[infurl]

https://physicsworld.com/a/fighting-flat-earth-theory/

The idea that the Earth is a sphere was all but settled by ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 BC), who obtained empirical evidence after travelling to Egypt and seeing new constellations of stars. Eratosthenes, in the third century BC, became the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth. Islamic scholars made further advanced measurements from about the 9th century AD onwards, while European navigators circled the Earth in the 16th century. Images from space were final proof, if any were needed.

It beggars belief that anyone could think that the earth is flat but over the last ten years their numbers have been growing. It's important to find out why this worrying trend is occurring, and think about possible ways to counter it. I'm interested in this topic because to me the most important application for artificial intelligence will be to coach and guide human beings into more productive and fulfilling ways of thinking and acting. Studying people whose thought processes are this badly broken is bound to provide some useful insight.

[Korrelan]

I don’t think this is anything new; there have always been minorities who have ‘blind faith’.  Religion, cults, etc are all examples, but prior to the internet they were localised pools, geographically isolated.  These traits have always run through a minority of the population but now they are coming to the fore, or being noticed because of the internet. It’s acting as a vehicle/ catalyst and allowing these people to pool/ accumulate on a global scale and self-reinforce their belief systems.

There are many different types of intelligence, and just as some people excel in one sphere others lack, some people just don’t have the neural/ reasoning capacity/ tools to contemplate concepts like this.

All humans are similar but not the same, there are probably humans who believe plants can talk... they just haven't found a forum yet.

 

[infurl]

I don’t think this is anything new; there have always been minorities who have ‘blind faith’.  Religion, cults, etc are all examples, but prior to the internet they were localised pools, geographically isolated.  These traits have always run through a minority of the population but now they are coming to the fore, or being noticed because of the internet. It’s acting as a vehicle/ catalyst and allowing these people to pool/ accumulate on a global scale and self-reinforce their belief systems.

That's true, but what is odd about the flat-earthers is that this particular delusion had almost disappeared until a little over ten years ago. Those other disturbing and dangerous aberrations of the present time such as anti-vaxxers and trump supporters can be attributed to the greed and poor judgement of various social media companies, but the dramatic rise in numbers of flat-earthers can be directly traced to one particular algorithm employed by YouTube. If someone watched a conspiracy video, that algorithm would react by showing them more and more conspiracy videos, and it succeeded in quickly converting huge numbers of dumbasses into extremely paranoid dumbasses.

By the time Google realized what was happening and corrected the problem it was too late. Now the question that we're faced with is how do we get these idiots back to a relatively harmless state of mind. We're not just talking about a few people here either. We're talking about significant portions of the population in some countries, such as Brazil where there are estimated to be about eleven million people who fervently believe the earth is flat now.

[WriterOfMinds]

I suspect one aspect of fringe conspiracy theories' power is their appeal to pride. They'll give you the feeling that you possess secret knowledge the majority of people have missed. You're "in" and everyone else is "out." You're a "free thinker" and everyone else is a "sheep." The Establishment tried to fool the world and would have gotten away with it too, but for the fact that you're SO very clever.

I'm not sure how to counter this ... short of being aware of it and watching for times when we could fall prey to it ourselves.

[frankinstien]

I suspect one aspect of fringe conspiracy theories' power is their appeal to pride. They'll give you the feeling that you possess secret knowledge the majority of people have missed. You're "in" and everyone else is "out." You're a "free thinker" and everyone else is a "sheep." The Establishment tried to fool the world and would have gotten away with it too, but for the fact that you're SO very clever.

I'm not sure how to counter this ... short of being aware of it and watching for times when we could fall prey to it ourselves.

What you're describing is biology, it doesn't care if your genome is based on a philosophy, culture or a true molecular configuration, so long as you can aggregate, isolate, groom and then balkanize to pollinate the groomed genome, then its all good.

Welcome to evolution, and as my favorite amoeba from "Blazzing Saddles" says: "We don't need no sticken brains" and nor does evolution...

[ivan.moony]

Paranoid Android?

