> Conspiracy theories, religious fanatism, extreme nationalism, flat earth societies, sanitary anticompliance (anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers), climate change denial... they all have a thing in common: they are not rational and the people behind them are afraid of rationality and science.
Actually, I'd disagree. If you dig in to a lot of these theories, there is a kernel of rationality behind them. Many adherents can actually rebut arguments with evidence that makes a surprising amount of sense: there are usually multiple possible explanations for individual phenomena, and if you look at them in isolation, it can be very hard to conclusively demonstrate that the "scientific" answer is actually the best possible explanation. This to me explains why even intellectuals can fall prey to these theories: if you already have a nonconformist streak, the alternative explanations can be interesting to dig into.
Where they fall flat is in overall coherence; these theories often end up with massive gaping seams if you try to expand them from explaining one phenomena. And these seams are so obvious, and yet adherents have no coherent explanation for these seams, that it overshadows whatever kernel of rationality the theory originally had.
I think treating flat earth theory as a rational argument to debunk is appealing, but ultimately unproductive.
There was an interesting article some time ago: https://jameshfisher.com/2019/01/20/my-parents-are-flat-eart..., which casted the human perspective on the problem: at the root, believing a conspiracy theory gives self-importance to the believer, and it's, in a way, "fun".
Considering this perspective, this phenomenon belongs to the class of problems whose easy angle of attack is the technical (rational, in this case), and the difficult one is the human.
I'd argue that if one thinks that a flat earther is metaphorically a brick wall, and consequently a fool, opposing technical arguments against it is equally as foolish. It's actually the other side of the coin: yelling arguments to a wall is the mirrored human problem, in my opinion.
In conclusion, I think it would be more productive to think more about why this belief is appealing to people (and why it's spreading), rather than proving it's false.
> Science, as we do it, ie based on trust and without personal verification, is absolutely equivalent to religion.
We call it Social Constructionism. It's the basis of all knowledge in society. Whether a concept exists or whether it's believed to be true does not necessarily have anything connected to an objective reality, all you need is making it believable (different groups of people and different societies have different standards on what qualifies as believable). Demonstrating it by direct observation using the scientific method can achieve this goal, creating a mythology or writing a textbook can do it as well. At the end of the day, you must start from an existing concept and assume it is true. Theoretically, You can start from simple and self-evident concepts and derive everything from first principles. However, in a modern society, the existing body of knowledge is too large for any individual to independently verify and too useful to refuse. Even the verification of the simplest fact can be non-obvious and expensive. Thus, we assume they're true without verification. And often, what we have accepted are not even technically accurate.
Now, I'm not interested in discussing any particular issues in the thread, but I'd like to use this chance to talk about my pet theory on the psychology of conspiracy theories... An interesting thought exercise: Consider the shape of the Earth. Now, design a physics experiment to provide empirical evidence for a spherical Earth, preferably also it's rotation. Requirements: This should be practical within the ability of a single individual, and should be as easy as possible. Only minimum pre-existing concepts should be used. The result should be as obvious and unambiguous as possible without too much interpretation. It should be able to defend itself from any challenge on its technical inaccuracy or alternative models... I think it's actually a non-obvious problem. It's amazing how much domain-specific knowledge it requires. Flat Earth conspiracy theorists have cherry-picked numerous arguments to support their positions, just to name a few...
* Bedford Level Experiment. A number of sticks were placed in an 6-mile uninterrupted straight line. Optical observations were made. Experiment failed to detect any curvature, or that the data showed the curvature was not outward, but inward. Many modern versions by Flat Earthers can be found in YouTube videos, often on lakes or sea - objects and buildings well beyond the horizon can be seen by telescopic lens. Laser beams have been detected 15 kilometers apart, etc. Why? Atmospheric refraction. After atmospheric effects have been corrected, the data will definitely show that the Earth is indeed a sphere. But from now, to interpret the data, you suddenly need a model of atmospheric optics, which is far from obvious and requires many additional concepts. Then, consider the cost and difficulty of this naive experiment - For an individual, it's already high enough and unpractical for a city dweller. Thus, all optical experiments are doomed? Radio based observations are even trickier than optical observations.
