That wouldn’t help though because he wasn’t insisting the earth is flat. He was saying the matter isn’t settled so they should teach the controversy, basically, giving platform to both sides. Treating it like it’s any question at all is still a win for the conspiracy theorists.
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Doable, but not safe for humans:
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It is necessary for people who only have such a vague idea of the world around them that they can’t even consider that there might be other evidence available.
If you have no clue, you can either blindly believe what others say, or go see for yourself.
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You give them too much credit: they don’t really care one way or another, it’s all about imposing whatever stupid thing they say onto others.
It’s about control.
If they can get you to believe even a little bit in something like a flat Earth, then they can make you believe that you really should vote for them, give them money, or do whatever else they really want you to do.
For the others, it’s simple resistance to admitting they fell for a bamboozler. It’s aversion to curiosity, a fear of facing the shame of stupidity—it’s being called stupid that is more painful than being ignorant itself to them.
In any case, evidence won’t help. I’m reminded of Dachau, a little town just northwest of Munich, where the first Nazi concentration camp was opened. When the Americans liberated it, they were so shocked by what they saw that they forced the townsfolk to tour the camp, see the horrors they claimed to know nothing about. It’s called a forced eye opening by the museum there, but I know from talks with actual Dachauer that many blamed the Americans rather than admit they supported a cruel regime.
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A gun, no. A launch loop, though, could be made long enough to allow lower g forces but still reach escape velocity. Much safer. Also much more scalable for continuous usage.
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I think you are overthinking. I’m not hung up on this guy’s being alive when he reaches orbit.
We really should focus on cost/outcome rather than quality.
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Maybe, but launch loops could be made electrical, like a railgun. Suitable for bulk reuse.
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You have a point. No shortage where he came from. I’m obviously guilty of short term thinking. Carry on.
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Generally, there is an overlap between Flat-Earthers and Creationism. When explaining Eratosthenes’ feat to Flat-Earthers, using ‘BC’ instead of ‘BCE’ might increase the chances of maintaining their attention.”
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Thank you for that. I may be due for a re-read of the entire Discworld opus.
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This makes me sad. Well this and a lot of other news out of Slovakia.
Back in my wild and wonderful hosteling days, I visited Bratislava. In, like, October.
It was nice. I walked through old town, up to the castle that used to house royalists and IIRC now was the president or PM or somebody elected’s offices… the nuclear bunker under said castle turned seat of democracy was closed on Mondays, so I settled for a very long, meandering walk.
But there was something… simmering. I, like a lot of ppl, had diverted from the more popular destination of Budapest due to the migrant crisis. (Fucking Putin – propping up Assad bombing the shit out of suburbs… ppl were desperate and it was sometimes uncomfortable getting swarmed in train stations for cash)
Anyways… despite being really picturesque and polite, they also had a lot of corruption. It reminded me of Moscow in terms of a bunch of black cars driving like jerks and lots of weird guys in suits.
Unfortunately, the reaction to the immigration and corruption seems to have been a slide to nationalism/populism, and it’s sad, because “Eurotrip” really did them dirty – it was a very cosmopolitan, clean, nice little town.
(Sorry for being the typical American and visiting only the capital and extending my thoughts of it paired with drunken staring out the train window to extend to the entire country)
Speaking of drunken staring, VLC becons – it is after 5 in Appalachia. Maybe I’ll watch Eurotrip again for old times sake…
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I was talking about those people you refer to as “you”, and not so much about “them”.
Evidence does help.It works better in cases where people are on the fence, and it takes longer with people who have already made up their mind. You can’t just expect people who are invested in a certain belief to change their mind in a minute.
What also works really well is supporting people to think things through for themselves, because even for strongly held beliefs, many people never did that. There’s techniques for doing that (e.g. street epistemology).
Education (in the sense of knowing basic facts about the world, being able to distinguish between natural laws and culture, a modicum of critical thinking, and awareness of one’s own values, needs, uncertainties, growing edges) will help falling prey to theories of conspiracy as well. So that level of education is what we should strive to provide for everyone.
I doubt that these days anyone in Dachau believes that the Americans were responsible for Dachau. A part of that is that students are taught about Dachau in school.
All students in Bavarian public “Gymnasiums” even take a field trip to Dachau in 10th grade. But students in public “Mittelschulen” and “Realschulen” are not provided with that opportunity. A shame, really, because visiting Dachau does leave a deep impression, I’ve been there a couple of times, most recently last year with my oldest son,
In short: you can’t just put some evidence on the table and expect that to work. People need to engage with it, and that is easier with some help, and works better when there is already a certain competency for changing your mind based on evidence.
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Also an electrical railgun launch could be done with renewable energy.
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I get your point, that you were not so much hoping to deprogram the cultists as to prevent others from falling into the cult. Which is good, and long overdue in other areas—see the problems we are having with Reichsbürger (Germany’s answer to sovereign citizens) and the demonization that the AfD engages in.
I was bringing it back to pointing out that the whole point of spouting an outrageous belief isn’t so much the belief itself as it is imposing dominance. Which is why education is good, it builds mental immune systems, but even more important is to strip the spouter of lies of any credibility. They need to be exposed just as much as the gish gallop of lies they are trying to drown us in.
So yeah. We mostly agree, we just differ in the details and the focus.
My anecdote about Dachau is based upon a friend’s birthday party in Dachau itself, and one of the neighbors after a few beers decided to get in my face, about how we Yankees were worse, that Dachau is more hype than truth, that bleeding hearts and socialists distorted the truth (the guy wasn’t all that smart). It’s about how people, even generations later, will refuse to accept uncomfortable truths.
I take it you too are in the Munich area? If so, drop me a line and we can make a BoingBoingBavaria meetup. Or at least enjoy a couple of beers together.
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