The whole thing about flat earthers is that they come up with more and more elaborate explanations to fit each individual observation, when Occam’s razor says that the theory that explains them all should probably be the correct one.
Like, they’ll argue about refraction of light due to hot air being the cause for the disappearance of ships past the horizon, and then their explanation for how time zones work is something else entirely, and why we have seasons, and why planes take the routes they do, and all this other nonsense. They all need separate, complicated explanations, and they willingly accept them and vehemently deny the simplest theory that ties everything together.
The actual explanation for this behaviour is flat earthers are a friend group, doubly so for the people who pushed “globeheads” out of their life. So to change their view is to socially isolate themselves
Allero@lemmy.today 5 days ago
Interestingly, most of people just believe in spherical Earth without ever checking anything, because society says so.
This is not an argument in favor of flat earth, but an argument that people around you can make you firmly believe absolutely anything without you ever bothering to check it by yourself.
Kitathalla@lemy.lol 5 days ago
We stand on the shoulders of giants. I don’t know how many of us repeated the experiments in our chemistry textbooks to prove that what was claimed was correct. A few piddling things here and there, but when did I get to build a nuclear bomb?
Allero@lemmy.today 5 days ago
Sure enough, it’s basically impossible to recreate human knowledge by checking everything yourself to see if it’s true; but something so basic really is easy to verify.
Robust_Mirror@aussie.zone 5 days ago
Sure, but there comes a point where you either believe it, or you believe that there’s a “world government” running the shots, telling every single country to teach the same wrong scientific facts, and literally NO ONE has ever fact checked anything or been a whistle blower about it.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
Yeah I like to question everything, which is the reason I know this. I investigated and saw the evidence myself.
It’s a little disappointing to me that most people aren’t this way.