* Foucault Pendulum. It's the most famous physics experiment to show the Earth's rotation, but the instability of the original, unpowered pendulum is notorious, even minor imperfection in mechanical construction or startup can create unwanted mode of oscillation, such as an elliptic oscillation which can totally mask the Earth's rotation. For powered pendulum, a careful and complicated mechanical analysis is needed to show that the pendulum has no preferred direction of swing,. Thus, Flat Earth advocates reject Foucault Pendulum as a valid experiment - any expected result is refuted as a coincidence or the result of the experimenter's biases.
* Gyroscope. An accurate and sensitive gyroscope, such as a Laser Ring Gyroscope, can sense the Earth's rotation. But gyroscope observations are rejected by Flat Earthers in general - the raw data output is noisy with random drifts and noise, aquisation of useful data heavily relies on algorithms and data processing. They argue that the algorithms can be biased to show a rotational Earth. Of course, it's not the case, but then you need to justify the entire subject of statistics and digital signal processing, good luck with that.
* Astronomic and Geodesic Measurements. Examples include observing the fixed stars and showing their variation in altitudes, or showing the sum of a triangle on Earth is greater than 180-degree, etc. Many of these experiments require an individual to travel great distances, many geodesic measurements also require accurate navigation, which can be disputed.
Of course, obvious experiments that produces strong evidences do exist, good candidates can be lunar ellipses, sun rise and sun set, timezones. But it's just a rhetorical question, I used the absurd example of Flat Earth to illustrate the point of non-obviousness of personal verification - indeed, many people who believe the Earth is a sphere have proposed these experiments to Flat Earthers, while making the mistake of not realizing their limitations, which in turns strengthens the beliefs of many Flat Earthers that "people are too brainwashed to see the truth". If we move away from Flat Earth and step into more advanced subjects, obviousness completely disappears, and only domain-specific knowledge remains, which are heavily dependent upon preexisting results.
In my opinion, it's how numerous conspiracy theories are created. The conspiracy theorists will simply tell you: why do you assume they're true? It's entirely possible that everything you know is false. And all the gaps in your accepted knowledge can be exploited by them to make this point. And ultimately, you may come to the conclusion that the entire body scientific knowledge is a hoax. Then, one may ask, how can people build anything in engineering? The conspiracy theorist will tell you, the truths are carefully and systematic distorted in a way that appears to be self-consistent, enough for some applications, but it's distorted enough to kill truth. And since any pre-existing results couldn't be trusted and one is unable to derive or verify anything from first principles due to limited time and resources, science is hence rejected.
Conclusion: The theoretical and epistemological foundation of many conspiracy theories are the equivalent of Reflection on Trusting Trust - they claim the vast majority of knowledge is manipulated for malicious purposes, in the same way that the hypothetical attack by Ken Thompson claims one's compiler could be backdoored and no program in one's computer can be trusted.
> Sure, they could all be faking it, but at that point you have to question how much evidence it takes to believe in anything at all.
This is worth questioning (and hopefully coming back around to believing in)! Most of the reason I reject the idea of young earth theory is that the incentive to fake the earth's evident age is so vanishingly low my understanding of the rest of society would also have to be rejected. And that's a deeply stressful act to engage in without my own incentive to. But it's worth knowing about yourself that your view of the world is inherently based in your place and comfort within it, even the stuff that people broadly agree about, not some sense of discovering absolute truth. The latter aspect is just a symptom of having a coherent worldview, which people manage with very heterodox beliefs all the time.
It's worth looking into examination of flat-earthers and why they turn to it—it's often linked to myriad other conspiracy theories, each of which support each other.
> I can tell you that I can identify an ideology for every conspiracy that I am familiar with.
