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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 08:55 am:   

Oh, I forget the title, but I watched a thing on the increase in Flat Earthers last night. It was quite good and made me realise I have sympathy for them.
(These thread starters feel very un-conversational)
The film highlighted that people have been alienated by science and certainty. They feel cornered by facts and an end to mystery, I think. They are oddballs who have found a raft of an idea to cling to with other oddballs, they want to belong, but not belong to people who might scoff them, because they're quite vulnerable and different and society has become inclined to laugh people down now, now that religion has fallen off the conveyor belt. People with soft spots for hokey things are next in the sights, I suppose, and they're resisting because science, sadly, has little time for people who are governed largely by their emotions. Life is starting to feel like The Martian (which you/Proto mentioned) itself, poetry wrung out, all shit and potatoes and no Silver Locusts.
For the record I'm not a flat earther, I just have sympathy for them, like I said, and wouldn't be shooting them down anytime. And there was a scene in the film where two of them snuck into a huge hanger with an Apollo rocket in it and scoffed it for being fake. It upset me because people died and gave all their worth trying to get into space and they didn't seem to respect that, and felt no awe at what they were looking at. It was the one moment where they lost me.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 08:56 am:   

God, talk about autistic lecture. They leave you cold, don't they? I hate seeing it.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 08:56 am:   

'BUT' there was a scene in the film, not 'AND'.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.27
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 05:09 pm:   

I liked a lot of the Flat Earthers in that doc, and admired that they were at least trying to start to do experiments. I agree with the scientists who said that it's their fault for not explaining the science in a clear way. But also populism and the media play a part, along with people feeling inadequate and wanting to feel special.

I've always enjoyed paranormal stuff growing up, no matter how preposterous! It was another way of getting a sense of wonder, in parallel with that from science.

There was a definite turning point for me with the moon landing conspiracy theorists. To me, that felt, as you say, both illogical and insulting to those who accomplished something wonderful. It seems like a mean-spirited and cowardly effort to destroy something that was genuinely awesome and replace it with something mundane. They're not at all fun and make the world feel less exciting. They're just kicking over someone else's sandcastle.

I believe in expertise. Some people know more about some things than I do. It seems to me humility is a quality in short supply now.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.27
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 05:10 pm:   

That main flat earther was like David Brent.

I love the ranting one whose girlfriend was perpetually checking her phone in the background behind him.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Saturday, March 23, 2019 - 07:14 am:   

This is crazy, I had the radio on while I slept last night and when I woke up at so,e point there was this woman who said just what we were talking about about being a little alienated by science and having a sense it was taking something from her. It felt like a dream but wasn't. I'll try and find it.
The nuts man in that doc was ex Nasa! But as my son said, even intelligent people can go insane, or be ill. A belief will fit an illmess like upholstery.

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