Netflix: "Behind the Curve" (doc about flat Earthers)

Cafe Society
1

Since it’s a movie I’m putting this is CS, but I suppose it could go in GD.

I found it very interesting. While it was certainly critical of the ridiculous belief in a flat Earth, it was actually somewhat sympathetic towards the members as flawed (who amongst us isn’t) and often lonely people looking for someplace to belong.

It’s an examination of the psychology of conspiracists more than a critique of their beliefs.

There are people whose whole identity is wrapped up in this belief.

Some have built their livelyhood around it (and yes I am skeptical of the sincerity of some of those).

They have conventions which are attended by people from all over the world. Parents bring their children. They’re determined to get respect and equal time for their beliefs.

It strikes me that in some ways they represent extreme skepticism and extreme gullibility at the same time. It’s like the two ends of the spectrum wrap around and meet.

They’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars conducting experiments involving gyroscopes and lasers in an attempt to falsify the ideas that the Earth moves and that the surface is curved. When the results show that the Earth does move and the surface is curved, they desperately look for the experimental errors that they’re certain they must be making.

I get the impression that the movement is growing, and that’s obviously disturbing.

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To me, this is one of the most dramatic observable impacts of the internet, the ability to find cohorts and amplify specious beliefs through group confirmation. But I guess that’s kinda the backbone of why it exists?

[old man voice]Back in my day, if you had a crackpot notion you had to drive into the city and find a cheaply published newsletter about it![/old man voice]

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Did the documentary estimate how many people belong to the “Flat Earther” movement?

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I think I recall members claiming large numbers (millions?) but I don’t recall the doc reaching any conclusions.

It may be impossible to say. There are conventions, and chapters, and meetup groups, but I don’t think there are any official membership lists.

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It baffles me that as a species, our knowledge marches forward and human kind is now smarter than ever in the way the world works, yet there are still groups like flat-earthers or anti-vaxxers desperate to march backwards.

6

I just watched this, but I was very puzzled by exactly some of the things you (davidm) mentioned / observed.

“It’s an examination of the psychology of conspiracists more than a critique of their beliefs.” - This is true, and though that made it very “hard 2 watch” with a capitol 2 (especially him and that lady, good lord! I had to look away and watch through my fingers…) it surprised me as well.

I, like you by the sounds of it, both thought this was going to be a little more substantive in terms of documenting and/or evaluating/refuting the compelling “evidence” that these people are so convinced by. They pay little more than lip service to it and it ends up being a fluff piece about these 2 serially lonely people and their blog lives.

I enjoyed the message from the nasa/jpl guy at the bar, that as “learned”/“educated”/“ambassadors-of-science” it is our responsibility to reach across the divide and be friendly, engage, discuss, convince, explore, and debate with people like the flat earther’s. It reminded me a lot of the speech from Traffic (movie based on british television show, about the drug war(s)), roughly paraphrased as “a war on drugs is a war on our own children, a war on our own communities, and against our own families. A war in which the enemy is also the victim, and all of us are their abusers.” Also that guy (I believe a psychologist) who also strongly urged people to not engage in social/societal pariah-ism, that it is as unthinkable and anti-intellectual now as it was when the church used it for more than a millennia. He said something like “They have been backed into the corner” and it will take some significant effort to get them out again and make them useful to society and no longer “lost”. They were pushed there by lack of interest and lack of empathy, he said it was exactly the same as the teacher blaming the student for failing, and I believe he could not be more right.

The central thesis of “Behind the curve” evident from the title alone, is that these people are dumb which makes the above sentiments the outliers; disingenuous and inconsistent with the larger message of the film.

Which brings me to the reason I am here, at the venerable straightdope (news you can’t abuse) to ask a simple question that is MESSING WITH MY MIND!

“Behind the curve” appears to be all social/psychological but, perhaps just for face-saving, can’t help but take a few potshots at those “behind the curve” while saying literally a couple of nice things about them. It does this by attempting to have the self-proclaimed flat-earth experimenters DISPROVE THEMSELVES?!?!?!

  1. This is insane, discredited people (that are “Behind the curve” and lack/eschew education) can’t prove things anymore… even if they subsequently prove something that agrees with your point. There were caltech people, real scientists, but they all talked about psychology and how “sad” it all is. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. However, I know how hard it is to make an entertaining documentary and so forgive the makers for their insane error.
  2. The “proof” from the experimenters, that appears to disprove that the earth is stationary, shown in the documentary is mind blowing, cuckoo-bananas, has anyone-in-here-even-seen-a-physics-textbook level crazy. Again, people who make films by and large know NOTHING of science (even the optics required for their cameras :() so I forgive them, but I have to post here now as a result…

They show a laser gyroscope that they purchased, supposedly $20,000, used in planes and satellites and spacecraft and then explain their “incredible findings” that would be “very bad for the flat-earth community” - “it would be very bad” says the fat credibility-less asshole, assuredly. What they supposedly found/measured was the motion of the world (rotation speed I believe). They supposedly repeated the experiment putting the laser gyroscope within boxes made from bismuth and other material hoping to stop absorption of “heavenly energy” that might be throwing off the test.

I am aware of the michelson-morely experiments, and was taught in HIGH-SCHOOL that there is no experiment you can do to prove that you are moving (inside a stationary inertial frame). I know that no matter how you orient the apparatus, the worlds motion (either through space or rotating about an axis) cannot be detected in any way shape or form, and Michelson-Morley and many others since with far greater accuracy have found the same (though the original accuracy from the 1900’s was fine! They made the thing huge to compensate.).

