The Flat Earth Thread

[Electricity]

So this blog is going to be like my (brilliant) P.ie's Hall of Shame thread elsewhere.

It'll be the same idea except the scope is extended to any (Irish political) site. Obviously Arsefield's will probably be the main and perhaps only one for flat-earth nonsense and illogic and I was even thinking that maybe that deserved a thread of its own. And then I thought, why not include leftists, I mean when you think about it they're a very similar animal.

So, I'll probably make most of the entries myself but anyone and everyone is free to do so, or just join the discussion.

If making an entry yourself, link to the post (by the flat-earther or leftist) you're shaming please and any deliberate misquoting of the shameee is a banable offence.

I also will be operating a no spam please policy.

All set? Super.

I'll probably make the first entry myself later today (after my nap).

So I've awoken from my nap but I'm still a little bit sleepy. I've had a glance at Arsefield's and I do have a flat-earther shaming in mind (but alas, I need to watch video).

So how about this quick and easy (leftist) one, which I thought can also serve as an example and general guideline for how entries should be made..

Citing The Post

Post in thread 'Irish Nationalism and Catholicism (E.g. The National Party).' https://islepoli.com/threads/irish-nationalism-and-catholicism-e-g-the-national-party.21/post-741

Quoting The Post

If 'Truth League' considers itself a member of a superior 'race' all I can say is that elevated demographic is well f *cked.

So again, nice and easy, it's only one sentence.

Pointing Out Illogic And Nonsense

So, why would I consider a race superior because of a member (individual) of that race, myself or anyone else? That doesn't make any sense.

The leftist in question has obviously made a not-so-thinly-veiled insult of me but I could say the same about her, or him - and we're both members of the same race. The difference being that I don't draw any conclusion about race X being superior or not because of either of us, whereas the leftist does.

Relationally, the leftist will assume that if a "racist"* says that race X is superior to race Y, in some way, then the racist is saying that all members of race X are superior to all members of race Y, in that way.

Which is poppycock.

Pointing Out Common Traits Of The Shamed Group

So in this section you could talk about how leftists tend to not understand (or ignore) group averages, per capita etc., which is true, please take a moment to read this infographic -

So I hope you have a better understanding now of how entries should be made.

*This only really holds for the leftist if - race X is white, race Y is black. And really only if the person saying it is white - "only white people can be racist".

 

[roc_abilly]

Rather you are too dumb to understand that the other person objects to your idea of applying these kind of "measures" to people.

It is of course inconsequential that a race is on average short. Whereas what an educated person is interested in is say the diverse backgrounds an individual person is from, and their personal growth as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture.

They understand such considerations completely and utterly transcend such specificities as their height. So why the hell are you talking about it as if it is something worth consideration?

They also recall similar, of the Nazis scientifically measuring people in such manner, and typing them according to race, utilising averages.

You see you in your ignorance think that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled along such lines.

Intelligent people discern that in you. So it's not that they don't understand the concept of averages. (They probably understand more about averages than you, such as the principle that you never cross a river on average four foot deep.)

Rather they have a problem with the process of your logic, your emphasis, where you are coming from, and this is something you apparently are incapable of realising.

 

[Electricity]

I love the way flat-earthers use scientists to deboonk the science, here's a recent example on Arsefield's -

Post in thread 'Trust the Science' https://www.sarsfieldsvirtualpub.com/threads/trust-the-science.340/post-39279

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku says no one in his field does the scientific method ("it's leaps of logic, it's guesswork"):



A twenty second sound bite that they think is meaningful.. Michio Kaku (inadvertently) said - Yep, you got me, science is all bullshit, it's God whatdunnit.

Does anyone else want to have a go at completing this entry, David, Mowl, @roc_WeWuzKangz_abilly?

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

I'd be very surprised if science either did or didn't come to any conclusion on 'god'. Mainly because that's not its job. As an offshoot of scientific advancement mr 'god' has become so small now that he/she/it is hiding in the nanoseconds before universal expansion.

Bit of a demotion for sandal-boy when you think of it. The only reason 'god' remains as a trope in the world at all is because there are ferociously undereducated people in it.

Most of them with little access to education in the developing world. Which doesn't explain westerners who do have access to education wailing for Sandal-Boy Cloud -God for some deep seated emotional reason.

Bunch of daffodils.

