That guy has my utmost respect.
To admit he was wrong and change his worldview (quire literally) when confronted with evidence, this is not easy. Mad respect.
and not delete the previous videos
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Have you ever had the change your fundamental understanding of the world? What if you found out today that our entire understanding of science and the universe was flawed due to the interference of some outside force that caused us to make all kinds of faulty observations.
Would you instantly accept it as fact when presented with evidence? Or would your lifetime of observations still carry weight?
I have been on both sides on this. I was trapped in a Buddhist group. Considering that the teachings where flawed or wrong would basically mean that I would lose out on that community. Believe me, the sense of belonging can be euphoric in a religion.
Of course, changing your view in isolation is quite easy. It becomes harder when a big part of your life requires you to believe.
Also, when I was younger my need to “be right “ was quite strong. I had severe self confidence issues, so “being right” was the one thing I latched on to. Admitting being wrong gets really hard once your self confidence is that shaky.
I am doing much better now.
Huh? What kind of Buddhist group requires you to be so in? Kind of antithetical to Buddhism.
I mean, I would technically still be welcome there. But no longer believing does mean I can’t really feel connected with that group. And thus losing community. Maybe “trapped” was a strong word to use here, but trying to discuss the flaws was just met with equally flawed arguments. Just look up the “five mindfulness trainings” from plum village and it should be easy to see how they can become problematic when followed to the letter.
I thought pure land Buddhism was pretty dogmatic in how you get the Buddha to let you be reborn into the pure land
It takes a big man to admit his mistakes and I am that big man.
Glad to see his views got more well rounded over time.
And it’s excellent that his sphere of influence expanded
Ball! (Am I doing it right?)
Views were definitely more flat at the start.
Has anyone seen Behind the Curve? Most of these flat earth people seem to possess some level of critical thinking, just… not enough. That, or their pride or obstinacy get in the way. At the end of the documentary, a team of flat-earthers perform an actual, well thought out experiment. It’s… well, just watch.
Best part? Immediately after this, they discard the results of the experiment saying the premise was faulty. Somehow.
Try being in their shoes: you set up an experiment to prove the earth is not flat and is indeed round, you run the experiment and at the end you realise your experiment fail and would prove the earth is flat. Would you changwe your point of view ? I know I wouldn’t, I would immediately assume I am an idiot and messed up the experiment, because I am so much convinced it is round, it would be much more realistic to assume I messed up.
If I do it 10 times and each time the result is ‘flat’, and 99.99% of scientists in the field say it’s flat, at that point I would do some self evaluation to see why I was so hell bent on being wrong
If I’m grifting people into giving me money to prove it’s flat I’ll keep doubling down until that teat runs dry.
This. This is exactly it. Commonly referred to as cognitive dissonance where when presented with evidence differing from that of one’s beliefs, they will discard said evidence as faulty and will double down going deeper into their wrongfully held beliefs. Cognitive dissonance can be overcome but it is very difficult to do so, especially if you aren’t willing to entertain the idea that your beliefs might be wrong.
I think it may have the best last line of any documentary. I won’t spoil it.
Kind of the same as talking to Liberals. /s
I feel like it’s been memory holed, but I remember 00’s flat earth being genuinely smart people using it to illustrate the ridiculousness of teaching creation beside evolution, which was a push around that time. It was a Church of Satan style mockery, but I guess the arguments were too convincing.
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.
This is what happened at the Donald on reddit. It was a place to meme Trump’s idiotic presidential bid. But as soon as he got real chance at the election it was soon overran by the MAGA crowd.
People keep saying this and I think it’s bullshit.
If anything, the fascists were so stupid from the get-go that sane people thought they were joking.
I think a more accurate retelling is that the memes were fun before Trump was a serious threat.
I love that…and hate it passionately
;)
The smart people may have started it, but the dumb people listened and took it as gospel.
Watch out, there will be a true church of Pastafarianism before we die.
I’m kinda hoping for a Cthulu Church myself. Can you imagine how cool the aesthetics of the building would be?
Only place I could find this
I need to become an author, create a Cthulu religion, buy lots of boats, and an island with a giant Cthulu statue with no explanation to keep it a mystery. I’ll build a church and instruct everyone to stay away from the island. Inside the statue I’ll pay a person to sell merchandise…
RAMEN BROTHER, PRAISED BE HIS NOODLY APPENDAGE!
Hopefully they stick to the
108 condimentsDoes the subgenious still exist? That’s one deep rabbit hole from what I recall
I recall it being an argument in a high school debate club or someother which made it’s way onto 4chan and found supporters, who then proceeded to do what 4chan does best, and troll people/targets of their derision. Basically they assumed no one was stupid enough to believe it and were shockingly surprised.
I remember it being trolls on 4chan.
It was a weird blend of that and true believers. Then the people there for the joke of it all got weirded out by the crazies and left.
It started out as something like that… I could have sworn it was poking holes in Holocaust denialism?
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Good ending
Redemption arc
Who profits from flat Earth? Do they sell exclusive models and atlas’ or something?
No idea. Maybe donations, fees from conventions, ad revenue…?
Yes conventions, donations, revenue off YouTube videos
Trolls and people who sell merch and tickets to conventions. Same as alien believers
Aliens might be real, though, I just doubt all the supposed sightings that can be chalked up to mistaking one thing for another, or just gov’t tech that we simply don’t know about.
Same as alien believers
I view flat Earthers and people that believe in aliens as polar opposites. Flat Earthers think that the Earth is special and the center of the universe, with the heavens revolving around us. Alien believers see the universe as being incredibly vast and recognize that there’s nothing inherently special about our world and that life almost certainly exists elsewhere.
