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BCsven@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

After a few years of marriage, it came to light that my wife thought the earth was flat. It wasn’t some religious thing or cult thing, she had no affiliations. She just came to that conclusion based on visual cues in the world (like ground looks flat) and believed it without it ever being challenged in it.

It came up when she mentioned that a plane fkying near the sun must be getting hot, and I’m like Whaa? I explained the sun is so far outside the earth that that plane isn’t feeling much different than us. She revealed she though the sun was inside the earth (like we lived in a snow globe on a flat planar surface) and the sun just went down behind the mountains at night like half hour away.

I was stunned. We had a 4hour talk about the earth as a planet and the solar system and how gravity works.

She curled up in a fetal position and had an existental crisis for the rest of the day.

Somehow she missed school for the gravity, solar system etc. And I’d destroyed her entire core belief system; that she had developed herself.

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Zorque@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
But hey, she listened. Thats something most never do.

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Iunnrais@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I think your wife’s case was actually significantly different from “flat earthers”, as a community. There’s ignorance, which can be corrected with knowledge and information and reasoning, and there’s willful defiance, which cannot. The very fact that she was freaked out and had a crisis, which enabled facts to enter her head, demonstrates that.

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- BCsven@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yes, the true flatearthers deny what they are hearing and dig in deeper
  
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- jpablo68@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Agree, and if earth was indeed flat, these people would claim it was a sphere.
  
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tomiant@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Whenever someone curls up in a fetal position and has an existential crisis, I KNOW that they are doing something right.

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helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Good job lad

Relevant xkcd

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blackbrook@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This is really fascinating to me. Do you mind my asking, with no intended disrespect, how intelligent your wife is? And did she have any kind of unusually isolated situation for much of her life?

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icelimit@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
What were your core talking points and structure that you managed to teach gravitational theory and heliocentrism in 4 hrs?

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Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
did you tell her if the sun was so small it can fit inside the earth, everything wouldve been vaporized near its vicinity, let alone the gravitational effects being to a object that small.

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