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

As for 'flat earth theory' it is just another exercise in the ongoing amusement of some people on earth fooling gobshytes into believing the ludicrous.

It is very popular in the United States I'm told.

 

[roc_abilly]

I might be slow, but I'm still having difficulties comprehending what Jambo wants from this thread.

I think it is to post things that people say who are on the opposite side of the political spectrum from him, and guffaw at what they say?

OK let's try. Here is a recent one:

"... British nationalism: A drug more lethally mind-altering than LSD..."

Right, here we go... Haw haw haw... Mindless wiberal leftist wanker... How can anyone say such a thing... Oh there's not an ounce of truth in it...

Is that it? Have I got it right?

 

[roc_abilly]

Or here's another one from a renowned "leftist":.

"... the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it..."

I'd personally add to come and study posters like Jambo and the Arsefields crowd on fora like these - you get infantile, animalistic, primitive, religious or ideological zealotry, and psychotic, all in one go.

Anyway, the type of insight she's talking about in the above quote. Is that the type of thing we're supposed to guffaw at? Is it that individuals like Jambo just can't grasp what she's talking about, that it's beyond them?

 

[roc_abilly]

I love the way flat-earthers use scientists to deboonk the science, here's a recent example on Arsefield's -

Post in thread 'Trust the Science' https://www.sarsfieldsvirtualpub.com/threads/trust-the-science.340/post-39279

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku says no one in his field does the scientific method ("it's leaps of logic, it's guesswork"):



A twenty second sound bite that they think is meaningful.. Michio Kaku (inadvertently) said - Yep, you got me, science is all bullshit, it's God whatdunnit.

Does anyone else want to have a go at completing this entry, David, Mowl, @roc_WeWuzKangz_abilly?

I'll have a go.

Sure, what this guy says that in his field "it's leaps of logic, it's guesswork", is absolutely true.

But obviously the idiot making the youtube video, or the lads on Arsefields or Jambo for that matter, don't understand what he is actually talking about.

It was not an "inadvertent" comment, and Jambo's rephrasing of it is not what he said either.

Where do we start. Well first, what do most people mean by "the scientific method"? Well no doubt, most people don't have a clue, they just try to make appeal to the authority of science, without really understanding what it is.

But by and large what they are referring to is "inductive reasoning". - In contrast to deductive reasoning (which dominated science since Aristotle) inductive reasoning is testing and refining hypotheses by observing, measuring, and experimenting. It was systematically introduced to "science" in the seventeenth century by Francis Bacon.

Now the problem is in theoretical physics that for the most part, there is rarely anything tangible to observe, measure, or experiment on, is there. (Of course you have the CERN collider which aims to add this element of observe, measure, and experiment to the theoretical work, but most of the time observing, measuring, and experimenting is impractical. And noting their work rarely begins from observation either).

So for the most part, 99.9% of the time, what theoretical physicists do is leaps of logic and guesswork. They put these leaps into the language of mathematics and see do those leaps make sense in the exact language odf mathematics.

Actually what all science consists of is a series of best guesses, at heart. You then draw on logic and mathematics and so on to develop a theory that supports your best conjecture (as an experienced scientist, in other words, we are typically talking about educated guesses).

And when you have the theory satisfactory, when it stands up to peer criticism perhaps, then you try and go out and test it in the real world to try and find a case that disproves it (not proves it).

For example when Einstein made his leaps of logic and guesses to work out his general theory of relativity in mathematics, he then went and sought out some phenomenon that might disprove his theory. He was lucky in being able to get Arthur Eddington on an expedition to Africa to observe an eclipse of the sun, to observe starlight passing close to the sun to see if it was deflected in agreement with his idea. Einstein said, "If the redshift of spectral lines due to the gravitational potential should not exist, then the general theory of relativity will be untenable."

But much of his time, as a scientist, was spent in leaps of logic and best guesses.

Anyway, people guffaw for various reasons at the true statement that science consists of "... leaps of logic, it's guesswork...". That's because they don't understand what the man is saying - they don't know what this scientist knows, they know only what they themselves know, and they judge his statement on that basis, on their own ignorance.

This is a terribly common affliction in the internet age.

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

Or here's another one from a renowned "leftist":.

"... the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it..."

