Will Smith as Det. Del Spooner: "I'm allergic to bullshit."

@Lauren - regarding psychology... I haven't met very many personally, but the ones we've all met online seem to share something similar: well-educated people appear to make them feel inferior. They usually contribute nothing to a debate except sneering ignorance and grade school logic, but it seems like being smug and "sounding smart" themselves is their way of pushing back at these people

As part of an online science group, I unfortunately encounter these people daily. They're very predictible and no matter the particular issue they're arguing, there's always the same underlying themes of fear, mistrust, a general lack of understanding of the subject, and a need to gain some sense of control by constructing a narrative that simplifies things and gives them the illusion that they have the REAL knowledge. They despise and degrade those with expert knowledge because the facts and knowledge that are shared often don't align with what they want to believe to be true. It triggers cognitive dissonance and they alleviate that discomfort by cherry-picking and/or distorting any info that supports their beliefs and dismissing or denegrating any sources that don't (experts, institutions, etc). This is classic motivated reasoning & confirmation bias mixed with the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon. It's like the old proverb says: "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Standards for evidence of what they want to believe: extremely low. Standards for evidence of what they don't want to believe: impossibly high.

@lauren My neighbor is a conspiracy person. Took me awhile to realize he just wanted to " be in the know". Made him feel smart that he knew " the TRUTH". Sad really.

I also have a neighbor who is a conspiracy theorist and a denialist of many things. He's a white, working class man with modest education and has a very over-developed sense of entitlement. He also fears what he doesn't know or understand. Put that together with a fear of losing that entitlement at the hands of social progress and the many online echo chambers of misinformation and it feeds this vicious cycle of paranoia, hatred, and delusion. Sadly, he's gone so far down the rabbit hole I don't think there's much hope in bringing him back to reality.

@Lauren - what's interesting is behind every conspiracy you always find the true hidden agenda. No matter if it's anti-vax, 9/11 truther, flat earth, moon landing hoax... they all tend to neatly fall into two main camps: anti-government paranoia, or bronze age religious fundamentalism. The anti-science types tend to be the religious fruitcakes, while the anti-government ones are often highly political. Many have a foot in both camps.

So where does the flat earther I know fall? He's left wing, atheist, not a conspiracy theorist, had a poor science education but is not "anti-science", very pro observable science. He believes that the Earth is flat because he "can't see it curve with [his] own eyes". He thinks that science education is too much on complicated theoretical science and not enough on observable science, and that is "hurting children by denying what their eyes see". I don't support what he says, those are quotes from him, but I don't think that everyone falls into such a neat little package.

@Kira... I said these are camps conspiracists tend to fall into, of which you said he’s not - so you already answered your own question. He just sounds like someone terribly uninformed of how science actually works. Waving it off as "too theoretical" is its own example of neat packaging, when in fact most is overwhelmingly based on observational experimentation or predictive success (that’s how theories gain acceptance). And to rely *only* on human eyesight - which is pathetically poor and limited - to explain the natural word? Children can’t see atoms either - what’s his explanation for the subatomic world? Or the the existence of other wavelengths also invisible to their eyes? How is it harmful to reveal the fascination of these things to children? If he were to study how the brain processes visual data, he’d learn how badly it does so and how easily our visual cortex can be fooled. Hell, even Aristotle was aware of this

I never understood this " if I can't see it, U don't believe it" crowd. We know that they intentionally built the Parthenon with a curve because they knew a straight line would look crooked at a distance. Human eyesight is flawed.

He is a science denialist. We know the earth isn't flat. To say otherwise is a form of denial; in this case, science denial. He may think of himself as science-minded, but he is demonstrating the opposite. He's fallen prey to a weakness we all have as humans, and that's our heuristics and cognitive biases. In other words, the mental shortcuts and filters we use to try to understand the world. He sounds like someone who is frustrated that science is so complicated and wants to understand, but finds it too difficult. Sounds like he's compensating by rebranding it in a way that makes sense to him, even if it's far from accurate. He's putting more value in subjective belief and feelings than logic and objectivity because it's easier and it "feels right". He may benefit from an introductory education into what cognitive biases are and how they affect how we process information and our perceptions of the world. I personally recommend Dr. Novella's book "Skeptic's Guide to the Universe".

Observable science is how the ancient Greeks figured out Earth is round. They could see ships disappear over the horizon. Eratosthenes used observation to calculate the planet's circumference.

Go to youtube and watch Flat-Earthers vs Scientists. The scientists are the soul of patience, and the flat earthers actually seem like normal people. It's a bit scary.

@WilvanderHeijden - their YouTube videos are always so laughably amateurish, like some grade school kid put them together. Same for their huckster websites, which are just pathetic and sad to look at

Agree, I don't know if it's still around but there's a video of 2 flat-earthers who scientifically prove that they are wrong and next blame it on flawed results because they must have surely made a mistake somewhere in their experiment.

@Noel, next time you debate a flat-earther, ask them how we've been able to accurately navigate the oceans since the 1700s using sextants, which is only possible if the Earth is spherical. Insist they explain the math to you - specifically why the distance moved happens to be proportional to the tangent of the angles measured by sextants.

hahahaha they won't get it and will just go away with something like "your and idiot" XD (your, not you're)