I've never been sufficiently convinced that most "flat earthers" are actually serious about it. The movement seems to consist of a large ratio of people claiming such just to troll.
There is another group that uses the same tactics....
>“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
The issue with a group that plays idiot, is they attract a lot of idiots.
Flat-earthers aren't by their nature demonizing and dehumanizing groups of people. If done in sincerity, they merely disagree with consensus about the nature of the planet we're on.
It's quite a drastic change from that to anti-semitism.
> Because once riding the conspiracy train there's usually lots of extra luggage...
See also: the human consciousness (circa 2023, Western culture style) train.
Gaze in amazement at all the confident claims of "fact" in this thread, that are derived from the imagination of the claimant.
Oh, but of course, everyone is "just expressing their opinion", of course. And the question of whether each person was conscious of it at the time shall not be discussed, because that would be "pedantic", "sea-lioning", "not the purpose of this forum", etc.
I was linked to this video a little while back in a different context and without foreknowledge that it was certified crackpottery. I was led to believe it was merely wild speculation fringe stuff, which I'm kinda into.
Anyway, it was ringing crackpot alarms almost immediately. I didn't even have to scrutinize the claims (they don't hold up even a little, natch), the way the claims were presented was sufficient. I wonder what it is that makes some people deaf to the heuristics most of us are able to employ against this kind of nonsense.
The video mentioned there claims to "reverse your concept of forests by 360 degrees". You read it right, reverse "by 360 degrees". Are we sure it's not a huge and successful practical joke? Although by the amount of people falling for it, it cant be really called joke anymore... at some point making fun of stupid ceases to be fun and gets actually frightening.
This itself is a rather clever "tactic" (comparing something to anti-semitism, arguably the most powerful psychological phenomenon on planet Earth, and then allowing readers to form their own conclusions about the initial proposition...and, human minds have been thoroughly trained on how to "correctly" respond to "anti-semitism"), though I do not necessarily think you are doing it with conscious intent.
> The issue with a group that plays idiot, is they attract a lot of idiots.
Well, that depends on whether one is "measuring" on a relative or absolute scale, and a subjective or objective one....and also: whether one is able to think in these higher dimensions, that are all around us (and inside us) all the time.
Take HN for example: on a relative scale, this is a highly intellectual forum. But on an absolute scale, I wonder how impressive it is.