I was a really young child, riding home with my Dad from someplace I've forgotten. It was late at night, and that moon . . . well, it just seemed to follow us in a way that I didn't think it should. As if it was pinned straight above us.
Much of the rest of the ride home was spent with me getting a lecture on angles, speed, and visual perception, and how those things create an illusion in how we see the moon.
So I continued to stare at the moon while I counted how many licks it takes to get to the center of my Tootsie-Pop.
Behind The Curve, currently in rotation on Netflix. brought back memories of several childhood mysteries; things that seem magical in a moment of consideration but can be explained in full by science.
Behind The Curve pokes a lot of holes in the domed earth conspiracy, but it gives Flat Earthers plenty of opportunity to mansplain their belief to viewers. Boiled down, it sounds something like "I used to think the idea of a flat earth was crazy but once I looked into it I realized I couldn't prove it's not."
Yeah, but, the fact the earth is a sphere has already been proven. Like, a bunch of times in a whole lotta ways.
Watching the flick reminded me of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a psychological phenomenon in which bias occurs because people view their cognitive abilities as superior to others when, in reality, they aren't. These folks don't have awareness of their own cognitive limitations and, as a result, live out an illusion in which they believe their opinions are more accurate than are the opinions of others.
And that includes the opinions of legit scientists, who've theorized and then proved tons-o-stuff over and over and over again.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect. Sounds sorta like our world of social media too, eh?
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