Had a long conversation today with a few friends and someone... well... let's say: from the other side. He believes that nothing we know or see today is real, science is all wrong, the whole world is one big conspiracy and has been for the last 300 years, gravity doesn't exist and more of that. I like the guy, but it was difficult not to call him what I thought he was: a complete and total nutcase.
View article
View summary
Had a long conversation today with a few friends and someone... well... let's say: from the other side. He believes that nothing we know or see today is real, science is all wrong, the whole world is one big conspiracy and has been for the last 300 years, gravity doesn't exist and more of that. I like the guy, but it was difficult not to call him what I thought he was: a complete and total nutcase.
He took the classic approach: using difficult words, suggesting all his claims are self-evident, and that we should do our own research. I'm not easily impressed by difficult words; I took Latin and Greek in school, so I usually have a reasonable idea of what a word means even though I've never heard it before. None of the words he used were new to me anyway. Furthermore, it's very difficult to convince me that I'm wrong without some really convincing arguments, and most importantly: I have done my research.
We got into a rambling story where three things kept popping up: "heliocentric world view", "second law of thermodynamics" and "cognitive dissonance". The heliocentric world view was wrong, he stated, without pointing out what was wrong with it. Only thing I could come up with, was that we no longer see our sun as the center of the universe, but he wasn't very clear if that was the real problem with it. He insisted that it was one of the pillars of what was wrong with science though.
The second law of thermodynamics, according to him, meant that earth would never be able to keep its atmosphere, "because of entropy". All those gass molecules would randomly go this way and that, and would simply "disappear" in space. Pointing him at the concept of gravity resulted in a giggle. There is no such thing as gravity, he said. The fact that an object falls slower in water than in air clearly proves that, he maintained. I tried to let him explain why what was, but to no avail: he kept circling back to "heliocentric world view", "second law of thermodynamics", "cognitive dissonance" and that I should do some research.
After having gone in circles for a while, I asked where he got all those theories. He claimed that it was "common sense", that "hundreds of millions" knew and that I could readily find all the evidence myself. I told him that I wasn't new to doing some research, both online and off, but that I always found the other stuff, the carefully constructed lies. When I asked him to show me some of his sources, he tried to give me some more of the "do your own research", but I insisted and eventually he sent me this:
https://globeterminator.com/The man behind this, he claimed, was a PhD, retired after a long life in the scientific world. What I read is:
I have a quite substantial background in: Quantum Mechanics, Genetics, and Biochemistry. I am also Retired Military with half my career spent in Reconnaissance —the other half is ‘Need-To-Know’
I assume he had hoped I would just accept this "quite substantial background", and accept all his claims as the truth. Well, surprise: I don't.
I don't know where this is going to end. As I said, I like the guy, but he's quickly losing my respect with this babbling. In Dutch we call this kind of people "wappies", nutcases. I'm growing more and more allergic to wappies, they seem to be contagious. I loved watching Jordan Klepper interview wappies at Trump rallies, but that was far away in America. Nowadays we have them here too: the same circular reasoning and rejection of reality. I even have one in my own family...
