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CONVERSATION LESSON

THE EARTH IS FLAT

Dan: What’s happening Aaron?

Aaron: Not much man, how are you doing?

Dan: You ready to talk bears?

Aaron: Oh, I like bears. I like bears. I’m ready to talk bears.

Dan: You ever seen a black bear?

Aaron: Um, I have seen a black bear in the Great Smokey Mountains.

Dan: Yeah, how big was it?

Aaron: I don’t know, black bears aren’t that big compared to other types of bears, like grizzly bears or brown bears or polar bears, or Kodiak bears. Brown bears tend to be smaller thanDan: Yeah, they’re like little gerbils.

Aaron: Well no, they’re not like little gerbils. They can be pretty big too, but I meanDan: They get, probably when they’re on their hind legs, they can get to be close to the size of a small person.

Aaron: Or a big person.

Dan: A big person, too. Okay.

Aaron: Yeah, if they stood up, I mean some of them could reach maybe two meters.

Dan: Right.

Aaron: Something like that.

Dan: So did you have the urge to give one of them a bear kiss?

Aaron: A bear hug? Or bear kiss? No, neither one. I did not.

Dan: Or wrassle a bear?

Aaron: Wrestle a bear? No thank you.

Dan: No?

Aaron: No. But you know, they say if you’re ever attacked by a black bear, you should fight back. You have a better chance of coming out of the encounter alive if you fight back. But with a brown bear or a larger species, it’s better to play dead.

Dan: Uh huh, just cover up.

Aaron: Yeah, cover up your neck, play dead. You have a better chance of survival.

Dan: You think you could take a black bear?

Aaron: I could take on a black bear, yeah. I wouldn’t want to, but I could.

Dan: I think you’re just supposed to make a lot of noise.

Aaron: Well, I think if a black bear appears threatening, I think you’re supposed to make yourself big. So if you’re wearing a jacket, you should take off your jacket and hold it up into the air over your head, and back away very slowly and keep a very calm demeanor, speak to the bear in very soft tones.

Dan: Look at you, you’re like Crocodile Dundee.

Aaron: Yeah, and thenDan: You know all about this.

Aaron: … very gently back away, but make yourself appear big because their eyesight is poor. And you’ll look like a big animal if you make yourself look big.

Dan: Are you just making this up off the top of your head?

Aaron: I’m totally making this up off the top of my head. No, actually I’ve read about this, ‘cause I do, I hike in black bear country all the time.

Dan: What kind of bears do they have around here?

Aaron: Black bears.

Dan: Black bears, okay.

Aaron: Yeah, Japanese black bears.

Dan: Right.

Aaron: But yeah, you should, but if you ever are attacked, you should fight. Never run, never run.

Dan: Right.

Aaron: But hopefully you can avoid being attacked by making yourself appear large.

Dan: So what do you think about this whole, the pro-bear camp, that believes we should commune with bears?

Aaron: I think it’s, I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I think it’s good to respect animals and treat them with kindness. On the other hand, I think if you condition a wild animal to be comfortable around human beings by feeding it and showing it lots of affection, you could be putting other people in danger who may not have the same energy, or vibes that you do, and all that, it’s just an accident waiting to happen.

Dan: Well here’s an interesting fact. In the last … Since 1900, so what is that, 118 years, 70 people have been killed in North America by black bears.

Aaron: How many people?

Dan: 70.

Aaron: In how many years?

Dan: 118 years.

Aaron: Only 70?

Dan: Well you say only 70, so you’re attaching a judgment there.

Aaron: Well I would guess higher than that.

Dan: So how does that make you feel about communing with bears, now that you know only, as you put it, only 70 have been killed.

Aaron: Well, I would say I wouldn’t want to be one of those 70.

Dan: Well you know, I bet more people died from apples falling on their heads.

Aaron: Or coconuts.

Dan: Well, there’s not too many coconuts. I guess Florida, does Florida have coconuts?

Aaron: No, I don’t think so.

Dan: Yeah, I bet that, yeah according to Lynn Rogers, there are millions of bears, and so 70 deaths, that’s …

Aaron: That’s minimal. That’s minimal.

Dan: Yeah, I mean compared with, how many people do you think humans have killed in North America?

Aaron: Oh humans kills, yeah they kill every day. I mean in the United States.

Dan: And in 118 years, they’re probably killing more than 70 every day.

