this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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Skeptic

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Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism, sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

What is this from? Sounds old and I really hope this flat earth stuff hasn't been around that long.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

It's the first part of a two-part poem published in Poetry Magazine in 2006.

https://www.onelimited.org/p-cope-01

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It isn't. A lot of popular conspiracy stuff is pretty new and the internet helped their spread.

It does remind me of Galileo's quote "Eppur si muove" (still it moves). Or less directly Feynman's "for a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled".

Reality doesn't care about anyone's opinion.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Flat Earth belief is pretty much as old as writing. Long history here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There are two types of flat Earth belief, and the writing above is definitely the latter, more recent, and willfully ignorance crowd.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

More recent, but still 19th century.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

great poem. My favorite part is "and asks her not to yell". To this day tone policing is a maddening and often unrecognized tool of deflection, particularly on the internet.