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What are some things you are skeptical about? Do you believe in climate change? Do you trust vaccinations? In this article, I want to tackle a few subjects that have been surprisingly up for debate lately thanks to 21st century skepticism. Let's dive in! Travelers Recently, I was watching Travelers, a Netflix Original Series. If you're unfamiliar with the concept of the show, basically it's about time travelers who come to the 21st century to stop the breakdown of society. The way time travel works in Travelers is similar to Steins;Gate. Instead of sending people back in time, the time travel technology sends consciousness back in time. Of course, there's a bit of an added wrinkle. In Travelers, the time travel technology can send consciousness into any person thus killing the previous consciousness. To allow time travel to be ethical, potential time travel hosts must be near death before takeover. As a result, instead of dying, the host continues to live with a completely different consciousness. Naturally, this adds all sorts of fun to the story line. SPOILER ALERT: At some point in the show, a few of the time travelers are discovered. Of course, how would you react if someone told you they were a time traveler? I'd imagine you'd be pretty skeptical. You'd probably even ask them to prove it, but how would they do that? As you can probably imagine, the inspiration for this article came from a quote from one of the characters who said that he hoped "21st century skepticism" would protect them from being discovered. I can't help but think that's a reference to the anti-intellectualism movement. The Anti-Intellectualism Movement A couple months ago, I went on a little rant about anti-intellectualism in regards to Netflix's Twitter account. If you haven't had a chance to see it, basically Netflix pulled up one of Neil deGrasse Tyson's tweets from five years ago just to poke some fun at him and fish for likes. To be honest, I take more issue with the responses than the original tweet, but I digress. The point I want to make here is that for whatever reason Americans devalue intelligence. It's almost as if the jock mentality of high school has gone mainstream, and there's nothing we can do about it. Of course, I am not the first person to make this observation. In fact, there's an excellent article on The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols. As you can probably imagine, this article focuses on the common belief that all opinions are equal. As a result, the blatantly ignorant rule. 21st Century Skepticism Examples Instead of reiterating the points in The Death of Expertise, I'd rather take a look at some of the common examples. Anti-Vaxxers As mentioned in Tim Nichol's article, one of the biggest modern examples of anti-intellectualism is the anti-vaccination movement. If you're unfamiliar with this movement, it's the idea that vaccination causes more harm than good. To be honest, I have no idea how this movement came to be, but I do know that there are companies invested in keeping this movement alive. They do this by spreading false narratives. For instance, who hasn't heard that vaccines cause autism? Fortunately, there are a lot of great people trying to dispel some of the myths surrounding vaccines: https://youtu.be/y2WtUMvNjzQ Naturally, the blatant disbelief in science is allowing this movement to thrive. But, I have hope that people will come around even if that's through government policy. Flat Earth One of my favorite examples of 21st century skepticism is the flat earth movement. A few years ago, I would have called this movement out as parody. Today, I find that it's alive and well. Apparently, there's a rather large group of people that believe the earth is actually flat. Of course, don't even attempt to ask for a mathematical proof of any of their ideas. Their work is completely fragmented to the point of being easily disproved. That said, the burden of proof is on them, and they never seem to have any. Despite the overwhelming amount of proof that the earth is indeed round, they will simply refute whatever you say with some piecemeal argument. When you question them, they move the goal posts. Let's be real. Who honestly believes the earth is flat? How would we have nearly any of the modern technologies we have today? Do flat earthers believe in angular momentum? How about relativity? What about gravity? What is there to gain by hiding a flat earth? Who is benefiting from it? How many people would have to be lied to for this secret to stay hidden? I just don't get any of it. Fortunately, I don't have to do any of the arguing. Here's NASA's Michelle Thaller: https://youtu.be/CGjFAe018oA As they state in the video, there are hundreds of round earth proofs, so it's difficult to even decided where to start. For us, they provided three. Since we're on the topic, here's a video of some flat earthers on TV in the UK: https://youtu.be/erA3WQE9Zes I don't even want to go into the comment about gravity never being "proven." Also, I hate to be that guy, but 9.81 m/s2 is not a constant across the planet. Gravity varies all over the planet. Lunar Landing Since we're on the subject of conspiracies, let's talk about the lunar landing. The general conspiracy works like this: we haven't been to the moon in 50 years therefore we've never been there. After that, piecemeal together some argument, and you've got a conspiracy against the lunar landing. As usual, people believe the whole thing