[BrownRobin]

Hi,

You have likely already read the attached articles, however, it gave me a high level understanding and some insight on the Psychology or Thinking of a Flat Earther.

In taking a quote from the attached article called "Flat Earth: What Fuels the Internet's Strangest Conspiracy Theory?" (By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor): "flat-Earth conspiracy theorists may be chasing many of the same needs as believers in other conspiracies: social belonging, the need for meaning and control, and feelings of safety in an uncertain world."

In the second article entitled "Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?" (By Natalie Wolchover and Live Science Staff): Karen Douglas, a psychologist at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom who studies the psychology of conspiracy theories quotes that : "all conspiracy theories share a basic thrust: They present an alternative theory about an important issue or event, and construct an (often) vague explanation for why someone is covering up that "true" version of events. One of the major points of appeal is that they explain a big event but often without going into details," she said. "A lot of the power lies in the fact that they are vague."

-----------------------------------

For all of you Round / Spherical Earthers out there like myself, you likely won't be able to change the mind of a Flat Earther no matter how much evidence you try to present or how much you want to debate. Psychology helps us to understand in a way that Conspiracy Mindsets can be about the need for social belonging, the need for attention, and/or the need for control and certainty in world that may not make too much sense (to them).

Regards.

https://www.livescience.com/61655-flat-earth-conspiracy-theory.html

https://www.livescience.com/24310-flat-earth-belief.html

[Tom Bishop]

It is amusing that you accuse us of dogmatism while simultaneously espousing a blind belief in authorities, unconcerned that you have no direct knowledge of the matter for yourself.

[BrownRobin]

It is amusing that you accuse us of dogmatism while simultaneously espousing a blind belief in authorities, unconcerned that you have no direct knowledge of the matter for yourself.

Psychology helps us to understand in a way that Conspiracy Mindsets (Flat Earthers) can be about the need for social belonging, the need for attention, and/or the need for control and certainty in world that may not make too much sense (to them).

[Tumeni]

It is amusing that you accuse us of dogmatism while simultaneously espousing a blind belief in authorities, unconcerned that you have no direct knowledge of the matter for yourself.

I invite you to share, in summary, the 'direct knowledge' you have.

[Tom Bishop]

It is amusing that you accuse us of dogmatism while simultaneously espousing a blind belief in authorities, unconcerned that you have no direct knowledge of the matter for yourself.

Psychology helps us to understand in a way that Conspiracy Mindsets (Flat Earthers) can be about the need for social belonging, the need for attention, and/or the need for control and certainty in world that may not make too much sense (to them).

We seek to question truth and our authories. You seem content with the idea that they are beyond questioning.

So who is the closed minded thinker here?

[BrownRobin]

It is amusing that you accuse us of dogmatism while simultaneously espousing a blind belief in authorities, unconcerned that you have no direct knowledge of the matter for yourself.

Psychology helps us to understand in a way that Conspiracy Mindsets (Flat Earthers) can be about the need for social belonging, the need for attention, and/or the need for control and certainty in world that may not make too much sense (to them).

We seek to question truth and our authories. You seem content with the idea that they are beyond questioning.

So who is the closed minded thinker here?

You likely won't be able to change the mind of a Flat Earther no matter how much evidence you try to present or how much you want to debate

[Rushy]

You likely won't be able to change the mind of a Flat Earther no matter how much evidence you try to present or how much you want to debate

If you simply intend on repeating an erroneous claim you included in your opening message then I don't see why this thread needs to exist. This is the Flat Earth Debate section and if you would like to once again confirm you have no intention on debating anyone, I'll gladly move it to a more appropriate forum. I always have a special love for people who come to this website with the full belief that they are correct, everyone else is incorrect, and therefore they have no need whatsoever to even bother reading the other party's arguments on the subject.