Are you familiar with UFO conspiracy theories such as Area 51/Roswell/etc? What is their ideology? How about JFK assassination conspiracy theories, what ideology are they? What is the ideology of the moon landing hoax theory? Or the conspiracy theory (which a taxi driver once tried to convince me of) that the passengers on MH370 were abducted by the CIA? [0]
> - Flat Earth conspiracism is about an anti-intellectual pan-Christian traditionalist ideology
Wikipedia [1] says:
> Research on the arguments that flat Earthers wield shows three distinct factions, each one subscribing to its own set of beliefs. The first faction subscribes to a faith-based conflict in which atheists use science to suppress the Christian faith... The second faction believes in an overarching conspiracy for knowledge suppression... The third faction believes that knowledge is personal and experiential. They are dismissive of knowledge that comes from authoritative sources, especially book knowledge
So, contrary to what you say, it says only one branch of Flat Earthers have a Christian ideology. Also, it isn’t “pan-Christian”: almost all Christian Flat Earthers are non-traditional Protestants (such as “independent Fundamentalists”); very few Christian Flat Earthers are Catholics or Orthodox or traditional Protestants (Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists, etc). At the time of Christianity’s founding, most educated people believed the Earth was round, and the vast majority of Christian leaders accepted that societal consensus; it is only in modern times that a tiny fringe has emerged to question it. The idea that belief in a Flat Earth was ever widespread in the history of Christianity is actually a myth that was invented by polemicists in order to defame Christians (especially Catholics) [2]
> - Antisemitic conspiracy theories are about an ideology of white supremacy, and of mythic struggle among "races".
Antisemitic conspiracy theories are extremely popular in the Arab and Muslim worlds, but in that context have nothing to do with white supremacy. To quote Wikipedia’s article on the infamous antisemitic hoax “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” [3]
> Neither governments nor political leaders in most parts of the world have referred to the Protocols since World War II. The exception to this is the Middle East, where a large number of Arab and Muslim regimes and leaders have endorsed them as authentic, including endorsements from Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, President Abdul Salam Arif of Iraq, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya. A translation made by an Arab Christian appeared in Cairo in 1927 or 1928, this time as a book. The first translation by an Arab Muslim was also published in Cairo, but only in 1951.
The 1988 charter of Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist group, stated that the Protocols embodies the plan of the Zionists. The reference was removed in the new covenant issued in 2017. Recent endorsements in the 21st century have been made by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrima Sa'id Sabri, the education ministry of Saudi Arabia…
The Nation of Islam has been a major promoter of the antisemitic conspiracy theory of Jewish responsibility for the Atlantic slave trade. [4] Their ideology is definitely not white supremacy. Antisemitism is found all over the ideological spectrum, even among secular progressives [5]; it is a disease which transcends the boundaries of ideology - and antisemites of any and all ideologies are susceptible to accepting antisemitic conspiracy theories
> May I ask if you've ever had an extended conversation with a conspiracy theorist?
Yes, a good friend of mine was quite taken in by PizzaGate, and tried hard to convince me of it, although in the end we agreed to disagree. Also, whatever is the ideology of PizzaGate as a whole, I know my friend didn’t share it. I’m convinced his credulity on that topic was more about his personal dislike of Hilary Clinton than disagreement with her actual policies (e.g. he was and is the kind of guy who says things like “abortion is a women’s issue, men should stay out of it”)
> You know it was once a conspiracy theory to say the Earth wasn't flat.
In the 3rd century BCE, it is documented that the Egyptians calculated the circumference of the Earth to a relatively high degree of accuracy [1].
The Earth not being flat wasn't so much a "conspiracy theory" but a challenge to medieval Christian doctrine. It just doesn't fit the modern definition of a "conspiracy theory". The essential part of a conspiracy theory is that a powerful and covert group is responsible for something not appearing as it seems.