There’s a divide though in “alien believers”.
I absolutely believe that other life exists in our vast universe. This is a pretty common opinion among scientific thinkers, space enthusiasts etc. that the universe is simply too huge for us to be all alone.
I also believe that due to that vastness, we’ll never meet any aliens, unless we punch into Europa someday and there happen to be some fish down there.
UFO enthusiasts, on the other hand, have a position that is much less supported by science.
Instead they think theyre the special ones because they got abducted…?
Oh I didn’t realize you were talking about people that believed they’ve been abducted. I thought you just meant people that believed that aliens existed in general.
I think they were referring to alien consipracists, who much like flat earthers believe in a global hoax committed by the elite (read: Jews and Liberals) to keep us misinformed on the true nature of our reality (for some reason). In that way they are very much cut from the same cloth.
Flat earthers are easily radicalised into right wing belief like “The world is controlled by Jewish lizards” and “the election was stolen from Trump” and “the vaccine contains a bill gates microchip that makes you gay”. And right wing conspiracy theorists will willingly spend their life savings on Alex Jones dick engorgement supplements while generating culture war controversy to draw political attention away from actual issues like climate change and worker’s rights that may harm big business interests.
Think of it this way: in the mediaeval age, you armed your peasants with shields and spears and had them protect your keep. In the information age, you arm your peasants with conspiracy theories and twitter accounts and have them protect your untaxed billions.
The people who benefit from division, confusion, and inability to determine information from misinformation. Aka, the rich and powerful.
Some of them are really raking it in through Patreon and sales of shoddy merchandise. That’s how Alex Jones finances HIS deranged ramblings too.
Spouting bullshit while pretending that THEY are trying to stop you to get people to donate and buy your shit is unfortunately an extremely lucrative business for many.
Flat earthers claim theres a resource rich area past antartica and they keep it a secret so only the wealthy or governments can hoard the resources
Draws an audience of gullible morons. With that starting point you can do a number of things grift wise
BigFlat
I’m still convinced that none of these people actually believe in flat earth. It’s the kind of belief you can pretend to hold without any other that reputational damage to yourself but I doubt any of them would be willing to put their money where their mouth is.
My mother joined the Flat Earth Society when she went to college because she thought it was so absurd and would be a fun experience. Turns out none of the people in that group actually believed it either, so it was just a club to hang out and socialize.
Seems the whole flat earth thing is a lot more prevalent now so I’m guessing there are more and more people buying into the narrative.
It’s the exact same phenomenon that several other fandoms or belief groups have gone through. First, start a satirical society and laugh about the foolishness with boon companions. Enjoy the companionship. Second, expand so that the society doesn’t die when you leave college or the location. Begin recruiting folks and telling them about your society. Third, watch as people join and some don’t realize it’s satirical. Disbelief dawns on the originals. Fourth, the true believers take over as the people in on the joke slowly leave due to all sorts of reasons, including no longer finding the society funny because of the true believers.
I watched it happen with bronies (not the furry sexual folks, 4chan already had those, but just people who were really, really into the show) on 4chan, a ‘drinking’ club at my college that was a joke because they only drank water at the meetings (at first, anyway), and a local activity (can’t name it because it’s specific and would give it away) club that was truly supposed to be just a social gathering but is now populated by a gaggle of 70 year old women fervently taking part.
In which state do you think is the religion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Hopefully it’s all in my head. We’ll see if I ever experience the personal touch of a noodly appendage.
Christofascists.
Damn, actual personal growth being displayed on the internet? Such a rare thing I find myself wondering it wasn’t all staged. How messed up is that?
Also, how messed up is it that it worked, cause I’mm’a go watch all of these.
I am crazy impressed that anyone could follow that path and not just drop off the internet in shame when they realized. I hope if anything I view in the same manner ever comes up as fabricated I’m as brave.
I used to be a 9/11 truther, convinced of ex military, windowless jets with missile pods, thermite and a global conspiracy to kill thousands just to fake the death of a few important scientists who were on the plane so they could be kidnapped and enslaved to prevent them leaking government secrets while also making bank on the insurance claims and destroying evidence of massive corruption and compromat, just like the scuttling of the titanic.
Im still not really sure when and why I changed my mind.
it’s the human experience - plenty of real conspiracy shit - from cia acid/mk ultra to the tuskegee experiment makes anything seem possible.
I’ve always felt there was some stuff on the saudi side that was left unexplored but know that a passenger plane could take out a building, and working in vfx, knowing there was no way to fake it on site. life will offer more examples of ambiguous outcomes, and they’ll be replete with government fuckery in some cases, in others, it’ll just be random tragedy. good luck!
I wonder which kind of arguments made him change his mind; the evidence based ones or the ones calling him an idiot.
My guess is neither of those. People don’t really base their world view on facts. Maybe his life situation improved, he found a healthier community or a hobby
It sure as hell wasn’t strangers with evidence-based arguments that did it. I’ve seen plenty of cultists on reddit before I left. They are like brick walls and each fact is a rubber ball.
Actually in his case OP mentioned that might actually be the case.
likely the former because calling someone an idiot isn’t going to change their mind
Probably personal connection paired with facts and persistence.
It’s not easy changing someone’s mind. You need a lot of dedication, especially if they’re in a community that reinforces their belief.
IIRC another YouTuber did a response video to his, disproving everything he said. And it opened his eyes.
Seems like most of the older videos from the meme aren’t on the channel anymore, at least not under the same upload. Guess he didn’t want someone to stumble upon them and be misinformed
they are, the titles just got changed
Good for this guy, I guess.
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it takes a lot to admit you are wrong, however, it only benefits yourself. it’s something I still struggle with emotionally, but it is what it is
