Why have flat-Earth theories become so prominent?

[Snowbound 17]

I haven't heard much of this at all. The odd person who believes that the earth is only a few thousand years old here and there, and one person who was convinced that aircraft vapour trails contained government sterilisation chemicals, but no-one who believes that the world is flat.

 

 

Most liberals I know went through higher education and took STEM subjects, so I don't really buy that.

I apologize for not making this as clear as possible. The SJWs and the crazy Liberals; not all Liberals. I'm talking about the people who claim that gender is a social construct, that you can be otherkin or fictive, or perhaps transethnic or transabled. The crazy sh** that doesn't follow science or biology whatsoever.

[Paianis 488]

Unfortunately there's been a wave of anti-intellectual thinking lately, which manifests itself in ignorance because of the idea that the scientific method has to be 'questioned'.

 

Basically, some less-well-off classes want to feel as if they can contribute to society without having to commit their minds to understand any given subject.

[Twilight Dirac 720]

Are flat Earth theories really that prominent though?  Maybe I am just in the wrong circles but I barely even hear about them.  I know there is a Flat Earth Society but they have been around for ages.

[FlootahBabby 265]

They've been watching too much conspiracy videos.

 

I have a friend who said he watched a shit load of conspiracy videos in middle school, and it took him up to a point where for like a whole year he thought 9/11 wasn't even real.

 

I do have a question for flat earthers, which is if they think that the earth is flat, does that also apply to every other planet in the universe?

 

I guess what I learn from them is to not become a conspiracy nut anytime in my life. It's just a difficult question that you're probably gonna get a lot of flack for, and for your entire life you're probably not going to find a definite answer that you're right. There's just no point.

 

It reminds me of people who read a lot of creepy pastas and they think they're real. Like those girls who stabbed one of their friends just to appeal to Slenderman.

 

Basically, just don't try to get manipulated. Or at least be careful. There are conspiracy theories that have a possibility, but for something that's been very heavily disproven like the flat earth? It's probably not true.

[llamalauncher 84]

I had my twitter name as Earth Is Flat for a full month and i spent the whole time retweeting conspiracy tweets and stuff. Omg i got so much hate it was so funny. I also start arguments on youtube by saying something stupid like Greenland did 911. You can never tell if someone on the internet is being serious.

[Alice.EM 42]

I dont think theres actually anybody that really believes in it, its just trolling

Or maybe Im just underestimating how stupid a person can be

[CheeryFox 23,811]

It's called propaganda, fam. I'm actually surprised...the number of scientists that believe in this. 

[Miles 2,512]

I think it's the fascination for people, that some things in this world might not at up. Most of these people are bored out of their skull and then read this kinda stuff on the internet, without checking that this theory might be wrong and some of them seem to not be able to look over their own fence.

 

It's the same with people who believe that Lizard people take over the world.

 

I really think this whole idea of a flat Earth gained most of its momentum from this wave of anti-establishment thought that's been going around lately. Between poor economic situations, scandals, corruption, and a perceived disconnect between those in power and those they rule, a lot of people the world over are starting to really question their governments. And that's cool, I'm totally for that, to a reasonable extent at least. When you stop questioning your government that's usually when the wacky shit starts happening. Y'know, the totally uncool "6 million people killed" kinda stuff?

 

Anyway, I think the problem is that, at least in some people, this mistrust has started to spread to other large groups that are also seen to be filled with the "elite" like corporations (which I guess I'm also kinda okay with), higher education, the scientific community, and others. I'm not saying that all these groups are squeaky clean, or that NASA doesn't have a secret agenda for world domination, but for Christ's sake have none of these people ever had the window seat on an airplane? I mean, it simply astounds me. What could anyone possibly have to gain from tricking the whole world about the shape of the Earth other than going down as having pulled the largest, most elaborate prank of all time? That's the problem with these people. Sure, they're questioning the establishment, but they're just asking really stupid questions to the wrong people.

