Understanding Cognition: The Dissonance Of Flat Earth
Carrying on with our series on cognitive biases, today I want to talk about cognitive dissonance and how it effects people in general, and more specifically flat-earthers.
Cognitive dissonance is what a person feels when something they believe in strongly, is challenged by new evidence.
This is why flat earthers are the perfect group of people to study cognitive dissonance. Because if a person believes the earth is flat, they are bombarded every day with evidence to the contrary. Therefore the amount of dissonance they feel is so manifested that it makes it very easy to view and study.
To experience cognitive dissonance live; show this pic to a flat earther and ask them to explain it.
A Cold Dissonance
Let's take a look at how cognitive dissonance might arise in the first place with a good old thought experiment.
Imagine a person who has for some reason managed to grow up in Antarctica. More specifically in the Soviet Vostok Station, which is officially the coldest place on earth.
Let's call this person Sam. Now even though Sam's parents are polar scientists, they somehow don't know very much about the world beyond the ice. So they have taught Sam that the sun is made out of a ball of ice.
Sam being the same as all children on earth, is genetically programmed to believe what his parents tell him, and so grows up with the notion that the sun is indeed made of ice.
Then one day as a young man of twenty one years old, he decides that he wants to interact with other human beings and leaves Antarctica to go to Las Vegas.
Whilst in Vegas he goes out to the Nevada desert and he is very hot. He asks a stranger why he is so hot. The stranger looks at him funnily and tells him it's because the sun's heat is so fierce in the desert.
But of course Sam knows the sun is made of ice and doesn't give off heat. Later that night he returns to the desert and notes that it is very cold.
He wracks his brains all night and falls asleep outside. In the morning when the sun rises, Sam is hot again.
At this point Sam is experiencing cognitive dissonance. He knows that the sun is made of ice, he also knows that ice is cold. Yet he feels heat when the sun is present in the sky, and cold when it isn't.
Sam now needs to reduce his cognitive dissonance in order to align his cognitions (perceptions of the world) with the new evidence.
Sam's brain is left with four choices:
Change the behaviour of the cognition - I will stop believing that the sun is a ball of ice.
Justify the cognition, by changing the conflicting cognition - The sun is not creating this heat, it is the sand.
Justify the cognition by adding new cognitions - The air around the earth gets thicker towards the middle and that traps heat made from people breathing.
Ignore or deny information that conflicts with existing beliefs - It is not in fact any hotter here than at the South Pole.
Sam ends up choosing a mixture of choices 2-4, depending on who he's talking to.
Two Sides To The Flat Coin
So back to the flat earthers, or rather two specific ones. A Youtuber called Tigerdan925 and 'Mad' Mike Hughes, the flat earth rocketman.
Tigerdan925 believed that the earth was flat, and so somebody challenged him to draw a flat earth map that worked as well as a 'glober' map.
After several weeks of trying, which involved moving continents around to try and suit his model. He realised that the thing he had believed all of these years was completely ridiculous and quite publicly rejected the notion. In other words he went for option 1.
Mad Mike Hughes built a steam powered rocket that he hoped would somehow get him into space, and bring him back to earth without killing him.
Obviously he didn't get high enough, only around 570 metres (circa 1500 feet). However he did disprove one flat earth model, which is that gravity is an illusion made real by the fact that the earth is accelerating up at 10 metres per second squared (10 m/s2).
If this was the case then anything accelerating quicker than this would be able to get into space. Even though Mike's rocket got to a speed of around 500 k/ph it didn't reach escape velocity and came back down to earth.
Mike plan's to build another rocket, even though a flight in a commercial plane at sunset or sunrise will not only take him much higher, will prove to him that the earth is round. Mike is going for options 2-4.
He chooses to restore the balance that cognitive dissonance has robbed him of, by making more and more elaborate stories to make his theory fit.
Public Denial
What makes Tigerdan925's retraction so amazing, is that it is much harder to retreat from a belief when that belief has been publicly ratified. In other words, if you tell people about your belief, and you even try and convert others to that belief. Then it is very difficult to later walk away from it. However that is exactly what Tigerdan925 managed to do; bravo sir!
As far as Mad Mike's concerned I fear the same won't be able to be said about him. The fact is Mad Mike has had plenty of evidence to show him that his thoughts about a 'frisbee shaped' earth is a complete and utter nonsense.
