My Parents Are Flat Earthers

I feel like the Flat Earth movement is, at it&#x27;s core, a hack on the human mind.<p>People want to feel important, and they want to feel in control. When the world is so large and uncaring, so horrible and meaningless, and people are so small and unimportant, a good conspiracy theory lets <i>me</i> be someone <i>important</i>. There are evil people out there who did this all to us, and now I get to know the <i>truth</i>. I get to be in better control of my life. I can keep reading and researching and with each step I feel more in control. I&#x27;ve got hope now because I know what&#x27;s really going on!<p>Anyone who challenges this worldview is not attacking my logical argument, they&#x27;re attacking my emotional investment in this hope, this piece of control of life. When you challenge me, you aren&#x27;t debating what is and isn&#x27;t, you&#x27;re trying to take away this one little bit of control I have. Why would you do that to me? Perhaps you&#x27;ve been brainwashed by the evil people, or maybe you&#x27;re part of the evil people who did this to us all.

Increasingly with life these days, I feel like I am an actor in a play where the producer sees less and less of a role for me in the production as the curtain keeps raising on increasingly chaotic scenes - so I end up feeling disconnected and distant from something that I was immersed in and enjoying, and am now just an increasing befuddled and alienated observer.<p>The uptick in flat earth theories among other things is central to that. I made the mistake of clicking on an anti flat earth Youtube channel once (SciManDan for reference [0]) and now get others videos in that channel as &#x27;suggested videos&#x27;. I try not to click on them, but... I do. And each time I do, a little more of me dies on the inside when I see what the pro F&#x2F;E pundits are putting out there, AND see their followers applauding it as &#x27;truth&#x27;. The globe earth model is now apparently just a &#x27;belief system&#x27; and not science any more. o_O<p>[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCRtsZ5Iak9wSLsQLQ3XOAeA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCRtsZ5Iak9wSLsQLQ3XOAeA</a>

I read quite a bit of the discussion here, and I’m struck:<p>People railing against anti-scientific attitudes by spouting the first shit they made up that makes some intuitive sense to them about psychology and&#x2F;or group dynamics.<p>I wonder if anyone else sees the irony?

I got to the part where his parents were jehovas witnesses, and realised that perhaps people who are gullible enough to believe dumb shit like flat earth, are probably wired to believe dumb shit.<p>I’ll explain, my grandmother is a jehovas witness.<p>She believes any dumb shit she reads and hears, no matter how easily one could refute it. She will argue black and blue, and if you try and tell her she’s wrong, it only reinforces that she’s right and onto something “big” since we have to refute it.<p>Thing is about Jehovas witnesses is they believe that there’s a limited number of places in heaven, and only the truly devout will get a spot. There’s two real good ways to earn yourself a spot.<p>1. Donate a lot of money to the church over a lifetime. 2. Convert as many people as you can.<p>It is in essence a pyramid scheme.<p>No mattter how many times I’ve told her that she won’t earn one of the ~200,000 spaces in heaven (it’s really what they believe) because there’s easily a few million members of the “church” globally, and they would all be as devout as her... so if they all die before her surely they would get one of the 200,000 spots. Then what happens? Does their god say to person number 200,001 “oh shit man sorry we just sold out of spots in heaven. <i>clicks teeth</i>”<p>She will retort with “those other people have probably sinned and won’t get a spot.” Alluding that she’s better than people she doesn’t know. Which I’ll turn around on her and tell her that kind of thinking is probably a sin.<p>She will get up and walk away and we will begin this again next year.<p>Flat Earthers to me are similar to this kind of mindset. To hear that his flat earther parents were also Jehovas Witnesses... just wow.

It&#x27;s important to understand that FE has nothing to do with finding the &quot;truth&quot; and everything to do with belonging to a club that gives you access to privileged secret knowledge. It&#x27;s no different from any other religion or cult.

