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let me do one better and suggest you acquire a webcam with a higher resolution. This would be a net win across your channel as it scales. Also, keep up the good work.
I think talking to people that used to be into conspiracies is really important when communicating with people into that kind of stuff. Unless you've been into that stuff personally, it can be hard sometimes to sympathize or fully understand the people that are into that stuff
Do you know the podcast Be Reasonable? (Merseyside Skeptic Society) It’s been a while since the last upload to it, but the host is also co-hosting Skeptics with a K, and they’re doing a fantastic job addressing various pseudoscience claims and conspiracy assumptions, from a "compassion for the victim" approach!
I just wanted to say that I held on as a fan of Graham for years. Every criticism i would hear of Graham would be, 'oh hes crazy, he's horrible, he's a charlatan'. They would never actually explain why and challenge his analysis. Finally i saw Flint on Rogan just plainly explain a couple of things and it took about 5 minutes for me to realize my folly
"...and let birds fly over the earth across the face of the vaulted dome of heaven." ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UrqZuXCgXps.htmlsi=uiUMVjowzcS2R4HN
Nah - you are incorrect in your calling him a grifter: "A grifter is a con artist: someone who swindles people out of money through fraud. If there's one type of person you don't want to trust, it's a grifter: someone who cheats others out of money." He's a writer who sells books, tv programs, videos etc. You can read his books for free in a library. When you buy his book you actually get a copy. He is publishing his theories - you don't have to agree with them. He does go to these places he writes about, as can you. Much of archeology is conjecture and assumptions based on artifacts, proxies for lack of direct knowledge. How are his hypotheses about them are more or less fraudulent than anyone else's? If you buy a book of fiction, watch a movie, etc. are you then a victim of fraud?
@@varyolla435 The basic principal of science is to search for answers by asking questions. Then you publish those answers and they are challenged by others. If the answers are good, they stand up to criticism if not, new questions are asked. It's an ongoing process. As to monetization, without money, little or no research gets done. The trick is to avoid cooking the results to provide the financers the results they want, but to be honest in your research. Failure to do so is the real grift in scientific research, and sadly, it happens all too often. I suggest you google "My dream died, and now I am here" by Sabine for her discussion on monetization and science.
@@gerretw doesn't he use things like fear (for example, of the end of the world) to get people to buy his books though? I would say that is a form of grifting.
@@matthewsmolinsky5605 Fear porn was widely used during the pandemic, sea level rising, Cuban missile crises etc. it's a typical political ploy to manipulate the population, but I don't recall seeing Graham doing that during his Netflix series. He was more about the fate that befell those civilizations that were destroyed and lost for centuries if not millennia. Could that happen to us? Certainly, if the Beaufort gyre breaks down shutting down the Gulf stream, Europe will have to invest heavily in winter clothes, heating gas and oil as the temperature there tanks.
@@matthewsmolinsky5605 Not defending the practice but that's just marketing and sensationalism. I've seen legitimate scholars and academics resort to pretty eye-roll worthy stunts to sell their works, it sucks but it's the name of the game. Granted, rarely anything to that extent.
The modern floods scenario is useful, as in someone claiming, “There are stories from many parts of the world about record floods in 2024, therefore there must have been a worldwide flood in 2024.”
Getting flashbacks to "Foucault's Pendulum". Which was hilarious until it was horrifying. I'm a programmer by profession, and programmers are very good at pattern recognition. And if a pattern doesn't exist, by God a lot of them will invent one. I used to find it amusing to listen to Jeff Rense's program of silliness until I noticed the increasing hints about Jews. These days I doubt they're just hinting. I've always found David Hatcher Childress incredibly smarmy and annoying, to be honest.
Great content as usual. I consider my self a former conspriacist as well, but I still hang on to some "reverse skepticism" I guess you could say. Just knowing things like MK ultra and such were true is too much for me to not have some semblance of conspiracy thought roll around in the noggin.
My dad asked the other day if that recent probe had landed on the moon yet. He was hoping it would get pictures of the rover, landers and other things we supposedly left up there. I asked, why would the new pictures convince you any more than all of the old pictures. No response.
