The hollow Earth … Sigh.
David Icke hasn’t met a
Crazy he don’t like.
Continuing on the theme about the structure of the planet, I take a look at something not talked about for 139 episodes: The Hollow Earth. In this particular case, I take a look at the claims about the hollow planet made by conspiracy guru David Icke.
As mentioned in this post, I was recently on an episode of Cognitive Dissonance where I had read chapter 12 of David’s 1999 book, “The Biggest Secret.” We discussed a lot of the conspiracy in the chapter but only tapped the topic that made up about 25% of the chapter, David’s claims about Earth being hollow. Since I spent so much time reading his nonsense, and I took notes, and I even highlighted (in 4 different colors!!!!), I had plenty of material to get a podcast episode out of it, and … here it is!
There are three other segments beyond the main one: Logical Fallacy (focusing on the Gish Gallop), Feedback (going back to episode 145 to try to explain a few things in easier terms), and mentioning people who have left iTunes reviews since the last time I mentioned them (back in December 2015).
I hope that you enjoy this episode.
P.S. Already a correction that I’ll mention in the next episode: I incorrectly stated that if you’re inside Earth, you would not be pulled to the inner surface of the shell, you would be pulled to the center. This is incorrect. The Shell Theorem holds that any particle inside of a perfectly symmetric sphere would experience an even force of gravity, everywhere, such that if you placed yourself anywhere inside the sphere, you would stay there. David Icke is therefore still wrong, but my explanation of what would happen was not correct.
Hollow Earth Image with Hole at Pole
Exposing PseudoAstronomy 
Just finished listening to the episode and thought I’d bring up a point. Belief in conspiracy theories, is not a product of low intelligence (Although it can certainly assist in the development of such beliefs.), rather it is a result of faulty reasoning processes. People like David Icke know how to exploit these for their own profit and agenda, once the correct mindset is incluated, a high intelligence is no defence, but rather a help in keeping the victim trapped.
As to the ‘gish gallop’ method of presentation, many conspiracy theorists use this technique, relying on the audience to reshape the material presented according to their own personal beliefs.
Comment by Graham — September 17, 2016 @ 10:24 pm |
Most conspiracy theorists are bored idiots. I say “idiot” because even though they may possess a high or low intelligence, they don’t employ it so it may as well not exist. The smart ones I doubt believe their own drivel and exploit the genre for profit. Illogical maybe, but I gained a poignant visceral disdain for these folks when they came out of the woodwork after Sandy Hook.
Comment by Sam — September 18, 2016 @ 2:52 am |
I totally love the shell theorem.
Comment by expat — September 18, 2016 @ 7:41 am |
You could almost call this the ultimate shell game…
Comment by Rick K. — September 18, 2016 @ 7:58 am |
Am I right in assuming that if the shell theorem was wrong, then a Dyson Sphere wouldn’t work? As I see it a Dyson Sphere is just a much bigger version of a hollow Earth
Comment by NWsingledad — September 24, 2016 @ 11:08 pm |
Two things on that, one being that you still have a sun in the middle of a Dyson sphere, and the other being that if you’re intelligent enough to build one, you may have figured out some method to generate gravity in some way. People also like the idea of a Dyson “array” which, if not distributed uniformly, would then have the shell theorem NOT apply.
Comment by Stuart Robbins — September 25, 2016 @ 1:58 pm |
Of course. Which is why you are the PhD. with the wildly successful podcast, and I’m the mook with the blog that even my friends don’t read.
Comment by NWsingledad — October 2, 2016 @ 9:56 am |