The above image was taken in December 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 mission on their way between the Earth and the moon.
But that's all bullshit.
I know because Eddie Bravo says so.
In the infuriating video below Joe Rogan and his assistant Jamie try for an hour to convince Eddie Bravo that the earth is indeed round. If you can last the entire hour, you're a better and more patient person than I am.
What you witness is a man who refuses to believe any rational evidence presented to him. His response to anything Rogan says to him is:
"That's fake as fuck!"
"Says who? The GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS?"
or when pressed to the limit:
"I'm crazy, bro!"
There's really no getting through to him.
Eddie Bravo doesn't appear to be a stark raving lunatic. He's actually a highly accomplished Jui-Jitsu master on par with the likes of the Gracie brothers. He has a dojo across from my work called "10th Planet Jui Jitsu".
He doesn't know dick about astronomy though.
I want to get my son and myself into the sport, but I think my business would be best spent at a facility where the owner actually understands what a planet is.
Eddie isn't just a lone nutcase, however. There's this whole dark part of the internet where people are on a mission to disprove the notion of a round planet. Don't click on the video below, just don't do it. Just understand that I'm not making up Eric Dubay.
Now, I love trolling the gullible just as much as anybody else and I think this movement is about 60% trolling, but there are people out there that are buying it.
I also think it's the most endemic problem facing modern society today.
Pyrrhonian Skepticism
Being a skeptic is healthy. Believing in every conspiracy theory that you come across is not. In the 4th century B.C. greek philosopher Pyrrho established the school of Pyrrhonian skepticism. The purveying belief was that it was impossible to know anything for certain. This is called acatalespia, the belief that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, only to to probability.
Pyrrhonians can be subdivided into those who are ephectic (a "suspension of judgment"), zetetic ("engaged in seeking"), or aporetic ("engaged in refutation").
We are swimming in a aporetic Pyrrhonians right now.
I have no problem with people adopting a philosophy and trying it out for size. I like Stoicism, it's working for me right now.
My problem is with people who are dismissing any evidence which doesn't align with their worldview.
That's not philosophy, it's called being fucking lazy.
These people have every right to exist. Every right to own land, property and express their dogshit views in a free society. Our first amendment protects them.
However, they shouldn't be driving the train in the forward thrust of human progress.
Wouldn't it be weird if the president of the United States was a nutty conspiracy theorist who had a problem with believing anything he didn't agree with?
I'm having trouble coming up with a single thing that Trump has ever said, was presented with contrary evidence about, and then acknowledged he was wrong about.
The birther thing, the "biggest electoral college victory since Reagan", "3-5 million illegal voters"
We could go on and on. He's incapable of discerning reality from delusion and there are still people who believe every word he says.
Trump is beyond hope, it's the masses of sycophants who voted him in that we need to address moving forward.
When Skepticism Turns To Lunacy
I feel like balance is an important factor in facing this problem. The thing is, there are legitimate conspiracies.
In the 60's big sugar paid off scientists to say that saturated fat lead to heart disease. They paid scientists to claim a false correlation between people who ate a diet high in natural saturated fat and the astronomical rise heart disease related deaths. This lead to the "low fat craze" that has lead to astronomic sugar consumption in the Western World and is responsible for our current health crisis.
This is open and shut, no one seriously refutes this today.
The problem with pushing every bullshit conspiracy theory available is that it discredits every legitimate conspiracy that happens to be true.
There's a huge gulf between being a 9/11 truther and a flat earth theorist. In order to find the truth we must have a standard for which a theory can sink or swim and we as a whole must reject the crap that doesn't cut the muster.
I think the problem is that we live in a free society. Not just any free society, but a society so free that we are allowed to believe in stupid crap. There are good ideas, and there are bad ideas. Nazism is a bad idea. How do we know? They lost the second World War.
So if you identify as a member of the Nazi Party, you are literally a loser. The beliefs and worldviews exposed by this form of thinking has failed under scrutiny. You are free to believe in it, but we must be free as a society to call you a loser.
You have the right to believe in what Alex Jones says. Society has a right to shun you for it.
You have a right to be a Trump supporter. Society has a right to call you a sucker.
A Hope For Reason
Alex Jones is feeling the heat for his pizzagate conspiracy and his Sandy Hook false flag claims, we just need to wait for him to deny The Holocaust so that we can be rid of him.
Sean Hannity may not survive the weekend due to his disgusting exploitation of Seth Rich's murder.
Good. When the light turns on then the roaches scatter.
There Was No Abe Lincoln
Have you ever seen Abraham Lincoln with your own eyes?
Then how do you know he was real?
Maybe the South really won the Civil War.
How do you know? You weren't there.
Maybe Confederate society collapsed by the late 1900's and all text books were changed to revisionist history in order to heal the wounds of a divided nation. To save the future generations of Southerners the shame of the failures of their forefathers.
The Union then made up a fictional president who was a hero of the civil war to also disguise the shame of their loss to Robert E. Lee. They changed the text books to make the reunification of North and South more favorable and keep all parties seen in a more positive light.
Look at the FACTS MAN!
The Abe Lincoln conspiracy is not really a thing.
I literally made it up right now.
The problem is that there are people gullible/naive/stupid enough to believe this crap that I just improvised on the fly.
How's About We Address The Kids On The Fence?
We shouldn't need Metabunk.com, but it turns out we do.
The founder Mick West is doing a service to disprove the most egregious conspiracies like chem trails and flat earth by displaying simple test and literature that the most simple-minded conspiracy theorist can do at home.
All of it costs less than sending Eddie Bravo into space.
“Think for yourself, question authority.”
But don't be a sucker with a bad case of cognitive dissonance. Leary left that last part out.
I think it's important that we address this. Our only way forward is the belief that reason is the only true north star. If we can't agree on what reason is, then there is no way we can move forward as a society.
It's gotten us into a heap of mess politically and we can't make the same mistakes moving forward.
-Love,
Phil, the "Round Earth Shill"