hbomberguy
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2019–2024
45:18 · 7.4M views · Dec 31, 2018
hbomberguy investigates the modern flat earth movement and why people come to believe it. The video treats the community with a measured, humorous tone and looks at the social causes behind the belief.
HN commenters recommend it as an entertaining and thoughtful look at flat earthers that frames the belief as a distrust of failing institutions.
5 comments from Hacker News
I strongly recommend watching hbomberguy's video about flat earthers, "Flat Earth: A Measured Response" this video The short summary is that flat earthers are probably seen as a rejection of established institutions (like capitalism/neoliberalism) that the (correctly) see as a major source of the problems in their life. Unfortunately, lacking the social/political background required to actually understand these problem, they work with what they can understand. "The government/etc has been consistently lying to us for decades while our jobs were shipped overseas and our quality of life keeps sliding lower and lower. If they are consistent liars, why should I believe anything they've said?"
> A flat earth makes sense if you only spent 5 minutes thinking about it and have no background in or exposure to basic science. Not that I particularly want to jump to the defense of people that believe in a flat earth, but they are not people that "only spent 5 minutes thinking about it". A lot of time has been spent trying to back up their beliefs and to form a coherent theory. They're wrong , of course, for many reasons, but it's incorrect and dismissive to call them intellectually lazy. The core of flat earth and similar beliefs is often a legitimate reaction against the large established systems in society that, from their perspective, appear to be failing in obvious ways while lying to them regularly that everything is fine. The are recognizing a problem, and attempt to apply something resembling science to try and find answers. I recommend hbomberguy's recent investigation into recent flat earth belief: this video
Yeah I've known someone (a family, actually) who did the same. In case you want a bit of light entertainment, the video where I learned about this is here - don't worry it's debunking flat earth, not in favour it: this video
HBomberguy's "Flat Earth: A Measured Response" [0] is also an interesting look into the present-day flat earth "community". [0] this video
Scientist 1: If we put a sugar cube into water whose temperature is exactly 74.7373 degrees centigrade, the water will likely turn pink. here is our evidence for this. Scientist 2: we tried this and found that if the water is cooling that it doesn’t work, it has to remain at a constant temperature. Scientist 3: we tried it with refined and unrefined sugar. unrefined sugar did not work. scientist 1: we took another look - it seems there was some weird additive in the refined sugar, when this additive added to water at 74.7373 degrees centigrade the water turns pink. that’s a very silly and stupid example of “challenging” other scientist’s work. you precisely explain what you tried and how it differed, in the hope it leads to a more specific and accurate picture down the line. flat earthers et. al just “say stuff” they think is right, where the evidence does not actually challenge any hypothesis or existing evidence because the claims are just … bad. this is not “challenging” science. it is stubborn ignorance. pure and simple. most of it is so easy to refute any random youtuber with a spare hour can do it (read: 6-12 months [0]) - this video however, your point about platforming is important, because people who wouldn’t have had a soapbox 15 years ago, now have a soapbox anyone in the world can find them on. if you’re looking for something to confirm your world view, there’s something on the internet for you. rule 1 of the internet should be spammed in front of everyone’s eyes for