Eyup
Yes, my blog has been entirely neglected for ages, I know.
However, in my armchair explorer mode I have been watching lots of youtube stuff and have become jawdroppingly stunned at how a certain concept has gone from being mocked, to being more mainstream and widely mocked.
"What are you on about?" I hear, floating on the aether (Michelson and Morley experiment).
By my last reference, you might have gathered that the "Flat Earth" concept is the main target of my pondering.
OK, at school (many years ago) I was taught (and I studied) Physics, as I remember, we (the class) were asked to perform, or were demonstrated, certain experiments, that gave us an understanding of our environment/world/existence. We were shown these (repeatable) lessons in a logical pragmatic order that gave us the tools to build our own paradigm and it gave me the ability to analyse and develop my own understanding of physical conundrums as they presented themselves in my work and life. Not all of my conclusions have been correct and I readily accept that my logic can be flawed, my main method (unless I am being taught) is to try to develop an explanation of my own and then confirm it by looking it up. Works well for me.
What occurs to me, when I am watching some of the more entertaining videos produced by proponents of the planer existence, is that they seem to fall into one of three categories:-
1: The oblate spheroid idea is fed to you by one or more agencies that have a vested interest in keeping the general populous ignorant.
This includes the conspiracy theorists (NASA, CIA and Illuminate (et al) all have an agenda to keep us from discovering..... err, something), Bible apologists (it says that the earth is flat in the bible, the bible is the word of God therefore if the world is not flat then you are saying that the word of God isn't true........ARRRRRRGH!!!! (head explosion)).
2: Non conceptual crowd, the type who can't think outside of the box (literally), presenting the inability to realise that if you are travelling at a constant speed then you do not feel it, we only feel changes in speed (more commonly known as acceleration), or the inability to realise the massive scale of things, (reference, the curvature of the earth, gravity or the distance to the sun).
3: The arseholes that couldn't give a shit about reality, as long as category 2 style muggins subscribe to their channels on youtube. (I'm also including some that might be doing it as a "bit of a laugh").
In respect to Cat 1 types, I do remember being a tad susceptible to Arthur C Clark style books when I was about fourteen (and have read some since but without my blind acceptance gland engaged) and to be honest, if you state every possible outcome of a situation, when the outcome is realised, you will have been correct (once). Conversely, if you latch on to every hair brained conspiracy theory, one of them might be correct (WARNING: that doesn't prove you right, it is just means that you threw the dice often enough), I'm going to go with the infinite amount of monkeys analogy here.
As for the Bible saying that the earth is flat (therefore it must be) are we about to reference a book that was cherry picked from Latin into sixteenth century English, in turn the Latin version that was cherry picked from Ancient Greek (with a smattering of Hebrew) derived from recounted tales spoken in Aramaic (or different versions of the above depending on whose narrative you deploy)? Some of the defenders of this stance are young earth creationists who are petrified of anything that could shake their faith or even put a slight dent in their "Truth Armour" (If you honestly believe in God, then fair play to you, but I don't see how, proving that the world is flat, would gain you any smarty points when it comes to checkout time, in fact, if you put yourself in his shoes, who would you rather be surrounded by in the afterlife? A bunch of simpering "yes" men or people who would provide scintillating conversation for the remainder of eternity? (Another topic at a later date)).
Cat 2: The problem with this crowd is Dunning Kruger Effect, it's not a new concept, Messrs Dunning and Kruger have defined it. In layman's terms it is being too stupid to realise that you are stupid, guess what! We all suffer from it to a degree, unfortunately, some people cannot acknowledge this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOLmD_WVY-E
This is worrying (a touch of introspection required) and begs the question "Am I qualified to be writing this" but should also raise the question (to be asked of the YouTube content producers) "Am I setting myself up for a bloody good mocking?"
In answer to the last one, then, if your content is in opposition to experts that have been peer reviewed and their opinions and theories have stood the test of scientific method and are generally accepted, then YES! You might actually wish to gain an understanding of what they are trying to convey, as opposed to calling them idiots or "debunking" their well established theories. I'm not saying that everyone should blindly accept the theories, and questioning given information is a healthy way of approaching life, but, as with most ideas, to deny the veracity of the idea without presenting a plausible alternative proof to support the denial is five year old style arguing and will probably expose your ignorance (a prelude to mockery).
Cat 3: If I were a conspiracy fan I would be inclined to say that some of these people were milking the gullible and some of them were in league with the content providers for the juxtapositional (how do you like those fruit from the tree of knowledge?) content. Whereas I applaud the production of well presented, simplified and understandable content with the intent of education (some of which I have found useful) and it can be classed as peer reviewed (very loosely, and you then have to consider the level of the peer that is reviewing it) it is, nullified by shoddily researched and basically pseudoscience based claptrap that deserves to be derided and mocked (however, the idiots claiming that they are "woke" will do the counterpoint "debunking" of the more pertinent content).
So, do we need a license for social media? Are we suffering from free speech overload?