I'd personally add to come and study posters like Jambo and the Arsefields crowd on fora like these - you get infantile, animalistic, primitive, religious or ideological zealotry, and psychotic, all in one go.

Anyway, the type of insight she's talking about in the above quote. Is that the type of thing we're supposed to guffaw at? Is it that individuals like Jambo just can't grasp what she's talking about, that it's beyond them?

It seems so. There is some excuse where education is a scarce resource in the world but very little in the 'developed' west. Each one of these clowns who are ill informed about science and operating off ill-informed perceptions would have little knowledge of the process of either proving a conjecture or methods of disproving a conjecture.

They think they understand the words 'theory' and 'conjecture' but they don't and there is very little sign of them comprehending the scientific method of either proving a conjecture or being able to disprove it .

In short there are a lot of educationally underdeveloped people even in the western world. Even in the two-cars-on-the-drive era of measuring development there are still peasants in every nation in Europe and in the United States. A peasant mentality of rejecting anything they instinctively don't like, which is pretty much anything that might disturb their peace of mind and most new ideas will do that to them.

I always get heat and light for pointing out that the stupid, like the poor, will always be with us. Problem is that the stupid in the west have access to mass communication and they are delighted with it and tend to coagulate around their preferred perceptions as they would do in the village pub.

I guess stupidity becomes a common virtue if enough people gather around it.

 

[roc_abilly]

Science never ever proves anything. Ever. Science may only disprove something.

A mathematical "proof" is something different, it is usually some sort of a theorem.

But a theorem rests on assumptions. For example geometry "proofs" rest on Euclid's postulates.

However, consider that Einstein's work undermined those postulates, it showed geometry is non-Euclidean in the terms of reality that Einstein discovered. A more "true" understanding than our previous understanding of it.

No doubt that understanding of reality will in its turn also be superceded in time.

So, point being, science is not about certainty, or knowing something, it is about not knowing, or knowing what you don't know; understanding that you will never know with certainty, that you cannot ever, you may only strive towards understanding, and "the scientific method" is just one tool to help towards that, currently in vogue.

That is one problem that the "stupid" and the crowd on Arsefields have, they cannot deal with uncertainty, they must have certainty. And they therefore demand that the world is cast in a manner they can grasp, with certainty.

They cannot grasp the extent of what they don't know, or deal with it. I personally think that may be the best definition of "stupid. The poor, tragic saps over there.

 

[Mowl]

Nice to see this thread take a completely different track to the one its author intended.

It's actually interesting now, which was never the plan.

 

[roc_abilly]

That is one problem that the "stupid" and the crowd on Arsefields have, they cannot deal with uncertainty, they must have certainty. And they therefore demand that the world is cast in a manner they can grasp, with certainty.

They cannot grasp the extent of what they don't know, or deal with it. I personally think that may be the best definition of "stupid. The poor, tragic saps over there.

It seems to me what drives all the stupidities you witness these days is driven by this incapacity to handle uncertainty, things that are "unknown", ambiguous, unspecifiable, vague, etc.

So, for example, with the Covid virus, rather than deal with the fact of all the unknowns and uncertainty around it all, they found this certainty they desperately sought by asserting that it was all in fact a conspiracy to control them.

That was the one thing that they could say with absolute certainty.

And it's the same with everything else that is in their dogma. Taking another example, look at anthropogenic climate change. No doubt we can never say it is definitely going to happen, that it is defintely man-made, and that it will definitely be catastropic, or predict much about it at all, with absolute certainty.

(But of course any adequate scientific reasoning leads you to the realisation that what you do when you're dealing with possible outcomes that may have infinite costs, even if somewhat low probability - you must take precautions, take action.)

However, rather than deal with that uncertainty, and absence of evidence, and incompleteness of scientific knowledge, and so on, again, these chumps find the certainty they crave by asserting that the whole thing is again another conspiracy to try and control them, and so on.

And you know who one of the very worst idiots with respect to what I'm describing? Yes, the very same radicalised racist "anti-anti-white" numpty who began this thread.

 

[roc_abilly]

Let it be said, there is another form of this type of stupidity we're talking about - ascribing omniscience to "the scientific method".

As I described it above, it is merely a form of reasoning, inductive reasoning, that is one tool to help us to try and better understand nature and reality. It is useful in many things, but it is not the be all and end all.

