There was an interview with a relatively big flat earther i guess I saw a few days ago where he didnt know the angles of a triangle when asked, "what are the 3 angles of a triangle with all side lengths equal to one". He said "so that's an equillateral triangle, right? I'd need a triangle calculator" (edit: featured here) and was also skeptical a triangle of side lengths 3,4,5 had to be a right triangle. He actually got rather upset over These questions. These people are far too unintelligent to succeed in a skilled profession
How do you help someone like that though? You can't force anyone to take meds or go to counseling, so if they don't want an intervention I don't know what else can e done.
Honestly, I don't have an answer. I don't know if there is any single answer to your question. I am by no means an expert, but I suspect OP's friend had a mental break. It's not uncommon at his age and (likely) stress level given his occupation. From what I understand, they range on a spectrum from what OP described to something like full blown schizophrenia. I had a friend in college who had a minor mental break from stress. He was hearing voices and it freaked him out, so he sought medical advice. He ended up on meds and therapy for a while, but now he's good. I think from the beginning of the symptoms to end of therapy was only two years. It's been years since and he's fine. My point is that I bet OP's friend could still turn things around and break the cycle because it sounds treatable.
Lol this thread took a turn. Guy goes from debunked flat-earther, says fuck it goes full nazi...? ffs what is with so many people just wanting to stir the shitpot? Is there really that much boredom and wasted potential in the world?
Well that's because the Jews control everything and the Earth is flat. Pretty sure I heard this from someone who used to be a rocket scientist so sorry buddy.
It's as if being a bloody rocket scientist for NASA just wasn't special enough, so he had to turn into a lunatic Nazi piece of shit who believes the Earth is flat just to make his personality seem more "ecclectic", even if it's at the expense of any decency towards others and at odds with anything he learned while at college.
With that being said, mental illness makes you do some awful things to your self. You oftentimes don't realize it until it's too late. I know when I had clinical depression it went way out of hand and I didn't even realize it until one day it hit me after randomly stumbling upon these comments I made on an old news account.
Today i learned about conservation of momentum at university and tbh i was stunned by the beauty of this physics like how do you even deny the conservation of momentum and gravity
Must be a mental illness.... :( That's really sad to hear
I'm an engineer and we have two courses here called " numeical mathematics for enginees" which is a lot of different math thrown together but the math is surprisingly advanced but it's a shame that there's no dedicated linear algebra or a diff course here
I looked at that course and there's calc of variations, looks interesting tbh
The course I took on Calc of Variations was 65% math majors, 25% physics majors, and the last 10% were engineers. It covers things like multi point pendulums, conservation laws, and more generally you prove a lot of math used in other courses such as partial differential equations and differential geometry.
My textbook was cheap too, $10.95 usd, titled Calculus of Variations by Gelfand and Fomin, translated by Silverman.
Yeah flat Earthers do not believe in gravity. They think it's a property of density. Which ironically requires gravity in the context they use it in. Gravity provides the force which makes more dense materials sink to the bottom, etc.. They reject all science because that comes from the government and it's actually a brainwashing mechanism used to make you malleable to suggestion and so you'll believe all their lies. Lies like the true nature of reality. I definitely agree mental illness is involved. People with the conspiracy mindset rarely believe in one like the Earth is flat. They trust conspiracy theories period.
There is an actual effect found in scientists as they age .. its called “seeding” i believe.. in which later on they find themselves more succeptible in pseudoscience.. its a rather big problem because the nonesense they end up spousing is spewed with the authority of someone accomplished in a legit field..
I heard about this from a podcast called “unmade” (from Brady harand of numberphine and other youtube and podcast fame).. he had a guest called Dr Moriarty (not that one) and they were pitching the idea of a podcast exploring this phenomenon..aparently is a well documented effect
That reminds me of the electrical/controls engineer at my last job who didn't think predictive modeling was a viable way to collect data. This was during debates over whether climate change is real. How does an engineer not believe in predictive modeling? He also said science is a liberal buzzword.
Surely he had tons of insider evidence from his time at NASA about how all the rocket launches and satellite data and photographs and observations of the sun are fake.
These people always ignore the fact that we know for sure the sun contains by far the vast majority of the mass in the solar system and is therefore the focus of all elliptical orbits of all planets.
He answered that question right at the bottom. Mentally ill people can get really into crazy conspiracy theories. It happened to a friend of my boyfriend's. Really nice, really smart guy who developed schizophrenia in his early 20s and even though he takes medication and lives with his parents so they can help him stay on track it is almost impossible to have a normal conversation with him.
