Flat Earth "Theory" -- Why? (2 of 2)

Answer to that third question: the Galileo spacecraft, in one of its passes by the earth on the way to Jupiter almost two decades ago, took a photo of the earth each minute for a full day.  You can see them here: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0705/earth_galileo_big.mov  (I doubt long-range spacecraft ever carry video cameras since still cameras serve much better; even if such a video were made, it would be hard to see the earth turn at a true speed of 1/4 degree per minute.) 

Here're two more, even niftier, from the DISCOVR spacecraft.  The shorter one runs at different speeds, ending with one frame per day--in which the earth seems to stand still, wobbling a bit.  The longer one shows an entire year at high speed, so you can see weather and seasons.

This would be a clever argument, except there's no consideration of "circumferential" flights between, say, Santiago Chile and Johannesburg, South Africa--two or three thousand dollars
one way--which would, I think, be beyond the range of commercial air flight in a flat earth.  

 That "sky glow" is called twilight.  It goes away, you know--just wait a bit!

Probably a good many flat-earthers (Charles K. Johnson was among them)

are already predisposed to disbelieving the majority view.

Maybe the earth is flat--from a muon's point of view!

I considered the question of flat earth "theory" as a theory in an earlier post, showing that the only way to take it seriously would be to throw out much of the established knowledge of centuries.  I lay out a simple observational case that a flat earth is nonsense, here.  Nothing short of willful and complete blindness is required of a flat-earther.  I will justify this link because it's funny, and because it makes a point I hadn't thought of: flat-earthers acknowledge that the moon and sun raise tides in the oceans by their gravity--which would be impossible if water did not also exert gravity.

To believe in a flat earth is not merely to imagine we’d got something basically wrong (and managed to conceal this from the entire populace for centuries), but to believe the entire framework is a lie.  In fact, a believer must be blinded to the significance of even the simplest observations. 

In short, flat earth "theory" is the ultimate conspiracy theory--one that even most conspiracy lovers laugh at.  It can only be taken seriously if virtually everything else is a lie, promulgated worldwide and throughout history for mysterious purposes.  

Of course, all of the preceding takes flat earthers at their word as Seekers of Truth.  But if such simple and obviously contrary observations can send them into gymnastic feats of defensive thinking, then probably there is more going on here than an honest search for truth. 

A Boston Globe article traces the origin of our local man's radical distrust to a series of events that begin with the loss of his parents--leaving him with no immediate relatives--and launching him into the wild west of the internet.  By 2015, he "had begun devoting significant time and attention to an array of conspiracy theories."  If radical distrust, and hostility to established knowledge ("waging war on science," the Globe calls it) is indeed the key, why is such distrust and hostility on the rise right now?  Is the distrust of science? of "elites?" of authority in general?

Maybe these folk are simply the deep end of the more pervasive attitude of distrust that fuels and is fueled by cries of "fake news!" that come from respected figures that pre-date Donald Trump.  Or perhaps the problem is even broader, as the Globe suggests.  "Researchers have studied conspiracy theories, and what they’ve found is that we’re more likely to accept such beliefs during times when we’re feeling excluded, isolated, vulnerable."

"Clinging to a conspiracy theory, in other words, can be a kind of coping mechanism — a way to apply some semblance of control at a time when the world can seem markedly void of it. 'What we found,' says Alin Coman, an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, 'is that it really goes to this notion of a search for meaning.'"

A hypothesis linking conspiracy believers to anxiety finds that "In lab settings, subjects induced to feel anxious and out of control...are more likely to latch onto the idea that big, conspiratorial forces are behind terrible events.  Believing that a powerful hand is playing puppet-master is more comforting,...than submitting to the idea that random, awful events are a fact of life,...  ...their general worldview is an even more important predictor [of conspiracy belief]. If you believe one conspiracy, you’re likely to believe several." 

These are anxious times.  As a school teacher, I, too, have noticed a rise in diagnosed anxiety in several area schools.  Have sources of meaning fallen away, or become perceived as irrelevant?  What new meaning can take its place?  Do we need the meaning provided by small, exclusive, group-thinking tribes like the flat-earthers?  If the cause is some sort of bias in our thinking, why does it affect so few?  Or is the seeming rise of flat-earthers simply one more consequence of the Web as a gathering place for people with unpopular beliefs?  Perhaps all these play roles.

A thoughtful discussion here tries to tease out the reason for the belief, adding a further possible explanation in "intentionality bias"--a tendency to ascribe motives where there are none--and a similar tendency to perceive patterns that don't actually exist.

When I think about meaning, I lean toward the very small--the small circle of people I love, wild nature and its fate on our planet--and also the very big.  I am moved to consider  the vastness, complexity, and beauty of the cosmos as we discover it.  Charles Darwin, in the famous closing of The Origin of Species, posits, in defense of a scientific worldview, that "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Carl Sagan* saw an even bigger picture.  "The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself."

Update: New Yorker author Alan Burdick has a nice (if depressing) profile of the flat earth movement and its underpinnings and ethos in the May, 30 2018 issue.

*He also said, We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.