Great balls of ice

A famous skit from the early days of Saturday Night Live had a stereotypical married couple (played by Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner) arguing over whether a particular product was a floor wax or a dessert topping.  After a moment, Chevy Chase steps in and says, "No need to argue!  New Shimmer is a floor wax and a dessert topping."

The couple gives the camera a big smile.  "Tastes great!" one of them says, and the other adds, "And look at that shine!"

I thought about New Shimmer a couple of days ago when my younger son, who has a fantastic eye for wacko ideas, found a claim online that resolves the Flat Earth/Oblate Spheroid Earth controversy by saying no need to argue... it's both flat and a sphere.

How can that be, you might be asking?  That's certainly what I asked.  I mean, the whole raison d'être of the Flerfs (as I have come to call the Flat Earthers) is that the Earth is a flat disc with no curvature whatsoever, in many iterations bounded by an ice wall that the rest of us call the continent of Antarctica (and which the Flerfs apparently believe is what keeps the ocean from pouring off the edge).

But no, says this new claim.  The reason that the Earth looks flat to the Flerfs is that we are only living on a tiny bit of it, and a tiny bit of a sphere looks, for all intents and purposes, flat.  But in reality, we're on a sphere -- just a much larger sphere than any of us, including the astronomers, realize.

If you're having a hard time picturing this, so was I, until Nathan sent me a diagram.  So without further ado, I unveil to you the latest version of the Flat Earth Theory:

The Great Ice Ball Earth Theory.

That, my friends, is one huge ball of ice.  But it all makes sense, they say -- don't get all technical on us and claim that such a huge planet would have an enormous gravitational pull, comparable at least to Jupiter's -- because, as the diagram clearly tells you, the ice ball is "possibly hollow."

And I realize that the inset in the lower left hand corner is probably too small for you to see clearly, so allow me to elaborate.  The Earth, it claims, might be just one of many "ponds" in the ice ball.  So this could account for all sorts of things, like UFOs, which wouldn't have to cross interstellar space, they'd just have to sail around the ice ball until they found a hospitable looking "pond."

And given that this is upstate New York in February, it has actually looked a bit like we're sitting on a giant ice ball lately.  So maybe there's something to this after all.

In either case, I suppose this ends the Flat Earth/Oblate Spheroid Earth argument.  It's kind of a shame, because there were parts of it I was rather enjoying.

In any case, that's the latest from FlerfLand.  Now y'all will have to excuse me, because I'm gonna go get a bowl of ice cream.  I sure hope I have some floor wax left.  It's just not the same without it.

Tales from the flat Earth

Having steeped myself in All Things Woo-Woo for some years, you'd think I'd have it all figured out, at least with respect to why people believe weird things.  After all, the topic was the subject of one of my favorite reads, Michael Shermer's book entitled, oddly enough, Why People Believe Weird Things.  (And this book, in my opinion, should be required reading in every high school in America.)

But there's still a lot about the whole woo-woo belief system that mystifies me, and one of the things that baffles me most is why weird ideas come and go -- and then reappear.

I'm not talking about cases where the reappearance was caused by the money motive, as with all of the unreality shows now springing up like fungus after a rainstorm on networks like the This Used To Be About History But Isn't Anymore channel.  Programs with titles like Monster Quest, UFO Hunters, Ghost Adventures, Paranormal Witness, and Real Bigfoots of New Jersey.

Okay, I made the last one up.  But it's not really that much weirder than the actual ones that are out there.  And the plots are all the same; some people go out looking for whatever they're hunting, don't find it, and then high-five each other at the end as if their quest had been a raving success.

So it's no surprise that these shows resurrect interest in the paranormal.  But what is more perplexing to me is why all of a sudden woo-woo ideas from the past will catch hold and rise, zombie-like, from the grave, without there being any apparent monetary incentive involved.

In particular, I'm thinking of the Flat Earth Theory, which is only a "theory" in the sense of being "an idea that someone came up with."  Myself, I'd thought that the whole idea of the flat Earth had gone out of vogue somewhere back in the 15th century (and to be completely accurate, the fact that the Earth is a sphere had been proven without a shadow of a doubt way back in 240 B.C.E. by a Greek scientist named Eratosthenes).