Q: With so many qualified people in the movie, why would this be put forward as the central reason disproving or casting doubt on their beliefs? Just to show how profoundly uneducated and stupid they are? It ends up very much showing the same about the makers of the movie… Has science changed since I was a lad, and now we have a device that can measure the rotational speed of the earth (or speed through the aether?)? I know we now have a device that generates vector thrust without expelling any material, and the emdrive may be an even more impressive example of that too, so I know things like this are not impossible (more exists in heaven and earth…) and basic “givens” taught in high-school are routinely found to be incorrect.

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Sure, but they believed that the gyroscope would be prove motion or no motion, and when it didn’t work (according to their beliefs) they rejected the results. This says something about their psychology.

Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t the laser experiment to measure curvature a valid test?

I agree about it being difficult to watch in places.

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Thinking about this some more, doesn’t a Foucalt pendulum demonstrate the Earth’s rotation and, if it does, why wouldn’t a gyroscope? Rotation is acceleration, right?

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I started a GQ thread on the gyroscope question.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=871576

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Crossposting here from the other thread, but Foucault coined the term gyroscope and more or less invented it exactly to demonstrate the earth’s rotation in a more satisfactory manner than his pendulum.

Link

It is thus quite ironic that flat earthers are using a gyroscope of all things to demonstrate the opposite of what it was invented to prove.

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Also, I have no clue what that bit about not being able to observe earth’s rotation. A Foucault pendulum demonstrates it nicely.

Even the bit about Michaelson-Morley is not correct. That experiment proves earth isn’t moving through an ether but that’s different from a proof that earth doesn’t move at all. There are literally infinite numbers of inertial frames of reference in which earth can be measured to be moving. I have no clue what ‘stationary’ inertial frames of reference is supposed to mean. Any ‘stationary’ frame has to be measured against some preferred frame, which does not exist.

Also, inertial means inertial. Rotation is most definitely non-inertial so there’s also that out the window.

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So a gyroscope can be used to demonstrate the Earth’s rotation, just as I thought.

So these flat-Earthers did an experiment, it proved them wrong, and they refused to accept that result. What they’re doing is more akin to religion than science.

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Dunno personally I pretty skeptical of the entire movement. Not the fact the earth isn’t flat, the fact there is actually a serious group of people who genuinely think it is.

I am not at all convinced the “flat earth” movement as a whole isn’t actually just trolls, who are fully aware the earth is not flat, but are happy to say it is to get a rise out of people (and a ton of attention like this documentary). I mean there may be a deluded minority of people who do genuinely believe it, but IMO it is just that a minority (even within the flat earth movement).

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That very thought has been in the back of my mind. One thing that seemed off about the documentary was the scene where two guys were talking about how the gyroscope test results should be kept under wraps, presumably until they could find and correct the supposed error. If they want to keep the results secret then why talk about it on camera?

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That’s how a “gyrocompass” works - it uses the effect of the Earth’s rotation to find north.

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@Great Antibob - I had never heard that focault invented the gyroscope, I love those things… how did I not know this? I am also vaguely aware (though I definitely need to give myself a refresher) that focaults pendulum demonstrates the rotation of the earth. However, they purchased a laser gyroscope (Ring laser gyroscope - Wikipedia), not a gyroscope. It is much more like an interferometery setup, and has no moving parts. I refreshed my memory a bit, and found that Michelson–Gale–Pearson experiment - Wikipedia actually did detect the rotation of the earth (no motion through space), and that this is the exception to my not-so-steadfast “there is no experiment you can do to prove that you are moving” rule. So I guess with a very accurate one on a small scale today it could actually be possible to measure the rotation of the earth (which seems to be likely what they did in the movie). Thanks for helping set me straight, it was bugging me!

@davidm - yeah, that scene showing them afraid of it “getting out” directly into the camera is another slightly “bogus” performance. I guess also displaying their ideas for “making the experiment work” for them by putting it in boxes of various materials was pretty hokey too. If you were committed to believing/rationalizing that the earth is flat, why not accept that it rotates too? Seems far simpler than “heavenly energies”… Thanks to you as well for starting this thread, and the other one to help answer my question!

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But that’s kind of the point of the documentary - it explores why people do this.

To dismiss people who believe in this sort of nuttery as just stupid is really inaccurate. A lot of smart people believe in nuttery. Rather, I think you will find a common thread amongst people who believe in nuttery, or who belong to odious groups, or even just succumb to any number of social contagions or join weird in-groups is a need to belong, to be accepted, to find meaning. People long to be a part of a group. We are social creatures, and the acceptance and approval of others is something we must have. If you lack that in your life, you will seek it wherever you can find it. Most of us find it in family, friends, and more conventional social settings, but some find it in very odd places indeed.

And so if you try to convince a Flat Earther the world is what it is - round - to you that is a simple argument based on fairly rudimentary observation and logic. But to the Flat Earther (or a member of any number of strange and often ridiculous beliefs or groups) you are not challenging a matter of empirical observation. You are challenging their very self-worth. You are challenging them to abandon a big part of what gives them a sense of meaning and belonging. That’s incredibly hard.

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Ditto. Without knowing what they really believe in, it’s difficult to ascertain what is going on. Calling them stupid, or anti-science or whatever is all meaningless if they are just trolling, which given some the Onion-like claims they make, seems quite plausible.

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I believe the people who are investing money in this and going to conventions are true nutters. But what I think Mark fails to realize WRT membership, is that the majority of people signing up online or engaging in other social media, are probably just currious onlookers, or people looking to troll Flat Earthers.
Also, I don’t like how they ended it. I would have liked to seen how they explained away why the laser test didn’t work.

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I do not “believe” in Bigfoot, but I went to a “Bigfoot Convention” a few years ago just to look at the wackos. The problem was, the people I spoke with there were like me, just looking at the wackos.