 

[/rant]

 

I think that it's a mixture of both of your stances. Like Mesme Rise stated, some of the folks may have found this fascination due to boredom, and are keeping to it for the sake of [lack of] stimulation [from anything else]. Whether or not they actually believe it, or "don't necessarily not believe it" is up for grabs, if you catch my drift. On the other hand, as wildstar has stated, some may have come out of this new wave of anti-establishment. I'd like to think that there's a greater chance that those folks are more likely to actually, truly believe in the conspiracy than the folks who found the theory out of boredom/fascination. 

 

Regardless, I find it entertaining in an odd manner. Of course I know it's a bunch of bologna, but sometimes I like to see if they have said anything new that is even crazier out of ironic curiosity. The best thing I've come across yet is that they think there is land outside the poles and such. Hidden land. Lmao, it's hilarious. 

[Aurora Wolf 2,354]

(Double Face-Palm)

 

It's pretty obvious the Earth isn't flat. Maxim Bady mentioned this conspiracy theory already, and the worst part is that we've known the Earth is round ever since before the space age with the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan. This is ludicrous.

[Twilight Dirac 720]

We have known the Earth is round long before Magellan.  The idea is at least as old as 5th century (BC) Greece.

[Yamato 1,347]

sometimes I like to see if they have said anything new that is even crazier out of ironic curiosity

 

My favorite one is the whole "no forests on flat earth" sub-conspiracy. For those of you who haven't heard, mountains and mesas are apparently the stumps of giant silicon-based (or petrified, depends who you ask) trees. Explanations why they aren't here anymore range from giants cutting them down, to the flood of the Old Testament, to aliens that were hard-up for resources, to (guess who?) the Earth's elites cutting them down to erase evidence of the old world and help usher in a New World Order. My personal favorite is that the elites cut the trees down because they were growing too tall and were about to hit the dome that the sky is apparently painted onto. Yeah, someone out there thinks Earth has a sky-box in real life. If that doesn't make you feel good about yourself, I have no idea what will.

 

I recommend y'all take a nice, long, relaxing wade through this beautiful ocean of garbage so y'all can see firsthand some of the very best humanity has to offer. It doesn't sink in for you that what you're reading are the actual conscious thoughts of a living human being until you're three or four pages in, really...

Edited March 5, 2017 by w i l d s t a r

[Cheval 61]

Hey, to anyone still interested, I wound up debating someone who actually makes videos on the Flat Earth. He had spent almost a week responding to anyone who brought up science or logic to call him idiotic. I took a different approach, and now I'm wondering if I drove him into an existential crises, because he still hasn't responded. I'm the black text.

 

Why are you doing this?

 

Awareness.  The globe is the map of a region shaped into a ball to give you the illusion it is the only region of land and resources available.

 

People are in denial in a religion of self-loathing where they believe they are accidental specks of insignificant dust lost in space.

This is by design since a population empowered realizing there is more than materialism and they have purpose as well as divine right to the land and resources with the entire universe moving around us is not part of the program for those few that control this region...this would scream intelligent design.

 

What fixture in your conscious life relies upon the shape of the earth?

 

This is merely a stepping stone for people to realize their actual empowerment.  The goal is for the exploration of space.   Not the space above us where we cannot explore, the outer space around us circumnavigating south to North in a straight line.  Has never been done.  

 

How can anyone be sure you are not attempting to empower yourself at the expense of others? That unless people agree with you they are lesser? Somehow unworthy?

 

If mankind is susceptible to deception, does the allure of "truth" or "awareness" manifest its own form of oppression - little more than a changing of hands while the masses remain crushed underfoot? 

 

The message of my research is "let’s explore" as we have a divine right to all resources and land available.  Let us explore to be sure we have access to all land and resources.  This is not about me.

You are posing a deeper question.  Were we to find more land and resources, who would have that right to ration it out?  Definitely no one would have the right to more of a share than others and the aim should be to utilize all land and resources in a renewable manner to be continuous. 