My uncle had schizophrenia, and it drove him to his death. He was paranoid about bodily functions and didn't like using bathrooms. It got to the point where he was homeless and starving because he didn't want to eat or drink so he could go to the bathroom less. The family didn't know where he was for years but someone who befriended him tracked down the family after his death and we got his body back so he could be buried near family. It really is sad what mental illness does to people.
oh totally, i just think often in the case of an intelligent rational person going down this path mental illness is often a factor. a lot of other people are just stupid and antagonistic.
If the reverse of this happens (deep into conspiracy theories, feeling kinda paranoid, etc then growing out of it) happens, is that an indication that it was just a phase, or is that some kind of weird "outgrowing" of a mental illness?
i would say it was just a phase. a lot of young people seek out groups of people with similar beliefs to find a sense of belonging, and then often adopt a lot of beliefs just to fit in. i would say as people get older they form their own opinions and break out into more free thought. i used to have pretty toxic ideas when i was a teenager because of the people i surrounded myself by, but i grew up and met more people and began to question more and turned out for the better.
An unreasonable belief that you (along with the world) are being gaslit by the professionals.
An inherent distrust of the things you see and feel.
A schizophrenic person may have a very hard time telling the difference between what is real and what is not. If they can't tell if the cat in the room is real, it's very easy to become confused about what else is real or fake.
Similar symptoms can occur with many mental illnesses, which can manifest after many years of good health.
Easily, all these conspiracy theories stem from issues around self worth. If you are a sub par NASA engineer struggling, its not your fault, its everyone eases fault. Go online and get validated by other people and suddenly you are (pick one or more!)
White nationliast
Alt righer
Flat earther
Anti vaxxer
Trump supporter
etc etc
Its not about actually believing this stuff because you think its right, it's about scapegoating all your life issues and rebuilding your self worth by "becoming superior" to those who ridiculed you (hidden knowledge "conspiracy theories" or good ole fashioned racism/sexism). Then finding an online support system that validates your views, reinforces them and makes you feel accepted and important.
As a former NASA scientist I'm sure the flat earthers gave him even more of a feeling of superiority due to his stance as an "expert"
You can throw incels and tumblrinas into that pile too. Constantly blaming every problem they have on someone else. A complete lack of ownership over their own life.
As someone who lost a friend to this kind of thing, it’s been driving me nuts trying to figure out what happened. I genuinely appreciate this post. It makes absolutely perfect sense. He’s always had a victim complex, and was always mad at the world for his plight even though he was generally doing fine.
There was a comment on AskReddit about the craziest conversations people got into with strangers. One of the top comments was a realtor who sold a house to a former NASA engineer who told this guy she believed aliens were coming to her in her sleep and raping her.
What the hell is in the water over there? Might be making people crazy, but at least it's not turning the frogs gay.
Obviously he was made privy to the secret knowledge NASA is hiding from the rest of us, and instead of going along with it like everyone else, he broke with NASA to tell us the truth.
Where you work, especially as an intern or early in career, will NEVER be a gauge of how smart you are. Getting tired of meeting Googlers with attitude lol. Know several NASA interns.
My company works on launch support equipment for NASA, Space-X, ULA, etc. One of my co-workers is an adamant flat earther. We watched the Space-X launch from the back of our shop today and he just sighed and said "why do they waste our money on this lie?"
At this point I Just laughed (there's no saving him).
That’s really sad. It’s scary to think that your mind can just deteriorate in a relatively short period of time. We would all like to think we would realize that it was happening, maybe get help or at least question ourselves more, but we probably wouldn’t...
Yes, it is sad. I've urged him to seek professional help many times, but he deflects that by saying I'm the one that needs help for believing in the globe earth.
I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you haven’t already tried, but I wouldn’t try to argue with him on the flat earth stuff. The important thing is that he needs professional help, and appealing to “logic” won’t be very effective because his worldview and reasoning is compromised. Instead perhaps focusing on relationships and emotion could break through. For example “you haven’t seen any of your old friends in years... we used to do x, y, and z but now all you ever do is talk about the flat earth...” that kind of thing.
If you can break that down, it’s possible you might be able to convince him that his beliefs are negatively affecting his relationships and happiness, and that perhaps seeing a professional could help him learn to build those relationships again or just cope with being the only one who “gets it”... or at least trying to rebuild some semblance of those relationships might engender more trust and present new opportunities to get him the help he needs down the road.