[LOCKSUIT]

The things that stay are the things that can survive the dangers of space.

[infurl]

The things that stay are the things that can survive the dangers of space.

In the long run that may be true, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to correct problems like this without having to wait for this batch of flat-earthers to all die? The odds of survival are better for all of us if we can keep waste to a minimum.

[infurl]

I suspect one aspect of fringe conspiracy theories' power is their appeal to pride. They'll give you the feeling that you possess secret knowledge the majority of people have missed. You're "in" and everyone else is "out." You're a "free thinker" and everyone else is a "sheep." The Establishment tried to fool the world and would have gotten away with it too, but for the fact that you're SO very clever.

I'm not sure how to counter this ... short of being aware of it and watching for times when we could fall prey to it ourselves.

There's that Dunning-Kruger effect in play again. 

[LOCKSUIT]

The ones we should send to space for free are the flat Earthers.

Or better, take them in a jet around Earth.

We should take their leader, and send him in a jet.

[infurl]

The ones we should send to space for free are the flat Earthers.
Or better, take them in a jet around Earth.
We should take their leader, and send him in a jet.

I'm sure it would be interesting to observe the impact that such an experience would have on their beliefs but I'm not sure that it would actually correct their delusions. Given what I read in the article, many of them would still find a way to explain away the experience.

Remember that the problem is not ignorance so much as paranoia. The YouTube algorithm accidentally helped them construct a complex layer of overlapping conspiracy theories around their ignorance so that subsequently any evidence that confronts their beliefs was dismissed as attempts to manipulate them.

[HS]

People could be picking up on our society’s preoccupation with beliefs. Disagreements about beliefs are what most of the fuss is about; online, off line, on TV, with family, on a train, in the rain… though we overwhelmingly refuse what is being proposed on the other side. Given the abundance of such interactions, the importance of beliefs probably gets incorporated into people’s worldviews quite early on. This fundamental assumption then steers their choices from behind the scenes, without being identified as an agent.

So, whatever people happen upon to believe in, they’ll often feel that it’s really important. This motivates them to invest lots of time and effort into securing and championing beliefs, which is made easy by the auto suggestive positive feedback loops of our algorithms. It’s now easy to develop an illusion of concentrated support for many beliefs. 

We have both the cultural proclivity, and the adaptive informational networks which can exploit it. So, we could either change our convenient search algorithms (I’d rather not), or we could stop conflict around differences of opinion (seems good). But it does seem nearly impossible to change each other’s beliefs through reason. Usually a substantial emotional incentive is required, and even then, it’s the person who chooses to (or usually not) convince themselves.

How could we overcome such an unmovable force? Maybe some stances are mutually supportive, but separately unstable, like two people having thumb wars on stilts. I’m thinking we could take some broad steps to disengage from the thought wars. Not by instituting more prohibitive laws, and not through a movement which is itself belief driven. But by removing laws governing opinion, then reducing and simplifying the laws governing actions.

[LOCKSUIT]

The things that stay are the things that can survive the dangers of space.

In the long run that may be true, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to correct problems like this without having to wait for this batch of flat-earthers to all die? The odds of survival are better for all of us if we can keep waste to a minimum.

I never said long term events, space dangers include fast things too, like us wanting to fix them "now".

[LOCKSUIT]

Here is Flat Earthers
https://www.tfes.org/

Utterly hilarious,,, I want to shake their heads off their bodies
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?board=7.0

In some sense it is hard to prove Earth is round, I get them just a bit...

[infurl]

https://www.sciencealert.com/an-ai-tool-can-distinguish-between-a-conspiracy-theory-and-a-true-conspiracy

This could become a useful tool for detecting and correcting harmful trends on social media. What is important is that it is able to tell the difference between bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiracies. Given the events of the past few days such a capability is becoming more important than ever, though four years ago anyone with at least half a brain could have easily predicted what was going to happen.

I'm curious whether anyone knows someone who has fallen for an obviously phoney (to you) conspiracy theory. Even more interesting and edifying would be introspection from someone who got sucked into one, and how they extricated themselves from it.