Common examples: faked Moon landings, UFOs (as aliens, including Roswell and other such incidents), the JFK assassination (done by the CIA or whoever) or the Holocaust didn't happen.
They all tend to revolve around some Big Lie (a fact exploited by Goebbels and others) and it tends to play into human psychology that there's some grand plan or there's something you, as a believer, know that other people don't. We now live in a time that has validated people raising how they feel to having the same weight as science, demonstrable evidence and reason. So now we have people believing in stolen elections, QAnon, Covid-19 being fake and the like.
So what you're doing is attempting to conflate the term conspiracy theory by applying it to a situation any reasonable person knows as being obvious ("the Earth isn't flat") and I have to wonder why. What other belief are you trying to validate?
My working hypothesis is that most people lack the intellectual capacity to understand these things, and they haven't the fortitude to accept that they don't understand or don't know something.
So instead of attempting to understand they select some imagined model that does make sense to them and act as though it is truth.
Challenging them is difficult since they are so invested in their fancies being true; the alternative after all is accepting that you don't understand something and where does that leave them? This is why evidence and rational arguments are futile.
If they could grasp the facts and the arguments in the first place they wouldn't have had to construct these fancies in place of them! It's almost tautological that those who can believe flat earth stuff are also incapable of accepting science.
> How do you get out of flat-earth on your own, without re-living centuries of astronomic research? How do you get out of moonlanding negationism, without personally examining all the retrieved moon rocks? How do you get out of antivaxxing, without personally living through pestilence? (well, at least Covid19 should help with that...)
Find a way to get rationalists out of believing that these examples are an accurate representation of the beliefs of the conspiracy world in general, and you may be well on your way to a universal solution. But watch out for that first step, it's a doozy.
This essay provides a lot of the necessary advice to accomplish such a thing, but I suspect one must actually possess sufficient unconventionality to exercise it, not just perceive oneself to possess it.
I have friends who I have witnessed converting to flat earth-ism and anti-vax-ism.
I am perplexed by the whole thing, because any thoughts you are likely to have (stupid people, trolls..) are wrong. It's just hard to form/adopt any kind of theory of the phenomenon.
At its core I think Scientism is a good name for it, because it does seem somewhat similar to Marxism (in particular) and Freudianism, the "theories" Karl Popper and F. Hayek had in mind when they coined these terms.
I usually have opinions and theories about everything. I have nothing here. No idea what's going on, other than a suspicion paranoia is plays a role.
> But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion
This applies to flat earth theory believers as well. If they are unable to refute the reasons for the sphere theory, they have no ground for preferring either theory.
There's also the part "where he must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest" and I have a hard time imagining that most conspiracy theorists actually believe their theories -- in my experience, most people cling to conspiracy theories because they're more convenient to them; the need to believe is stronger than the actual belief. But that viewpoint is exactly what Socrates was denouncing ;)
> A flat earth makes sense if you only spent 5 minutes thinking about it and have no background in or exposure to basic science.
Not that I particularly want to jump to the defense of people that believe in a flat earth, but they are not people that "only spent 5 minutes thinking about it". A lot of time has been spent trying to back up their beliefs and to form a coherent theory. They're wrong, of course, for many reasons, but it's incorrect and dismissive to call them intellectually lazy.
The core of flat earth and similar beliefs is often a legitimate reaction against the large established systems in society that, from their perspective, appear to be failing in obvious ways while lying to them regularly that everything is fine. The are recognizing a problem, and attempt to apply something resembling science to try and find answers.
There seems to be a non-trivial anti-semetic component to at least one version of the flat earth conspiracy. It seems there's not one coherent view that all flat-earther's follow, which is not surprising at all. But I would feel confident in saying that the part where the earth is flat is just a springboard for the more insidious conspiracies people conjure up.
