ant.

That’s big. But it’s nothing next to the scale of the Earth to a human.

The earth is approximately 1,083,206,246,123,080,894,852 m3 in size. Humans cannot be standardized very well, but let’s take the average male American, who weighs 190 pounds, or 86 kilograms. He has a volume of .86 m3, approximately. 1,083,206,246,123,080,894,852 divided by .86 is 1.25954215 × 10²¹ times as large. The earth is 1.26 sextillion times larger than a human.

Try as you might (and trust me, I just tried and miserably failed), you cannot fathom that kind of scale. We are, by scales, more than 1000000000000000000x smaller to the earth than the ant to the person. That’s really, really, really small.

We are such infinitesimal specks upon this enormous globe that the curvature of the earth is simply beyond our ability to see it until we are ridiculously high above it.

Scale matters. When one is unwilling or unable to accept the enormity of our world, it becomes very easy to make misguided assumptions about what you should and shouldn’t be able to see.

Ignorance of certain undeniable facts

I’ll throw a few out there.

1. That if the earth was a flat disk, why is it winter in the southern hemisphere when it’s summer in the northern?
2. That in different places on the Earth, one sees different star constellations.
3. That days and nights can only exist if the Earth is round. If the sun was just a giant spotlight over the flat earth, then all of us could see its beam of light from everywhere, if even just a little. Night and day are the rotations of the Earth, turning it into or away from the Sun.
4. Eclipses.

In the end, what we have in front of us is a fringe pack of people who are desperate to make sense of an ever-changing world. Clinging to this ridiculously out-of-date notion is, at worst, a form of madness, and at best, a goofy attempt to garner attention and notoriety where none is really deserved.