 

Why should we "explore," if the only answer achievable is, itself, a finite world that they have already discovered?

Does that not pose the same quandary?

 

Rather than being minuscule specs of dust in a 3-dimensional universe, we become minuscule specs occupying a minuscule island, and are, therefore, insignificant compared to the totality of our surroundings that we have just barely begun to comprehend.

How is this in any way distinct from an infinite universe? What are you achieving by demanding that others explore…only to deny the discoveries of any who explore and reach a contrary verdict?

 

Is that not a redundancy? A forced imposition of perpetual ignorance? One no more transcendent or significant than saying we are minuscule? 

 

What is this assumption based on?  Is there a citizenry group for the checks and balances of all claims?  Who has gone south come back North and continued back to their original location.  Has never been done.  What is the threat of a citizen accounting of all claimed lands...? 

 

If someone did, would you believe them? 

 

Millions if NOT more have circumnavigated East West on planes and ships..yet North and South we do not have the access to do so..

No, it would convince me.  An exploration to the citizenry for an accounting of the land and resources available would be adequate.

We do not have free travel.  To leave land you need a passport from one controlled air space trip to another.  We do not have free passage and these areas should be open access to citizens who are equipped to brave these climates.

 

"No, it would convince me." This is quite literally incomprehensible.

Which is it, yes or no? 

 

If one person claimed to do a southern circumnavigation such as the cousin of The Queen, I would not believe them. 

If one person claims to have seen a unicorn would the be proof for you?  Or if all citizens had access to view the unicorn and over time build a preponderance of evidence of the unicorn?  I am the latter.

 

Prove that you exist. 

 

I cannot.  I can only take my firsthand accounts as well as thorough secondhand sourced documented accounts of others as an experienced existence.

Where my life is a mosaic of these experienced sequences in the order of sunrises and sunsets I've existed through

Whatever is not experienced firsthand and cannot substantiate through thorough cross witnesses secondhand accounts may be ruled out of actual existence.

This is why I want a preponderance of evidence.

What a prolific question! 

 

People use their personal experience as well as second-hand reports, mathematical equations, and 6,000 years of human astrological documentation, compiling a mass of evidence that is publicly and readily available to anyone today...

to conclude that the Earth is a globe.

 

As you so astutely answer, I cannot prove this. I can only convey information I have heard or seen, filtered through my individual perspective, and transmitted through the written language we share to purport the presence of any of these things.

Since I am but one person, I can, at no point, prove my own existence or the existence of anything else. My cognition is no more tangible than the Earth below my feet, and yet I continuously marvel at its beauty, contemplating infinity not as my own relative obscurity, but rather as an immense and awe-inspiring gift to be beheld and cherished.

 

I find something so juvenile as shape to be an irrelevancy, concocted and disputed and fought over solely to impart one's ego.

I find that you are no different. I find you unexceptional in your ability to conjure up doubts regarding the existence of things. And I find it easy to demonstrate that your own standard for objective affirmation gradually and inexorably dilutes all that exists until one is left inquiring as to whether he, himself, is real - thus creating a more sardonic sense of minute, fleeting insignificance than any who might achieve temporal joy in their own ignorance of the true state of the world.

 

The enormity of our condition and the incessant badgering of a curious mind does not create truth. It is rather intrinsically aware and prodding - and thus can only be inhibited the moment an individual ceases their inquiry towards themselves and towards their own conclusions. 

 

You have proven yourself to be resistant towards information conveyed by pre-meditatively unacceptable sources and have therefore confined your waking hours to a self-imposed prison of certain uncertainty - a grandiose and self-righteous enclave in which all other minds must ascribe to the same standards of thought you yourself harbor, or they will be condemned by an enemy you yourself have created for them.