(please say yes)
Yes, my blog has been entirely neglected for ages, I know.
However, in my armchair explorer mode I have been watching lots of youtube stuff and have become jawdroppingly stunned at how a certain concept has gone from being mocked, to being more mainstream and widely mocked.
"What are you on about?" I hear, floating on the aether (Michelson and Morley experiment).
By my last reference, you might have gathered that the "Flat Earth" concept is the main target of my pondering.
OK, at school (many years ago) I was taught (and I studied) Physics, as I remember, we (the class) were asked to perform, or were demonstrated, certain experiments, that gave us an understanding of our environment/world/existence. We were shown these (repeatable) lessons in a logical pragmatic order that gave us the tools to build our own paradigm and it gave me the ability to analyse and develop my own understanding of physical conundrums as they presented themselves in my work and life. Not all of my conclusions have been correct and I readily accept that my logic can be flawed, my main method (unless I am being taught) is to try to develop an explanation of my own and then confirm it by looking it up. Works well for me.
What occurs to me, when I am watching some of the more entertaining videos produced by proponents of the planer existence, is that they seem to fall into one of three categories:-
1: The oblate spheroid idea is fed to you by one or more agencies that have a vested interest in keeping the general populous ignorant.
This includes the conspiracy theorists (NASA, CIA and Illuminate (et al) all have an agenda to keep us from discovering..... err, something), Bible apologists (it says that the earth is flat in the bible, the bible is the word of God therefore if the world is not flat then you are saying that the word of God isn't true........ARRRRRRGH!!!! (head explosion)).
2: Non conceptual crowd, the type who can't think outside of the box (literally), presenting the inability to realise that if you are travelling at a constant speed then you do not feel it, we only feel changes in speed (more commonly known as acceleration), or the inability to realise the massive scale of things, (reference, the curvature of the earth, gravity or the distance to the sun).
3: The arseholes that couldn't give a shit about reality, as long as category 2 style muggins subscribe to their channels on youtube. (I'm also including some that might be doing it as a "bit of a laugh").
In respect to Cat 1 types, I do remember being a tad susceptible to Arthur C Clark style books when I was about fourteen (and have read some since but without my blind acceptance gland engaged) and to be honest, if you state every possible outcome of a situation, when the outcome is realised, you will have been correct (once). Conversely, if you latch on to every hair brained conspiracy theory, one of them might be correct (WARNING: that doesn't prove you right, it is just means that you threw the dice often enough), I'm going to go with the infinite amount of monkeys analogy here.
As for the Bible saying that the earth is flat (therefore it must be) are we about to reference a book that was cherry picked from Latin into sixteenth century English, in turn the Latin version that was cherry picked from Ancient Greek (with a smattering of Hebrew) derived from recounted tales spoken in Aramaic (or different versions of the above depending on whose narrative you deploy)? Some of the defenders of this stance are young earth creationists who are petrified of anything that could shake their faith or even put a slight dent in their "Truth Armour" (If you honestly believe in God, then fair play to you, but I don't see how, proving that the world is flat, would gain you any smarty points when it comes to checkout time, in fact, if you put yourself in his shoes, who would you rather be surrounded by in the afterlife? A bunch of simpering "yes" men or people who would provide scintillating conversation for the remainder of eternity? (Another topic at a later date)).
Cat 2: The problem with this crowd is Dunning Kruger Effect, it's not a new concept, Messrs Dunning and Kruger have defined it. In layman's terms it is being too stupid to realise that you are stupid, guess what! We all suffer from it to a degree, unfortunately, some people cannot acknowledge this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOLmD_WVY-E
This is worrying (a touch of introspection required) and begs the question "Am I qualified to be writing this" but should also raise the question (to be asked of the YouTube content producers) "Am I setting myself up for a bloody good mocking?"
In answer to the last one, then, if your content is in opposition to experts that have been peer reviewed and their opinions and theories have stood the test of scientific method and are generally accepted, then YES! You might actually wish to gain an understanding of what they are trying to convey, as opposed to calling them idiots or "debunking" their well established theories. I'm not saying that everyone should blindly accept the theories, and questioning given information is a healthy way of approaching life, but, as with most ideas, to deny the veracity of the idea without presenting a plausible alternative proof to support the denial is five year old style arguing and will probably expose your ignorance (a prelude to mockery).
Cat 3: If I were a conspiracy fan I would be inclined to say that some of these people were milking the gullible and some of them were in league with the content providers for the juxtapositional (how do you like those fruit from the tree of knowledge?) content. Whereas I applaud the production of well presented, simplified and understandable content with the intent of education (some of which I have found useful) and it can be classed as peer reviewed (very loosely, and you then have to consider the level of the peer that is reviewing it) it is, nullified by shoddily researched and basically pseudoscience based claptrap that deserves to be derided and mocked (however, the idiots claiming that they are "woke" will do the counterpoint "debunking" of the more pertinent content).
So, do we need a license for social media? Are we suffering from free speech overload?
(please say yes)
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