was faked despite the lack of technology to make that even remotely possible. Let's not ignore the amount of people that would have to have kept quiet all this time. It's just not possible. Of course, I won't go on a huge rant about it. Just check out this Adam Ruins Everything clip: https://youtu.be/zhp-FTYSGe8 Personally, I love the counterargument to this video: if we didn't have the technology to fake it, there's no way we had the technology to go to the moon, so we must have faked it! That's 21st century skepticism for you. Climate Change Perhaps the most perplexing of of them all—and I've already touched on flat earthers—are climate change skeptics. Despite a complete scientific understanding of the mechanism behind the green house effect, people still believe that we are not responsible for climate change. To make matters worse, people try to use "science" against climate science by stating that the earth naturally goes through cycles. Therefore, we have to let it happen. The irony of this is, of course, the cherry-picking of data. How are the models that predict climate cycling correct for the past but wrong for the future? I don't buy the logic. What makes matters worse is the government is involved, and there are opposing viewpoints across party lines. As a result, if you even mention climate change, you're an alarmist. Despite the pointless debates, we've already ruined the climate so much that there's basically nothing we can do about it: https://youtu.be/dC7A9FHLreI Hopefully, science will continue to progress despite the rampant anti-intellectualism. That way, we can remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere without worrying about convincing the 21st century skeptics that we have a problem. Here's another solid video for the road about climate science myths: https://youtu.be/sZB1YtQtHjE I don't know Joe Scott's qualifications, but I think the video is pretty solid. Also, the like ratio is a lot better than the previous video if that's worth anything. Elon Musk Currently, Elon Musk is one of my favorite people because he receives so much unnecessary hate. Just take a look at some of these tweets: The fact that Elon Musk's first instinct was to build a submarine instead of paying the wages and damages of the volunteers already successfully rescuing those kids is an example of how good innovation requires listening to users. “billionaire” SHOULD be a slur, as it’s a fucking shameful thing to be. vast wealth is immoral, and capitalism is a cancer on society. nobody should have things they want while anybody goes without things they need. ESPECIALLY if what they want is to send a car into space. If Elon Musk was in music business, he would be like DJ Khaled. He would shout his name at beginning of each music video and do nothing else. But would take complete credit if the song becomes a hit. $TSLA And, perhaps my favorite meme of all: Apparently Elon Musk is Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne, and Tuxedo Mask combined—or, at least that's what raging Twitter would like you to believe. It's funny to me that people are criticizing Elon for launching a car into space or designing a submarine that ultimately never gets used. After all, what have these critics done themselves? I think some of these people need to take some time to reflect. Anyway, I like Elon. I wouldn't consider myself a part of his cult, but I like him. He uses his power and money to transform the future, and he has every right to do so. If he wants to launch a car in space all while creating a reusable rocket, be my guest. If he feels the best way to help with a disaster is to rapidly prototype a solution that never gets used, who cares! I certainly don't. Donald Trump Meanwhile, I find that billionaire Donald Trump is the figurehead for 21st century skepticism. His ignorance in almost every topic somehow grants him expert status among his followers. Isn't that odd? Of course, his ignorance isn't what's scary to me. It's his narcissism. How many times have you seen him make a mistake and successfully gaslight people into believing it never happened? Let's not forget how well his administration plays the role of the flying monkey by coming to Trump's aid in every dire situation. At this point, I'm surprised Donald Trump hasn't tried to gaslight people into believing some of the conspiracy theories above. Well, I suppose he's already claimed China created climate change and launched an arbitrary trade war over it. Give it time, my friends. Isn't it funny that we give Trump more merit than science? That's 21st century skepticism. The Takeaway When I first heard the phrase "21st century skepticism," I had to wonder if that had a positive or negative connotation. In some ways, I have to imagine it was meant to be positive. After all, skepticism is very important. It allows us to sift through lies in search for the truth. Taken to its illogical extreme, however, skepticism leads to conspiracy theories that reject the fundamentals of science. That's a problem. As soon as we start tearing down science, we lose the very fabric that makes up modern society. Is it not ironic that people are able to spread conspiracy theories using technology that requires the very science they are debunking? The gall of these people. Fortunately, we're only a fifth of the way through the 21st century. Perhaps in my lifetime, we'll see the light at the end of the tunnel. In the meantime, I'll let science do its thing.

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