I use the shadow metaphor deliberately, because what Eratosthenes did was to measure the difference in the angle of a shadow cast by a rod in Syene, Egypt, and compared it to the angle of the shadow of the same rod in Alexandria on the same day of the year -- and from the comparison, and using a little bit of trigonometry and solid geometry, came damn close to getting the circumference of the Earth right.

So you'd think that 2,200 years ago, the Flat Earthers would pretty much have said, "Oh.  Okay.  We were wrong."  But no.  They're back, and they're back with a vengeance.  As little as ten years ago, Flat Earthers were kind of a fringe group, and the Flat Earth Society was populated by a membership that seemed to be half True Believers and half people who joined it to have a good laugh.  But now, there is an increasing number of Flat Earthers out there, and they are not amused by us scoffers.

They're mad as hell, and they're not gonna take it any more.

And, according to an article in The Atlantic, they are coming up with additional wacky ideas to add to their view of the world, based upon the premise that if you believe one idiotic idea, appending other idiotic ideas onto it makes it more sensible.  According to Sam Kriss, who wrote the article, not only do they believe that NASA is leading a coverup of all of the evidence for Earth being shaped like a platter (and, therefore, all of the astronomers are too, because apparently NASA uses a substantial part of its ever-shrinking budget to pay off the scientists and keep them from spilling the beans), but the geologists are in on it, too.

Why would the geologists care, you might ask?  Well, according to a small but vocal subset of Flat Earthers, another thing that is fake about the scientific view of the world is... forests.  Because the forests we have now aren't real forests, at least not in the sense that they're like they were back eons ago.  Thousands of years ago, before humans were the common species they are now, there were actual honest-to-goodness forests made of actual honest-to-goodness trees...

... that had heights measured in miles.

What is the evidence for all of this?  Well, some of the stuff that geologists hoodwink the populace into thinking are "eroded volcanic cores," like the Devil's Tower in Wyoming, are actually the stumps of these humongous trees.

[image courtesy of photographer Colin Faulkingham and the Wikimedia Commons]

So anyhow.  I know that this is a nonsensical idea, but what puzzles me is why it's caught on so strongly just in the last year or so.  Social media has been buzzing with stridently vocal Flat Earthers who believe stuff like the aforementioned horseshit about MegaTrees, and who consider skeptics like me either deluded sheeple or else NASA shills.  (Which reminds me, NASA: where the hell is my shill check?  I'm waiting.)

I'm hoping that this is just a phase, and that this will fizzle out the same way that Ouija boards did a couple of years ago when there was a sudden flurry of people wanting to communicate with the Spirit World.  But this one is kind of annoying, because the Flat Earthers don't just quietly do their thing -- these people are cantankerous.  They gum up websites like the r/skeptic subreddit with their nonsense, engaging with people who just can't stand to ignore them.

So I'm counting on this being an example of what C. S. Lewis was talking about when he said, "Fashions come and go, but mostly they go."  And in my opinion, this one can't go soon enough.

Disc world

My younger son came for a visit this weekend, and predictably, our lunchtime conversation ventured out into the ether.

We were talking about various kinds of woo-woo stuff, and Nathan said, "You know, I think the one that bothers me the most is the whole Flat-Earth thing.  All woo-woo ideas require you to ignore evidence, but that one raises ignoring evidence to an art form."

I asked him what he was thinking about, and he said, "Have you ever heard of 'zetetic astronomy?'"  I hadn't.  Nathan told me that it was the brainchild of one Samuel Rowbotham, a 19th century British crank to whom we largely owe the fact that the flat Earth model is still around.  Rowbotham did the lecture circuit in the mid-to-late 1800s, talking about his idea that the Earth was a flat disk centered at the North Pole, with a ring of icy mountains (which we spherical-Earth sheeple call "Antarctica") around the edge.  All of the astronomical objects we see, up to and including the Sun and the Moon, are actually hovering a few hundred miles off the ground, doing peculiar little loops for reasons that physics is unable to explain.