Aaron: Yeah, you’re much more likely to be killed by a human than a bear.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: But we don’t encounter bears that frequently. We encounter humans all the time. So I wonder what the statistics are on that, like in terms of number of encounters per deaths.

Dan: Right.

Aaron: So maybe bears are more dangerous in some ways.

Dan: But maybe they just, they haven’t been tamed. If they would be more tame…

Aaron: Are you talking about humans or bears?

Dan: Bears.

Aaron: Well I think most bears don’t want to have anything to do with humans.

Dan: Well that’s, it seems like they do, in this town of Eagle’s Nest.

Aaron: Well that’s probably because they’re being fed.

Dan: Yeah, but they seem to want to have a relationship.

Aaron: Okay.

Dan: So like this bear Solo, this guy Jeff, he said he was mowing his lawn, and he had never fed the bear before, and the bear came and just sat down, and just watched him mow the lawn.

Aaron: Waiting for food. And eventually he fed the bear, did he not?

Dan: It changed his life. It was like bear therapy for him. You know, he had all these fears, and … yeah, he became a new man.

Aaron: Yeah well, is he still alive?

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: He is, okay.

Dan: Yes, and he is, well I don’t think he’s stopped feeding the bears, but he stopped befriending bears.

Aaron: Okay.

Dan: Out of respect for his neighbors.

Aaron: Okay.

Dan: Because I guess he understands fear so deeply that he understands it’s not something that you can just turn off.

Aaron: Okay.

Dan: It’s not something his neighbors can just turn off andAaron: Right, but he’s not the first bear aficionado, or self-proclaimed bear lover, that has ever existed. And there have been some that have been eaten by the bears they proclaim to love.

Dan: Who told you that?

Aaron: Who told me that? That’s a very common story, like there’s a recent story within the last, I don’t know, 15-20 years, of a guy somewhere out in the western part of the United States, or maybe it was Alaska, who had befriended bearsDan: Are you talking about Grizzly Man?

Aaron: Well maybe the Grizzly Man, or the guy that got eaten with his girlfriend by the bears.

Dan: Yeah, but that was a grizzly.

Aaron: Yeah, that’s a grizzly bear.

Dan: That’s a different

Aaron: But it’s a bear.

Dan: It’s like a different animal.

Aaron: It’s still a bear.

Dan: Not really.

Aaron: Yes. It’s definitely a bear. It’s just a bigger bear.

Dan: In name only. It’s really …

Aaron: It’s a hamster.

Dan: It’s really like a dragon.

Aaron: It’s a big hamster, right.

Dan: It’s really like a dragon. That’s interesting Lynn Rogers actually said that he thinks it’s all a myth, and it was created over the last few hundred years to make hunters look stronger.

Aaron: What is a myth?

Dan: That bears are dangerous.

Aaron: Oh, that bears are dangerous, yeah.

Dan: Yeah, I mean I think he’s specifically talking about black bears. He probably wouldn’t recommend that you go kiss a grizzly.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: But he thinks that part of this myth is just to feed the ego of hunters.

Aaron: That could be, yeah. What about you? Have you ever encountered a bear?

Dan: Just in the zoo.

Aaron: Just in the zoo?

Dan: Yeah. But yeah, I think that that … that was interesting was that both sides in this town, the pro bear people and the anti-bear people, they both had a point.

They both had different sides, or different, you know, somewhat correct views on reality.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: And, but yet neither of them were willing to budge.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: I think that Kelly, the guy who had all these fears, he came the closest to kind of understanding the other side, even though he disagreed with it. And I think that they had all presented their cases pretty clearly, that okay yes, it’s only been 70 deaths, but that’s 70 too many. And I don’t want it to be my kid that gets, that becomes 71. But from Roger’s point of view, that’s ridiculous. Like you said, even though there’s no coconuts growing in America, you’re probably more likely.

There’s probably been more coconut deaths in the U.S.

So they both do have true, but contradictory, angles or perspectives on reality.

And I think that was one of the threads going through this core audio lesson is that we have trouble holding contradictory truths … And the other story was, yeah I don’t know if those people have any realistic slice of reality.

Aaron: Well I found that interesting in some ways, in the sense that …

Dan: Flat-earthers we’re talking.

