What did the flat landers have been right

CBS News recently released a documentary on planar lands: people who say the Earth is flat. According to them, the sun is a small orb in the sky that floats above the Earth.

"We have never been in space, period," said Patricia Steere, one of the leaders of the flat earth movement.

According to the terrible, a massive conspiracy keeps this information secret from humanity. The Flatlands meet online and in person to discuss their theories, even going as far as conducting their own experiments to refute the curvature of the Earth.

"We are supposed to be shooting thousands of kilometers at the time, but we do not feel it," said Netta Hagler, an organizer of the Flat Earth community. "I do not think I'm shooting right now."

The Flatlands are a good documentary, as it is puzzling that anyone could believe such an outdated idea despite meeting aircraft, time zones, telescopes, GPS systems and shadows. Their logic does not crumble after a moderate review?

But there is something deeper here than a ridiculous scientific theory. Earthmen ask a difficult question: how do you know what you know? Does this come from your personal experience? Science? Pictures? Or do you just listen to so-called experts?

A friend of mine has already made a documentary about Flat-Earthers (another documentary, I think?). He said that for every fact he was throwing against the earthlings, they had an answer. It's not that they have not thought about counter-arguments. In fact, they seem to enjoy offering explanations.

"The thing of the flat earth is like all that's left to me, I just want people to question everything," said Michael Hughes, literally made his own homemade rocket and threw himself into the sky to see if the Earth was curved (it was not high enough). "Ask what your congressman is doing, your city council, question what really happened during the civil war."

He has the unpleasant idea that people, including authorities, really lie all the time. We know it because we catch them from time to time. From Nixon to Clinton to Trump, it's not hard to understand that cover-ups probably happen all the time.

"It's a giant chess game. We all, in humanity, are pawns," added Steere. "Part of the problem of the flat Earth is keeping us locked up, without knowing who we are, who we really are as people and what we are capable of."

Scientists are better sources of information about science than the rest of us. So, even if a little doubt is useful, think that the Earth is a flat disk goes too far. But perhaps this is the goal of the flat Earth theory: to make you decide where, exactly, you draw this line. Growing up, I believed what I had learned at school. The US government determines what my school has taught. Now, the US government president says that humans do not cause climate change.

Flat-terrain may be harmless, but other types of conspiracy theorists are only too relevant. The deniers of climate change are driving US environmental policies. I have friends who do not believe in climate change because they have seen self-proclaimed "experts" say that science does not corroborate climate change in YouTube videos.

But perhaps total skepticism is also the cure. It may be time for people fighting climate change to pull out of the book and really look into the source of their information.