He also knows there are far better ways to prove that flat earth theory is idiotic at best, wildly dangerous at worst. However he did something that was doomed to failure from the beginning, because that made him feel better.
And there we have it, cognitive dissonance makes us feel bad, and so some of us choose to make that bad feeling go away by making up stories.
For the rest of us, we simply have to deal with the realities of our lives and move on . . .
>Title image: Yvan Musy on Unsplash
[*Cryptogee*](https://steemit.com/@cryptogee)
This is Steemit @cryptogee! Now all the flat-earthers here will flock to your post to try and prove their stance! 😂
I think most people choose number 4, and ignore/block out evidence that challenges their beliefs. Most markedly with politics and science imo.
Remember that this isn't only about flat earth. Probably you and me and even @cryptogee also run into cognitive dissonances from time to time, and choose the wrong strategy.
On a very practical level, I know that sometimes I've managed to get lost by seeing and dismissing strong hints that I'm going in the wrong direction or that I'm in another place than I thought I would be.
Last time I clearly remember that happening, this easter. I even had the GPS with me, and there were signposts also.
We had one incident where the skiing track on the most direct path was completely bad, so we started ignoring the signs. Then the GPS was jumping a bit forth and back, so I decided it was inaccurate and not to be trusted ... but surely, I should have questioned my belief of our position and the route forward rather than ignoring the GPS and signposts for a longer while.
At least, we had a nice trip, even if we were completely exhausted when we arrived.
Once I did a challenge here, where I had to answer 12 questions so people could get to know me better. One of the questions was, "What would be the most surprising scientific discovery imaginable?" And I said that I would be very surprised to find out that the Earth is flat. Sure enough that one tiny part about the Earth being flat turned into a discussion with people who believe differently. So when I saw this, my first thought was here they come!!! Lol
I agree that cognitive dissonance does happen to everyone. In some areas for me, I figure that if I have already looked at all angles of a subject, and have established my belief, there's no longer the need to entertain other perspectives. Maybe because I don't want to feel bad, like @cryptogee said, or burdened with having to prove myself, or maybe just because I'm lazy. 😜
Reading your story, I can imagine how many barriers there must've been before realizing what was really happening and changing your perspective, especially when the information comes from supposedly trusted sources. When I look at my location on my phone, GPS has me a couple blocks away from where I really live, so there's that too... Anyway, glad you enjoyed your trip @tobixen! 🙂
Let them come, I've already done a series showing them how they can win the Nobel Prize by simply explaining certain phenomena.
So far none of them have managed to do so 🤣😂🤣
Cg
They are probably already scared of you then lol.
@snowpea,
Cryptogee dreams of such things. :-)
Quill
It is amazing to think that the earth is flat. So the pictures from space must be gross fabrications then and the earth's curvature when looking at the horizon from a great distances is an optical illusion? The fact that we experience day and night in different times in different places is just the coin flipping? I don't understand. I need to sleep on this.
I saw this youtube comment that sums it up beautifully:
🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
Cg
😂 really everything is perspective. Very funny. People believe weird stuff though
@cryptogee,
Epic. And yet, these people have the right to vote.
Quill
It's just your imagination - if you would be a flat-earther, you wouldn't see any curvature.
The sun goes too far away and it becomes dark.
Neither do I - but actually there are people here on Steemit that believes in the flat-earth-dogma.
I've made two posts on this subject:
There are so may conspiracy theories out there ... and for many of them it can be quite difficult arguing against ... but not so with the flat earth, anyone ought to be able to see with their own eyes that the round earth theory is a more useful theory. I believe that's a good exercise in school: "use scientific methods to find out if the earth is flat or round".
@bleepcoin,
Well, at least they're social. If they serve coffee and donuts ...
Quill
I imagine donuts would be controversial
@bleepcoin,
Ah, yes ... I forgot. A donut ... that's an alternative Earth-shape theory that contradicts the accepted Frisbee-shape model of the planet. Coffee and ... pancakes, perhaps. To be politically correct. Thinkers get hungry and we do need some kind of snack food.
Quill
The universe is really weird. Sometimes in our lives we really need to hear something. Sometimes it gets posted right in our face when we need it most. I'm not a flat earther... but the thought theory is applicable to many other issues of perception. Thank you for a well written post at a, personally, perfect time.
