Unlike God, aliens, public policy, or which way the toilet paper roll goes, the shape of the planet is absolutely provable. I was joking around with Jimmy, my flat earth (and architect, father, homesteader, truth seeker, gardener, aspiring beekeeper) buddy, the other day. “Man, we sell a lot of honey, build a rocket, bet each other a C note, and have a look…one of us is gonna lose.”
“True!”
It all started a while ago.
The Past
A cold February evening in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC, sometime in the past
“Whatcha got there?” they asked.
“A telescope, dude. Have a look at the moon.”
“Wow…! Hard to believe…”
“I know, right?”
“That we’ve been there!”
“Ohhhh man, you got me. Hey, perfect, been wanting to talk about this. Do you think the earth is flat?”
“Kind of.”
And so begin an unlikely friendship. The start was a bit rocky, with a debate, pointing at the telescope, gradual cooling and calming, and then, listening. “Jimmy and Joe” went to the National Prayer Breakfast and then back to Oklahoma, I went back to my secular temple of astronomy books in Maryland, and all returned to normal. We followed each other on social media.
The conversation seemed vital, but I couldn’t figure out why. Not like I’m gonna make an international shipping company with these guys. Who cares what shape the earth is?
I’m against sneaky conversions. I didn’t want to gradually prove a point. Still a moral relativist then, I certainly wasn’t ambivalent about the fact that the earth is either round, or it’s not. (Important note: I think it’s round, Jimmy does not, and we both agree that one of us is wrong. We’re not both right.)
Jimmy and Joe brought up the moon landing.
“But why would a big scientific institution lie?” I asked, shivering in the February cold. “It would be so easy for someone to speak up if they saw something wrong.”
It was early 2020.
In about a month, I’d have the first clues to why that conversation could save the world.
(Mine would end first.)
Eagle Rock
How life has changed.
“I dunno, man. Life was better in 2015.”
“Was it?” Jimmy challenged. “You’re out in the country now, keeping bees, breathing fresh air.”
“Yeah…yeah…you’re right. I guess it was just easier to not have to think.”
The “commute” wound through deep woods, suddenly opening into vistas, orange day lilies waving from the roadside bank, blue mountains towering in the distance. Up and up to the heights, Crest of the Blue Ridge read the parkway sign, then plunging down switchbacks hewn from ancient rock. Skirting the river, waving at cows, hurrahing at a timely coal train roaring through green valleys with black diamonds from the mines of West Virginia.
Eagle Rock Library, next left.
I took it.
Three years after Jimmy and Joe stopped by the telescope, I had an idea of what we were talking about. If only I could explain it convincingly to the folks who stopped by for the evening talk I was there to host.
Flat Earths and Blind Spots
Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion ranks as a top five most influential book in my life.
He asserts that people operate from intuition first, then logic.
Note in this chart person A’s reasoning does not talk to person B’s reasoning, but their intuition. (Another example of why infographics don’t work.)
A more colorful way to visualize it involves elephants and riders.
The book is an essential read for anyone wishing to make the world a better place. One of the key points I learned from it is: One must talk to elephants (intuitive/impulsive/subconscious mind) and not riders. At minimum, make the elephants comfortable.
Not a Conversion
Why bother? Sure, it’s a more pleasant neighborhood, but wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could be persuaded of the Truth?
Not so, says Haidt. (And possibly Aristotle, but I can’t remember.)
For no one person or school of thought has total monopoly on Truth. There’s always a blind spot. As such, we need each other to see the whole Truth.
What about the shape of the earth? There’s a right answer, and a wrong answer. Yet the debate continues.
Continues about what?
Obviously, the obvious. While that seems important, I think there’s something even more pressing.
Jimmy and Joe’s “elephants” are keenly trained to sense corruption, a “drug-sniffing subconscious”, if you will.
I stood on that cold February pavement, naively conflating the Scientific method with scientific institutions.
As a partial result of my blindness, the sky fell on my head, the world forever changed, the phrase Trust the Science (antithetical to truth and progress) was spawned, and…
I wrote a book about the result of the lockdowns in the nursing homes.
The spirit of intellectual rigor (and common decency) leaves open the debate: How bad was the response to COVID?
It’s a debate we should have, but we seem to be forgetting it too quickly. My aim here is not to offer my own opinion, but to witness what I saw, and unearth the mechanics of the conversation.
One More Chart
Here’s one that I thought up. The redder the box is, the more possibility for corruption.
The Truth (shape of the planet): It’s round (or not.) It’s transcendent of people, and not round for me, and flat for Jimmy. It’s pure, unaltered by humans.
The Scientific Method: Not the only method for arriving at Truth, but a good one. Fairly intact, although in the realm of humans.
The Theory: If it’s not corrupted by funding, errors, politics, faulty equipment, human limitations, etc - we can work with it.
Institutions: It’s not a question of if, but how much corruption is present. (Have you been to a club lately?) But: vital for any significant progress. We can’t both reinvent the wheel and a quantum computer at the same time.
The Average Joe: We wonder about the universe, and must move through the steps above us to reach the truth (usually). We hold the redeeming power of curiosity and skepticism. We’re also profoundly stupid, loving, brilliant, evil, and angelic.
Note that “Scientism”, a rigid, religious attitude (“Trust the Science”) stops at the Theory level. It’s a danger to the integrity of science in an abstract sense, and directly impacts us if left unchecked. It’s also not science.
In Closing
A foreign idea is threatening. “Why do you think it makes people so mad?” Jimmy asked. (We talked the other day. I ran this talk by him.)
I think that thinking is hard. It’s painful to hold opposing ideas, do research, exercise judgement. When I finally get a house of mental cards built, I resent it if someone knocks it over, especially at a foundational level.
I still think the earth is round. Jimmy and Joe still think it’s flat. But I’ve been humbled to realize their questions and ideas pointed out the blind spot that almost was the ruin of us all, and the question before us:
How do we manage corruption in intuitions?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. (Well…maybe I wouldn’t. But I need to hear them.)
)By the way, the talk went well. A good conversation was had by all, nobody got mad, and we all moved forward as a species. So, that’s a win.)
Treasures from Earth
It’s fitting to end with some thinking music. Enjoy the beauty and order of J.S. Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1”, as played by Thomas Schwan.
Keep at it, folks. We’re counting on you!
Josh