Claim - The Brother of Nick Davies (AKA Phuket Word) Speaks

[Z.W. Wolf]

Anyone who was here at MB in the FE years should remember Nick Davies/Phuket Word.

For Example:
Claim: Seeing The Same Stars All Year Disproves Globe Earth
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/claim-seeing-the-same-stars-all-year-disproves-globe-earth.10324/


Some background. Nick Davies started a website called Phuket Word in the year 2010.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/phuket-word

Phuket word is a fresh new website with phuket news, events, happenings and classified ad.
The website's interactive format was established to lead Phuket media into the next generation of internet news
Nick Davies started Phuket Word after several years as managing editor for a hardcopy publication.

Before that...
https://th.linkedin.com/in/nick-davies-5607355?trk=org-employees

Managing Editor
Phuket Gazette
Apr 2007 - May 2010 3 years 2 months

Managed all content for weekly 40-50 page newspaper

You'll have to take my word for this next bit, because it's based on years old memory. Davies used Phuket Word as a journalistic pen name years before 2010. At least as far back as his days as Managing Editor for the Phuket Gazette. The Pen Name was used in connection with a recurring feature: a guide for visiting foreigners. That's what I remember from something I ran across when FE was a hot topic here.

It's important to know this because in the comments section of this SciManDan video "Phuketwordsbrother" has left several interesting comments. Can we trust that this really is the younger brother of Nick Davies?

Phuket Word still going on about the "Eye Level Horizon"


It's natural to suspect that these comments might just be a sham... But the Phuketwordsbrother Channel was created on Jan 10, 2008. Long before Davies started his FE "career." There are only a few old videos on this channel, many of them about a couple of family outings to view Christmas decorations. It couldn't have been created as a parody account about the Flat Earther Nick Davies, because Davies wasn't a Flat Earther at that time. And who in 2008 would know about "Phuket Word" other than a friend or relative?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7mOogU369x461YdlbB75fw

Only one of the videos, from 2016, is about FE, and is clearly a response to the kind of videos Nick Davies was making at the time. There are responses to this video from Nick Davies/Phuket Word.

Flat earthers are blatant liars

My question: Is it possible to rename a YT channel years after you created it? I don't think it is. If that's true I think we can accept that this channel was created and named in 2008, possibly for posting videos to realtives. Most of the videos seem to be family oriented.

Also, the comments seem level headed. Not the kind of thing someone would write as parody.

@Phuketwordsbrother
11 hours ago
I truly apologize for my brother. I've tried having this discussion with him on numerous occasions about the horizon and I can't quite get my head around why he is in such obvious denial.

The last time he came back to the UK I showed him the artificial Horizon on an f-18 in my flight simulator in VR. He did everything he could to avoid look at what I was trying to show him. It was my intention to show him how the physical Earth Horizon drops away from the virtual Horizon as altitude is increased; plus how on military aircraft there's a symbol called a "flight path indicator". Only when the flight path indicator is level with the virtual Horizon does the aircraft fly level. If the flight path indicator was aligned with the physical Horizon, in about 20 minutes or so the aircraft with hit the ground. Instead what actually happened, Nick would fidget around, would not sit still and generally looked in every direction other than straightforward through the HUD.

@Jehannum2000
11 hours ago
Is his denial because of religious reasons (e.g. Bible says Earth is flat)?

@Phuketwordsbrother
10 hours ago (edited)
@Jehannum2000 to be honest with you I don't know. I'm as confused as you are. He is two and a bit years older than me, He had the same upbringing as me apart from I went to a boarding school from 11 years old only because I suffered dreadfully with dyslexia.

Our parents were reasonably strict with us but not terribly so. Such as if we were out playing in the light summer evenings we were the first kids in the street to have to come in at night. However Nick rebelled where as I stayed quiet and somewhat respected my parents beliefs.
Pretty much as soon has Nick was able to leave the home he did so. Firstly to France where he worked for Euro Disney the same year it opened, then very shortly after getting cheesed off working as a porter he then moved to Bangkok Thailand to teach English to kids. I know he speaks Thai so well the over the phone a native type person cannot tell.

What I'm saying is I think he's quite bright and I think he knows what he's saying is wrong. Unfortunately for him years of smoking cannabis and his brain not being able to handle it have taken it's toll and this is what we're left with.

@MariaMartinez-researcher
9 hours ago
Amazing. As I am not really knowledgeable in the subject, I have suggestions that I can't explain properly regarding technical things, but practical observations instead. Like, he has traveled to and from Thailand, by plane, I suppose: he should have observed that the horizon does not rise to eye level when one is flying. Another thing, one feels acceleration when starting the flying, but when at constant speed, one feels nothing. Most importantly, what path the flying route follows? In time and distance, and regarding the countries above one flies, what matches better, flat or round Earth?

I don't think he will ever believe anything that requires instruments for a demonstration, but, maybe, his own experience could be a path back to reality.
So sorry. ??

@tma2001
8 hours ago
@Phuketwordsbrother commiserations! he's fallen so deep down the rabbit hole that it has become an echo chamber from which he refuses to accept any offer of a rope to pull himself out.

