Steven Novella’s take on FE believers

On 3 May 2018, Steven Novella analyzed the modern belief in a flat Earth, and concluded that, despite what most people think about the subject, the believers are being sincere in their belief that the Earth is flat, and are not "just saying that to wind us up". He stated that:

In the end that is the core malfunction of the flat-earthers, and the modern populist rejection of expertise in general. It is a horrifically simplistic view of the world that ignores (partly out of ignorance, and partly out of motivated reasoning) to [sic] real complexities of our civilization. It is ultimately lazy, childish, and self-indulgent, resulting in a profound level of ignorance drowning in motivated reasoning.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_societies#Internet-era_resurgence

Is this just another representative of the conspiracy, another so-called expert trying to make FE believers look bad, or is there truth in what he says?

EDIT: I am not, for some reason, able to apply italics to the first two paragraphs. Sorry for that. (Fixed now.)

On 3 May 2018, Steven Novella analyzed the modern belief in a flat Earth, and concluded that, despite what most people think about the subject, the believers are being sincere in their belief that the Earth is flat, and are not "just saying that to wind us up". He stated that:

In the end that is the core malfunction of the flat-earthers, and the modern populist rejection of expertise in general. It is a horrifically simplistic view of the world that ignores (partly out of ignorance, and partly out of motivated reasoning) to [sic] real complexities of our civilization. It is ultimately lazy, childish, and self-indulgent, resulting in a profound level of ignorance drowning in motivated reasoning.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_societies#Internet-era_resurgence

Is this just another representative of the conspiracy, another so-called expert trying to make FE believers look bad, or is there truth in what he says?

EDIT: I am not, for some reason, able to apply italics to the first two paragraphs. Sorry for that.

There you go!

Cheers!

Saw this video the other day.

Looks at body language, I dont know enough of this guy to stake any claim hes an expert but found it interesting. He does find examples of FE, who as you would expect, genuinely believe the earth is flat, hes not quite as sure with Mar Sargent though.

Again, not using this video to make any particular point, other than its quite an interesting watch and marries closely with the OP's topic.

Interesting.

The article in question, for those interested in reading it.

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/what-the-flat-earth-movement-tells-us/

I found this passage particularly compelling:

The scientific endeavor is messy and can be distorted for nefarious purposes, but it is not monolithic. The problem with the flat-earther perspective is not the belief that science can sometimes fail. It can. The problem is that they have the scale off by many orders of magnitude. For the flat-earth theory to be correct, there would have to be a conspiracy of pretty much all institutions of science over all countries, controlling all individual scientists and even many amateurs, over centuries. Many different specialties will have to be involved too, from astronomy to physics, geology, and meteorology. The extent of the conspiracy would have to be all-encompassing – the grand conspiracy of all grand conspiracies.