 

Your choice of what does or does not constitute a preponderance ultimately represents the same daft, innate, and instinctive categorization of your surrounding environment shared among all beings that have dared eat the fruit instead of the tree.

And no history or physics lesson you conjure up can ever prove otherwise.

 

*mic drop

[Mesme Rize 15,681]

Hey, to anyone still interested, I wound up debating someone who actually makes videos on the Flat Earth. He had spent almost a week responding to anyone who brought up science or logic to call him idiotic. I took a different approach, and now I'm wondering if I drove him into an existential crises, because he still hasn't responded. I'm the black text.

 

Why are you doing this?

 

Awareness.  The globe is the map of a region shaped into a ball to give you the illusion it is the only region of land and resources available.

 

People are in denial in a religion of self-loathing where they believe they are accidental specks of insignificant dust lost in space.

This is by design since a population empowered realizing there is more than materialism and they have purpose as well as divine right to the land and resources with the entire universe moving around us is not part of the program for those few that control this region...this would scream intelligent design.

 

What fixture in your conscious life relies upon the shape of the earth?

 

This is merely a stepping stone for people to realize their actual empowerment.  The goal is for the exploration of space.   Not the space above us where we cannot explore, the outer space around us circumnavigating south to North in a straight line.  Has never been done.  

 

How can anyone be sure you are not attempting to empower yourself at the expense of others? That unless people agree with you they are lesser? Somehow unworthy?

 

If mankind is susceptible to deception, does the allure of "truth" or "awareness" manifest its own form of oppression - little more than a changing of hands while the masses remain crushed underfoot? 

 

The message of my research is "let’s explore" as we have a divine right to all resources and land available.  Let us explore to be sure we have access to all land and resources.  This is not about me.

You are posing a deeper question.  Were we to find more land and resources, who would have that right to ration it out?  Definitely no one would have the right to more of a share than others and the aim should be to utilize all land and resources in a renewable manner to be continuous. 

 

Why should we "explore," if the only answer achievable is, itself, a finite world that they have already discovered?

Does that not pose the same quandary?

 

Rather than being minuscule specs of dust in a 3-dimensional universe, we become minuscule specs occupying a minuscule island, and are, therefore, insignificant compared to the totality of our surroundings that we have just barely begun to comprehend.

How is this in any way distinct from an infinite universe? What are you achieving by demanding that others explore…only to deny the discoveries of any who explore and reach a contrary verdict?

 

Is that not a redundancy? A forced imposition of perpetual ignorance? One no more transcendent or significant than saying we are minuscule? 

 

What is this assumption based on?  Is there a citizenry group for the checks and balances of all claims?  Who has gone south come back North and continued back to their original location.  Has never been done.  What is the threat of a citizen accounting of all claimed lands...? 

 

If someone did, would you believe them? 

 

Millions if NOT more have circumnavigated East West on planes and ships..yet North and South we do not have the access to do so..

No, it would convince me.  An exploration to the citizenry for an accounting of the land and resources available would be adequate.

We do not have free travel.  To leave land you need a passport from one controlled air space trip to another.  We do not have free passage and these areas should be open access to citizens who are equipped to brave these climates.

 

"No, it would convince me." This is quite literally incomprehensible.

Which is it, yes or no? 

 

If one person claimed to do a southern circumnavigation such as the cousin of The Queen, I would not believe them. 

If one person claims to have seen a unicorn would the be proof for you?  Or if all citizens had access to view the unicorn and over time build a preponderance of evidence of the unicorn?  I am the latter.

 

Prove that you exist. 

 

I cannot.  I can only take my firsthand accounts as well as thorough secondhand sourced documented accounts of others as an experienced existence.

Where my life is a mosaic of these experienced sequences in the order of sunrises and sunsets I've existed through

Whatever is not experienced firsthand and cannot substantiate through thorough cross witnesses secondhand accounts may be ruled out of actual existence.

This is why I want a preponderance of evidence.

What a prolific question! 