However, a certain mind-set, often fanatical atheists, look on this form of reasoning, and the dogma that has grown up around it, as like a substitute for God, they think of it as omnipotent and omniscient, you often find.

Not far away at all from the gaseous invertebrate whom mankind invented and called God in previous eras. As yet again, it is like a vast distorted shadow of themselves, and they cringe before it, and the more they do, the more this spectre seems to rob them of their humanity and capability to reason through drawing upon their own innate humanity, that is connected with the rest of humanity.

Just as the religistas did in previous eras, they also do and think stupid and inhumane things in the name of "science", they believe hideous things in its name, for example like how the OP following in the steps of the likes of Mengeles, appears to believe in things like "scientifically" measuring people, and typing them according to "race", drawing on statistical concepts like "averages", etc.

Well this particular tendency is far from confined to the right, you see it in the left a lot as well (assuming certain ideas about differentiating between "right" and "left" viewpoints, etc.)

 

[roc_abilly]

That edited thread title is certainly an improvement. Good lad Jambo, it is a positive development to see you coming around to a less trolling manner of discussion.

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

Let it be said, there is another form of this type of stupidity we're talking about - ascribing omniscience to "the scientific method".

As I described it above, it is merely a form of reasoning, inductive reasoning, that is one tool to help us to try and better understand nature and reality. It is useful in many things, but it is not the be all and end all.

However, a certain mind-set, often fanatical atheists, look on this form of reasoning, and the dogma that has grown up around it, as like a substitute for God, they think of it as omnipotent and omniscient, you often find.

Not far away at all from the gaseous invertebrate whom mankind invented and called God in previous eras. As yet again, it is like a vast distorted shadow of themselves, and they cringe before it, and the more they do, the more this spectre seems to rob them of their humanity and capability to reason through drawing upon their own innate humanity, that is connected with the rest of humanity.

Just as the religistas did in previous eras, they also do and think stupid and inhumane things in the name of "science", they believe hideous things in its name, for example like how the OP following in the steps of the likes of Mengeles, appears to believe in things like "scientifically" measuring people, and typing them according to "race", drawing on statistical concepts like "averages", etc.

Well this particular tendency is far from confined to the right, you see it in the left a lot as well (assuming certain ideas about differentiating between "right" and "left" viewpoints, etc.)

Don't want to derail your valiant attempts to drag the thread out of the mire but we'll disagree on your assumption that science is regarded as inherently omniscient or regarded as such.

Science and the scientific process has the ability to challenge conclusions built in to the process and should not be compared to atheism which I'm sure you are aware is the absence of a belief in a god or gods.

This is where you insert your own construct that atheism is a rival to relief or belief in god which I am sure you know is not a correct assumption.

When a scientific paper is peer reviewed it is checked for flaws in methodology, in translation to experiment and for erroneous or fallacious conclusion.

Belief in the mystical requires none of these things so is basically a human hobby derived from fear and uncertainty which is inherently unscientific.

Category error.

To bring it back to the subject properly I suspect you'll find believers in flat earth can believe in pretty much anything- not because there is any evidence but because they want to. Which puts them more in the 'god' camp of human beings.

 

[roc_abilly]

 

[Buachaill Dana]

Religious loons and far right catholics are completely bonkers.

Ultimately, what sets them apart from the rest of us, is their refusal to embrace the cause of pregnant men and gender queer liberation.

They are definitely the mad ones.

 

[roc_abilly]

Religious loons and far right catholics are completely bonkers.

Ultimately, what sets them apart from the rest of us, is their refusal to embrace the cause of pregnant men and gender queer liberation.

They are definitely the mad ones.

There is a scintilla of truth in this.

Without dragging the thread down this "far right" talking point currently in vogue, let us just make the following observations:

The phenomenon of "pregnant men" out of the whole phenomenon of LGBT+ is extremely small statistically, but the cases are found, the opinions are found, and then amplified on twitter and Telegram, and the qanon types who think of themselves as internet heros saving the world from paedophiles go into a frenzy.

As regards the "liberation" of people who are queer, i.e. anything aside from heterosexual, including those who feel they are more like a man than a woman, even though they have a vagina, and vice versa, well let us note that it is a favourite topic from the "culture wars" of the US and UK and being imported here.

So should the thread be dragged down that road? Does it have any relevancy to the thread topic?

