Steve Burns was a little after my childhood, but Bill was squarely in it. So nice to see both of them talking about the important role critical thinking and the scientific method play in our lives. They get into why things are so challenging now, socially, thanks to access to so much information – and dis/misinformation. Well worth a listen or watch.
A choice quote:
Steve: In the last year, I’ve met three different people from three different walks of life who asked me or asked my wife to ask me if I thought the earth was flat or might be flat. And you can laugh out loud at such athing, but these are guys, they were all men, raised in the United States who went to high school in the United States. And that is really troubling that we as a society have let these people down. It’s really surprising because this is a further division of our society. Those with knowledge and those without knowledge.
And by knowledge, I’m talking about just the world is round, you guys. The moon is round, Mars is round, the earth is round. Crying out loud. What do you think that is? What do you think that impulse is? Why are we seeing that? Why are we seeing people that that have unprecedented access to actual facts and actual legitimate information preferring a theory like a flat earth?
Bill: Well, the way I describe this – everybody wants to have their own cosmology. By that I mean their own understanding of the universe.
I believe, since you asked this question, I, believe people take the shortest cut. Like well if the Earth is flat then I can see everything and I take out a flat map and I got the whole story. I don’t need to go anywhere. All I need is my phone and off I go. But whereas the fact of the round earth is much harder to understand; and of course much more exciting once you once you embrace it.
And the other thing that really is cool for me is when people do get it, when people who are from a lower income community, people who don’t have the e access to the educational resources that for example I had and they understand this that the earth goes around the sun and this is this remarkable almost magical force of gravity.
This is really exciting. Well, that’s the whole thing, you know, when you’re a teacher and you see the spark in the students uh eyes, that’s the most rewarding thing. So, it works both ways. That’s all I’m saying.
There’s the frustration of the flat earth people and there’s the excitement of the kid from a underprivileged background who’s going to go into aerospace. So, it works both ways.