 

People use their personal experience as well as second-hand reports, mathematical equations, and 6,000 years of human astrological documentation, compiling a mass of evidence that is publicly and readily available to anyone today...

to conclude that the Earth is a globe.

 

As you so astutely answer, I cannot prove this. I can only convey information I have heard or seen, filtered through my individual perspective, and transmitted through the written language we share to purport the presence of any of these things.

Since I am but one person, I can, at no point, prove my own existence or the existence of anything else. My cognition is no more tangible than the Earth below my feet, and yet I continuously marvel at its beauty, contemplating infinity not as my own relative obscurity, but rather as an immense and awe-inspiring gift to be beheld and cherished.

 

I find something so juvenile as shape to be an irrelevancy, concocted and disputed and fought over solely to impart one's ego.

I find that you are no different. I find you unexceptional in your ability to conjure up doubts regarding the existence of things. And I find it easy to demonstrate that your own standard for objective affirmation gradually and inexorably dilutes all that exists until one is left inquiring as to whether he, himself, is real - thus creating a more sardonic sense of minute, fleeting insignificance than any who might achieve temporal joy in their own ignorance of the true state of the world.

 

The enormity of our condition and the incessant badgering of a curious mind does not create truth. It is rather intrinsically aware and prodding - and thus can only be inhibited the moment an individual ceases their inquiry towards themselves and towards their own conclusions. 

 

You have proven yourself to be resistant towards information conveyed by pre-meditatively unacceptable sources and have therefore confined your waking hours to a self-imposed prison of certain uncertainty - a grandiose and self-righteous enclave in which all other minds must ascribe to the same standards of thought you yourself harbor, or they will be condemned by an enemy you yourself have created for them.

 

Your choice of what does or does not constitute a preponderance ultimately represents the same daft, innate, and instinctive categorization of your surrounding environment shared among all beings that have dared eat the fruit instead of the tree.

And no history or physics lesson you conjure up can ever prove otherwise.

 

*mic drop

 

It's very obvious that this guy can't fathom the idea, that he actually is a small spic of dust in a big universe.

 

I think that is also one of the reasons why people believe in a flat earth, because they want to feel more significant, because their religion says that the human race is the crowning achievement of creation.

[GuerrierCosmique 146]

Because many people on the internet (as well as in real life) are dumb and tend to believe nearly everything you tell them, no matter how stupid it is, if it's nicely wrapped in rhetorics.

 

Conspiracy theories thrive only on this, but politicians and the advertisement industry make extensive use of it, too.

[Zyrael 1,471]

likely because of conservationism in response to the trump phenomenon. Like how young earthers were common in the bush era i.e. dinosaurs are jesus ponies 

Edited March 6, 2017 by TheLegend27

[I used to be a stranger 7,989]

There seems to be to be  a thick chord in individualist society to defy people in positions of authority.

 

They seem to be experts? They think they're so smart.

 

 

What's curious is that they will develop a fixation for details which concern the things they decide to be worried about. For example, I have a couple of friends who seem to have a strong mistrust of NASA. NASA itself does a lot of aeronautical research regarding safety. It's probably the biggest single contributor to the flight dynamics science that makes the National Transportation Safety Board tick. Conspirators will be all over videos about possible UFOs, but nothing on official uncut footage from NASA. I wonder why that is...

 

Probably because if NASA's doing something "boring", they're just trying to distract you.

 

 

The flat-earth theory technically isn't wrong. If you can hypothetically go at the speed of light towards the Earth, space contraction would cause the Earth to contract into an infintesimally short length. 

 

Excuse me young man but this forum is strictly a Newtonain shop. We wll have no more of this Obi-Wan Kenobi Minkowsky-space gibberish.

[ChocolateCrane 155]

Today is a sad time, when apperantly some people consider it "wise", "intelligent" to question science on everything

 

^ I think it is pretty important to question science. If people just accept every "fact" that comes out of the scientific field, it would facilitate laziness and potential erroneous conclusions among scientists to be viewed as "correct". Challenging scientists forces them to perfect their contributions within their line of work.

