Of Course I Am Not a Flat Earther, But Now I Understand Them Better
I have paid no attention to "flat earthers," people who believe that the earth is flat. I'm well educated (graduated with honors from Stanford in 1964), and I know better. Besides, the concept was never mentioned when I was in school, unless it was described as a quaint idea from previous centuries. But this week I came to understand better how someone could believe that or any number of things.
My husband and I watched a program one evening that kept me awake thinking about the implications. In this show, it was explained that on Google or Facebook (but not limited to them), what you are shown is directly related to what you have watched there before. So over time, this leads to different groupings of people. If you believe X and I believe not-X, we will be shown posts that support our points of view. The social media use algorithms to instantly calculate what someone should see. So different people get different views of "reality."
This is not good news. You can imagine that such algorithms could add to the divisiveness in the world. Hence my loss of sleep. The show is on Netflix and is quite current, and its title is something like The Social Dilemma.
It did change my view of people and how thinking happens, doesn't happen, and happens in such different ways.
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We can speculate that if Facebook were around in Christopher Columbas' day he wouldn't have been able to recruit the crews for the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. But that might have been a good thing..
Another related anecdote - I remember feeling cheated by my school learning that "everyone thought the world was flat" until Copernicus to whoever. Then I found out that Aristotle and his buddies knew the Earth was a sphere from observations they made of lunar eclipses seeing that the shadow of the Earth was always a disc. And the only object whose shadow is always a disc is a sphere.
Sorry - it doesn't take much for me to shift into pedantic-mode.
Interesting. I swear sometimes they read my mind too. There are things that I just THINK about (don't discuss on FB or even on the phone, don't Google, nothing) and a post or ad will come up addressing EXACTLY what I was thinking. This and Alexa creep me out. 😊
The implications of that show are also disturbing. As if we don't have enough division already.............. 😡
~Debbi
I agree with you the earth is flat.....no wait a minute, that is not right.
There are many programs that are showing us what they think we want to see, and I really do not like this. I have always been curious about many things and having some algorithms decide what I want to see, really sticks in the back of my throat.
It is probably as simple as the age old axiom "That I do not like to be told to do something". I prefer to reach my own conclusion and act alone. (These days I can never be sure it is my own thought process driving what I do).
I still think I have some control over my life, but it is dwindling.
I will watch the Social Dilemma - thank you.
Alex
True 'flat -earthers' can put together a pretty convincing case to back their cause but I am always wary of 'discussions' where one side is not prepared to cede anything at all.
I mean, every photograph you ever see is flat.
But if you leave an old photos in a drawer for a few years they will curl over time. Maybe that is an attempt to restore the representative curvature of the Earth?
Maybe it is. I can't remember all of the counter arguments but I do remember the futility of trying to hard to change their point of view.
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Hi Rosana
Thank you for sharing the link to this article.
Yeah, it is amazing to know how easy it is for us all to become indocrinated! I grew up in a country at war and once the war was over, my head was in a complete spin. The propaganda from all sides was something else.
Social media really is a force to be reckoned with from all standpoints - most especially political.
From a business perspective its best we pay attention to this space.
Blessings always
Louise