Oddbean new post about login | logout Sometimes im just astonished by how out there some conspiracy theories are... like not landing on the moon, I guess i can get that cause we are so far removed from it and there isnt any good way to verify it personally... its all trust... But flat earthers and stuff like that... i just cant get how someone can be that level of stupid... Apparently it is a conspiracy theory (at least with one person) that nukes dont actually exist and were never used. I mean... i could build you a geiger counter from scratch, i could literally prove nuclear fission with very little parts... how can this stuff even be doubted?
@b05df304 this is one of those cases where I'd say it's important to talk to [at least] a person who has the perspective to find out why they believe it. Have you? So very often when I talk to people who have perspectives that are so different from my own I figure out, through discussion, why they believe what they believe, generally because they're working with a different set of facts or premises. I know a few people with really out there beliefs, and when I chat with them I figure out the factually disagreements we have, so their ideas are sometimes rather sensible, given their inputs.
@b05df304 – "isnt any good way to verify it personally" that's part of it, I think – an unwillingness to believe anything you didn't personally verify. Like, go outside and look at the ground or whatever: it looks flat. So to accept this premise that it is round instead of what it obviously looks like, they'll want to see something *personally*. At some point, to function at a certain level, so to speak, you need to take some stuff on trust: like things you learned in science class and so on. Also: I think there's also a personality that wants to find meaning in everything – so like the idea that something happening implies somebody did it by design. Both of these are maybe related by failure to apply Bayes' theorem. You kind of know this subconsciously: you think something is true with some probability, but then as you see evidence that probability in your mind changes according to the evidence. Basic underpinning of science, right? But you need to have some way of evaluating these probabilities and adjustments. If there's something missing in you that makes it hard for you to do it, then you're going to have the kinds of problems that I'm outlining. Re. moon landings, you really need to be conspiratorially-minded (or wildly ignorant): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings – if this is a conspiracy, then just wow.
@b05df304 Dear Dr. Freemo: I believe that conspiracies actually exist, someone can contact 2 or more people and conspire to give me a birthday party. They can all agree to sing happy birthday, agree to violate happy birthday song copyright laws. So yes big and small conspiracies do happen, so it is a remote possibility that man never landed on the moon. Conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal. Now the theory that planet earth is flat would be much harder to accept because other planetary bodies seem to be spherical in nature, on planet earth we find naturally occurring nearly round stones. I do have an open mind, I have read most of the flat earth conspiracy theories that claim that world governments are intentionally suppressing the information that the earth is flat. Sincerely, Monica Andrews, Editor-in-chief, #FreePeoplesFreePress News