Woke Sloth, a fun site to explore, wrote this article Flat-Earthers Have A Ridiculous New Theory That Involves Pac-Man.
You see it is hard to account for the known fact if you keep going East, you will traverse the globe. Or not? Apparently, you get to the ‘edge’ of the flat-earth and then timewarp to the other side.
Okay, I laughed. A lot. I had a damn good laugh at this. Mostly because of Occam’s Razor. Adding in timewarps and who knows what to try and make their theory make some sort of sense… when you could just believe the far more simple fact the Earth is a globe. Take the simpler theory.
But that isn’t what caught my eye. I listened to the video as they discussed their firm belief in the Earth’s flatness.
And it is based on the fact that Seeing is Believing.
If you cannot see it with your plain eyes, then the phenomena doesn’t exist. Because you have to doubt all you have been taught to believe about it. But we know this is false. Our brain fools us on our perceptions all the time, for just one thing. Secondly, you can verify a fact by many means. Scientific means. But if seeing is believing, well then, there goes All of reality other than this physical state we see. No atoms. No quantum mechanics. Hell, there goes Australia. I haven’t been there. They could be actors trying to fool me that they are there. It could be an evil genius making me think it is there, when in fact it isn’t. Actually, there goes the whole world. Because all I know is that I exist in this room. For all I know, existence of others and other things, is dependant on me. My spouse doesn’t exist until I walk into a room with him in it. And he ceases to exist when I leave the room. Without a god of the gaps moment, that is all I can be certain of with my senses.
And onto Rene Descartes. Because their skepticisms are that radical. I used to love Rene Descartes. Loved the idea of the mind being distinct from the body.
Rene Descarte (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French rationalist philosopher opposed to empiricism. Meditations on First Philosophy was written in 1641 and has the subtitle ‘In which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated’. The work is composed of six meditations that explore his metaphysical system. Using the method of radical doubt he hopes to uncover that which cannot be doubted to use as a foundation. He states “I set forth the reasons for which we may, generally speaking, doubt all things especially about material things.” Rene Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy
And in their conspiracies and their belief everyone is being fooled by NASA and astronauts are actors… it seems like they are experiencing radical doubt. Doubt everything until you find one foundational fact. ‘I think therefore I am’… or ‘The Earth is totally flat’. This radical doubt means they are free to discard the facts that they can’t do anything about. See images on TV? They could be manufactured. Astronauts have seen the round earth? Those are actors, we have never been in space.
But it isn’t radical doubt
But of course, it isn’t radical doubt they have, is it? But you could never say seeing is believing then. Because we could be insane. We could be dreaming. I have hallucinations with migraines… could be hallucinating all of the sense world. The entire world and the reality we sense could be a lie. It isn’t the true foundation.
It is more like radical skepticism.
I can’t Believe what someone else says unless I can actually prove it to myself.
In which case I can freely say I believe electricity is actually tiny fairies emitting magical fairy dust. I can’t see electricity. One might even say it might not actually exist. I can’t just believe what I have been taught about it. But I can come up with several wild theories about what it is that get more complex as I go along to explain known facts… and believe that instead. And no one can convince me otherwise, because all knowledge on the subject is a lie we have been told.
And what about the Big Bang Theory? Or that space is expanding? With some radical skepticism, since I can’t believe physicists because they could be lying, I can discard those theories. I wasn’t there to see the Big Bang. I don’t feel or see the universe expanding. Hell, how do I even know those pinprick of lights are suns with other worlds around them? The universe could be extremely small and those stars are themselves tiny and close by.
We rule our lives by reasonable doubt and healthy skepticism.
I know what my history lessons have taught me but I have a healthy skepticism that the victors would have an unbiased account of what really happened. To the victor go the spoils… and the story of what ‘Really’ went down. That can be doubted. And we use reasonable doubt and healthy skepticism to the news presented to us (slanted usually), what we find on the internet, things we have learned. What we know about the world around us and what we do not know.
Radical skepticism is born from not trusting science and authority figures. To conspiracy theories that all of NASA is a lie, for no real reason I can fathom, but whatever. It distorts thinking. Of all the things I Know, few of them are because I personally did the experiment, the math, went out into the world to find it, and saw it with my own two eyes. If you have no trust in experts, then there is very little you will ever know about the world. It is like not trusting a doctor to do his job because he may be lying, an actor, or a figment of my imagination.
And that is why you will never be able to argue with a flatearther. We either a) are part of the lie or b) were raised to believe the lie. And anyone with the scientific knowledge to refute them is lying or wrong.
That was my thoughts on the video. But I don’t indulge in flatearther theories. What I have heard seems to contradict reality itself in many ways. Timewarps? Well, can we go study those timewarps? What caught my eye was pondering on how they think, not what they think. That stuff gets weird fast. From the little I know about it, it is weird stuff, man. But seeing is believing isn’t common sense. Nor is radical skepticism on those that know far more than we do about the facts in question, have experienced the object in question from space, our satellites Around the object in question, makes any logical sense. And Occam’s Razor is a good tool in this situation.
Or probability. If a flat earth is possible, then other shapes are possible… why do we not see other flat-planets or even square ones?
But there is no logic to argue with on this subject. No logic at all. If we doubt the earth is round then you clearly doubt a lot more than you actually know. It confounds me people believe it, but I suspect half are trolls fueling the fire.
Remember knowledge is power. Not the doubt of knowledge.
Other weird opinions I have:
Cocky and all the words I want to own
Some things you should know about me
The Wyrd 