Well, it is true that one side in the "argument" like to draw on a seventeenth century conception of the physical sciences (that deals with inanimate matter), and the dogma of objectivity, to contemptuously dismiss the lived reality and direct experience of transgender people, to deny the experience of people who say that they feel different, and to deny the wisdom of non-Christian cultures that have long recognised these type of people among them, and allowed them room to live, like the Mahu of Polynesia, or the Hirja of India.

So we might conceivably have a reasoned argument along these lines. But it is extremely unlikely. The reason being that that the topic is completely polarised, and full of disinformation.

I mean there is a crusading fervour where anecdotes becomes salient, and one is manipulated into mistaking the partial & anecdotal for a general property. In other words the topic is swamped by statistically tiny events that are discovered, amplified, dwelt upon, discussed at length, say an overt pervert who decides to use a transgender identity to effect his entry into a woman's toilet.

And around these outlier events, an extended "conversation" takes place on the point that the participants wish to establish as having general applicability. A general applicability that goes far beyond its statistical significance, and the specific context it occurred under. And it is constantly emphasised that "conversation" participants are engaged in protecting children, and saving "Western civilisation" to give them moral succour.

I am just pointing to the character of discussion around the topic. I am trying to see is it relevant. No doubt there are ideological elements in evidence in both sides.

I.e. In the transgender groups who are fighting for room to live, who try to foster a lively tribal awareness in order not to lose their dignity and moral rectitude, to become more aware of their peculiarity in their social way of life and recognise their own cultural contributions, who fight back against the undignified mania of adaptive conformity, who try to raise self-confidence in the interest of a normal living together with non-queers, etc.

And also obviously ideological in the form of religion and so called "conservative" ideology in the Catholic and other "far right" groups who are on a crusade to stop the queers, who inadvertently provide the yin to their yang, who try to systemise and amplify the arguments, reasons, logic, why we should look down on these queers, why they might justifiably be discriminated against, why there may be reasons to hate them, for example because they are paedophiles disguised as women etc.

But realistically no discussion is possible. The thread becomes littered with anecdotal, statistically insignificant tweets, with morons crying crocodile tears of righteous indignation over these tweets and selective snapshots.

So do we really want to go down that road? Never mind we all recognise this moron masquerading as "Buachaill Dana" (who I drove off p.ie) and remember how he is an exceedingly tedious one trick pony with his lame efforts to put words into the mouths of his opponents, that is his only argument, to misrepresent his opponent. I.e. A totally boring gobshite of the first order.

 

[roc_abilly]

So yes, towards elucidating the thread topic, we might conceivably talk about cultural relativism. No doubt that may be one ideological element that is in the queer liberation movement.

Honestly though I don't think there is sufficient knowledge about it in most of the posters you typically find on these boards to do justice to the question of whether cultural relativism creates a distorted view of the world, and how so.

Or alternatively we might talk about the ideological outlook that you find in the type of poster that you come across on the likes of Arsefields, who have all these bigotries that they justify by saying that they are doing it for Ireland, for the unborn child, to save the country from George Soros, or from scheming EU bureaucrats, and so on and so on.

In fact I think most of the people who might be tempted to sign up for this forum are much more qualified to talk on the latter rather than the former (they will only repeat interminably boring sound-bites from their "far right" doctrine concerning the former). Wouldn't you agree.

Might we encourage them to plumb their own depths towards the advancement of knowledge on this forum?

Can they defend their own view of the world and its alleged non-distortion, examine their own rationales and ideology in asserting that their view of the world is not of their own agency, that it is more so a reaction to what the queers, the immigrants, the muslims, the globohomo, the deep state pedophiles, the Troika, the EU bureaucrats, the "Bankers", Zionists, George Soros, and so on, impose on them?

So come on, @Buachaill Dana, defend yourself, stop hiding behind your little "ironic" charade, come and talk to us in an intelligent manner, you've got the stage now.

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

Irish social conservatives are easily explainable. It is an island at the edge of Europe after all. Most people in Ireland are three generations from working on the land.

Among the good things that such a background brings, a vivid and well known mythology irretrievably borne of the relationship between the land and people, there are the bad. Like the suspicion of the outsider and unfamiliar ideas and an instinct to reject the new.

'Let no new thing arise' is an old Irish saying and it speaks of the fear of the unknown.