Reading this reminded me that the ancients have understood and applied celestial navigation, tides, eclipses, and scores of other concepts since at least Hipparchus around 2200 years ago. And before him, Eratosthenes measured the Earth's circumference to within 1.4 percent.
And now we have trolls and morons trying to undo human knowledge to before this point. I sat on my hands before going off to tilt at that windmill.
Just consider the number of people that understood this was vastly smaller back then. Most people may simply be aiming for attention, but far worse ideas are out there. People at the utter fringe like Breatharians might convince a few people into starving to death, but poor diet advice is far more harmful because it’s widespread.
As such, the best approach is simply ignore the insanity and focus on crap that’s actually significant.
I agree generally on ignoring. However, I think we need periodic reminders that the structure we're building on isn't made of magic, but accumulated hard work and delicate knowledge and technological chains. If we stop valuing education, if we stop valuing culturally scientific truth and knowledge, if we rest on our laurels disinformation grows and knowledge decays: it was a good reminder after recent political climate in the US, UK and Brazil for example in which disinformation (poor access to reliable sources) played a large role. In those cases populism exploiting misinformation. I think if nothing else we need it for democracy, otherwise the people can be manipulated and those in power are sure to serve mostly themselves[0]. Flat Earth is so absurd that it's a good example most people can call out.
[0] Also, our problems, and its solutions as well, are becoming more complex. Climate change is the great example: we are fighting a costly problem brought by technology, that most people can't see, and you can't readily verify themselves. Coronavirus is made more dangerous by increasing speed of transportation and interconnection, and our solutions also more drastic and technological. Faith in science and ability to evaluate claims for themselves is critical.
If you actually have the time and you go to the royal museum at Greenwich you can see that all of Harrison‘s clocks are still functional. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen as an engineer
