As we were all taught from a young age, the world is round. To the vast majority of people any suggestion otherwise is ludicrous. Most would assume that the flat earth conspiracy theory must be a satire of other theories, but there’s a real and growing contingent of people who un-ironically believe the world is flat.
Up until recently flat earth conspiracy theorists were simply a niche group that most people didn’t even know existed. However, a number of factors have recently combined to make more people aware of the theory, and has even converted some. Firstly, trust in the government has fallen to new lows, creating an environment ripe for conspiracy theories in general. Secondly, NBA star Kyrie Irving recently said on a teammates podcast that he believed the world was flat. This got the flat earth conspiracy theory into the mainstream, and has since been discovered by millions of people. The vast majority of people who hear about it simply dismiss it as another crazy celebrity, but younger, more impressionable minds have started to think of the conspiracy as a valid concept. In a recent NPR interview middle school teacher Nick Gurol said that in his class a significant amount of students have started to believe in the flat earth conspiracy, and he cites Kyrie Irving as the reason why. The impact that celebrities have on the viewpoints of the population as a whole cannot be underestimated.
To the average person it would seem that this conspiracy could be easily debunked. After all, there are thousands of videos and images available that clearly show that the Earth is round. You can even see the curvature of the earth from an airplane in some instances. Conspiracy theorists manage to explain away most of these explanations with a fundamental lack of trust in the government. Not just the government of the United States, or NASA, but every government in the world. According to flat earth conspiracy theorists the fact that you can see the curvature of the earth from an airplane is dismissed simply as an optical illusion. These are outlandish arguments, but many of these conspiracy theorists are caught in a loop of confirmation bias where they only seek out or acknowledge information that reinforces the views they already hold.
Many, such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson, lament the quality of our education system for this wave of anti-scientific sentiment we’re seeing in the country. Sizable contingents of people in the country still reject scientifically proven facts. Some examples being those who still deny that climate change is occurring and those who are so called “anti-vaxxers”. While a lack of education may play a role on this, I think the people’s total loss of trust in the government is more to blame. After all, everybody who attended elementary school was educated about the solar system and the shape of the Earth, but that didn’t stop some of those people from going to thinking that the Earth is flat. Kyrie Irving even went to Duke, a renowned university, and he still believes it. If this wave of anti-scientific sentiment is to be stopped trust in the government must somehow be restored.
