No, flat earthers happen because of trusting people too much, not being sceptical. Scepticism gets you not knowing the shape of the earth, but thinking it fairly likely that it is round.
flat earthers happen because of trusting people too much
I think the reason they end up trusting other flat earthers is because they’re being skeptical of science and authority in the first place though. Since the majority of the trusts the world is round, if it were only a matter of too much trust they would have no issue trusting scientists. It is ironic they are sceptical to all kinds of scientific proof but not to this community of reality-deniers though.
It’s good to be sceptical of authority, and of the institution of Science with a capital S. Science is a method to find truth, not a system of experts and publications and exploitative journals. If you do your own experiments, you will find that the Earth is round, as in Behind The Curve. You can also trust the institution of Science, to a degree, bearing in mind the factors that cause bias within it.
Trusting a small group of leaders over the majority of people is a very common tactic in small cults, eg Flat Earthers, Antivaxxers, Radical Islam, Judaism, etc
There’s that–that kind of cult of personality mindset–but also I think they just choose which people they want to trust and call it objectivity. We all do it to an extent, it’s just a matter of how much intellectual and emotional legwork you put in before deciding which sources you trust (but I agree: conditionally, you should re-assess to what extend you trust your sources from time to time).
Don’t trust any sources unconditionally, to call it truth. You can decide for low stakes things, it can be worth it to act as though some things to trust are true, but all you can really know is that you exist as a thinking being. Practical knowledge which you use, in the basis of probabilities, to navigate the empirical world, is not synonymous with truth. And even in the empirical world’s practical knowledge, it is very low probability that the world is flat. The methods of science and experimentation are good methods for finding good probabilities for empirical knowledge, and they demonstrate that the Earth is very likely round.
No, flat earthers happen because of trusting people too much, not being sceptical. Scepticism gets you not knowing the shape of the earth, but thinking it fairly likely that it is round.
Never. Unconditionally. Trust. Anyone.
I think the reason they end up trusting other flat earthers is because they’re being skeptical of science and authority in the first place though. Since the majority of the trusts the world is round, if it were only a matter of too much trust they would have no issue trusting scientists. It is ironic they are sceptical to all kinds of scientific proof but not to this community of reality-deniers though.
It’s good to be sceptical of authority, and of the institution of Science with a capital S. Science is a method to find truth, not a system of experts and publications and exploitative journals. If you do your own experiments, you will find that the Earth is round, as in Behind The Curve. You can also trust the institution of Science, to a degree, bearing in mind the factors that cause bias within it.
Trusting a small group of leaders over the majority of people is a very common tactic in small cults, eg Flat Earthers, Antivaxxers, Radical Islam, Judaism, etc
There’s that–that kind of cult of personality mindset–but also I think they just choose which people they want to trust and call it objectivity. We all do it to an extent, it’s just a matter of how much intellectual and emotional legwork you put in before deciding which sources you trust (but I agree: conditionally, you should re-assess to what extend you trust your sources from time to time).
Don’t trust any sources unconditionally, to call it truth. You can decide for low stakes things, it can be worth it to act as though some things to trust are true, but all you can really know is that you exist as a thinking being. Practical knowledge which you use, in the basis of probabilities, to navigate the empirical world, is not synonymous with truth. And even in the empirical world’s practical knowledge, it is very low probability that the world is flat. The methods of science and experimentation are good methods for finding good probabilities for empirical knowledge, and they demonstrate that the Earth is very likely round.
Yes, conditionally