why do people still think the earth is flat

The people panicking over these developments have an explanation for the newfound vigour of conspiracy theories: They say the Big Tech platforms have developed the equivalent of mind-control rays that beam even mediocre ideas past our rational defences. Look up the 19th-century skeptics who decried the smallpox vaccine and you’ll find that anti-vax arguments have progressed very little in more than a century. The arguments for “alternative medicine” or against accepted climate science are no better than those that have lurked in the fringes for generations. Either ideas are convincingly argued and/or they are delivered to people whose circumstances make them susceptible to those ideas.Ĭonspiracies aren’t on the rise because the arguments for them got better. Ideas spread because of some mix of ideology and material circumstances. While we may get back to Wallace and his theory, for the most part we're going to focus on cases where the motivation for the controversy is a bit less obvious.From climate denial to anti-vax to a resurgent eugenics movement, we are in a golden age of terrible conspiratorial thinking, with real consequences for our species’ continued survival on our (decidedly round) planet.

This is our first try of a new video format where we look at controversies that, well, really shouldn't be controversial. That was Alfred Russell Wallace, one of the two co-developers of the theory of evolution. But when it comes to the idea that the Earth is flat, centuries of:thu accumulating evidence don't make much of a difference-its adherents have centuries of history of ignoring it, along with at least one not-nearly-as-famous-as-it-should-be instance of threatening a prominent scientist along the way. But it's truly bizarre to see one from the latter camp have a sudden surge in popularity and attention millennia after we knew it was wrong. There's no shortage of strange beliefs out there, and not all of them involve having a firm grip on reality. Or people just really like plumbing the depths of absurdity. This video turned out to be one of the more popular ones we ran this year, probably because we're part of the 'Big Globe' conspiracy and we're using our status as bona fide members of the global media illuminati cabal to promote a blatantly pro-sphere agenda. We're re-surfacing a few videos from days past over the Christmas 2018 break to give folks a chance to see them anew.

Why do people still think the earth is flat