You Will Not Change Their Minds
A group of knowledge seekers ran through their experiment’s design one last time. They arranged multiple pylons, evenly spaced over a large distance, with a hole the exact same height above sea level in each, except for the last one. When cued, one of them would shine a tightly focused laser through the holes and then be visible on the last one where a second member recorded their observations. If their hypothesis was correct, and the light successfully passed through all pylons and reached the end, it would prove, conclusively, that the Earth is flat.
“Huh. Are you sure the laser is set at the right height? Try raising it a little. …that’s weird.”
A hallmark of recent social media posts, especially if you have left-leaning timelines is a familiar refrain “how can they be okay with this???” or something similar. The idea being that right leaning people look at the exact same situation as left leaning people and that they should draw similar conclusions, but that’s not really how it works.
Take our intrepid flat earthers. They are doing legitimate science. If the Earth was flat, this experiment would likely prove it. However, the curvature of the Earth prevents the light from passing through every pylon. In theory this should cause them to reflect on that, and possibly recant their beliefs, but it doesn’t. They can only conclude that there must be some issue with their experimental design. Now, I’m merely a lay historian and not a psychologist, but I’m fascinated in these kinds of beliefs and how they develop. People don’t jump straight into being flat earthers. There are steps to get there and I’m curious to see how they made that journey.
This anecdote is contained within the excellent documentary Behind the Curve which documents the phenomenon, and interviews a number of folks who explain how they came to believe such things. It starts off with small things, innocent things, like the flight paths of certain planes, but in those early stages, they might draw an incorrect conclusion, or connect two unrelated data points and suddenly, the pattern recognition parts of the brain kick in and they begin seeing things they thought were previously hidden. It’s not a unique thing either. I remember reading this excellent piece about a small Missouri suburb and how it became a place where Michael Brown was killed by a police officer. It traced back decades of zoning laws, and sundown towns, and all the miscellaneous pieces that led to the murder of a teenager. It was a rush honestly. Like the first hit of Coke Zero in the morning, or whatever the limitless pill is that Bradley Cooper took, it feels good.
But it also comes with some unique challenges. Any conversation I had about Ferguson then became backed by this new knowledge, and it felt like JP Prewitt convincing Derek Zoolander of a male model assassination ring. It didn’t make sense why people weren’t blown away by this same knowledge. Were they dumb? Not necessarily.