The best way to challenge him is to tell him if he wants to be taken seriously then he has to put the work in and master a skill such as manual navigation with a sextant or surveying with a theodolite (rented one or buy 2nd hand for gawds sake!). He will quickly find out that horizon drop or dip is a thing.

If I truly believed I was being deceived by some 'global conspiracy' to suppress the truth I would make it my mission in life to do what ever it takes with whatever expense and effort was required. I have yet to encounter a flerf with the humility to do this.

@Phuketwordsbrother
7 hours ago
@tma2001 if only it was that easy.

The way I see it; he knows if he goes to actually look he will see the same things we see. So flat earthers choose not to look and instead just make up what they think they would like to see. Apart from that I have no other explanation.

@vetinaris1297
7 hours ago
You can't help an addict until the addict wants to help themselves. No amount of outside pressure will change anything until they want to change.

@bekinditsfree272
6 hours ago
? @Phuketwordsbrother When did he start believing this? How is his social life? Does he believe in other conspiracies? I'm afraid, weed plays a big part, because it develops paranoia in some cases

@Atlas6355_
6 hours ago
@Phuketwordsbrother hmmm, I was told he was frying fish for living

@Phuketwordsbrother
4 hours ago
@bekinditsfree272 I couldn't tell you precisely when it all started. However I do know about 10 years ago he used to talk about crow 777 and the holographic moon. Then when my other half first fell pregnant, he would warn me about the Wi-Fi and how it could damage my child. Of course back then I was completely ignorant of conspiracies so decided to look into it. Naturally I found out in about 5 minutes it was complete bollock.

I couldn't tell you about his social life, I very rarely speak to him.

 

[Mendel]

My question: Is it possible to rename a YT channel years after you created it? I don't think it is.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2657964?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform=Desktop#zippy=,handle,channel-url,name

You can change your YouTube channel name .... You can change your handle

The use of the word "flerf" for Flat Earther makes me think that this person habitually talks about Flat Earthers, unless someone else used the word in a comment he way replying to there.

 

[Ann K]

The person who claims to be his brother (unproven, but I think a reasonable assumption) says

The way I see it; he knows if he goes to actually look he will see the same things we see. So flat earthers choose not to look and instead just make up what they think they would like to see. Apart from that I have no other explanation.

I have a friend with "face blindness" (prosopagnosia), but is otherwise unimpaired. She is intelligent, alert, and has an admirable memory; she just doesn't recognize people readily, especially those seen outside of the habitual context in which she sees them.

Prosopagnosia (from Greek prósōpon, meaning "face", and agnōsía, meaning "non-knowledge"), also known as face blindness,[2] is a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one's own face (self-recognition), is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision-making) remain intact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia

Might such a condition mean that the brother's conclusion ("he will see the same things we see"), although reasonable, is untrue? (Disclaimer: I'm not a neuroscientist!) But I think it likely that we have all met people that it's hard to explain things to, and diagnosed or undiagnosed mental conditions may play a part.

(edit to add) The brother speaks of his own problems with dyslexia. Is Phuket Word perhaps suffering from a similar-but-different condition? His brother is quick to claim cannabis as a contributing factor, when I'm sure he didn't blame cannabis for his schoolboy dyslexia difficulties.

I realize I'm contributing more questions than answers, but perhaps someone with more familiarity with neuroscience can address this.

 

[Mendel]

She is intelligent, alert, and has an admirable memory; she just doesn't recognize people readily, especially those seen outside of the habitual context in which she sees them.

Phuket Word is inventive and friendly. He recognizes that celestial mechanics (height of Polaris etc.) prove the globe, so when he asked for globe proof (as a challenge) back when I was following him on youtube, he ruled out anything involving the sky. (In Thailand, sunrise and sunset in December suffice to disprove FE.) Some of his own demonstrations come close to being globe proofs.

Obviously there is some kind of "blindness" at work, but there's no reason to assume it's caused by anything other than confirmation bias, or the desire to please his audience.

 

[FatPhil]

Phuket Word is inventive and friendly. He recognizes that celestial mechanics (height of Polaris etc.) prove the globe, so when he asked for globe proof (as a challenge) back when I was following him on youtube, he ruled out anything involving the sky. (In Thailand, sunrise and sunset in December suffice to disprove FE.) Some of his own demonstrations come close to being globe proofs.

Obviously there is some kind of "blindness" at work, but there's no reason to assume it's caused by anything other than confirmation bias, or the desire to please his audience.

I don't see it as being particularly far from Festinger's exemplar for /Cognitive Dissonance/, namely that of cult members presented with the obvious falsity of their claims (in their case predictions, where the date had passed). You've used a sight word, he used a sound word, but they're both mere analogies. (And you refer to the dampening of the signal, he refers to the signal itself, but again, these are the two sides of one coin - and to be honest, you're selected the more sensible side to address, there's nothing necessarily wrong with dissonance, it's how you respond to it that might be the problem.)

 

[Mendel]

Festinger's exemplar for /Cognitive Dissonance/

Article:

In When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World (1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world. A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance. They tend to make changes to justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance (rationalization) or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance (confirmation bias).

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

We were discussing examples of Phuket Word purposely avoiding contradictory information, so that seems to match confirmation bias.