Showing posts with label Sci Man Dan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sci Man Dan. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Like I said, one of the best things on the Internet...

If you’re stressed out and need some pure gut-busting laughter, I can’t recommend the Sci Man Dan flat-earth-fail compilation videos strongly enough. I had written about the Sci Man Dan YouTube channel before, but for very concise distillations of flat Earth lunacy, do check out the channel’s compilation of the stupidest, most inane arguments made by those who believe the Earth is flat. Here is a link to one such compilation video.

In fact, these compilations are giving me ideas for this blog, as well as possible exercises for my future classes on conspiracy theorists. Wouldn’t it be just as funny to start a compilation of the most shockingly stupid anti-vaxxer or 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Hmm…although I don’t know if funny would be the right word here. Especially when it comes to vaccines. With the flat Earthers you are merely watching the mindless, uniformed ramblings of the hilariously ignorant. They might be stupid, but they hardly cause any damage in the world. 

Anti-vaxxers, on the other hand, get people sick, or worse. 

The flat Earthers are like the performers in old-time freak shows. They are intellectual grotesqueries you can stare at and laugh at and feel superior.

The anti-vaccination activists make you wish that a law could be passed to keep people whose IQ’s are below a certain level from voting. That way we could be sure that no one who actually believes the anti-vaxxer drivel will ever be able to cast a ballot in any election.

Sunday, September 8, 2019

One of the best YouTube channels out there!



If you were to subscribe to just one YouTube channel devoted to debunking the depressing glut of conspiracy theories polluting the internet, I would urge you to make the Sci Man Dan channel the one. Check out a sample video right here. Not only does this channel devote almost all of its time to dismantling Flat Earth theories, it does so with a wonderfully droll British wit. Not only do you get to see science at work, but presented in a very funny way.

I had been recommending Sci Man Dan to several students recently and they asked what the point was in putting this much energy into dealing with fringe kooks like the Flat Earth believers. The energy must  be put into dealing with Flat Earth believers, into exposing the absurdity, the sheer ignorance of their claims, because they are out there. People like this exist in the twenty first century and they must not. 

This is exactly the reason I am blogging and teaching about the dangers of conspiracism and the threat posed by the shameless, reprehensible charlatans behind this movement. While we should be living in a time where science, rationality, and reason should be ordering our belief systems, we are instead descending into a new Dark Age of willful, aggressive ignorance. This can not stand. The 9/11 “truthers,” the false-flag crisis actor conspiracy theorists, and the rest of their sleazy ilk exist in our time, and they simply must not.