Originally a comment by Francis Boyle on Men are not women=the earth is flat.

I learnt a useful term on Twitter(!) today – epistemological caste system. Roughly, the idea is that people like McKinnon see their job as purely the promotion of ideas. Testing or analysis of those ideas is strictly someone else’s job. Whatever passes for truth in their world view is taken on authority and that authority is taken as being fundamentally ethical. How that squares with identifying as a philosopher is anyone’s guess. (I suppose I could read the thesis in question but thankfully that’s not my job and I don’t identify as a masochist.)

@ktron

I certainly don’t know anyone who believes the Earth is flat but I follow several flat-Earth debunkers on Youtube and the first question I ask when I see someone new is “is this person a dupe or a scammer”. Eric Dubay who started the modern flat-Earth movement is undeniably a scammer. He’s a bullshitter in the Frankfurtian sense. He probably has less concern for truth than McKinnon, and like many new age gurus made a lucrative career out of shamelessly telling people exactly what they want to hear. Down one level, most of those who have positions in flat-Earth organisations, I suspect likewise know they are talking nonsense but they like the gig, even if it’s not financially rewarding. It’s really just a fun hobby for them. But here’s the thing. At the bottom there’s an endless parade of obvious dupes. These people simply lack the intellectual capacity to understand reality in any systematic way so they compensate by reflexive personnel incredulity which they glorify as scepticism. They don’t so much believe the Earth is flat as disbelieve anything they haven’t personally experienced or dreamt up. And to them that’s a brave and noble stance. And when you’ve found a virtually effort-free way of being special and virtuous you don’t want to go and ruin it by asking too many questions. While you don’t have to be very smart to believe the gender nonsense, you just have to be a bit less smart to believe the flat-Earth nonsense.