[JohnAdams1145]

I think that the Flat Earthers can be separated into two types:

1. Those who wholeheartedly believe in it, have made up hypotheses for it, and generally suffer from too much confirmation bias to convince. Science is extremely complex, and many of these people do not understand that even a PhD in physics only understands an extremely small fraction of current science. Many of their clever rebuttals are trivially shown (and have been shown long ago) to be fallacious. Their knee-jerk reaction is to attempt to disprove modern science without a full understanding of it. Take, for example, Tom Bishop's assertion that if you hold your hand so it's at a higher angle ("above" from your perspective) than a distant lamppost, the lamppost looks upward to see your hand... that's false, and obviously so. Or his various machinations about Doppler shifting from the stars (like randomly looking up the term bathychromic shift without understanding that these apply to molecular spectra). That's not to say Tom's a bad person. He's actually one of the better people here, because he engages constructively in debate, and a lot of wrong stuff he says not out of bad faith, but of ignorance. He's just heavily affected by these psychological biases, specifically the backfire effect and confirmation bias. Or you can take a look at Pete Svarrior's nitpicking at arguments while denying the obvious truth through circumlocution and technicalities. That's called muddying the waters.  These are the people who are heavily affected by the psychological biases you talk about; they perform mental gymnastics because in their minds, they cannot possibly be wrong. But you should remember that they could say the same about us, because from their perspective, they think they know the "true science" and that we're being dogmatic. Of course, this is not true (precisely because of all of the scientific verifications that they're ignorant of as a result of almost no physics education), but it's an understandable thought. These are the people who, short of throwing them out of an airlock with a space suit of their own making, and then interviewing them afterward, will never believe in a round Earth. This is because they've gone so deep that their minds have closed to learning science (they question before they understand what they're actually questioning), and without a reasonable degree of scientific knowledge, one cannot ascertain the validity of FE or RE as currently presented.

2. These are the people sitting on the fence, usually because they don't understand the entire debate and from a layman's point of view, a lot of what FE says makes sense. While those who usually respond to the various threads in FE debate are mostly part of the first class, I spend time rebutting them not to convince the people who are actually debating. It's not untrue that in debates, both sides usually think they won. But for someone sitting on the fence, reading the various debate threads may at least convince them to second-guess the fallacious explanations of those without expertise in the relevant parts of science, and take a skeptical eye toward hypotheses/explanations that are widely panned by scientists worldwide. The main point here is that science requires domain-specific expert knowledge to critique; for example, you cannot critique Special Relativity without understanding all of the experiments that went into making this rather unpleasant theory.  Of course, the flatness of the Earth is a rather irrelevant debate to today's society, as Flat Earth believers will never work on space exploration, long-range navigation systems, and space-based telecommunications by virtue of their complete wrongness on several levels of science. But hopefully people on the fence of Flat Earth, and then convinced of the rigors of scientific study (even if it's impossible for them to understand), can apply this elsewhere. Maybe the next time they see a conspiracy claim (vaccines cause autism, chemtrails, global warming hoax) that's not as clear-cut (I mean they're pretty clear-cut, but nothing compared to the flatness of the Earth), they'll think twice about "doing your own research" (from poorly-made YouTube videos chock full of technobabble or fallacious reasoning from obvious non-experts) and then choose to actually inquire through reputable sources (and rely on them for scientific reasoning, while still leaving the standard logical deduction to themselves.


TL;DR: you shouldn't heed any of the meta- arguments of Tom Bishop, Pete Svarrior, etc. They're irredeemably mistaken on their belief that science is simply a fallacious appeal to authority. This is because they aren't aware of and don't understand all of the evidence that was collected to back up current scientific understanding. This is a result of a lack of a true understanding of the basics of science.

[BrownRobin]

I think that the Flat Earthers can be separated into two types:

1. Those who wholeheartedly believe in it, have made up hypotheses for it, and generally suffer from too much confirmation bias to convince. Science is extremely complex, and many of these people do not understand that even a PhD in physics only understands an extremely small fraction of current science. Many of their clever rebuttals are trivially shown (and have been shown long ago) to be fallacious. Their knee-jerk reaction is to attempt to disprove modern science without a full understanding of it. Take, for example, Tom Bishop's assertion that if you hold your hand so it's at a higher angle ("above" from your perspective) than a distant lamppost, the lamppost looks upward to see your hand... that's false, and obviously so. Or his various machinations about Doppler shifting from the stars (like randomly looking up the term bathychromic shift without understanding that these apply to molecular spectra). That's not to say Tom's a bad person. He's actually one of the better people here, because he engages constructively in debate, and a lot of wrong stuff he says not out of bad faith, but of ignorance. He's just heavily affected by these psychological biases, specifically the backfire effect and confirmation bias. Or you can take a look at Pete Svarrior's nitpicking at arguments while denying the obvious truth through circumlocution and technicalities. That's called muddying the waters.  These are the people who are heavily affected by the psychological biases you talk about; they perform mental gymnastics because in their minds, they cannot possibly be wrong. But you should remember that they could say the same about us, because from their perspective, they think they know the "true science" and that we're being dogmatic. Of course, this is not true (precisely because of all of the scientific verifications that they're ignorant of as a result of almost no physics education), but it's an understandable thought. These are the people who, short of throwing them out of an airlock with a space suit of their own making, and then interviewing them afterward, will never believe in a round Earth. This is because they've gone so deep that their minds have closed to learning science (they question before they understand what they're actually questioning), and without a reasonable degree of scientific knowledge, one cannot ascertain the validity of FE or RE as currently presented.

2. These are the people sitting on the fence, usually because they don't understand the entire debate and from a layman's point of view, a lot of what FE says makes sense. While those who usually respond to the various threads in FE debate are mostly part of the first class, I spend time rebutting them not to convince the people who are actually debating. It's not untrue that in debates, both sides usually think they won. But for someone sitting on the fence, reading the various debate threads may at least convince them to second-guess the fallacious explanations of those without expertise in the relevant parts of science, and take a skeptical eye toward hypotheses/explanations that are widely panned by scientists worldwide. The main point here is that science requires domain-specific expert knowledge to critique; for example, you cannot critique Special Relativity without understanding all of the experiments that went into making this rather unpleasant theory.  Of course, the flatness of the Earth is a rather irrelevant debate to today's society, as Flat Earth believers will never work on space exploration, long-range navigation systems, and space-based telecommunications by virtue of their complete wrongness on several levels of science. But hopefully people on the fence of Flat Earth, and then convinced of the rigors of scientific study (even if it's impossible for them to understand), can apply this elsewhere. Maybe the next time they see a conspiracy claim (vaccines cause autism, chemtrails, global warming hoax) that's not as clear-cut (I mean they're pretty clear-cut, but nothing compared to the flatness of the Earth), they'll think twice about "doing your own research" (from poorly-made YouTube videos chock full of technobabble or fallacious reasoning from obvious non-experts) and then choose to actually inquire through reputable sources (and rely on them for scientific reasoning, while still leaving the standard logical deduction to themselves.


TL;DR: you shouldn't heed any of the meta- arguments of Tom Bishop, Pete Svarrior, etc. They're irredeemably mistaken on their belief that science is simply a fallacious appeal to authority. This is because they aren't aware of and don't understand all of the evidence that was collected to back up current scientific understanding. This is a result of a lack of a true understanding of the basics of science.

Couldn't have said it any better.

[juner]

Couldn't have said it any better.

If you aren't going to add anything to the thread, then please refrain from posting. "Me too" posts are considered low-content in the upper fora.

[SpaceCadet]

I think that the Flat Earthers can be separated into two types:

1. Those who....standing. This is a result of a lack of a true understanding of the basics of science.

I wonder if I could be said to disagree with you. Where will you place the flat earther who just trolls? The one who knows the earth isn't flat but will argue continuously that it is? The one who knows he has no point but will throw up statements taken out of context, will quote mine to confirm bais or will out-right lie? There is a fellow on the other site who says he knows space flight is real, he knows pictures taken from space are real but he still believes in a flat earth because he believes in the holographic projection universe theory.

The statement Pete put on the home page of this site about seeing things on TV smacks to me like the statement of a con man trying to maintain his con after he has been busted. Quote mining Steve Woz to make it seem like he also doubts the launch of the falcon heavy.

I think there are only 2 types of flat earthers.
1. The one who doesn't know enough, thinks he knows enough, elevates his opinions to fact and backs up his thinking with misunderstanding simple facts including religious writings.