Aaron: Yeah, the Flat-earthers, the people who believe that the Earth is flat. It’s like, part of that belief is actually connected to their identity, as a group and as a community. So it’s like, if you hold that belief, you’re sharing something with a group of people, that makes you unique. It makes you who you are in a way. It sort of defines your community, so it’s much harder to give that up, because it’s not just giving up a belief, you’re giving up an entire experience, an entire community, an entire way of life in a way. You know?

Dan: Yeah, I think that’s partAaron: Relationships and everything, like …

Dan: I think it’sAaron: … almost as if it’s a cult.

Dan: I think that’s part of why, that’s just what I was about to say, I think that’s part of what makes cults seductive, or conspiracy theories seductive, is that you feel you’re on the cutting edge, or you’re on the forefront of a mystery that nobody else understands, except for your tribe. So yeah, it really, like you said it becomes part of your identity, as do things like politics, and political beliefs, and religious beliefs, and all these kind of, what you could call a core belief, that we find so hard to give up when we’re presented with contradictory evidence.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: Yeah, so that’s the idea behind the backfire effect.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: They’ve shown it with people’s political views, how … Not so much that they won’t accept the facts. In some situations they might internalize those facts, but they won’t change their opinion.

Aaron: And they dig in their heels further.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: And get really defensive.

Dan: So you might be able to take, global warming is one of these hot button issues that people really take to heart, and it becomes part of their identity. And you know, if you present them with some information like the, say for example now there’s the polar ice caps are melting, and there are parts of Northern Europe that … you know, polar bears are losing their habitats from.

Aaron: Right. They’re coming into towns, looking for food.

Dan: So there are people that don’t believe in global warming who might accept that, and say, “Okay, you’ve shown me some evidence and I believe that, but my opinion about global warming is the same, it’s not man-made. That’s from some other cause, or it’s a cyclical warming of the Earth.”

Aaron: Right.

Dan: That’s what they’ve shown in these psychological studies, that it’s not that they refuse to accept evidence, it just doesn’t sway their opinion, or their attitude, or their actions.

Aaron: Yeah. So what about you? Do you buy any conspiracy theories that are out there? For example, one of the conspiracy theories is that mankind has actually never landed on the moon. That that’s a whole conspiracy that it was …

Like do you buy that?

Dan: That we’ve never landed on the moon?

Aaron: Yeah, that it’s just a hoax.

Dan: No, I’m not a believer in that.

Aaron: You’re not a believer? I don’t buy that either.

Dan: No.

Aaron: How about 9/11? That it was an inside job? Do you believe that conspiracy theory?

Dan: I find it unlikely.

Aaron: You find it unlikely?

Dan: But I don’t completely discount it.

Aaron: Why is that?

Dan: I guess I just don’t put anything past the government.

Aaron: I see. But see, I have a specific piece of evidence that I’ve seen from that whole event that leads me to believe that we don’t know the whole truth of what happened.

Dan: Uh huh.

Aaron: And that’s the Building Number Seven.

Dan: Okay.

Aaron: That fell on its own footprint at the speed of gravity.

Dan: Uh huh.

Aaron: There’s video footage of it. This is a 40-something story building.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: Made of reinforced steel and concrete.

Dan: But there are engineers, loads of them, who say that that is not unusual.

And you’re not an engineer.

Aaron: No, I’m not. It just, it doesn’t, when I see that it doesn’t add up to me.

Dan: Okay, but I mean, there’s all kinds of things that you could say that don’t make any, like do you know how, could you explain how a toilet works?

Aaron: Yes, I can.

Dan: Yes?

Aaron: Yes, I can.

Dan: What about a microwave oven?

Aaron: Yeah, you push the button, and it heats up the food. It’s very easy, Dan. I mean say that’sDan: So the point is you don’t understand a lot of things that go on, but you rely on the opinions of experts.

Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. Right.

Dan: If some scientist were to give you a little five minute baby breakdown of how a microwave oven worked, you probably wouldn’t be like, “Hey, wait a second. That’s not how radiation works.” You’d be like, “Okay, he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.”

Aaron: Fair enough. I just, that’s true. I’m not saying that I’m a conspiracy theorist, but like you said, there is cause for doubt. That’s all. That’s all I’m saying.

