Ask A Genius 988: Creepy Racist Assholes, the Strato-Flat, Holocaust Deniers, and “Lance Versus Rick”
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/29
Rick Rosner: All right, so I haven’t talked to a flat earther about flat earth theory, but I’ve run into several on Twitter recently and may have one on Lance versus Rick this weekend or early next week. A flat earther believes that the Earth is a flat disk and that any indication that it’s a sphere floating in space is, in their minds and, according to their theories, an illusion and a bunch of conspiracies.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Have you heard the joke about what they should call the atmosphere? The joke is that they should call it the “atmo-flat,” “strato-flat,” etc.
Rosner: Well, I mean, flat earthers are what you get when your critical judgment about conspiracies is erased. You’re so conspiracy-minded that you doubt everything and are so gullible that as long as it’s a conspiracy, you’ll believe it. You’ll deny physics, astronomy, and just about every science in general, as well as the last thousand years of history, in the service of believing that everything’s just a giant conspiracy. More than a few of these people are out in the world, or at least in America, especially now that most interactions are electronic. In the past, your friends and family would tell you to get out of here with that stupid stuff or suggest you need to be locked up in a loony bin. But now you can share nonsense with other flat-earthers. I ran into this one flat earther that I’m inviting onto my show because if I get into a fight with somebody on Twitter, I’ll sometimes ask them to go onto the show since the show is about fighting. If somebody says I’m full of it, I’ll say, “How so?” or “No, I’m not,” if we have any dialogue, I’ll invite them on. This woman who believes all sorts of Trumpy conspiracies said, “Yes,” but then also mentioned she’s a flat earther. So we will have her on and talk about flat earth theory. It’s being too lovely even to call it a theory. I haven’t read anything about it, but it’s just one more indication that people’s brains are messed up lately.
Jacobsen: Would you invite a creationist on?
Rosner: Would I invite a creationist on? I might. Lance might be a creationist; I don’t know. We should talk about that. Creationism seems pretty dull. It’s just that “God created everything.” So, what’s the exciting part of that? Oh, He put dinosaur bones in the Earth to test our faith? Okay, fine. But we still have a whole show to fill up. It isn’t a very fruitful area to argue about. Flat Earth, on the other hand, involves denying so many parts of science that we could get at least five minutes out of that.
Jacobsen: What about a Holocaust denier?
Rosner: No, fuck them. Would I have one on? I don’t think so, because that’s a… I get bummed out about my show anyway because I think it’s a bummer. When Lance starts going off on Islam, it’s not attractive in my mind. It’s just gross and disquieting, and it takes what should be a fun show and turns it into an intolerant show. And I don’t love platforming that kind of thing. That kind of hate is why I wouldn’t have a Holocaust denier on for the same reason. You know, yesterday we were talking about the Gish Gallup, where some asshole like Trump gets away with much bullshit just by spouting so much bullshit. He spoke for 38 minutes and stated roughly 30 lies and half-truths, too many for Biden to counter effectively. If you have a Holocaust denier on and they spit out a bunch of nonsense, you’re not going to change their mind. They might bring up half a dozen false points, only a couple of which I might be able to counter because I haven’t studied Holocaust denial extensively.
I know one argument they use is that Hitler was a good guy, and the camps were designed to keep people safe and that some people died because of wartime shortages and illness, claiming it was only 150,000 people who died by accident. The Nazis kept meticulous records, so we know that 11 million people were murdered in camps and other situations by the Nazis. This doesn’t include deaths in battle. These were just straight-up murders. There are also tens of thousands of eyewitness accounts.
Jacobsen: I have a family secret you may not know about. We found out later. It’s not my mom’s dad, but my mom’s dad’s dad, or maybe my mom’s dad’s uncle, or something like that. We got an award a few years ago, maybe five, six, seven, or eight years ago, for the family because they harboured a Jewish couple or some Jewish people for several years.
Rosner: Many people did that. Those people were super brave because if they were caught, they would be just as likely to be murdered by the Nazis as the people they were hiding. In Israel, there’s a term for it called “Righteous Among the Nations” or something similar. Schindler is buried in Israel, and he’s one of the most famous for saving Jews.
The arguments against Holocaust denial are that the Nazis kept detailed records, there were numerous eyewitness accounts, and 11 million people were documented as murdered. Holocaust deniers would argue that those records don’t exist and that people are lying. Why should I sign up for a platform that kind of lunacy and lies about something so grim?
Congratulations to your uncle and your family. That’s a great thing.
Jacobsen: Would you have any tolerance to debate someone who had any ethnic hatred?
Rosner: Ethnic hatred? I mean, Lance often brings that up regarding Islam; though Islam is a religion, not an ethnicity, it incorporates people from various ethnic backgrounds. Different ethnicities and I would not say I like doing it. I mean, I would be okay with debating some asshole. I guess I’d want to do a little prep but on the IQs of different races and different countries, which I find to be entirely racist bullshit. Anybody arguing that different ethnicities and different countries have different average IQs and that the world is arranged at all by national IQs, that the most prosperous countries have the highest IQ, any arguments like that are made by creepy, racist assholes.
I would argue with somebody like that because I wouldn’t have to do that much work, as I already have a decent grounding in IQ. IQ, as you know, and statistics beyond IQ, just the mathematical discipline of statistics, have a history where some of the people who developed tools like the Pearson R correlation coefficient were racist. They were doing mathematical work to prove that white people are better than non-white people. It’s just garbage science, and I hate it. I would argue with someone like that if I ran into them. It’s just so gross — the end.
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