this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
175 points (98.9% liked)
Skeptic
1280 readers
16 users here now
A community for Scientific Skepticism:
Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism, sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence.
Do not confuse this with General Skepticism, Philosophical Skepticism, or Denialism.
Things we like:
- Civility
- Thoughtful discussion based on evidence and facts
- Humor
Things we don't like:
- Personal attacks or disrespectful attitude
- Wild speculation on events with no evidence
- Low-effort comments and posts
Other communities of interest:
"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." -David Hume
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What is this from? Sounds old and I really hope this flat earth stuff hasn't been around that long.
It's the first part of a two-part poem published in Poetry Magazine in 2006.
https://www.onelimited.org/p-cope-01
It isn't. A lot of popular conspiracy stuff is pretty new and the internet helped their spread.
It does remind me of Galileo's quote "Eppur si muove" (still it moves). Or less directly Feynman's "for a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled".
Reality doesn't care about anyone's opinion.
Flat Earth belief is pretty much as old as writing. Long history here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
There are two types of flat Earth belief, and the writing above is definitely the latter, more recent, and willfully ignorance crowd.
More recent, but still 19th century.