2. The troll, the conman, the snake-oil salesman.

[AATW]

There is a category of people who sincerely believe the earth is flat but I would sub-divide them into two camps:

1) People who have a bit of education but for whatever reason have come to the flat earth belief - never quite sure how they got there but it seems to be wrapped up in the conspiracy theory mindset. They use pseudo-science and just plain wrong assertions to back up their views - JohnAdams' citation of Tom's infamous "lamp looking up at your hand" is a perfect example. Just crazy, demonstrably wrong stuff and when it's proven to be wrong they just either mutter about perspective or leave the thread. It's telling that my thread about long shadows has received no flat earth response, and my repeated suggestions that they do some observations and triangulation to demonstrate the proximity of the moon or sun has never been responded to either. So maybe at some level they do know they are misguided but cognitive dissonance just won't let them admit it to themselves. People like Tom whose identity is so wrapped up in the Flat Earth Movement are particularly prone to this.

2) People who are just very ignorant of science. This is often people who believe in a flat earth for religious reasons - they take some Scripture literally which in my view shouldn't be interpreted that way. They tend not to engage with the scientific argument.

Those people are very entrenched in their views, for different reasons. Confirmation bias is at play here too - that plays out in the fact that the Bishop Experiment is proudly on their Wiki as experimental proof of a Flat Earth but videos of tall buildings occluded by the sea are dismissed by "waves". So why aren't waves a problem in the Bishop Experiment then, which he claims to be able to reproduce any time he likes.

It is an interesting psychology. I would suggest reading "Black Box Thinking" by Matthew Syed which goes into this in some detail - he relates stories of how when DNA evidence first started exonerating convicted rapists the lawyers who had prosecuted those people would do all KINDS of ridiculous mental contortions to explain how the DNA of the other person got there. Anything rather than admit they might have been a part of wrongly convicting someone. It's worth noting we are all prone to this sort of thing, it's just good to be mindful of it and question our beliefs in things to make sure we are thinking logically and not just believing things (or refusing to) because of preconceived ideas.

[BrownRobin]

I think that the Flat Earthers can be separated into two types:

1. Those who....standing. This is a result of a lack of a true understanding of the basics of science.

I wonder if I could be said to disagree with you. Where will you place the flat earther who just trolls? The one who knows the earth isn't flat but will argue continuously that it is? The one who knows he has no point but will throw up statements taken out of context, will quote mine to confirm bais or will out-right lie? There is a fellow on the other site who says he knows space flight is real, he knows pictures taken from space are real but he still believes in a flat earth because he believes in the holographic projection universe theory.

The statement Pete put on the home page of this site about seeing things on TV smacks to me like the statement of a con man trying to maintain his con after he has been busted. Quote mining Steve Woz to make it seem like he also doubts the launch of the falcon heavy.

I think there are only 2 types of flat earthers.
1. The one who doesn't know enough, thinks he knows enough, elevates his opinions to fact and backs up his thinking with misunderstanding simple facts including religious writings.

2. The troll, the conman, the snake-oil salesman.

I think that the above is partially true HOWEVER, as my original thread starter suggests or postulates, it also warrants an understanding into some of the Psychology and Mindset of a Conspiracy Theorist.

Digging deeper into the why's and how's of human thinking Mindset, and taking the conversation thread deeper, I am postulating that some of it has to do with the following:

1. The fear of the unknown and trying to make sense of it. Quite simply, being told that the Earth is likely a very small and "insignificant" spec in the overall grandness of the Universe; this could tend to be very hard for some folks to accept. What purpose in life does then being a tiny and insignificant spec bring to me?

2. A distrust in anything that the government says or does, no matter the evidence. Sometimes, to the point of seeming ludicrous. Perhaps something happened in the persons life that triggered this OR perhaps their life didn't end up the way that they wanted.

3. A need for social belonging or feeling the need to belong by becomming part of a common group that allows them to also vocalize or propogate distrust in NASA / the government / Space X /etc..etc..

Regards.

[ShowmetheProof]

I have a friend who told me that he thought that a lot of people who appear to believe in TFE and argue for TFE on this website are just getting a laugh by pretending to believe in it.  This doesn't seem too unreasonable, because I know a lot of people who if they had any knowledge that a fourth-grader couldn't tell you, would do that a lot.  There are serious debaters on this site, like Tom or Junker, but others may just be faking it.  My personal belief is that most believers in TFE start out just doing it for a laugh, but as they get more and more involved in playing around they learn more about the science involved and then switch from it being a laugh to an absolute truth of life.