Rowbotham was a master of the Gish Gallop -- a debating technique (named after young-Earth creationist Duane Gish) that involves drowning your opponents with a machine-gun delivery of trivial questions and straw men so quickly that they can't possibly address them all, meaning they come off looking like they've lost the argument.  A reporter for the Leeds Times said about Rowbotham in 1864, "One thing he did demonstrate was that scientific dabblers unused to platform advocacy are unable to cope with a man, a charlatan if you will (but clever and thoroughly up in his theory), thoroughly alive to the weakness of his opponents."

One of Rowbotham's acolytes, Lady Elizabeth Blount, founded the "Universal Zetetic Society" to spread his ideas, and the whole thing was given momentum when the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church of Zion, Illinois threw their support behind Rowbotham's ideas and began to use their radio show to broadcast information about it.  In 1956, The Universal Zetetic Society renamed themselves the "Flat Earth Society" -- prompted, apparently, by the fact that no one could actually pin down what the hell "zetetic" means -- and they continue to plague us, lo unto this very day.

Of course, back in Rowbotham's day, there wasn't as much hard evidence to go on, so I have at least a little more sympathy for the 19th century's Flat Earthers.  Today, though -- the amount of twisted rationalization you have to go through to buy any of it is breathtaking.  Take, for example, this gem, that appeared yesterday over at the r/conspiratard subreddit:

Remarkably, their math is pretty close to spot-on -- the distance between a sphere the size of the Earth and a tangent line, over a distance of 102.4 miles, is just shy of 7,000 feet.  But how do we know that the bridge doesn't curve that much?

Two ways, apparently:  (1) we have a photograph of a four or five mile long stretch of the bridge, and it sure looks straight to us; and (2) it just doesn't.  Stop asking questions.

All of their arguments boil down to this sort of thing.  How do Flat Earthers explain the Coriolis effect, the fictitious "force" that comes from our reference frame being fixed to a spinning sphere, and which causes cyclones to turn counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern?

They don't.  A direct quote:  "The Coriolis effect has nothing to do with the shape of the Earth."  End of discussion.  Seasons?  Caused by a shift in the movement of the Sun across the disk, not by the axial tilt of the Earth.  Photographs of a spherical Earth taken from space?  Optical illusions and/or deliberate misinformation from NASA.

Despite there being anti-science viewpoints that have a much bigger impact on human health, safety, and progress than the Flat Earthers -- the anti-vaxxers, anti-GMOers, and the radical fringe of most religions come to mind -- the Flat Earthers seem to be uniquely resistant even to acknowledging the issues.  They simply ignore them into nonexistence.

So I understand where Nathan was coming from when he said, "I'd rather debate a young-Earth creationist than a Flat Earther."  Me, though -- I'd rather not debate either one.  There comes a point where the only reason you keep hitting your head against the wall is that it feels so good when you stop.

Weighty matters

Yesterday, we looked at how apparently it's impossible for some people to believe that a 79-year-old man in poor health could die in his sleep without there being a sophisticated Black Ops conspiracy to take him out.  Today, we find out that gravitational waves, the recent discovery that vindicated Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, are a sophisticated hoax.

Why would scientists do this, you might ask?  Is it so they can fool us into giving them more grant money?  Is it to put them in contention for a Nobel Prize?  Is it just so they can sit in their labs, surrounded by flasks of brightly-colored liquids, rubbing their hands together and cackling in maniacal glee?

Well, sure.  Of course it's all that.  But there's more.  There's always more, where these people are concerned.

