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The Beyond Stupid Thread (Flat Earthers Etc.)

johninderby

By johninderby
in The Astro Lounge

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johninderby

johninderby

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Another forum I’m on (not astro) has a thread dedicated to what can only be called gross stupidity videos usually relating to flat earh theories or the moon landings were faked etc. Now on the other forum they love laughing at the sheer stupidity of them.

Anyway here’s one amusing bit of nonsense recently posted. Maybe you could post similar videos that you’ve come across. ?

 

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kirkster501

kirkster501

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There is no reasoning with these people.  I know a bloke - otherwise nice chap - who things likewise.

Flat Earth;  Crop spraying is a conspiracy and they are spraying drugs to keep us subjugated, Lunar landings fake, Princess Diana assassinated, JFK was a marxist shot by the CIA, There is no such thing as The Universe; science is fake,..... The list goes on and on.

Any reasoned point you put to them to challenge their views they dismiss as it being *you* who has been brainwashed by the system.

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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3 minutes ago, kirkster501 said:

There is no reasoning with these people.  I know a bloke - otherwise nice chap - who things likewise.

Flat Earth;  Crop spraying is a conspiracy and they are spraying drugs to keep us subjugated, Lunar landings fake, Princess Diana assassinated, JFK was a marxist shot by the CIA, There is no such thing as The Universe; science is fake,..... The list goes on and on.

Any reasoned point you put to them to challenge their views they dismiss as it being *you* who has been brainwashed by the system.

And they are impervious to brainwashing because...       say no more! :icon_mrgreen:

More seriously, I suspect that there must be an underlying psychological driver at work in these people, a need to convince themselves that they belong to an élite minority capable of seeing what has eluded the rest of the population when, in the daily course of their lives, things seem to be the other way round...  If you haven't been abducted by success you can still be abducted by aliens!

Olly

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kirkster501

kirkster501

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7 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

More seriously, I suspect that there must be an underlying psychological driver at work in these people, a need to convince themselves that they belong to an élite minority capable of seeing what has eluded the rest of the population when, in the daily course of their lives, things seem to be the other way round...  If you haven't been abducted by success you can still be abducted by aliens!

I could not have put it better myself Olly...

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Guest chaz2b

Guest chaz2b

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On 11/12/2018 at 19:11, Whistlin Bob said:

 

As one of the comments on YT points out- “flat earth theories have support across the globe.”

If a Flat Earther said that , it would have been ironic and very funny.

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mcrowle

mcrowle

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On ‎21‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 09:03, kirkster501 said:

There is no reasoning with these people.  I know a bloke - otherwise nice chap - who things likewise.

Flat Earth;  Crop spraying is a conspiracy and they are spraying drugs to keep us subjugated, Lunar landings fake, Princess Diana assassinated, JFK was a marxist shot by the CIA, There is no such thing as The Universe; science is fake,..... The list goes on and on.

Any reasoned point you put to them to challenge their views they dismiss as it being *you* who has been brainwashed by the system.

That describes one of my work colleagues, too, word for word!

Arguments along these lines come up every day, and can get very heated. I try to stay out of it now.

Regards, Mike.

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johninderby

johninderby

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The conclusions in the article I linked to descibes this very well.

Quote:

”Regardless of the outcome of these future studies, the real question for us now is how to deal with the Uncle Joe in our life. You may offer counterevidence in an attempt convince him to give up his conspiracy theories, but you’re unlikely to succeed. This is because you’re arguing facts, while Uncle Joe is defending his sense of security and his positive feelings about himself. And for all of us, self-image trumps facts every time.”

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StuartJPP

StuartJPP

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On 21/12/2018 at 09:03, kirkster501 said:

There is no reasoning with these people.  I know a bloke - otherwise nice chap - who things likewise.

Flat Earth;  Crop spraying is a conspiracy and they are spraying drugs to keep us subjugated, Lunar landings fake, Princess Diana assassinated, JFK was a marxist shot by the CIA, There is no such thing as The Universe; science is fake,..... The list goes on and on.

Any reasoned point you put to them to challenge their views they dismiss as it being *you* who has been brainwashed by the system.

The thing is that we are living in a topsy-turvy world these days. I don't trust institutions like the BBC as they always put some PC slant on everything they spew, to a lesser degree than some of the other rags, but they still wind me up.

So if that drivel is to believed why not flat Earth theories?

No more ridiculous then some of the current gender theories floating around to someone who believes in science, not feelings.

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coatesg

coatesg

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1 hour ago, StuartJPP said:

No more ridiculous then some of the current gender theories floating around to someone who believes in science, not feelings.

Sorry, I have to challenge this, or at least have to ask your exact point as to what "gender theories" you're referring to?

"Gender", even from a scientific point of view is very much non-binary - implying that the science/psychology around gender in any way has the lack of rigour as flat earth is at best poorly informed...

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JamesF

JamesF

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6 minutes ago, coatesg said:

Sorry, I have to challenge this, or at least have to ask your exact point as to what "gender theories" you're referring to?

"Gender", even from a scientific point of view is very much non-binary - implying that the science/psychology around gender in any way has the lack of rigour as flat earth is at best poorly informed...

Though I am not at all knowledgeable about this area, I have been wondering since the flare-up in the news about the female South African(?) runner who has been accused of actually being male (her name will come to me in a moment, or I'll have to search for it).  It strikes me that there must be many genes associated with traits we might normally consider "typically male" or "typically female" in addition to those determining which set of reproductive organs a body gets.  Depending on how those genes are expressed there may then be some sort of continuum between what we might consider "definitively male" and "definitively female".

As an illustration (which may be a bit rambling and potentially completely wrong) I believe researchers have done experiments in which participants categorise faces into "masculine" and "feminine" types.  But not all the masculine type faces belonged to men and not all the feminine type faces belonged to women.  So it appears that we have some internal model of what might constitute male and female faces, presumably accrued over years of exposure to people who clearly identify as male or female, but those characteristics can sometimes end up on the "wrong" body.  I guess it could be argued that it's actually classifying those attributes as male or female that's wrong, but if that's how they're expressed in the majority of cases perhaps it's reasonable to take the view that they are indeed male or female.

I wonder if the same sort of thing might be observed with other physical attributes.

Or perhaps we should just abandon the entire idea of classifying people as "male" or "female" other than strictly by which set of reproductive organs they have and otherwise accept that we're all just humans with a diverse range of characteristics across a broad spectrum.

Since I've already mentioned it, sport is one area where they're already running into trouble with the entire idea of what sex someone is.  Castor Semenya (see, I knew I'd remember her name) being a case in point.  I imagine this is only going to become more troublesome in the future.

James

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Kev M

Kev M

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5 minutes ago, JamesF said:

 

Or perhaps we should just abandon the entire idea of classifying people as "male" or "female" other than strictly by which set of reproductive organs they have and otherwise accept that we're all just humans with a diverse range of characteristics across a broad spectrum. 

 

I always thought that we need to categorise people into being a definite female or a definite male, so that we know whether to be happy or sad for their partner when they die.....

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