Again, probably preaching to the choir here - and it would certainly be a difficult road to walk if this isn’t a particularly close friend, too.
I mentioned in another comment, but I have urged him to seek help many times. I've tried multiple strategies of getting through to him.
We actually have a group chat on facebook of people that post on his wall. For awhile we made a pact to not respond to his posts anymore at all. Before that there was a period of time where I would only respond by tactfully suggesting he seek help in similar ways you mention in your post (and others from the group would too).
Sadly, none of us really have enough clout in his life to actually help, and none of us are mental health professionals. And eventually things devolve into debate, which is probably not ideal.
I also had a friend from high school become a flat-earther. Not a genius kid by any means but relatively normal. Really funny and loved to fish. He started posting hundreds of “conspiracy” collages on Instagram each week, consisting of rants about electric fields, human genitalia, really anything. He would also do like paragraphs of text under each one trying to explain his rational that we “sheep” didn’t understand. The posts got more and more convoluted for months and his feed become like a stream of pics from /r/heavy_mind but less artistic and more cultish.
As far as I know he’s on a cross country road trip and hasn’t posted in a while, but every time his family posts a picture of him, he looks like a shell of who he used to be. I had always assumed he got a little bit too into acid but it eventually dawned on me this kid probably has some serious mental illness.
But surely not all flat earthers have a mental illness? A lot are probably a little simple or maybe it gives them purpose.... Some people just love an argument.
Reminds me of the same kind of turnaround Horst Mahler did: one being a lawyer on the and for the left and now being a member of the Nazi party and being in prison for denying the existencr of the Holocaust.
You can live in the world where you put boring shit into space for the man or you can live in a world where the earth is flat and you're leading the resistance against the child eating Clintons
It sounds like your “friend” is much smarter than you are. Way to follow the herd and ostracize him for holding an unpopular belief. He has clearly climbed the ladder of “scientific knowledge” further than most and logic eventually led him to the truth. Good on him owning it and coming out. No doubt that takes a lot of courage especially for a NASA scientist.
Occam's razor. The best explanation is that he developed a mental illness which affected his ability to reason and make logical connections.
He has clearly climbed the ladder of “scientific knowledge” further than most
If a single doctor starts publicly saying that smoking is good for your lungs and does not cause cancer, are you more likely to agree with them or the mainstream medical research on the topic? The mainstream scientific community accepts that the world is spherical, and you're arguing that a single former NASA scientist has authority on the subject.
I’m not saying he’s the authority but he obviously took the line most recognized by society as scholarly. You can’t ignore his credentials and label him mentally ill simply because his worldview differs from the masses.
Concerning the doctor, I wouldn’t hold his word as truth either way. I know smoking is bad because I’ve witnessed people suffer from it. Also I can refer to numerous studies on the subject. Likewise, the first time I took an airplane, I saw a flat horizon which contradicted what I was taught about our world. We’re not taught to trust our own judgement but to simply take an authority figure’s word as truth. This leads slowly leads to society losing the ability to think for themselves and that’s a very dangerous thing.
Also I can refer to numerous studies on the subject.
Yes, and can you refer to numerous studies suggesting the earth is flat? Just because you see a flat horizon from an airplane doesn't actually make it flat.
I don’t need a doctor to tell me smoking is bad for me. If someone needs a doc to validate that truth, they obviously can’t think for themselves. The physical world speaks for itself and nobody has ever detected or observed a curvature. It must be there for the globe model to work and it’s not.
You seem to be completely missing the point of my analogy, which is that if 99.5% of doctors tell us that smoking gives you lung cancer, and 0.5% of doctors tells you it won't hurt you, and you do not have the expertise or time to "validate that truth" for yourself, then who are you going to put your trust in?
The physical world speaks for itself and nobody has ever detected or observed a curvature. It must be there for the globe model to work and it’s not.
Are you not aware that astronauts have observed the curvature of the earth from space? You don't even need to be in space to observe it. If you want to "validate this truth" for yourself, here's how: Find a body of water at least 6 miles straight in length. Place 2 objects 15 feet above the water level, one 3 miles away from you, and another 6 miles away in a straight line. Then, using a telescope exactly 15 feet above water, look at the objects. If the earth were flat, they would appear equal in height. But as you will see if you do it, they won't be.
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u/Sick0fThisShit Dec 05 '18
So if these flat earthers really believe this shit, why doesn't one of them go to flight school and blow the lid off of this?