First, we have the claim that the gravitational wave hoax is a clever scheme to convince the gullible public that the Earth is a sphere.  You think I'm making this up?  Watch this video by someone who goes by the handle "Stinky Cash," and which lays the whole thing out plainly.  Or, if you'd prefer not to waste five minutes and thousands of innocent brain cells in your prefrontal cortex, just read the following excerpt:

Unless you were in a coma, or living under a rock, you have heard that scientists have detected gravitational waves, and have proven Einstein right once and for all.  Every single science outlet and news outlet has reported this bullshit throughout the day.  The propaganda machine is working overtime right now.  First you have Reuters and the Associated Press, they wouldn't stop reporting this during the last twenty-four hours, then you had the Washington Post, you got The Wall Street Journal, you got CNN, you got BBC News, you got Fox News, you got MSNBC.  MSNBC and Fox News, reporting the same propaganda!  It's because they're owned and operated by the same people, with the same agendas.  Don't get fooled by that whole conservative/liberal crap.  NBC News, The Telegraph, Al Jazeera, CBS News, ABC News, Discovery News, Newsweek, Gawker, Futurism, even Neil deGrasse Tyson got in on the action today!

Yes, and that's undoubtedly because Tyson is actually an astrophysicist, and knows what he's talking about.  But do go on.

The propaganda machine was in full force today, and this was solely as a reaction to the Flat Earth Movement.  It was a reaction to all of the videos up on YouTube explaining how gravity doesn't exist.

Of course it is.  Because all of the scientists I know decide what to research by looking at YouTube videos uploaded by lunatics, and designing experiments to prove them wrong.

Gravity is a theory, an unproven theory thought up by an occultist to explain away everything that doesn't make sense about living on a spinning ball.  Why you're sticking to the bottom of it and still feel upright.  Why you don't feel the spin, and why you don't fall off this magical ball.  Gravity was invented to explain away all common sense...  Even Einstein knew this relativity thing was a bunch of bullshit.

We then see a quote with Einstein's picture, and attributed to him, saying, "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts," which apparently there's reason to believe that either was (1) Einstein being sarcastic about scientific fraudsters, or (2) something he never said in the first place.  But you know how that goes.

But Stinky Cash is far from done yet:

These people are in serious damage control mode.  Let's look at this quote from Stephen Hawking about why gravity is so important to them.  Because every lie in the scientific community -- or I should say, the pseudoscientific community -- every lie in the community has one agenda, and this is what it comes down to:  "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing."  Is the agenda becoming more clear?  All of the lies coming out of the scientific community have one agenda, and that's removing god from creation.  Gravity is the false god of this false science.

Righty-o.  Let's move on, shall we?  Because if you thought that the Flat Earthers are the only ones who have a problem with gravitational waves, you are sorely mistaken.

Next, we'll turn our attention to the folks who think that the gravitational waves announcement was a false flag, to turn our attention away from... um... wait, I'm sure it will come to me.  Um.  Something. Something big:

LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves using blind injection simulation which means it is basically a hoax or false flag...  People need to understand if they cannot make it they fake it. 100 years the best research labs could not confirm the assumption so they just fake it. 

There was a massive preparation for this with Hawkins [sic] doing special lectures and hinting he is going to get a Noble [sic] Prize (you see the narrative), its [sic] all showbiz. 

Astrophysics needs to be rescued. (I have never seen so much inferences made from so little data!) 

Then, we had the scientists themselves positing that the whole thing might be the work of an evil genius.  UCLA physicist and LIGO collaborator Alain Weinstein said the following in an interview with Gizmodo: 

An evil genius is, by definition, smarter than we are.  We cannot rule out the evil genius hypothesis because we’re not smart enough. 

We thought very hard about this, and concluded that we didn’t know how to do it.  So anyone who did do it had to be smarter than us.

Can't argue with that kind of logic.  And although I'll point out that Weinstein was making a joke, the conspiracy theorists -- who are kind of notorious for not getting humor -- will immediately go, "AHA!  The scientists have let the truth slip!  We're on to them now!"

So there you have it.  The thrilling announcement about gravitational waves a couple of weeks ago is just another in a long series of scientific hoaxes, conspiracies, and general screw-ups.  I'm disappointed, honestly.  Not in the scientists, who are doing phenomenal work, and richly deserve either a Nobel or a Noble Prize, whichever they end up winning.  I'm disappointed in the conspiracy theorists, who really need to come up with some new tropes.  Because everything can't be a false flag, you know?  Eventually something has to be the truth.  Even if it's the idea that gravity is real, and is what is holding us down to the surface of the Earth right now.  It'd have to be a pretty fucking huge false flag to distract us from that.