I feel like this whole flat earth craze is more like tide pods than anything else. There are very few people who actually believe the earth is flat just like there are very few people out there who were accidentally eating tide pods. Its a practically nonexistent problem that everybody can&#x27;t seem to stop talking about. Everybody who seems to talk about it that I ever see mostly do so as a gaff or some other reason. I guess the flip side of that is how many people actually believe there are large groups of the public who do or believe these sorts of things?<p>For me, where this type of stuff come from is more interesting. Is it pure trolling at its core or is there another reason for spreading the idea that these are problems? Is it some kind of experiment to see where the masses are at psychologically? Is it purely something crazy to talk about to provide revenue from advertising? I doubt we&#x27;ll ever know who puts forth all the effort or why. But I do bet it will become a thing of the past as the catalysts move on and the cattle get over it.

Earth can&#x27;t possibly be flat. If it was, the cats would have knocked everything off it by now.

As a former Jehovah&#x27;s Witness myself I can confirm that people from cults like JWs are very susceptible to believeing in conspiracy theories like flat earth, moon landing is hoax, etc. I personally know at least four ex-JWs and one current JW who all believe the Earth is flat. By contrast I don&#x27;t personally know anyone who was catholic their whole life and turned to flat earth. Which is not to say that this doesn&#x27;t happen, my point is that people who are extremely devouted to their religion are probably more likely to question everything, even the shape of the Earth, especially after they discover that their religious beliefs were not true.

I love this article: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deansforimpact.org&#x2F;why-mythbusting-fails-a-guide-to-influencing-education-with-science&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deansforimpact.org&#x2F;why-mythbusting-fails-a-guide-to-...</a> (“Why mythbusting fails: A guide to influencing education with science”) Narrowly, it&#x27;s about “learning styles”, the idea that certain students are e.g. “visual learners” and would benefit from education geared towards visual learners. But more broadly, it&#x27;s about science in general, about persuasion. In its second half (starting at “Is there any hope for change?”), it outlines an excellent approach for dealing with such cases — or really, any disagreements between people. Failure to follow a similar approach may feel good in the short term, but usually has tragic consequences.<p>And if it can happen with educated teachers, it can of course happen with flat-earth believers.

The author, having been home schooled by Jehovah’s Witnesses, waxes somewhat unsurprised at this reflection, and takes it in stride.<p>To be honest, having weird family members isn’t really all that weird. Beyond a certain age, when they can no longer embarass you, and you no longer depend on them as guardians, parents transform themselves into quasi-grandparents, even if you don’t have children. Growing up, half my grandparents were cooky, debilitated by age, and not exactly inspiring or heroic.<p>Old age is kind of terrible, and people mostly don’t improve after 50. So, things could be worse. Abuse and turmoil at younger ages is way more traumatic.

Interestingly, it&#x27;s the same problem than to determine if live in a flat or curved space(-time). You can determine curvature by intrinsic means. I you go from north pole to Ecuador painting your direction, turn 90º, advance a quarter of the equator, turn 90º still, and go home the Pole, your arrival direction is at still 90 degreess relative to your starting direction. the angles sum 270º! Instead of the 180 that should sum in flat Euclidean space. IIRC Gauss went to the mountains with ropes and instruments to verify things by himself, in a striking display of intelectual independence, defying any common sense of the time, and in fact he was shown right by the physics of last century. His shitty ropes just hadn&#x27;t enough measuring accuracy.

I&#x27;m sure I believe some things that are wrong (everyone does)...but I hope my kids have the decency not to trash me in a blog post when they&#x27;re older.

How do flat earthers explain that the other planets are round and we see different sides of them all the time? Is earth flat and the rest of the planets are spheres??? Even in their bizarre world of logic this seems unassailable.

You gotta admit, if you don&#x27;t think too hard about it, it is pretty weird how many flights there are over the arctic when there aren&#x27;t any (at all!) over the antarctic.<p>Have you tried explaining&#x2F;performing Eristothanes experiment with them? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;astronavigationdemystified.com&#x2F;eratosthenes-proved-that-the-earth-is-not-flat&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;astronavigationdemystified.com&#x2F;eratosthenes-proved-t...</a><p>edit: didn&#x27;t mean to sound like a flat-earther! please stop downvoting!