The thing that got me out of my conspiracy mentality was a podcast on 911. They went through the deal evidence and interviewed an expert in the actual investigation. Jimmy Akin’s mysterious world, hes a fan of mainstream archaeology and has debunked psuedo archeology, graham hancock in particular. He also does debates and i think you two would have an incredible discussion. Please look him up flint, you wont regret it. He’s also a skilled debater and can give you some tips if you were to debate dangerous dan or something. 😅
I’m curious about theories that are on the fringe, but still somewhat plausible? There’s something really attractive about the liminal space you find at the fringes. I’d still want to be responsible about exploring that space, but I’m not sure of how exactly to go about it myself (not being an archeologist), or where to find those sorts of theories being discussed. One that I’ve heard of in the past and that I find really compelling is the idea that writing may have been invented multiple times throughout the past, and the earliest writing we have today is more accurately described as the first writing we know about rather than the first writing definitively. From what I understand there might be some reason to think that things like the Vinča symbols are a form of writing, one that emerged out of conditions very different from the sorts of economic transactions that facilitated the emergence of writing in places like Mesopotamia - opening up the possibility that writing could emerge under very diverse conditions, maybe including emergences in the very deep past. However, when I tracked down the reference I was after, the one that discussed mechanisms by which writing might emerge in a society that wasn’t as economically complex as those in Mesopotamia (located in the book “European Prehistory: A Survey”, pg 237), it turned out to have been ultimately based on a personal communication between the author and David Anthony, and was thus inaccessible :( My guess is that a lot of this sort of grounded speculation does take the form of personal communications between professionals and is thus pretty inaccessible to the public. Still, it would be awesome to hear more about legitimate liminal theories in archeology!
William(Bill) Cooper, James Corbett(the Corbett Report), Amazing Polly, Whitney Webb and Max Igan are a good place to start...as far as ancient history goes Graham Hancock is probably the most reliable because that space is populated with occultists that use Helena Blavatsky's work such as Maurice Doreal and Billy Carson etc at the end of the day it's good to keep an open mind...just keep one foot on the floor so you don't float away down crazyville
For me it was a combination of many things that lead me to conspiracy thinking. One aspect I can remember is that it felt like harmless fun. Who cares what shape the Earth actually is, it doesn't harm anybody whether it is round or square, it is just fun to think about it. So any serious claim like racism/anti-intellectualism/fascism, that can just be dismissed out of hand. Another aspect was this weird mindspace where you think that finding questions = finding evidence. What if civilization was more advanced 300.000 years ago, it is technically possible, I thought of it, so it feels true. It also works with dismantling counter arguments. You say there is tons of evidence of hunter gatherers and nothing for LAHT, but what about this one question that you can't answer, that means your entire argument is null and void. I only have to come up with questions for evidence, but you have to perfectly counter and answer every imaginable counter claim or question or else your entire theory is wrong. I can't remember all the aspects, but I can remember it started out really small, you watch a UFO documentary, you search some pixelsquatch videos. But then more and more you argue, and criticize the status quo, watch weird videos and theories, and after a while your entire ideology is 'just asking questions'. You can counter any claim, any evidence, with a simple question, that is all you need to keep believing. Someone posts a video of somebody moving a giant rock, just ask where the video is of them cutting a rock. They show you a video of them cutting a rock, you ask where is the video of them moving a rock. If they show both, just ask them where is the video of them making an entire pyramid. You asked a question they couldn't answer, so you won. Same with Hancock, you show almost an hour of actual scientific, large scale, evidence to paint a clear picture of what we find, all he has to do is "but have you looked under every grain of sand in the Sahara?", you can't answer that question, so he won. I really don't know how I got out of it though. It was like a switch, just one day it was too much cognitive dissonance for me to handle or something and it all came crumbling down really quickly. I even remember watching a channel I used to watch and not being able to unsee it as crazy talk. Like you know those visual illusions where an image represents two shapes, once you see it you can't unsee it, you can hardly, or not, force your mind to see one thing after you seen them both. I think a big factor was that I had some kind of moral principles. Like at some point I did first hand experience how there is some kind of weird link between nazis and conspiracy stuff. It is all just 'ironic' and 'for the memes', untill you are in some discord server and it isn't anymore. That is when had to do a major concession and accept that it wasn't just some 'woke' hysteria, there was actually something to it. And then J6 and all the surrounding stuff happened and that is when I switched completely. Believing the Earth is hollow, fine, but believing the election was stolen so that trump can make himself dictator that is just too insane. And all the conspiracy people just went along with it. And Covid was the final nail in the coffin, that made it so clear that it wasn't just fun, it wasn't just harmless, conspiracy thinking is extremely toxic and dangerous.
Brent Lee went from believing that some ancient civilization from before "the Younger Dryas" may have influenzed the old Egyptians, the Mayas, the Incas, and so on, to worshipping a man who was alledgedly born from a virgin, who could walk on water, turn stones into bread and water into wine, who died and then rose from the dead. I guess if you are an American that makes perfect sense! Some conspiracies are obviously more equal than others!
One question. Where is the line between a mentally healthy person believing some BS and delusions like in schizophrenia where there is a psychiatric disorder.
