The idea that the Earth is a sphere was all but settled by ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 BC), who obtained empirical evidence after travelling to Egypt and seeing new constellations of stars. Eratosthenes, in the third century BC, became the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth. Islamic scholars made further advanced measurements from about the 9th century AD onwards, while European navigators circled the Earth in the 16th century. Images from space were final proof, if any were needed.
Today’s flat-Earth believers are not, though, the first to doubt what seems unquestionable. The notion of a flat Earth initially resurfaced in the 1800s as a backlash to scientific progress, especially among those who wished to return to biblical literalism. Perhaps the most famous proponent was the British writer Samuel Rowbotham (1816–1884). He proposed the Earth is a flat immovable disc, centred at the North Pole, with Antarctica replaced by an ice wall at the disc’s outer boundary.
The International Flat Earth Research Society, which was set up in 1956 by Samuel Shenton, a signwriter living in Dover, UK, was regarded by many people as merely a symbol of British eccentricity – amusing and of little consequence. But in the early 2000s, with the Internet now a well-established vehicle for off-beat views, the idea began to bubble up again, mostly in the US. Discussions sprouted in online forums, the Flat Earth Society was relaunched in October 2009 and the annual flat-Earth conference began in earnest.
Flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers and any other anti-common sense stupidity should be publicly shamed. No reason to be nice to the people who purposefully and are willfully ignorant. Uninformed and uneducated are fine, but these people pride themselves on being idiots. They belong in the trash bin of history.
the only people who belong in the trash bin of history are the people who needlessly shame other people for no good reason; these people haven’t hurt anyone.
“It’s not really an education thing,” she says. “It really is about distrusting authorities and institutions. [It] seems to be based on both a conspiracy mentality and a deeply held belief that looks a lot like religiosity but isn’t necessarily specifically tied to a religion”.
[…] Their lack of trust in authority includes not just scientists but scientific bodies such as NASA, all of whom (they think) are part of a massive conspiracy to prevent the flat-Earth truth being revealed. “[They] view the world through this really dark filter where [they] assume that all authorities and institutions and corporations are just there to exploit you.”
Yeah that really resonates with me, an anarchist. You can’t trust authorities, you have to find out things your own way. Especially this part:
Oddly, Landrum says that many flat-Earthers may distrust scientists, but they are not against the scientific method. “The majority of them put a lot of faith, for lack of a better word, in science. There’s a lot of curiosity and a lot of scepticism and a lot of the really good qualities that make scientists.”
how the physics community should best respond
These people haven’t hurt anyone. Why won’t you just let them believe what they want to believe?
Letting people believe what they want to believe gets people killed, unfortunately. You cannot just make up alternatives to chemistry, medicine, and physics.
Mixing brake fluid and bleach isn’t magic, but it does produce a lot of magic smoke. It also can permanently blind or kill you. People have turned shit like this into real products, take Radithor for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor
This product led to a revision in medicine after the patient died due to alternative medicine. Another example for flat earthers is flying.
Planes fly routes based off fuel calculations, because fuel is heavy and it takes fuel to fly with fuel. If you are a flat earth pilot, and you fuck up your fuel calculations because you don’t account for the curvature of the Earth, you and the 300 other unlucky bastards on the plane might crash into the ocean before reaching your destination. God forbid a flat earth programmer mess with fuel calculations for entire fleets of planes. It might be a one day mistake, but there are tens of thousands of flights all over the world.