I don&#x27;t see this sentiment elsewhere so I&#x27;ll share it... I enjoyed reading this article but I think it&#x27;s really f<i></i>ked up he wrote this about his parents.

&gt; But the Moon’s dimensions show the designers used the metric system<p>How does looking at dimensions affirm that metric system was used?<p>&gt; They live in respectable houses, and host meals with respectable friends. They eat well. They travel for holidays, by plane, all over the Earth.<p>The OP tells as if this is a good thing. However this is the scariest parts of all. Because who knows these people can as well be the next presidents.<p>&gt; As a Flat-Earther, having your theory rejected only re-confirms the Illuminati’s brainwashing campaign.<p>A good point, which even most of the political strategists DO NOT implement. &quot;Pushing extreme ideas does not swing votes.&quot;<p>Conclusion: OP seems like he has given up on trying to come up with good ideas to deal with fallacies of his parents. This might seem cute at first, but there isn&#x27;t a sense of realization that this might be very harmful to the society as a whole.

Jehovah&#x27;s Witnesses own official website is anti-flat earth: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jw.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;bible-teachings&#x2F;questions&#x2F;flat-earth&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jw.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;bible-teachings&#x2F;questions&#x2F;flat-earth&#x2F;</a>

I feel like more people need to read Foucault. He is in a sense the prototypical the writer responsible for a lot of the contemporary left perspective on the entrenchment of practices of power in innocuous places (speeches, the design of prisons, schools, clinics, etc). In a sense, even challenges to climate change can find some anchor in his work. His work is avowedly nonpartisan (&quot;I am just making tools&quot;, to paraphrase), though Foucault himself was a gay French historian who did much activism on prison reform and has an interesting take on the Iranian Revolution. But at the end of the day, I know no better resource with which to navigate modern information hysteria (and no matter how well-dressed in &quot;rationality&quot; it may appear).

This is the first time I&#x27;m hearing about Flat Earthers so a couple of questions according to these people, if anyone knows - genuinely curious (I don&#x27;t want to search since then Google will start showing me some ads related to FE):<p>1) if the Earth is flat, then what is on the other side of the flat Earth - do people live there?<p>2) I&#x27;m assuming it&#x27;s like a thick cylinder, if so how thick is the Earth?<p>3) depending on how thick it is, what is on the sides - do people live there?<p>OR, do these morons don&#x27;t care about these things?? Again, genuinely curious if anyone knows.

I feel like the real challenge is not what people want to discuss over dinner but that we allow people that are incapable of finding the holes in the flat earth theory to have the vote.

Sorry again, of course the majority of FE are a bit cargo-cult; but the root of it is &quot;fallacy of authority&quot; no? There aren&#x27;t many ways to tangibly justify the shape of the Earth to the average person. If all the images are photo-shopped and all the data is fraudulent, suddenly the world is a whole lot darker. And as much as it seems, the joke that the true edge of the flat earth is a mental illness diagnosis, says more about us than them.

Before reading your article, which I enjoyed, the title translated in my mind to &quot;My Parents Are Conspiracy Theorists&quot;. It was interesting to see that you then stated that connection in the article.<p>Rather than such views being an amusing curiousity, I find your parents a threat. As a member of a minority, your parents are predisposed to believe anything about us, all from a position of ignorance.

&gt; MKULTRA (uncontroversial)<p>That&#x27;s somewhat refreshing to read. I think 99% of Americans would call you crazy if you tried to explain MKULTRA.

Flat Earth theory seems like a symptom of a condition. Those who are showing symptoms deserve love and compassion, not ostracism.