I don't like your explanation of your usage the term racist, and I don't actually think that explanation truly applies to faux archaeologists. That they are racist BECAUSE they rob the brown-skinned of their myths and accomplishments is absurd because of the ease at which they might rob the light-skinned of same, and sometimes in the very same breath. I think what you're seeing here is not a racial bias of European vs the brown-skinned but a religious bias of Christian vs the pagan. This bias I propose far better explains the almost religious, cult-like fashion that these beliefs spread, and how they so often develop a selective cannon to best maintain the monism of the story's sway over the believer. I think parallels can be drawn here to the spread of early Christianity, and especially to the later development of cannon, the cultural dismissal of the (now) apocrypha and the destruction of pre-Christian, pagan literature. I don't think that a misapplication of such scornful a label as "racism," when a far more apt explanation exists, should be used. By ignoring the (in my opinion) more likely cause, instead choosing to "satanify" these people and shame them out of their beliefs, you are, unfortunately, further galvanizing their resolve against all external, non-cannon reasoning and simultaneously reducing the credibility of formal expertise thereby.
I love conspiracies, absolutely love them. I hate the modern political conspiracy nonsense. I want the real conspiracy nonsense. Graham Hancock nonsense... you know what I'm saying.
Flint, I’m disappointed you weren’t around earlier to destroy Graham Hancock but better late than never. You are a great communicator and keep up the great work.
I think talking to people that used to be into conspiracies is really important when communicating with people into that kind of stuff. Unless you've been into that stuff personally, it can be hard sometimes to sympathize or fully understand the people that are into that stuff
@@FlintDibbleit's such a fine line to walk sometimes though Like, I understand why people laugh at Graham Hancock's pseudoscience, but that sort of reaction of not listening to the people that are into this kind of stuff often misses the point of why these people are into this stuff. Probably 90% of the people I've met that are into this stuff have shockingly similar personalities. They are often genuinely interested in history and science, but have also drawn the short straw in life quite a lot. Even if their ideas are laughable, listening to these people first and foremost is what we have to do, because if they feel heard and acknowledged, they will likely be willing to listen to real evidence. Joe Rogan was a great example of this. You could see him getting visibly more skeptical of GH during that episode, and that I think was in large part because you just talked to him as a person first, with genuine respect. Nice job on that bty 👍
@@twonumber22 people also usually aren't willing to hear you out after being embarrassed. When was the last time you changed a strangers mind by leading with "hey! You're an idiot!"? People should be objective about the evidence, but people are gonna be people, and emotion and ego are hugely wrapped up in reasoning, especially amongst people into conspiracies
Such an insightful conversation! The small tidbit that I got caught up on was Brent’s descent into extremist Christianity. With the prevalence of satanic cults and rituals in this conspiracist worldview, a conspiracist must believe deeply in Christianity to endow these cults with the spiritual power that they claim. These claims of power would not be nearly as effective on non-religious individuals.
Flint please make an episode about plants and how they evolve from wild to domesticated. Your speech about that in Joe Rogan was wery nice, but it would be nice to hear you without interruptions and more in detail. Great work, keep it up 😀
Yessssss! I suspect there are many of us around the world waiting for such an epic podcast. Although, I did hear Flint may be writing a book? So, we may all have to wait for that 🤔
Yes, please do. I have some savvy friends waiting for that debacle (classical academic botanists and archeo-botanists who are neither a fan of Graham nor you)
I remember the exact moment I also became a "former conspriacist" my self. I was watching a short film about Tupac faking his death. The prompt at the beginning was "Tupac read a book about a prince named machialvelli who learned the secrets of keeping and maintaining power" and I immediately went whoooooa hold up... You mean the book TITLED "The Prince" written BY Machialvelli?? Like how many times had I taken a prompt like that and just ran with it? How am I expected to believe your grand theory if you can't get the basics right??
Reminds me of a fellow on Twitter who believed Plato met Solon and heard about Atlantis from him and kept correcting me when I claimed that the two weren’t contemporaries.
@@gentleratI had to look up Solo n. He died in 560 BCE, 132 years before Plato was born. Your opponent’s claim reminds me of one of the “principals of pseudo-history”: “Ancient” is all one time. 😂
This is a wonderful and insightful conversation. Genuinely applaud anyone who can escape the rabbit hole and even more for someone willing to use that to try and free others. Honestly i dont know if i could do the same, it takes a special kind of strength to admit to your mistakes so publicly for the sake of others.
This is very good. Both of you do a great job talking about this extremely important topic. It gives me hope for more understanding and compassion in our polarized society.