Thank you, I'm glad you found it valuable!
As you say there are many other less remarkable situations we can all experience cognitive dissonance. I just wanted to use flat earth because it is the most impressive example of cognitive dissonance the world has ever witnessed.
Cg
if the earth had been flat... it would have been so much easier for the English Empire to expand and hold that empire together. If i were the queen... i would demand flat earth truths be taught in school. The royal family needs to embrace the flat earth. Dissonance is and essential ingredient to a good monarchy.
@buttcoin,
Touché mate.
Thank goodness there are still a few people left who appreciate the Queen's yeoman-like contributions to the Commonwealth. "Adding cognitive dissonance to the system" ... I never thought of that! A bit of the counter-factual to add spice to the art of science. Nice. Perhaps we could make Deepak Chopra a Baron or something.
Cryptogee, you were right ... the Royals are worth every penny.
Here's the Queen carrying both the Sceptre AND the Orb ... at the same time. And she does it with a smile.
Quill
At some point it becomes maddening lol... I just say along with Ron White...you just cant fix stupid lol.
@old-guy-photos,
That was his best bit ever. To actually make that funny though, takes incredible timing. He has it. He's a great comedian. :-)
If a rocket can sustain an acceleration of 10 m/s^2 over a longer time, then it will be able to escape the gravity of the earth. It does not need to reach "escape velocity" at any point.
According to his world view one will constantly have to accelerate with 10 m/s^2 (and eventually one will hit a ceiling?). According to my world view, the higher you get the less you need to accelerate, and if you direct some of the acceleration sideways one will eventually get into orbit and can stay there without neither falling down nor accelerating.
According to my world view, there exists an escape velocity, meaning that any object reaching that velocity will eventually fly out in space and never get into orbit nor fall back again, without needing to accelerate more. In his world view, escape velocity is the speed one must have for hitting the ceiling? I don't know ...
My point was that earth's escape velocity is roughly 11.2 km/s, about 33 times the speed of sound. This is due to earth's gravitational mass the way Newton describes.
Flat earthers say gravity doesn't work like that (they have to otherwise, gravity would drag us all towards the centre of the earth if we lived on a disc.). Rather they say that we are accelerating upwards at 10 ms/2 (presumably going many millions of times the speed of light at this point in history.)
So if that were the case, the earth's escape velocity wouldn't be 11.2 kilometres per second it would be around 11 metres per second (regardless of acceleration).
So anything going faster than that would simply go straight up into space and wouldn't fall back to earth like Mad Mike's rocket did.
Cg
For all practical purposes, the real figure is higher - due to air resistance. But it doesn't really matter, with rockets and continuous acceleration it's no need to get up in such kind of speeds. Besides, most space transport does not escape gravity, it merely goes up to low earth orbit.
I don't understand your reasoning.
If earth is accelerating, then no matter what speed one jumps with, one will eventually fall down again at some point. While gravity can be escaped by speed alone, continuous acceleration can only be escaped by a greater continuous acceleration.
Wind resistance does play a factor however if you are on a body moving at 10 ms/2 then you too are accelerating. Also you could escape if you jumped at an angle near the edge of said body.
However yes, you would be caught eventually if you carried on going straight up. This doesn't change the fact that escape velocity would be a lot lower than 11.2 km/s though :-)
Although as I said earlier, the earth accelerating upwards theory can be killed by the fact that we're not moving at light speed or more.
Cg
Let's ignore the air resistance for a bit to make it easier. Let's leave out the edges too (no flat-earther has fallen off the edge and lived to tell the tale), and horisontal acceleration.
In this "accelerating pancake"-paradigm, one is accelerating together with the ground as long as one is standing on the ground. The acceleration of the ground exerts a force on your feet (or, more probably, your ass - we've apparently gone from being homo erectus to being homo sedes). As soon as your feet leaves the ground (or someone pulls the chair away from you), you stop accelerating, and the pancake will soon overtake you, with great pain. Exactly the same is observed if we exchange the accelerating pancake with a gravity ball.
This is not a fact, this seems like a misunderstanding. Escape velocity in an "accelerating pancake"-paradigm must be much higher - actually, infinitely high.