Dan: But my point is that so much of … so much of our understanding of the world is very thin. It is a very thin layer, and we just accept what authorities tell us. We just don’t have the time to become an expert in nuclear power, and global warming, and how toilets work, and … So I mean we have to specialize. We can’t know everything.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: But we selectively choose to disbelieve some experts. Like, for example, we might selectively decide that we don’t agree that there are hundreds of engineers that have said, “No, that’s perfectly possible for a building to fall that way,”

because of whatever the amount of heat that was generated from that plane hitting the building.

Aaron: No, we’re not talking about Building Seven. We’re not talking about theDan: The bears?

Aaron: The towers. The towers, the twin towers. No, we’re talking about Building Seven. It wasn’t hit by a plane.

Dan: Oh, okay.

Aaron: And it fell on its own footprint at the speed of gravity.

Dan: Okay.

Aaron: It’s highly unlikely that it would do that, unless it were engineered to do that. So that’s all I’m saying.

Dan: Okay. Alright so you’re a Truther.

Aaron: I’m not a Truther. I’m just saying, there’s likeDan: Why don’t you explain to everyoneAaron: … a little cause for doubt there, that’s all.

Dan: Explain to everyone what your people, the so-called Truthers, as you call yourself.

Aaron: Well I’m thinking about joining the Flat-earthers. Why not? Might be some nice people in there.

Dan: Yeah?

Aaron: Yeah, you never know. Could be a very nice community.

Dan: Like Mad Mike.

Aaron: Yeah, Mad Mike.

Dan: He sounds like a good dude.

Aaron: He sounds like a good guy to hang out with.

Dan: There’s actually conspiracy about Mad Mike that he doesn’t actually believe in Flat Earth, and he’s just a pub

Aaron: He’s just doing it for fun.

Dan: … he’s just a publicity hound.

Aaron: Yeah, why not?

Dan: Some Flat-earthers are making a conspiracy about him.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: So no one’s immune.

Aaron: Wow. No conspiracy theories that you think are plausible at all?

Dan: No, I think there is some unexplained mysteries to 9/11. I don’t. I don’t, I’m not convinced that the official story is the whole story.

Aaron: Okay, so but outside of 9/11, there’s no other?

Dan: Outside of 9/11. I don’t know, name some conspiracies?

Aaron: What about your beard?

Dan: What about it? That it’s all-knowing? If I shave it I’ll melt?

Aaron: Exactly. Do you believe that?

Dan: Well, that’s what people say. That’s what my cats have been telling me, have been whispering to me.

Aaron: Absolutely.

Dan: Yeah, so the backfire effect is that the more evidence we hear, the more we, not only is it not effective, it makes us believe our original beliefs even stronger.

Aaron: Sure, it makes them stronger, right.

Dan: Yeah. You’re kind of like that.

Aaron: The backfire? That’s my nickname, the Backfire Man.

Dan: Backfire Campbell. You don’t change your opinion very easily.

Aaron: Really? You found that to be true?

Dan: Yeah. Wouldn’t you agree?

Aaron: No, not necessarily.

Dan: See? There you go right there. I showed you 100% rock solid proof.

Aaron: There you go, there’s the evidence.

Dan: And you justAaron: You debunked, you debunked that conspiracy theory Dan: Actually some of these psychologists, they wrote a handbook, a debunking handbook, andAaron: Oh, like how to debunk theories?

Dan: How to debunk, so to avoid the backfire effect.

Aaron: Oh, okay.

Dan: And some ofAaron: Wow, they’re really on the ball.

Dan: Yeah. Some of the techniques include not, instead of, it’s sort of basic psychology. Don’t focus on what the other person believes that is wrong, but rather focus on what is right, for one. And to two, to try to build some common ground, because a lot of times, when they’re especially political or religious arguments, there is a tribal element. It’s like my tribe against your tribe. My tribe believes this, has this identity. So to try to find some common ground first, for example if you’re talking to some very politically conservative person who doesn’t believe in global warming, and feels that it hurts business, first maybe you want to stroke their ego a little bit about how, “Yes, the free market and creating businesses is good for society. But we don’t have to do it in a way that hurts the environment.”

So to kind of try to talk around, instead of going straight at, “You’re wrong.”

Aaron: Right. Common ground is always good to find. Just in any relationship.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: That’s how I met you man, I found some common ground.

Dan: That’s right. Common ground, we broke bread and yeah, built bridges.

Aaron: We built many bridges.

Dan: Got any other cliches? Alright, on that note, let’s bring this to an end.

Aaron: Okay, well we’ll talk to you next month.