What is the psychology behind someone believing the earth is flat even when there is a mountain of evidence disproving them?

[MajinGoku]

The same general idea applies to other stupid conspiracy theories like hollow earth.

 

[WelfareNiggerQueen]

Shitposter

 

[KittyGremlin]

they tend to trigger homosexual people

 

[The best and greatest]

How do you know George Washington actually crossed the Delaware? Did you ask him yourself? Obviously you 'know' this to be true because someone else told you it was.
You've probably never actually engaged with primary sources to verify for yourself that its a matter of fact. So how do you -really- know? You don't. You believe it to be true because enough people and institutions have told you it is. It is this lack of certainty in knowledge that leads to things like flat earthers. Ignorant people who don't know anything will put stock in ridiculous things.

 

[User names must be unique]

pathological contrarianism.

 

[Vecr]

I'm pretty sure they would have tried to make nukes bigger if the earth was flat. No curvature to get in the way of the blast radius. They probably would have given up and gone to 2-5 megaton bombs anyway (a bit bigger than what we have now), but there's no way they would have stopped before the 100 megaton test.

 

[cypocryphy]

Weird contrarians.

 

[Brenda Holiday]

Genuine flat earthers are a conspiracy theory

 

[The best and greatest]

Genuine flat earthers are a conspiracy theory

This would actually be a really funny way to engage flat earthers.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

The same reason why Dan Brown novels were succesful: the idea of a new revolutionary information is exciting. If we're living in a post fact age, then it makes sense to select whatever is the most exciting.

Also there was a brief time that there was a ridiculous amount of money in flat earthism. Almost like it's astroturfed, but I'm sure the word flat earther having become synonymous with conspiracy theorist and complete nut is acompletely accidental and serves no political purposes.

 

[generic sauce]

Think of all the dumb shit liberals think is real and they are the ones making fun of them. Just food for thought.

 

[Magicicada_septendecula]

I think it's a giant troll that's gone too far.

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

We have users here who are self-admitted terminal contrarians and always pick the least popular opinion.

There are some people who LARP this way irl.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

because it's funny

 

[jertzog]

They're hired by third parties to go associate with fringe groups and poison wells with this shit.

 

[not william stenchever]

That one guy who died flying steam rockets knew that espousing the belief that the Earth is flat would get him money from retards so that he can build and fly steam rockets. It was an effective strategy to offset the costs of the hobby that ended up killing him.

 

[Cougar Pump]

It's an example of 'Second-Option Bias', a pattern of thinking where widely-understood facts are assumed to be false because they are accepted as fact i.e. 'everyone believes it therefore it must be false'. You see this a lot in fringe groups, and flat earthers are just one example among many (others include Sovereign citizens and cryptid enthusiasts). The psychology behind it? Less clear. IMO it's a pattern embraced by genuinely stupid people as a crutch and cope that makes them feel smart and superior, because they have the secret scoop that nobody else has figured out yet. They can labour under this delusional cope for a very long time unchallenged in most areas, except where sometimes rubber meets the road (e.g. sovereign citizens at traffic stops, where it all falls apart spectacularly).

That one guy who died flying steam rockets knew that espousing the belief that the Earth is flat would get him money from retards so that he can build and fly steam rockets. It was an effective strategy to offset the costs of the hobby that ended up killing him.

You could view the Titan submersible accident as an example of this too, where Stockton Rush was an idiot displaying second-option bias when it came to sub development and safety culture.

 

[Fek]

People are very prone to suggestion. They can end up being completely taken for a ride because of where they choose to get their information, as I'm sure most of you have seen over the last several years. Some will pick up any given bit of information (especially if the source is trusted), choose to believe in its authenticity, and fervently chase after other factoids that will reinforce it. Cue the warring egos that emerge and the subsequent bickering straying further and further from the original point, and ultimately people's desire to be right outweighs what is true. No one wins.

Please oh please let this thread take off.

 

[Prokhor Zakharov]

Retardation.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

I'm pretty sure they would have tried to make nukes bigger if the earth was flat. No curvature to get in the way of the blast radius. They probably would have given up and gone to 2-5 megaton bombs anyway (a bit bigger than what we have now), but there's no way they would have stopped before the 100 megaton test.

The curvature of the Earth had nothing to do with nukes yields no longer getting larger - that was due to the development of ICBMs (which couldn't carry massive bombs) and the fact that large bombs delivered a smaller and smaller percentage of their energy to a target because most of it was lost to space.