Disc world

A couple of days ago I did a post on a climate change denier who attempted to science and failed rather catastrophically by neglecting to consider in his calculations the fact that the Earth is a sphere.  "Flat Earther" has become a synonym for "nut," with good reason, and the climate change denier -- one Ross MacLeod -- let himself in for a good deal of well-deserved ridicule for the error.

The problem is, there are people who seriously believe that the Earth is flat, and they're every bit as fervent about it as Mr. MacLeod is about his denialism.  In fact, as I found out from a piece that appeared two days ago in The Guardian, the Flat Earthers' devotion to their particular brand of wingnuttery has in common with religion not only its zeal, but its fractiousness.  Because I learned from the article, "Flat-Earthers Are Back: 'It’s almost like the beginning of a new religion'" by Beau Dure, that there are almost as many sects of Flat Eartherism as there are of Christianity.

The schismatic nature of Flat Eartherism becomes apparent when you consider the heretical views of YouTuber TigerDan925, who shocked the absolute hell out his followers when he admitted that Antarctica was a continent, and not an ice wall surrounding the Earth's disk.  The backlash was immediate and vitriolic, as if he'd nailed a tract to the cathedral door saying that the Pope wasn't the true leader of the church or something:

You've jumped to an awful lot of conclusions based on very little evidence here, Dan. And now ALL flat earthers are liars?  Really.  You showed us nothing but people on/in ice and snow.  You showed us a red dot where a military base supposedly is. The clip with the people playing instruments is REALLY convincing that All Flat Earthers are liars, for sure!  What the hell are you doing?  I mean, other than cause useless dissension...  Shame on you, dude.  Seriously.

From there, it was only a short walk to his being accused of selling out:

They got to you didn't they bro?  I saw you uncovering truth, interviewing missionaries and I thought you were legit.  It seems like overnight, you changed your position, despite all of the evidence YOU gathered.  Now you're saying there's only one scripture and it's vague so you will leave it out?  If you know it or not, you just lost yourself so much credibility, and you have more thumbs down than up.  I understand changing your position when you find new CREDIBLE evidence, but that's not what you did.  You went from believing the bible to not believing the bible, seems like overnight.  Leads me to believe "SOMEBODY" made you change your stance.

But never mind him, one commenter said, because the Eternal Truth will win out even if one guy is spouting heresy:

Next he says the Antarctica is not governed and protected by the Illuminati, that somehow any group deciding to buy and invest in equipment is free to roam anywhere by plane or on land.  This is absolute rubbish...  2016 is the year it becomes common knowledge the earth is flat, just like 9/11 became common knowledge, no stopping the truth now.

Someone claiming that Antarctica isn't governed by the Illuminati!  If you can imagine.  Next thing you know, he'll be claiming that salvation is through faith and not through actions, or something.

I didn't realize, however, how deep the dissension goes.  According to Dure's article, this is serious stuff, with Flat Earthers like Eric Dubay of the International Flat Earth Research Society keeping "a lengthy Nixon-style enemies list, labeling... many other flat-Earthers 'shills' who deliberately poison the movement with flawed arguments."

You'd think there'd be enough flawed arguments to go around, wouldn't you?  No need to fight over them, really.

The whole thing reminds me of all of the sects and sub-sects and splinter sects in Rosicrucianism, which has led me to suspect that the number of Rosicrucian groups might exceed the number of actual Rosicrucians.  And the Rosicrucians and the Flat Earthers, honestly, have approximately the same grasp on reality, so the analogy is pretty apt.

Anyhow, I had no idea that a woo-woo belief system could have so many internal divisions.  Shouldn't be surprising, I suppose.  It reminds me of a bit of wisdom that a friend of mine picked up while working for the Peace Corps in Senegal: "There are forty different kinds of lunacy, but only one kind of common sense."

