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Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Flat Earth - It's not funny

It's not funny people. Stop giving people that deny Science a platform to deny Science to a larger audience. Teachers have it hard enough getting students to understand what is fact and what is fiction. Pretending like the people that believe that the Earth is flat have the same factual basis for their arguments as actual scientists is nonsense. Denying Science can lead to very harmful and dark times. History has played this out for us already.

Whether it is Climate Change or a flat Earth, we need to stop pretending that a different opinion is the same as evidence that has been around for millennia in some cases. Science is based on questions. To get started with any type of Science, there is a question. Throughout history we have discovered the answer to many different questions. One being that the Earth is not flat. Stop pretending this is a debatable topic and focus attention on things that matter.

Ugh.

(I can't believe I had to write this post)

1 comment:

  1. Thank you SO much for posting this.

    >> ... we need to stop pretending that a different opinion is the same as evidence that has been around for millennia in some cases.

    This is very sad consequence of the well-intentioned sentiment that everyone is entitled to their opinion and from there it became everyone is entitled to their own facts. At that point, there is no knowledge, there is no introspection, there is no objectivity, and the only thing left is who has the bigger stick and the bigger mob. Science began in earnest only a few hundred years ago as a way to move above and away from "opinion" to a mutually agreed upon system for arriving at the best facts possible where opinions truly were in violent opposition, and when being on the wrong side of an opinion could result in being burnt at the stake. With the scientific approach to "natural philosophy", two people from two different countries speaking two different languages in the midst of a war with each other could agree to agree on why a candle stopped burning inside a closed jar. This underlying reason for the objectivity and purpose of science is one of the most important things lacking from today's teaching of science. Furthermore and sadly, many things that are called "science" on YouTube and in popular culture (and products sold to children) are really little more than "a magic trick done with a natural phenomenon." Too often there no real explanation of the underlying physical phenomenon as currently agreed upon by scientists, and no discussion at all of what the rational way is to validate or challenge any of the ideas in the portfolio of scientific knowledge.

    Thank you for bringing this essential and important idea back into the dialogue about science.

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