Thanks!
And I wouldn’t call this spamming.
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7:50 for Musk.
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Racism. The answer is always racism.
“They couldn’t have worked this out because they didn’t have good, God-fearing, white men around to explain it/show them how to do it”
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Yep, and they’ll ignore any amount of evidence to make it fit the racist fantasy, no matter how obviously absurd it is.
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It’s all part of the constant undermining and devaluing of expertise that we’re currently living through. People are interested in a topic, but not because of what they might learn, but rather how it can make themselves feel smart. If the latter is your goal, making stuff up is a lot easier than reading. Combine that with people thinking Google is “research” and here we are. It’s hard to remain optimistic about the future sometimes.
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Yeah, and I suppose that dynamic makes it really popular in the current shallow-information age. One can do some really basic searches and feel like an expert, getting only the most superficial understanding and avoiding the hard work of learning about the subject and having to struggle with any sort of complexity of argument or evidence while leaving tons of room to invent wacky notions of how everything “actually” went down… Google is practically a machine for creating conspiracy archaeologists (and flat Earthers, etc.).
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Making that even worse, misinformation is engineered to attract people now, because it gets eyes, clicks, and SEO performance. People like “just so” stories, things that sound like how they want the world to work, explanations with no nuance, etc.
When information is a popularity contest, as Google has made things, correct information hasn’t got a chance. 
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Don’t forget many of us might not have seen that other thread. I’m here all the bloody time and if I go searching for something I don’t know most of the threads. Will check it out thanks.
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That was fun! Will watch more of his stuff.
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I think that’s the main thing. It runs through all the ancient aliens, Qanon, sovereign citizens, and other woo.
Experts have mundane explanations full of uncertainty and nuance.
It’s very attractive to some people to instead believe the answer is actually simple but “they” are just hiding the truth so you don’t realise!111!
It’s all “There’s this one simple trick!”.
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Yah, it’s religion, basically. People like religion because there they find stories that conveniently explain everything, and many (most?) people prefer a tidy explanation that is wrong over a nuanced (but unsatisfying) one that is right. Science has to say things like, “the evidence mostly points to explanation X in conditions Y, but more testing is needed”. There’s also a lot of “We don’t know yet” answers in science, which people hate.
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Keep fighting the Good Fight tho.
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I like to think of “we don’t know yet” as the necessary lead in to “… and I’m looking forward to figuring it out!”.
But I am not a representative sample.
Come to think of it, that’s probably why I can’t get my head around religion, as well. “Figuring it out” isn’t just something that there’s no room for, it’s usually actively forbidden on pain of punishment potentially ranging from scolding to painful death. I don’t know how it’s possible to live in an environment where it’s forbidden to learn new things.
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If that were true there wouldn’t be such a thing as theology. There are things you have to accept as part of the religion, but otherwise it’s more that a lot of things it leaves unexplained are ultimately destined to stay that way, mysteries people can wonder about and discuss but never answer conclusively.
By the way, I am in the camp where “we don’t know yet” in science is kind of annoying, and so I support scientists figuring out as much of those things as possible.
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