It doesn&#x27;t look like he&#x27;s worried but IMHO he should be: while a lot of these flat-earther&#x2F;conspirationist are just &quot;having fun&quot; like he said, crooks can target easily these people! They&#x27;re telling the word: I&#x27;m a gullible person with faulty logic, imagine how an attractive target they represent to crooks!

This works in the opposite direction. Read Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy&#x27;s <i>The Jesus Mysteries</i> and you&#x27;ll see the sort of unsubstantiated and ridiculous theories that permeate the Flat Earther worldview.

I&#x27;m sure they have a good explanation for it that I don&#x27;t bother to google, but how do satellites orbit a flat Earth to give us common experiences like satellite TV and GPS? And what about the moon.

Flat earthers are just rebels that don&#x27;t want to listen to modern science for various other reasons, business backing, lack of trust etc

If people want to believe in flat earth, let them. And flat earthers should allow others to believe in what they want to as well. In 1000 years people will look back at all of us and think of how primitive we were for believing many of the things that we believe too. And another 1000 years after that then people will do the same. I think that looking down on people for believing something different is the same as racial hatred (it all comes down to prejudice)

Is true that flat earthers really exist? Or are they conspiring against us to believe they believe in a flat Earth??

Where do they think the edge is?

Its all about education. He even pointed it out in the article, he was home schooled.

While the author of this post focuses on the idea of a flat earth conspiracy leading to their conclusion that people believing in conspiracy theories don&#x27;t have much influence over our everyday lives and that they&#x27;re &quot;fun&quot;, I can&#x27;t help but disagree with an example that he even mentions shortly in the post: Anti-vaccination. The WHO has named anti-vaccination as a top 10 global health threat. Right now in Clark County Oregon there&#x27;s an evolving problem with the spread of measles. I can understand the author&#x27;s attempts to reconcile his parents&#x27; weird beliefs, but I can&#x27;t agree with his conclusion that they&#x27;re mostly fun and harmless. People who deny climate change enact that belief in the way they vote and in their every day consumption. That&#x27;s not just a fun point to argue with. It&#x27;s affecting everyone&#x27;s lives.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dunning–Kruger_effect" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dunning–Kruger_effect</a>

Poor kid.

Must say, I wouldn&#x27;t find it fun - I had a similar experience with my own folks when I found out they were avid Trump supporters. I was stunned at first, then I thought &quot;nbd, I&#x27;ll change their minds next family get together&quot;. Nope, every time we discuss it, we both double down, stop listening to each other, let our emotions run high, and get nowhere. Very stressful, we now try to avoid the subject altogether.

I have some clarification on this whole flat earth thing and it is insidious.<p>I have a father who is prone to believing conspiracy theories. When I grew up he bought me a thousand &quot;unexplained mysteries&quot; 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.<p>Today, He doesn&#x27;t care about any of those topics. They just seemed to slowly vanish from his radar. Today it is the invasion of &quot;lesser&quot; species trying to erode &quot;Our&quot; &quot;Moral certainties&quot;<p>- 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, &quot;Nature has chosen white DNA&quot; - He believes the Rockerfeller&#x27;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<p>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&#x27;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 &quot;attacker&quot;.<p>The reason Flat earth is so insidious is that it has brought 3 active communities together. 1) The conspiracy crowd who does&#x27;t trust the government (&quot;The man&quot;) 2) Religious Christians who interpret the bible literally. (&quot;The four corners of the earth&quot;) 3) Muslim culture being exterminated by christian &quot;integrity&quot;. Christians view the muslim community by default as heathens. 4) the obvious crazies.<p>so you have 3 powerful, emotional motivators steering this conspiracy. to the point where good science is being applied well, to poor premises.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

I remember stumbling upon the Flat Earth Society back around 2003. I was convinced it was one of those elaborate ironic jokes&#x2F;hoaxes that we used to have back then (bonsai kitten, World Jump Day, etc.)

We&#x27;re heading to the apocalypse quickly.

Is it true that flat earthers really exist? Or are they conspiring against us to make us believe that they believe in a flat Earth?