this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago (2 children)

This drives me nuts.

When I was in grad school, we had our weekly seminar. A student in our group had to go give a review-presentation on a topic of their choosing each week for our brown bag lunch meetings. People would usually present on topics related or adjacent to their actual work, because doing the reading and research for their presentation was part of their larger knowledge gain and broadening related to their own field.

But this one guy presented about how the world was going to end in 2012. He was serious -- some how he had made it into grad school, fooling everyone. We all thought it was some sort of Andy Kaufmann-esque prank he was playing on it, holding a straight face while presenting -- complete with references to conspiracy websites.

He lost his funding shortly thereafter.

The weird thing is, losing his funding probably reinforced his belief in the conspiracy. Persecution complexes can be very powerful things.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

That's the insidious thing about conspiracy theories once they latch onto the brain. Any consequences or conflicting information just become "them" trying to subdue or mislead you.

[–] Blue_Morpho 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

He lost his funding shortly thereafter

He can't be too upset. The world didn't end in 2012 so his hypothesis was wrong.

I wonder what all those 2012 people say today?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Same thing all numerologists will say: ah, something was wrong with the calculation. The world will actually end (insert some new date in the near future, so the grift can continue).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

After his 1260 prediction failed, the followers of Joachim of Fiore rescheduled the end of the world to 1290 and then again to 1335.

History is full of this stuff :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Was one of them, many of us coped by saying something subtle "changed" that will become noticeable later.

[–] LeadEyes 13 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I'm convinced that these conspiracies are spawned from racism towards non white civilizations. It's easier for them to believe an imagined space God came there and built something rather than the indigenous people. There is also probably some need to believe that we are always at the peak of human progress in all things but in reality the story is more complicated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I don't think it's racially motivated, it just appears that way because very few ancient civilizations were white to begin with. If Britain were an ancient civilization, we'd have the whitest kids you know telling us how Big Ben was built by the Gods, and is secretly a time machine.

And every sci-fi show ever would have an episode about it

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

It's true. I saw it on this documentary called Stargate.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Fun fact: War and Peas is on Mastodon and through ActivityPub magic their posts now also show up in [email protected]