The famous basketball player Shaquille O'Neill has declared that he is a supporter of the theory of flat Earth. Despite comic tone of the message, it has made media headlines at once and has caused a rough discussion among conspiracy theorists.
RT has taken an interest at the psychologist why marginal Society of flat Earth becomes a mainstream and why people begin to trust in more and more improbable things.
Legend of NBA, the center player Shaquille O'Neill has told that he shares a position of playing Cleveland of Kayri Irving who has declared that Earth flat.
"It is an honest truth. The earth is flat. Listen, there are three ways to manipulate consciousness: by means of what we read we see and we hear. The first that we are taught at school to: Columbus has peddled old stuff. However think: when he has reached here, has met the red-skinned people with long hair smoking pipes of peace. Means, Columbus didn't peddle old stuff" — O'Neill during the podcast has told The Big Podcast. The legendary basketball player after this discouraging statement has continued to urge on the co-hosts.
Several weeks earlier playing team player "Cleveland Kavalirz" Kayri Irving has made the similar statement, however later has declared that he has only joked. Similar comedy comments of the famous athletes have caused an alarm in the American segment of the Internet, as it has appeared, society of supporters of flat Earth becomes more and more popular.
Society of flat Earth is the marginal organization even in opinion of various conspiracy theorists and alternative historians of the USA following on a trace of the UFO, the Bigfoot and Masonic plots. So, the popular conspiracy channel on YouTube Secure Team has nearly one million subscribers and regularly posts video with allegedly alien objects and muddy photos of bases of newcomers on the Moon. In one of the published materials authors of the channel have expressed a regret "the growing number of the people regressing in this ancient belief". The channel has been immediately attacked by thousands of followers of Society of flat Earth.
Society on the website declares that it is guided by exclusively scientific principles. According to the adherents of the theory resorting to a method of Cartesian scepticism, the burden of the proof lies on all who believe that Earth has spherical shape. To it they regard certificates as insignificant or fabricated. At the same time they with pleasure publish videos from a low orbit which are allegedly proving that Earth flat.
"The most reliable proof of flat Earth is the experiment with Bedford level. Carried out many times on a piece of a surface of the water long to six miles, he has shown results which prove lack of curvature of the land surface" — it is said on the website of society.
The experiment to which the organization refers has been conducted by the English inventor and the founder of society Samuel Roubotem in 1838.
Members of society claim that our planet is a flat disk of 40 000 kilometers in the diameter, with the center near the North Pole. Also adherents of this theory deny existence of gravitation and the South Pole instead of which around a disk the huge wall of ice stretches.
Followers of this theory declare that all photos of Earth from space are generated on the computer, and the belief in spherical Earth supports a global plot of the governments and scientists. Space flights are deception, and disembarkation to the Moon has been removed by joint efforts of Stanley Kubrick and Andrey Tarkovsky according to Arthur Clark's scenario.
Society makes a huge number of Internet content, literally filling up the supporters and opponents with various "proofs": from obscure mathematical formulas to lists of quotes from the Bible. Has reached that Christian fundamentalists were even up in arms against followers of flat Earth. The radical Baptist preacher Stephen Anderson, itself extending conspiracy theories about the world government, has opposed with an angry tirade followers of society.
Many alternative journalists, historians and conspiracy theorists have made the assumption that behind Society of flat Earth there can be government intelligence agencies which want to make a laughing-stock any alternative views of the world.
RT has addressed for the comment the candidate of psychological sciences Alexander Neveev. The scientist has explained that there are two reasons for which people can suddenly begin to perceive antiscientific postulates seriously.
"The first — external in relation to the person. We receive a huge number of information in the form of specially prepared information packages. Just report to us about something, and we take it on trust. It is absolutely normal as we don't need to learn all by own experience. It isn't necessary to go to America to learn as there live people. But side effect of it is that people have a misunderstanding and fears that some forces can distort any information. Media sate the person with news, the facts but nobody is anxious with development of their understanding. As a result we have a similar situation. Our globe was seen with own eyes by nobody, only in photos, respectively perhaps huge number of insinuations" — the psychologist has told.
"The second reason is that ours in reason systems of mistakes — cognitive distortions and heuristics are initially put. Under the influence of these distortions we are inclined to consider our version of events of the most plausible. The person doesn't look for a denial to the beliefs. Our mind functions by the principle of cognitive ease — what doesn't strain us, we are inclined to consider the truth. Actually it is illusion. Conspiracy theories operate a problem of the fact that we can't directly bring to the person evidence of the return — to send him into orbit and to show that Earth round. To explain them mathematically, astronomically parameters which have forced scientists to come to such conclusion, very difficult. To tell that scientists have told lies also Earth plainly, very easily, and to apprehend it very easily" — the expert has concluded.
source: http://www.kramola.info