[StinkyOne]

It is amusing that you accuse us of dogmatism while simultaneously espousing a blind belief in authorities, unconcerned that you have no direct knowledge of the matter for yourself.

Psychology helps us to understand in a way that Conspiracy Mindsets (Flat Earthers) can be about the need for social belonging, the need for attention, and/or the need for control and certainty in world that may not make too much sense (to them).

We seek to question truth and our authories. You seem content with the idea that they are beyond questioning.

So who is the closed minded thinker here?

You are, Tom. You have repeatedly been shown to be wrong, but you won't dare to veer away from the stupid stuff Rowbotham wrote. (moonlight makes things colder...smh) You accuse others of appealing to authority without ever acknowledging the fact that Rowbotham et al are your authority. It is essentially a religion for you since you seem to take it on blind faith. (and youtube videos)

[AATW]

You are, Tom. You have repeatedly been shown to be wrong, but you won't dare to veer away from the stupid stuff Rowbotham wrote. (moonlight makes things colder...smh) You accuse others of appealing to authority without ever acknowledging the fact that Rowbotham et al are your authority. It is essentially a religion for you since you seem to take it on blind faith. (and youtube videos)

Always find it interesting how Tom demands evidence for round earth claims.
Not in itself an unreasonable thing to do, but compare and contrast with him taking Rowbotham at his word about pretty much everything even though Rowbotham's "proofs" are basically him saying "this is what I saw".
Which is exactly what Tom claims in the Bishop Experiment. Quite why he gets an experiment named after him when it's basically him looking at something remains a mystery, but anyway...
He claims that from 20 inches above the sea level he can look across a bay 23 miles across and can see people on the beach.
But elsewhere when you show video of tall buildings occluded by the sea he claims it's waves.
So is he claiming that there isn't a single wave over 20 inches high in 23 miles of ocean?
I'll be generous and say he is mistaken rather than lying but it's telling that there is no photographs or video of his claims, he gives only very basic details of how he conducted the experiment. No photographs of diagrams of the way the equipment was set up. It's just him saying "this is what I saw". I can see why he rates Rowbotham so highly if that is the level of proof he thinks is acceptable.

Tom is completely closed minded to any other possibility, his identity is too wrapped up in the idea that the earth is flat. Nothing will ever convince him, when he is shown to be wrong he just ignores it.

[xenotolerance]

Another article.

I wrote this awhile ago about denialism and flat Earth belief, in a thread about burden of proof:

The whole belief is built on denialism. There is no need for completeness: The flat Earth model has no prediction or explanation for why constellations (e.g. Orion) visible in either hemisphere during its summer. There is no need for consistency: The flat Earth skepticism known as zeteticism makes no provision for asserting conjecture (e.g. celestial gravitation) or conspiracy theories without personally observing the evidence. There is no need for correctness: The flat Earth believers we meet here have no care whatsoever for accuracy or rigor.

How high is the the sun above the Earth? Eratosthenes shows a height of 3000 miles. How big is the Earth? Eratosthenes showed a circumference of 25000 miles. It does not matter that these come from the same experiment; you get one or the other, but not both, but our resident zetetics have referenced both. It does not matter that repeated trials of the Bedford Level Experiment showed curvature of the Earth. It does not matter that triangulation makes calculating distances and heights trivial. It does not matter that airlines monitor fuel consumption carefully and know their engine efficiency to precision. It definitely doesn't matter that Tom Bishop said he would accept a spherical map of the Earth built from airline data as proof of a round Earth, then two such proofs were presented, and he was reduced to claiming that no one knows the distance between New York and Paris in avoidance of the truth.

These things don't matter because it's not about proof; but it's not just about faith without proof. There is no proof that God exists, but people believe all the same; there isn't exactly proof that God doesn't exist, either. There is an ages-old debate about who has burden of proof in that argument. Regarding the shape of the Earth; it is observed, measured, catalogued, and demonstrated seventeen ways from Sunday that the Earth is a motherfuckin' globe. So much so that most people don't give it much thought, it's just common knowledge, in the same way that 'car engines work using gasoline' is common knowledge, but few people are mechanics who know how it actually works. 'The Earth is a globe' is common knowledge but not a lot of people understand gravity, general relativity, optics, and geodesy, just to name a couple of relevant subjects. All the evidence is there, proof of the Earth's spherical shape, so believing in flat Earth means denying that evidence.