Water-tight compartments in the brain

Today's topic is compartmentalization, a psychological phenomenon that is defined thus:

Compartmentalization is an unconscious psychological defense mechanism used to avoid cognitive dissonance, or the mental discomfort and anxiety caused by a person's having conflicting values, cognitions, emotions, beliefs, etc. within themselves.

Compartmentalization allows these conflicting ideas to co-exist by inhibiting direct or explicit acknowledgement and interaction between separate compartmentalized self states.  [Source]

While I'm sure that we all engage in this defense mechanism to one extent or another, in more extreme cases it does result in stances that (from the outside) look completely ludicrous.  It explains, for example, two of my former students, both brilliantly successful in my AP Biology class, both of whom were Young-Earth Creationists.  One of them, when I asked how she could accept the rest of science and reject evolutionary biology, answered -- without any apparent rancor -- that the rest of science was just fine, and she believed it to be true, but when science and Christianity conflict then the science has to be wrong, because she knew that the bible is true.  The other student seemed more conflicted about the whole thing, but ended up with basically the same solution.

One of these students, by the way, is now a medical doctor, and the other an environmental lawyer.

The whole subject of compartmentalization is on my mind today because of something that President Obama said this week with regard to climate change.  In a speech given at Georgetown University (excerpted and reviewed here), Obama stated that the United States needs to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to manage anthropogenic climate change, and outlined steps that he believes would accomplish what needs to be done.  About climate change deniers, he had the following to say: "I am willing to work with anybody…to combat this threat on behalf of our kids.  But I don't have much patience for anybody who argues the problem is not real.  We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat-Earth Society.  Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm."

Which is a pretty good line... but, unfortunately, generated a response from the Daniel Shenton, president of the Flat-Earth Society, who said that actually, he believes in anthropogenic climate change.

"I accept that climate change is a process which has been ongoing since beginning of detectable history, but there seems to be a definite correlation between the recent increase in world-wide temperatures and man’s entry into the industrial age," Shenton said, in an email to Salon.  "If it’s a coincidence, it’s quite a remarkable one. We may have experienced a temperature increase even without our use of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, but I doubt it would be as dramatic as what we’re seeing now."

To which I can only respond: but you think the Earth is flat?  What the hell?

I mean, I've seen compartmentalized brains before, but Shenton may win the prize.

Not only does Shenton believe that the Earth is flat, but he believes that:

1)  Photographs from satellites are "digitally manipulated."  Why scientists are so desperate to convince people that the Earth is a sphere isn't certain, but they sure seem determined.  They're an evil bunch, those scientists.

2) The view of the Earth from space by the astronauts is explained by the fact that the space program is a lie, neatly tying up this nonsense with the Moon-landing-is-faked conspiracy theory nonsense.

3)  The seasons are caused because the Sun moves in circles over the North Pole (the center of the disk) and "shines down like a spotlight."  (Hey, don't yell at me.  I don't believe this stuff, I'm just telling you about it.)

4)  The Earth's gravity is created because the flat disk of the Earth is accelerating upwards at 9.8 m/s^2.  This acceleration, while it would create an apparent gravitational pull (consistent with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity), has as its cause a mysterious "aetheric wind."  Put a different way, they are making shit up.

 

Oh, but the rest of science is just fine, and we have no problem with accepting anthropogenic climate change.

I wish I was joking, here.  But these people, hard though this may be to believe, are completely serious.

The problem is, once you have your brain this compartmentalized, you become impossible to argue with.  Just like my long-ago student, anything that brings up an internal contradiction or logical flaw is immediately dismissed as simply wrong.  It's like the old joke, strikingly relevant here, about the man who thought that the Earth was a flat disk resting on the back of a giant turtle.

"What is the turtle standing on?" asked a friend.

"Another turtle," the man said.

"But what is that turtle standing on?" the friend persisted.

The man smiled.  "You can't catch me that way," he said.  "It's turtles all the way down."

I live in hope that one day, the water-tight compartments will begin to leak -- and that the resulting cognitive dissonance will require these folks to reevaluate their position.  But unfortunately, rationalism doesn't always win -- not with evolution, not with climate change, and not even with the Earth being an oblate spheroid.