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Pros And Cons Of A Flat-Earther Subculture

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A believer in flat-Earth conspiracies took another shot at shooting himself toward the stratosphere in a homemade rocket. Once again, it fell flat. "Mad Mike" Hughes, a self-proclaimed daredevil who rejects the fact that the Earth is round, posted a video on his Facebook page about two weeks ago saying that he planned to launch himself from private property to an altitude of 1,800 feet (550 meters) on Saturday, Feb. 3. Hughes had canceled and delayed launches before, so it wasn't really clear whether Saturday's event would happen. His homemade rocket sat on the "launchpad" in Amboy, California, for about 11 minutes before it … didn't go anywhere, as shown on a live video of the event. Nevertheless, it spotlights a subculture that is increasingly …show more content…

Instead, flat-Earthers argue, the planet is a disk. Exactly what this looks like varies by who is theorizing, but many flat-Earth believers say that walls of ice surround the edge of the disk, and that the planets, moons and stars hover in a sort of dome-shaped firmament above Earth, much closer to Earth than they really are. [8 Times Flat-Earthers Tried to Challenge Science in 2017) As conspiracy theories go, it's a pretty all-encompassing one. So what is the appeal? For many believers, it's a matter of distrust of the scientific elite and the desire to see the evidence with their own eyes. And, psychologists say, flat-Earth conspiracy theorists may be chasing many of the same needs as believers in other conspiracies: social belonging, the need for meaning and control, and feelings of safety in an uncertain world. The draw of …show more content…

Still, psychologists have studied why conspiracy theories are appealing, in general. The reasons fall into three main categories, said Karen Douglas, a social psychologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. The first reason has to do with the search for knowledge and certainty. People who feel uncertain tend to be drawn to conspiracies, Douglas told Live Science. This happens on both small and large scales: When people are induced to feel out of control in a psychology study, they become more open to conspiracy belief, 2015 research found. There is also evidence that conspiracy beliefs spike during times of societal crisis, such as after the 9/11 attacks, according to a paper published last year in the journal Memory

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When individuals are told that there is a problem with themselves and society, the reaction could be either anger or confusion. Since this generation never made a transition from analog to digital, a reader from this generation would be offended. This change to Carr’s mind has always been the mind of a person from this generation. Almost as if, Carr is depicting this generation is strange and unusual. As young children, fitting in was what most aspired to do because of the fear of ridicule and isolation.

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People today look for solid evidence to explain their wonderings about natural phenomena “Those with a magnitude higher than 7.0 -- more than doubled in the first quarter of 2014 compared with the average since 1979” (Yan 2). This shows how we rely on evidence to explain what is happening to the planet. Whereas the Greeks in 700 B.C.E. looked towards religion to find a

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These tropes are comparable to the age of social media in which we live. “Rocket Night demonstrates a clear in-group bias regarding

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Researchers say that this is due to the fact that people have “feelings of political powerlessness.” They believe that the government is such a powerful force that it would leave the regular people defenseless if they were actually conspiring. Because of this, people tend to blame and create conspiracy theories to make the people who are most powerful seem like they are at fault. When applied to 9/11, we can see use this information to understand how someone would be able to come to wondering if the government were behind the attacks. This falls back under Jan-Willem van Prooijen’s research that was mentioned, who found that people who believe conspiracy theories are those who feel that they lack control in their lives.

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Should we teach the flat-earth theory in public high schools? Of course not, right? But shouldn’t schools give students both sides of this debate and teach the controversy? Well no, because there is no controversy, except in the heads of the flat-earthers. A similar feud is currently going on over whether intelligent design, another psuedoscientific “theory” should be taught in public school.

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III. There are three reasons why people believe in conspiracy theories A. The first reason is the epistemic reason. According to verywellmind epistemic is a certainty and understanding for explanations. So, when it comes to epistemic reason people want to understand what is happening and want an explanation of things that are happening according to very well mind.

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It is still technically a theory but it is true based on all the accumulated public evidence. I am certain that all sane, informed, and well educated people believe that the earth is round because there should not be a reason why they should not believe it. It is much harder to proof something in religion because no matter how much insight evidence a person might have, he or she will never come in agreement with other people because those other people will have different insight evidence. There are many different religious beliefs who all claim that

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This heightened state of hysteria will cause one to believe everything they hear, including facts that may or may not be founded on common

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Both Olmsted and Coale use Hofstadter’s theory of paranoia in a way that is beneficial to extend and create a foundation for their own academic writing about conspiracy theory. However Fenster’s argument is effective as, by rejecting the dominant framework, he provides a contemporary way of thinking about the popular cultural discourse that focuses on conspiracy thinking and opens up what could be a more productive way to discuss, rather than disregard, conspiracy theory.

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The flat earth conspiracy theory has emerged as a popular belief among many people around the globe, despite the fact that it goes against mainstream scientific evidence. This paper aims to provide a critical analysis of the flat earth conspiracy theory by examining its reasons and evidence and evaluating the claims put forth by the conspiracy theorists. Additionally, this paper presents six credible sources to provide evidence contradicting the flat earth claims. Introduction: The flat earth conspiracy theory argues that the earth is not a globe, but instead is flat.

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This significant because it shows that hierarchies in society can cause people to change who they truly

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"Most of our general feelings - every sort of restraint, pleasure, tension, explosion in the play and counter play of our general feelings, …. likewise, and especially the condition of the nervus sympathicus excite our cause creating drive: we want to have a reason for feeling as we do." (Nietzsche, 228). People are afraid of all the unknown causes of things in the world and therefore come up with a reason as to why something happened the way it did. We tend to do this because it causes less stress and makes us feel more comfortable with the unknown. "

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Hundreds of years ago, people used to believe that the earth was flat, but with the research and technology, we were able to find out that it is a perfect sphere. Aliens run along those same lines. Even with all the technology today, there is still no definite answer if we are alone in this massive universe or not. There is so much controversy weather or not aliens exist.

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Another one was the sightings of UFO’s coming out from the ocean, which was explained to have happened perhaps because the center of the Earth was populated by extraterrestrial beings, who from time to time emerge from the poles in spacecrafts, perhaps because in the 20th century Hohlwelttheorie was linked with the belief of aliens. Moreover, this theory has also been linked with conspiracies such as that the Nazi specially Hitler knew of an entrance to the interior world at the South Pole, and that Hitler next to other of his colleagues and friends fled there at the end of WWII. In that same wavelength the popular science fiction story “A journey to the Centre of the Earth” by French novelist Jules Verne (1828-1905) has given the theory its most lasting exposition starting in the late 19th century, in which he describes the discovery of a prehistoric world by explorer who went down a volcano to find out this interior world, that had its own source of light, water, and life was

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Zack Storvick Mr. Diggins BTC English Flat Earth Controversy The Earth isn 't flat. To some that is obvious. To others it 's a bold statement. Many scientists and people argue about a topic that has a clear answer.

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