I give the above rant a B+, didn't go into enough depth about evaluating evidence i.e. rigor.

If we're going to try and categorize believers, I'd look at those who embrace it as a religious belief, and those who think of themselves as skeptics.

[BrownRobin]

Another article.

I wrote this awhile ago about denialism and flat Earth belief, in a thread about burden of proof:

The whole belief is built on denialism. There is no need for completeness: The flat Earth model has no prediction or explanation for why constellations (e.g. Orion) visible in either hemisphere during its summer. There is no need for consistency: The flat Earth skepticism known as zeteticism makes no provision for asserting conjecture (e.g. celestial gravitation) or conspiracy theories without personally observing the evidence. There is no need for correctness: The flat Earth believers we meet here have no care whatsoever for accuracy or rigor.

How high is the the sun above the Earth? Eratosthenes shows a height of 3000 miles. How big is the Earth? Eratosthenes showed a circumference of 25000 miles. It does not matter that these come from the same experiment; you get one or the other, but not both, but our resident zetetics have referenced both. It does not matter that repeated trials of the Bedford Level Experiment showed curvature of the Earth. It does not matter that triangulation makes calculating distances and heights trivial. It does not matter that airlines monitor fuel consumption carefully and know their engine efficiency to precision. It definitely doesn't matter that Tom Bishop said he would accept a spherical map of the Earth built from airline data as proof of a round Earth, then two such proofs were presented, and he was reduced to claiming that no one knows the distance between New York and Paris in avoidance of the truth.

These things don't matter because it's not about proof; but it's not just about faith without proof. There is no proof that God exists, but people believe all the same; there isn't exactly proof that God doesn't exist, either. There is an ages-old debate about who has burden of proof in that argument. Regarding the shape of the Earth; it is observed, measured, catalogued, and demonstrated seventeen ways from Sunday that the Earth is a motherfuckin' globe. So much so that most people don't give it much thought, it's just common knowledge, in the same way that 'car engines work using gasoline' is common knowledge, but few people are mechanics who know how it actually works. 'The Earth is a globe' is common knowledge but not a lot of people understand gravity, general relativity, optics, and geodesy, just to name a couple of relevant subjects. All the evidence is there, proof of the Earth's spherical shape, so believing in flat Earth means denying that evidence.

I give the above rant a B+, didn't go into enough depth about evaluating evidence i.e. rigor.

If we're going to try and categorize believers, I'd look at those who embrace it as a religious belief, and those who think of themselves as skeptics.

I would add to the above that I might also categorize believers as those that are looking for purpose and perspective in life.

Again, this particular thread is getting into the Psychology or Mindset and so I would think that this could have something to do with it.

Regards.

[Tom Bishop]

It is amusing that you accuse us of dogmatism while simultaneously espousing a blind belief in authorities, unconcerned that you have no direct knowledge of the matter for yourself.

Psychology helps us to understand in a way that Conspiracy Mindsets (Flat Earthers) can be about the need for social belonging, the need for attention, and/or the need for control and certainty in world that may not make too much sense (to them).

We seek to question truth and our authories. You seem content with the idea that they are beyond questioning.

So who is the closed minded thinker here?

You likely won't be able to change the mind of a Flat Earther no matter how much evidence you try to present or how much you want to debate

What makes you think that our models or arguments don't evolve from time to time? Do you think that Samuel Birley Rowbotham believed in the Universal Accelerator?

Things do change over time. Occasionally there will be something that needs to be rethought about. Most of the arguments posted here on a daily basis just aren't good enough or clear cut enough to compel change, however.

For the most part RET proponents rely on theories and axioms that are incredibly rationalized, and are unjustifiable at their foundations. You are fighting with swords made of jello, and this is what prevents you from making conclusive arguments.

[spoonbow]

For the most part RET proponents rely on theories and axioms that are incredibly rationalized, and are unjustifiable at their foundations. You are fighting with swords made of jello, and this is what prevents you from making conclusive arguments.

Just for clarification, Tom;
Classic physics = Sword made of jello?