Why flat earthers scare me

I'm starting to get worried about flat earthers I made a video about this a couple of years ago and I thought that it was a temporary curiosity like some religious sects have a moment in the Sun and then disappear but the flat earther Community seems to be growing on the face of it flat Earth beliefs are completely bizarre most flat earthers think that the Earth is a disc with a North Pole in the middle and the South Pole is a wall on the outside that keeps the water from escaping they can't really agree on where the continents are or how many they are or whether the South Pole may be extends all the way to Infinity so it's a flat Earth Multiverse Theory basically part of the reason people believe in this is just a lack of basic science education some of them think that if the Earth was a globe then water just run off on the South Pole pulled down by hm I wonder what they also misunderstand how perspective Works how trigonometry Works how cameras work and on and on it goes but it's not just a matter of misunderstanding if you believe that the Earth is flat you also have to believe in a global conspiracy that's hiding the truth for no particular reason for stus you must believe that most of physics is wrong and physicists are just making things up we're all part of a big conspiracy geophysicists they're also in on it astrophysicists or Liars everyone who's ever been involved in launching a rocket into space or putting a satellite into orbit is part of that conspiracy too moon landings didn't happen the ISS not in orbit every single photo that's ever been taken off Earth from space fake sounds pretty crazy doesn't it but then lots of people also believe that an omniscient being keeps track of who they have sex with a recent representative poll in North America found that 5% think the Earth is flat and another 6% aren't quite sure I'm not quite sure how many people lie in these polls but there's no doubt that interest in Flat Earth ideas has spiked in the past decade as you can see in the Google search Trends in 2009 the international Flat Earth Society set up a website in 2013 part of its members set up a Weeki and discussion forum around 2015 the topic started to appear on YouTube and spread from here in 2017 the first Flat Earth conference took place which attracted a lot of media attention YouTube made big changes to its recommendation algorithm and interest tapered somewhat off after that but rather than just fading away in recent years interest in Flat Earth has been on the rise again it's probably to no small part because of Tik Tok which has now become a Haven for flat earthers scientists don't take flat earther seriously and I can see where they're coming from but I think it's a mistake to me flat earther are the first symptom of a much bigger problem they show us what happens when people realize they can't understand modern science don't trust scientists and therefore throw out even the most basic scientific knowledge on the rationale of skepticism flat authors are somewhat extreme and that they're actually throwing out evidence that they could test themselves if they weren't so bad at science but the underlying problem is much deeper because in most of modern science the average person can't test evidence for themselves this is why I think it makes sense to identify the origin of this problem and some scientists have actually studied this they found that the scientific literacy of flat earther tends to be well below population average and at the same time they're much more confident of their scientific knowledge than the average person on top of this we then get Echo Chambers in social media that reinforce their misjudgment the trouble is of these two issues lack of knowledge and an inability to recognize this lack of knowledge are bound to become increasingly widespread simply because unfortunately scientific knowledge isn't heritable we're born without knowing anything of modern science we have to learn everything and the more sophisticated science becomes the more learning that requires sometime in the middle of the 20th century or so we reached a point where modern science just stopped being comprehensible to anyone without a special degree and this is still the case I don't really understand how crisper works I have no idea what TAA theory is I don't know how phones work and I yet have to figure out how to properly fertilize our lawn there's just too much knowledge in the world to learn at all and unfortunately no one has yet developed a pill for quantum mechanics but you don't actually need to learn any physics to see that the Earth isn't flat even leaving aside that it requires you to believe in this huge conspiracy Flat Earth ideas have a much bigger problem it's that you can't do anything with them you can't use them to do as much as predict sunset and sunrise let alone Tides or solar eclipses or the paths of planets you can't calculate airplane routes or understand satellite navigation even if you know nothing about how scientists do calculate these things it isn't hard to convince yourself that someone somehow did manage to actually calculate when the sun arise and when solar eclipses will occur and those were not the people who believe that the Earth is flat why do flat ARS not realize this I suspect what's going on is is that they don't have the faintest clue how modern science Works they might actually believe that drawing a rotating blob on a dis in blender is the state of the art in physics so what are we to do there'll always be people who distrust scientists and that might not even be a bad thing but I think it's a mistake to ignore flat earthers and I do have some sympathy for them I really do they're trying to figure out how nature works and that's a good thing we should just encourage them to get better at it and then maybe one day they'll figure out that it's actually much easier to explain their observations if they stop believing that the Earth is flat another reason I think we should take Flat Earth as seriously is that a lack of Science Education is more of a societal failure than a personal one luckily there's an easy way to grow your scientific background knowledge which is on brilliant.org I really like brilliant's course because they get to the point very quickly and help me to remember the key facts all of brilliant courses come with interactive visualizations and follow-up questions this gives you a feeling for what's going on and it also lets you check whether you understood it right away I even have my own course on brilliant it's a beginner's course for quantum physics it explains what the way function is and what superpositions and entanglement are it also covers the uncertainty principle and bells theorem and afterwards you can continue learning more about your favorite topics in science computer science or maths whether that's special relativity or Quantum Computing brilliant has you covered if you use our link brilliant.org you'll get to try out everything on brilliant for 30 days for free and you'll get 20% off the annual premium subscription so go and check this out thanks for watching see you tomorrow

Channel: Sabine Hossenfelder

Views: 264,229

Keywords: science without the gobbledygoook, hossenfelder, science humor, flat earth, flat earthers, flearthers, conspiracy, flat earth society, flat earth wrong, skepticism, science denial, mistrust in science, flat earth dangerous, science education

Id: TW6hgOc3wuI

Length: 8min 5sec (485 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2024