"Study blames YouTube for rise in number of Flat Earthers"

"Conspiracy theories shown on video-sharing site persuade people
to doubt Earth is round"

I take it those people are far far more gullible than most people and probably a lot less intelligent.

@Duchess64
Probably the same bunch voting for Trump. We have to face it. Humans are not as smart as they are cracked up to be. Me included.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

It's not YouTube's fault. The rightful role of the internet in our society should be more of a court jester than a truth-teller. Those YouTube clips "proving" the Earth is flat are just fancy magic tricks. Now we have adults who think magic is real.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

I believe you meant to say ignorance, not "ignorant".





you're welcome YouTube

The post that was quoted here has been removed

Again, I was being facetious. I've been attacked for spelling errors, using words that don't mean what I thought they meant, too many edits (how many are too many?) or pretty much anything that can be perceived as an error, whether it's an error or not. I don't like it either, but it doesn't bother me anymore.
Come to think of it, now that it doesn't bother me it doesn't seem to happen nearly as often.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

I know. Most of them are really long and unwatchable. On the science forum, I would prefer to discuss real data, not propaganda.

A list is not helpful either though. Do you expect readers to go through your book references to check source material? It would be better if you could quote/cite specific data that reinforces your premise.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

The difficulty with using books as references is that people reading a correspondence chess site's public forums are unlikely to have immediate access to a handy library. When I put references the purpose is either just to demonstrate that I'm not making it up, so a link to Wikipedia is adequate, or to provide a link for people with a casual interest to follow. I don't seriously expect people to follow these links.

The difficulty with YouTube is that it has almost no quality control. Wikipedia is heroic by comparison.

What is really so surprising about this? Is it any less gullible to blindly believe everything you read in a book? The Earths 'sphericalness' has been personally experienced by a handful of people, only recently in the entire history of mankind. Now, people with videos are capturing rare optical illusions of city skylines, etc... rising above the curvature with just enough mathematical understanding to show what they are seeing should be impossible on a curved Earth. And without deeper examination they are correct, it should be impossible! The old adage 'seeing is believing' explains the rest for most of the world. Another type of video shows some conspiracy theorist engineer who has just enough knowledge in physics to apply some concepts about relative velocity incorrectly, and it takes at least his level of knowledge to 'undo' his model, because its usually a subtle error. Most of the 'learned world' would not catch the error, if it was not believed the Earth was spherical to begin with. Basically, humanity is not nearly as enlightened as our egos would have us believe.

@joe-shmo said
What is really so surprising about this? Is it any less gullible to blindly believe everything you read in a book? The Earths 'sphericalness' has been personally experienced by a handful of people, only recently in the entire history of mankind. Now, people with videos are capturing rare optical illusions of city skylines, etc... rising above the curvature with just enoug ...[text shortened]... to begin with. Basically, humanity is not nearly as enlightened as our egos would have us believe.

Have you ever seen the TV show "Ancient Aliens". There's a group of people who literally take everything in the world that they think is a little bit confusing or not quite congruent and conclude "It's probably.... aliens."

It just makes sense.

@wildgrass

Yes, I've watched the show. It arises from a simple substitution. Take out "God", and replace "Aliens". Its suddenly seems more "scientific" and "liberal" to the audience...but, Houdini just pulled a different rabbit out of the hat. Perhaps, its deeply rooted in our psyche to believe in some great illusion for a reason, and we will always be stuck changing rabbits.

You can believe 1 of 2 things:

1) Total knowledge is finite, and obtainable. And we are moving toward it.

2) Total knowledge is infinite, and the horizon of knowledge will continually recede as we "approach" it.

or

3) Deep down in places we don't talk about a parties, we all suspect 2) to be true, but choose to believe in 1) to maintain the illusion of progress. In essence providing something "to do" while we are here in the loop.