Comment on What happened to the flat earthers who demonstrated that the earth is round in the netfilx documentary ?

• jettrscga@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The takeaway I got from the movie is it’s not really about the theory, it could be literally anything that brings people together. It’s just about being part of a community and being respected somewhere. Of course you can’t logic someone out of that.

  It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. -Upton Sinclair

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  • Phanatik@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I don't remember if it was said in the doc itself or it was a video discussing the doc (I think Hbomberguy), that said "they (flat earthers) are attempting a form of science".

    To me, what that says is, if they were intellectually honest with genuine curiosity, then they would've changed their views in the face of contradictory evidence. Time and time again, they showed that they weren't willing to do that even after seeing the results of their own experiments.

    As you said, they've staked too much on this notion that the Earth is flat and can't afford to give up the grift now.

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    • cows_are_underrated@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You’re right. It isn’t about proving something with science. It’s about the community. In this community you always hear the same things over and over again, so if you start questioning your beliefs you also have to question all this “evidence” you saw. You have to question all your beliefs. The beliefs that you defended in the Internet and real life against other people. Doing so can cause an “existential crisis”. It isn’t comfortable to question yourself. Humans don’t like change, so they won’t question anything and hold onto their beliefs, since it’s easy. Also all the people always positively engage with each other so breaking with your beliefs also means breaking with your social circle.

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    • jandar_fett@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yeah. It’s totally the sunken cost fallacy. They mistakenly think that there is too much to lose to change their minds and cut their losses.

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