 

Sure, with something as silly as "omg, the earth is totally flat guys! don't believe the government who tells you otherwise!", clearly this is stupidity. But imagine a world in which leeches were still considered the ideal method of treating blood disease? Challenge is required for progress.

[Sir Hugsalot 8,621]

^ I think it is pretty important to question science. If people just accept every "fact" that comes out of the scientific field, it would facilitate laziness and potential erroneous conclusions among scientists to be viewed as "correct". Challenging scientists forces them to perfect their contributions within their line of work.

 

Sure, with something as silly as "omg, the earth is totally flat guys! don't believe the government who tells you otherwise!", clearly this is stupidity. But imagine a world in which leeches were still considered the ideal method of treating blood disease? Challenge is required for progress.

And I never said it is wrong to question scientists, but here it is going too far. We reached the point, where people roll with flat earth, syringes causing autism despite total 0 evidence to back it up, people trying to replace scientific facts with what's written in for example the bible despite even priests saying not to interpret the bible in a literal way.

 

That's why there's "everything" in my sentence. Questioning modern discoveries? Asking for more evidence (if there really is no evidence) - go for it. But... flat earth? Seriously? It doesn't even require scientific research to see why earth is not flat. Questioning science on such stuff isn't smart etc. It only proves the person asking questions is either severly uneducated or simply reached the peak of stupidity. 

[Buck Testa 5,503]

I ask the same question about people who believe a dude in a toga who lives up in the clouds magically poofed the universe into existence over the course of 6 days just a few thousand years ago when there is a substantial amount of evidence to the contrary. 

People enjoy being willfully ignorant. They don't understand science, so they go out of their way to make their own understanding of the world, screw all evidence saying otherwise. 

[Sovereign Leader Rarity 12,000]

You know, I give people a lot of hate for being unintelligent. But, I've matured over time and had a chance to reconsider my behaviour. Yeah, this could work! From now on I'm going to treat others like they're intelligent. I mean everyone's intelligent in some way right........?.......

 

 

 

 

( Trails off after discovering this forum and reading it ).....................oh.

[SONICchaos 824]

I think it comes down to "willful defiance". Where the act of defying a commonly known fact gets attention since you dont feel its been proven since you yourself have never seen it. Its like someone saying "oh well blank is always blank" and someone shows you that person proof to the contrary but the arguer will then say "well thats not really true because blank and blank. Thats just made up and what the ignorant want you to think.". Its the idea of something so unreasonably false that it seems like a challenge to overcome. But its not to say that there are many who truly believe it. They are just in a different state of ignorance.

 

Willful defiance is very different from the "anti-vaxers" as those that practice it truly believe they are doing the right thing and believe the information from people they have a personal connection to instead of varied sources. Willful defiance is just about "well I didnt see it so its not necessarily true" because they follow the belief of "dont believe everything you hear" to an extreme. Where all sources are questionable and somehow have political agendas. But for someone with an open mind and a brain stem can come to the reasonable conclusion that...yeah the planet is probably spherical.

[Anneal 2,194]

Excuse me young man but this forum is strictly a Newtonain shop. We wll have no more of this Obi-Wan Kenobi Minkowsky-space gibberish.

It's actually proven, by the way, thanks to Einstein, though the idea came from Lorentz first. Newtonian physics only covers so much (at low velocities), after all.

[Guest]

Most of them are trolls seeking attention, most of flat earthers are christians, from what I can tell, so it comes from the general lack of knowledge and stupidity, nothing to wonder about here.

[Scrubbed user 3,415]

I don't know where it comes from, but there is a whooooole lot of them, all around the globe.

[Malcontent 196]

It's quite simple. Each generation I've come to firmly believe through observation..is getting dumber the more technology we make for ourselves. :/