I went through my conspiracy theory phase in the mid 90s. I was maybe 14-16 years old. Mostly alien conspiracies... Area 51, with some sympathy for grander theories, but more in the 'wouldn't it be nice to think so' vein. Part of it was just the X Files... but also, I think I was building a defensible ontology by exploring the limits of what we, as individuals, can actually know. I think it was a really important period in my intellectual development. I look back on it fondly. I wound up becoming a plant-microbial ecologist and soil scientist.
"I trusted Graham Hancock for 20 years" 🤣 Sure, probably there are stil guys believing this guy, but this made me laugh hard. I remember my father reading Von Däniken, exactly the same stories, G.Hancock did just pick them up, the next guy will use AI.
I'm tired of straw man arguments. Hey.... there are lots of controversial sites and lots of theories, some seem over the top, but cultures have disappeared and without these theories much will be overlooked as being possible. I've studied Anthropology for 50 years and much has reversed and changed, even before DNA technology. Catastrophism was considered pseudoscience until recently....etc.
@@GroberWeisenstein Doing things that benefit you, your buddies, and your "customers", isn't a conspiracy. A lot of the things people think of as conspiracies when it comes to wealth, big businesses, and politics, doesn't fit the definition of actual conspiracies. But I understand why a lot of people feel like there's a conspiracy. Noam Chomsky actually addressed this in an interview, you can probably find it if you search for "Noam Chomsky on Conspiracy Theories". Even if you're opposing his views on a lot of other issues, he's actually pretty much on spot on this one. It's also a classic when it comes to conspiracy assumptions; "the elite" is probably one of the oldest conspiracy assumptions. Like a lot of other conspiracy assumptions, it starts with something that is factual, (such as Nepotism exist), then it looks for increasingly complicated patterns, and eventually gets more and more illogical - instead of using Occam's Razor it all gets bonkers and someone ends up with ideas such as "the Reptilians" and "Hebrews with Space Lasers"...
I believe remaining suspicious of our government's and profit motives is the best way to be. Haven't said that all the lost ancient high tech stuff bothers me way more than it should.
I don't think it would go well for Flint. If you have watched any of Dan's videos debunking Flint, you can understand why. Google: "How Joe Rogan Was Conned By Archaeologist Flint Dibble" which came out today. Flint is well aware of Dan and tried to block his ice core research to respond to claims Flint made on Joe Rogan podcast.
@@Kitties-of-Doom ohhhh, you must be one of the people that know the location of the lost ice age civilization? Can you name the site with it's location?
if Dr. Dibble responded to every random neckbeard with a youtube channel he'd have no time to actually do his work. Dan from Dedunking is just a Hancock fluffer, a college dropout that read a book and thinks he knows more than people that actually put in the time and effort to study properly.
no offense to Dan from dunking, but if actual scientists responded to every random neckbeard on the inter webs then she/he would have no time to do their actual research, teaching, writing, etc. Dan is a school dropout who read a few books, but he is hardly a player in the field of archeology or ancient history. He's tinker toys, and I suggest you just ignore such insignificant noise.
I have to admit, I enjoy watching stuff like Graham Hancock. He does find really out there and unknown to the mainstream stuff and brings attention to it. You get like 85% interesting stuff, you're learning about "new" stuff to look into further. Then BAM!!!! ONE SINGLE WORLD WIDE CIVILIZATION!!!!!? Whoa,whoa, whoa, pump the brakes here lol I love that feeling of breaking away from the conspiracy and start thinking about how humans lived and migrated and maintained those familial trade networks long after the families became settled lands of moated and walled off hill forts and more. Sky Woman is so much more beautiful when you see the history of a daughter being married off to a more primitive culture to spread your trade networks peacefully instead of through war. Or the eventual failure of a settlement and people moving out. Creation stories are the best. Edit: Garden of Eden? Or how Adam was bad in bed, got a divorce and his new wife helped him steal iron working knowledge (flaming sword as they leave? Obvious lol) Adam should have learned how to please Sky Woman
How can you prove there weren't previous civilizations on a par with ours? Man with the same intelligence as thee and me has existed for many millennia. In a few thousand years we evolved from slings and rocks to cruise missiles. The cities of those lost civilizations could be on the continental shelves buried under thousands of years of built-up muck. But until someone is willing to spend the coin, we'll never know.
What is your meaning? Entertainment channels often have more subscribers than academic channels. People want mystery that does not involve the effort of study and are not as interested in factual information.
He's done threads on X about all these things showing how they aren't that precise or advanced at all with scratches and tool marks easily visible and wonky handles etc
He is just comparing someone who believes in conspiracies and someone who is paranoid. It's not that complicated man. Why did you entertain this dude on your show?