When disregarding the above-mentioned complications, when travelling vertically with the escape velocity and without any further acceleration one will eventually leave the system. In the gravity-ball-paradigm one will leave the system because gravity tapers out with the distance. In the accelerating-pancake-paradigm, one will never leave the system. No matter how much vertical speed an object have, the flat earth will sooner or later overtake the object. You can never reach any escape velocity.
Of course, now I'm having a mental model of a pancake accelerating through space in my head. It may be that the details differ. As far as I've heard, there is a dome above our heads, and the starts are attached to said dome (what about the planets?). With that in mind, sooner or later one will hit the dome if travelling too fast. Perhaps it's made of glass and that one will crash through it. Perhaps that's to be considered an "escape" and hence the escape velocity is smaller in the flat-earth paradigm. The only way to find out is to build a rocket powerful enough to actually crash with the said dome. As far as I can tell, Mad Mike did not crash with the dome yet, hence he cannot do any estimations on the escape velocity.
@cryptogee & @tobixen,
Just a quick expansion on what Cryptogee said because a lot of people don't understand what m/s2 means.
The Earth's gravitational pull accelerates an object towards the Earth's center of mass (the center of the Earth) at 9.8 m/s2. What that means, is that every second, an object falls 9.8 meters faster than it did the second before.
So, if you dropped a ball from a tall building, after one second, it would be falling at 9.8 m/s. After two seconds, it would be falling at 19.6 m/s ... and so forth.
Because Earth has an atmosphere, eventually the ball would reach a maximum rate of fall ("terminal velocity") due to air resistance.
What the Flat Earthers are claiming though, is that objects are not "falling down" towards the Earth, but rather that the Earth is "accelerating up" towards the objects.
As the Earth, and its atmosphere, would be accelerating through the vacuum of space, there would be no resistance, and so, the rate of acceleration would continue, unhindered, forever. An additional 9.8 m/s, ever second.
Earth's age (roughly 4.5 billion years), multiplied by an increase in velocity of 9.8 m/s every second, would result in a current velocity of ... a lot ... as Cryptogee stated, many many times the speed of light (I'll leave it to him to do the math).
But where would the energy to create such an acceleration be coming from? Just to accelerate a mass the size of the Earth to 99% of the speed of light would require more energy than all the stars in the observable universe.
Cognitive dissonance, indeed.
Quill
Well, if one does not want to believe in simple Newtonian physics, I see no reason to believe in relativistic physics. Hence speed of light is no problem, and the energy requirement can also be ignored for the same reason.
Even within the relativistic point of view, maintaining such an acceleration is unproblematic - it's a question of reference frames. If someone falls off the edge of the pancake, they will see the pancake accelerate with 9.8 m/s^2, but as the speed between the man-over-pancake and the pancake gets a significant fraction of c, the MOP will see the acceleration of the pancake decrease. The speed of the pancake will grow towards c in an asymptotic way, never reaching c.
This is a great devil's advocate argument by the way!
So @tobixen I would say that when you made this statement, you were 100% correct:
So therefore we can disprove the constantly accelerating disk earth with . . .
aeroplanes!!!
If the earth is constantly accelerating, then every plane that took off would come crashing down to earth as soon as it stopped accelerating and hit cruising speed. Because as you rightly pointed out, (or at least alluded to) the only way to stay at a constant height above the ground in the accelerating pancake model would be to keep accelerating yourself.
Ergo planes would not work unless they were continually accelerating upwards, and landing would be problematic to say the least. :-)
I think even the most logic-deprived flat earther would have problems getting out of that one without using the words; 'because magic.'
Cg
Sorry. As far as I can see, the only difference between the "accelerating pancake"-theory and the "gravitational planet pull"-theory is that the actual g experienced by the airplane at cruising altitude would be a tiny bit less than the actual g experienced on ground. Except for that, both theories are compatible with airplanes flying. The thing that keeps the plane from falling down is aerodynamic lift.
Though, what I do wonder about in the accelerating pancake theory is ... what is keeping the air in place? It should spill over the edges and fall of the pancake as the pancake is accelerating.
I managed to get some quite interesting discussions at my two posts on the flat-earth topic:
Yes I see my old friend @builderofcastles (destroyer of reason) is very prominent in those discussions. In order to keep my sanity I won't read his responses! :-D
Cg
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