Sometimes it seems the human race is getting dumber indeed.

I found the Netflix doc about Flat Earthers BEHIND THE CURVE to be quite informative. These people are not dumb, necessarily, but psychologically troubled. Most of them feel left out of the modern world and can't cope with it, so they look for like minded people that want to belong to something.

It's rather comedic how all their home-made experiments in the film prove the earth's roundness but the denial is so strong in them that they make even more outlandish theories to justify it.

There's also money involved. The most popular Flat Earth youtubers earn their living with Flat Earth, give conferences around the country, etc. When the filmmakers ask one of the most prominent ones what would happen if he was presented with irrefutable proof that the Earth isn't flat (of course this already exists, but they mean it in a way HE would believe it) he answers he would probably shut up about it and keep stating the Earth is flat.

So there's not "fixing" these guys.

 

Yeah, seems Sagan didn't really "get" Beavis & Butt-Head which is mostly a critique, not a celebration, of the TV-addicted ignorance of that generation (my generation!).

Even a genius of the level of Carl Sagan sometimes doesn't get it I guess, I don't know if that's a comforting thought or not...

But the rest of that quote is eerie in its accuracy, in 1995 the internet was in its infancy, everyone was hopeful and optimistic about the "information super highway" that was going to connect the world and enlighten us. 

That he saw a possible dark side to this that early is incredible futurology.

He wasn't alone - Arthur C. Clarke, who famously conceived of the telecommunications satellite and waxed rhapsodic about its potential, also wrote a story where a foreign power was planning to corrupt Western Civilization by basically broadcasting free porn across our borders.

And let's not forget Oppenheimer: "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."  Those at the forefront of science are sometimes the first to intuit its dangers.