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YouTube To Blame For Rise in Flat Earth Believers, Says Study (cnet.com)
According to research, almost everyone who believes in flat Earth theory got started on YouTube. From a report: Asheley Landrum is an assistant professor of science communication at Texas Tech University. Her focus: how cultural values affect our understanding of science. Most recently she's been looking at the rise of flat Earth theory. Incredibly, more people than ever believe in a flat Earth. Google searches for "flat earth" have grown massively over the past five years and flat Earth conventions have begun popping up all over the globe. That's where Landrum focused her research. Landrum interviewed 30 people who attended one flat Earth convention and found that all but one became flat Earthers after watching videos on YouTube.
She presented her research at an event run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. While Landrum didn't explicitly blame YouTube for the rise in flat Earth believers, she does believe that Google could be doing more to stop the spread of scientifically incorrect ideas. "There's a lot of helpful information on YouTube but also a lot of misinformation," she said, as reported by The Guardian. "Their algorithms make it easy to end up going down the rabbit hole, by presenting information to people who are going to be more susceptible to it."
She presented her research at an event run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. While Landrum didn't explicitly blame YouTube for the rise in flat Earth believers, she does believe that Google could be doing more to stop the spread of scientifically incorrect ideas. "There's a lot of helpful information on YouTube but also a lot of misinformation," she said, as reported by The Guardian. "Their algorithms make it easy to end up going down the rabbit hole, by presenting information to people who are going to be more susceptible to it."
There is actually two kinds. Just like with religion. The ones that really, really, REALLY try hard to believe it and at least convinced themselves, and now want to convince someone else to strengthen their faith so they don't "fall". To them it's quite a bit of a religious thing, and more often than not you'll notice that they follow some other religion and think that their holy book kinda "demands" that the world is flat, so they have to believe in a flat earth or their holy book could maybe be wrong, and that MUST NOT be.
And then of course there's the snakeoil peddlers that noticed that the former group is a welcome source of income.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Nobody can possibly be this dumb, they must be trolling" is a common trap to fall in. Sad fact is, there are more actual morons than there are trolls willing to act as morons.
No, they are predominantly a right wing thing though, and as other countries become more right wing authoritarian, you will see a rise in anti-intellectual beliefs. Flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, climate deniers, and creationists are about 99.999% right wingers. The fact they are so incredibly gullible is how right wingers manage to get elected anywhere on Earth in the first place.
In Biblical Christianity, our motivation to do good should not be about fear of punishment or hope of reward. After accepting the gift of the payment of our sin debt, God asks us to love others as He loved us. The motivation is love and gratitude. It's doing for others what's already been done for us, or as much as we can do toward that.