And not only do flat earthers not read reputable sources to soberly reflect on the matter, but often the truth or falsehood of their preferred conspiracy theory is not really the point. A lot of people are getting into Flat Earth, QAnon, or 5G-causes-whatever because those forums offer them a sense of community that satisfies their emotional needs. Perpetuating the conspiracy theory is just the ritual they must perform to keep the group vibe going, but in itself the conspiracy isn’t all that really important (as destructive as its side-effects are for the rest of the world).
I think the challenge for defeating those theories is providing the poor, undereducated and marginalized a more wholesome way to spend their time among other people. That is a hard challenge when community centers and churches are no longer a significant thing in many locations, and now the COVID lockdown means even less real-life socializing.
The problem with the flat earthers, and the more conspiratorial portion of the climate deniers, is it's not clear even the people making the claims believe it. They don't seem to mind ideas that contradict theirs, so long as the central belief that there is some sort of vast conspiracy is upheld.
You can't really engage with people who aren't all that interested in what's actually true.
Humans routinely believe wrong things, collectively, without it being a collective conspiracy to trick you.
The false dichotomy you present (“they’re right or they’re lying!”) isn’t reflected in the real world — and it’s worth knowing that you’re depending on trust in authorities rather than direct evidence.
> It is not irrational for someone to believe the Earth is round without being able to devise an experiment to prove it.
And I never said it was: just that it’s something you believe based on trust in authorities, not because you can (personally) justify the belief.
> These people are being logical in believing that, and walking around with your upturned nose telling them they're stupid because they can't "justify" their beliefs is not helping scientific literacy in the world.
Pretending that belief in authorities without being able to explain the proof is the same as scientific literacy is what’s actually harming scientific literacy — and it’s a confusion many people of average capability engage in.
I have some clarification on this whole flat earth thing and it is insidious.
I have a father who is prone to believing conspiracy theories. When I grew up he bought me a thousand "unexplained mysteries" magazines. the topics ranged from spontaneous combustion to ghosts to Loch ness monster to the magazines primary focus.. aliens. I had an incredibly scary childhood. As I grew older i learned that the strange noises at night were not ghosts but the house settling or something like that. It took me years to find peace from his indoctrination.
Today, He doesn't care about any of those topics. They just seemed to slowly vanish from his radar. Today it is the invasion of "lesser" species trying to erode "Our" "Moral certainties"
- He believes Trump is the answer the world needs
- He believes Global warming is a myth created by Al Gore so he could take billions from the government
- He believes brown skin makes you less intelligent because your DNA prohibits you from excelling, "Nature has chosen white DNA"
- He believes the Rockerfeller's control the world through manipulation and bribery.
- He lives in South Africa, yet is obsessed with Palestinian Politics.
- He has a programmer son, and a Scientist Daughter, but routinely sends conspiracy theories to both of us to the point where I no longer interact with him
I spent many hours researching why this could happen. Why would a person abandon all reason and persue his own beliefs so fervently? It turns out that people are prone to conspiracy theories via their personality. They don't understand the world, dont trust the government, and therefore latch on to an explanation that explains the whole world to them. Anybody trying to explain the difficulty of the situation to them is therefore an "attacker".
The reason Flat earth is so insidious is that it has brought 3 active communities together.
1) The conspiracy crowd who does't trust the government ("The man")
2) Religious Christians who interpret the bible literally. ("The four corners of the earth")
3) Muslim culture being exterminated by christian "integrity". Christians view the muslim community by default as heathens.
4) the obvious crazies.
so you have 3 powerful, emotional motivators steering this conspiracy. to the point where good science is being applied well, to poor premises.
I was listening to a pod cast about this where the scientist in question was impressed by the level of scientific control over the completely insane premise.
I have not solved this problem or re-connected with my father. It is ongoing and the misinformation is just horrific. Right now I feel that humanity is as divided as ever, with corporations taking their biggest cut.
I honestly expected a completely different outcome to the freedome of information we have today. I expected enlightenment, but instead got people doubling down on their own beliefs and researching points to support them because emotions at the end of the day are more important than truth.
> In the end that is the core malfunction of the flat-earthers, and the modern populist rejection of expertise in general. It is a horrifically simplistic view of the world that ignores (partly out of ignorance, and partly out of motivated reasoning) to [sic] real complexities of our civilisation. It is ultimately lazy, childish, and self-indulgent, resulting in a profound level of ignorance drowning in motivated reasoning.
One experts view on why people get into it, from your first link.
Flat Earth is more of a sign of protest masquerading as a theory rather than an actual theory. It appears to be more focused on finding elaborate ways to deny other theories rather than seeking truth. It is inelegant, illogical, and cannot be stated without involving a host of conspiracies of low probability. (The fact that one can only adopt it given values/traits/issues that let one seriously believe in those conspiracies may also make it useful for social signaling.)
What I find tragic is that STEM-inclined crowd might have sort of triggered that defensive reaction by supplanting religion directly with natural sciences. Sometimes when you point out something similar to this thread (that physics does not make statements of absolute truth, there are only models of which none can be fully provably correct and complete, etc.) you encounter vicious insistence that the world is literally the way it is described in physics textbooks or Wikipedia—and it will stay that way until we are blessed with a new explanation for how things really are. You can notice how to a religious person this might feel indistinguishable to a competing religion, rather than an orthogonal aspect of worldview (it is completely possible to be both religious and a natural scientist).
Come to think about it, even your comment sounds slightly off to me in this way, primarily due to the mention of “explanatory limits”. I would prefer another term (possibly “predictive limits”). Again, “explanatory limits” makes it sound as if GR or QM (or X or Y) is capable of “explaining” something. Taking a model, just one metaphor that fits how some aspect of apparent reality behaves in response to input or another observation, and using that metaphor to explain how things are in some objective sense (which is what I take “explanatory” means) is, to me, a misuse of the model. The fact that the model works for some of our purposes makes it useful, but does not grant it explanatory powers.
I wish more of us techies resisted the urge to see in natural sciences explanatory powers that they do not possess, and instead branched a bit into philosophy—which can actually provide some grounds for meaningful discussions on topics that are out of scope of natural sciences per se. (As a side-effect, this might also make us more understanding and bearable to talk to for someone on a different bandwagon than ourselves.)
> If an argument is strong enough for a theory, then deniers will eventually loose its steam ( flat earth is going nowhere).
I wouldn't be so sure about that. Crystal ball fortune telling, horoscopes etc. are still alive and well, as is denying the Moon landing and (this will get me downvoted to hell) religion - the most popular one of these.
But going back to the main discussion, these people want to believe something against all evidence (for various psychological reasons) -> more and better evidence threatens their world view (and in the case of YT - revenue stream) -> they make even larger leaps of logic to , start getting more extreme, more aggressive -> their followers do as well.
Sprinkle on some echo-chamber effects and you've got yourself a perfect machine for turning "sceptics" into extremists.
Now, with most political issues, conspiracy theories and other beliefs, it doesn't matter much and doing anything against them would be setting a dangerous precedent, but things like this are just too dangerous. We can "debate" the Moon landing for hundreds of years, but climate change is already happening and we need to do things now, not in 1 year or 100. There's no time to hope these people will just go away eventually.
Actually, I'd disagree. If you dig in to a lot of these theories, there is a kernel of rationality behind them. Many adherents can actually rebut arguments with evidence that makes a surprising amount of sense: there are usually multiple possible explanations for individual phenomena, and if you look at them in isolation, it can be very hard to conclusively demonstrate that the "scientific" answer is actually the best possible explanation. This to me explains why even intellectuals can fall prey to these theories: if you already have a nonconformist streak, the alternative explanations can be interesting to dig into.
Where they fall flat is in overall coherence; these theories often end up with massive gaping seams if you try to expand them from explaining one phenomena. And these seams are so obvious, and yet adherents have no coherent explanation for these seams, that it overshadows whatever kernel of rationality the theory originally had.
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