No, you haven't seen it with your own eyes. There's no need for argument from authority. There are several well reasoned arguments that the Earth is spherical (e.g., the shadow of the Earth is curved). It's proper to recite them.
>There are several well reasoned arguments that the Earth is spherical (e.g., the shadow of the Earth is curved).
That argument would prove the Earth is round - but not necessarily that it is spherical. A flat, round disc would also produce a curved shadow.
To play devil's advocate - you would also need to prove that it is Earth's shadow on the moon and not the Sun's shadow. For an example, I made an HD image in paint [0].
> To play devil's advocate - you would also need to prove that it is Earth's shadow on the moon and not the Sun's shadow. For an example, I made an HD image in paint [0].
Very nice! A great demonstration of how difficult it is to be explicit about all our assumptions.
I'm off the belief that (honest) flat earthers aren't of that belief due to lack of evidence, but rather due to lack of the trust framework necessary to have faith that those interpreting the evidence are interpreting it correctly.
E.g. a lot of the presented arguments presuppose an understanding of geometry, and that it applies to our universe. But for most people, that amounts to trusting mathematicians and physicists, which is in turn founded on trust in the scientific system and ultimately logic itself.
>I'm off the belief that (honest) flat earthers aren't of that belief due to lack of evidence, but rather due to lack of the trust framework necessary to have faith that those interpreting the evidence are interpreting it correctly.
...and yet the same people place absolute faith in arguments supporting the flat earth merely because it defies orthodoxy, and also believe the pseudo-scientific rationales behind them.
I'm pretty sure that if you take the set of flat earthers, subtract the people who don't really believe it and are just having fun being contrary, and then subtract out the mentally ill people, you're left with very nearly an empty set; I'm even more certain that if it's not empty, it's utterly negligible. So analyzing what they place faith in and why without reference to "mental illness" in most cases is probably a waste of time; the surface appearance of putting faith in this or that rationale is not the real story. We're talking about people who are legitimately broken in terms of their ability to understand the world and are often unable to engage with it properly in many other ways, too.
As tempting as it may be to then pivot from my statements here and snark about people of a religious mindset different than yours, or ethical or political mindset different than yours, bear in mind that many such people engage with the world just fine. The sort of thing that we actually call mental illness is a qualitative cut above that sort of thing.
You just called a bunch of people morons. Take that in for a second. There's thinly veiled circular reasoning in there somewhere, that amounts to saying that mental illness cannot be understood and these people must be mentally ill, implying this were so because you cannot understand them, but not giving any explicit opinion whatsoever. Ultimately you contradict yourself about their ability to engage with the world, too. This is polemic and very bad.
Ultimately, the message was that thoughts and feelings of mentally impaired people do have no bearing on their illness, or if it did, you wouldn't care. Then why comment, if you don't care?
No, you did. I said they were either deliberately playing or mentally ill, and that you must take that into account if you want to understand. It's the opposite of calling people morons. That was something you brought to this discussion.
Calling someone a moron is claiming they are mentally ill. Unless I have lost touch with the world and you think moron translates simply to worthless piece of shit or something of the like.
Edit: I mean, sure, you show some interest, hence my question was actually honest. I didn't expect an honest answer given the attitude, but I had to ask.
1. No, calling someone a moron does not always mean you're making the claim that they either have a learning disability, or are mentally ill.
2. Trying to make the claim that this word is completely innocuous, is very unbelievable unless we are to assume you are typing this from a wormhole into the past before this entered mainstream vocabulary.
3. If you were attempting to use the term in a more clinical fashion, you've completely failed to apply it correctly.
>Trying to make the claim that this word is completely innocuous
This is where it becomes obvious that you think that mentally ill -- the way you used it -- was completely innocuous, objectively true. Hence I might as well, by your own standards, call you a moron, or at least mentally ill, until the opposite is proven. That is, you might indeed be a Psychologist, and not an impostor, but otherwise your use of the term in a more clinical fashion is likewise incorrectly applied, very very likely. Sure this discussion is a waste of your time, if you are an idiot who doesn't understand "these people". PS: This is fun, blaming other people for their faults,not very helpful, but certainly fun getting a sense of superiority. I'm sure you are trying to say the right thing, but between lack of qualification and even contradicting yourself, you didn't, I'm sorry.
>rather due to lack of the trust framework necessary to have faith that those interpreting the evidence are interpreting it correctly.
Funny to hear it framed that way, because most of the flat earth trolls - if you can get them to admit to their game - do it to mess with people who take it on faith that the existence of system means that it can produce results. The general person over-assumes "science's" ability to deliver all the time.
Maybe the Earth really is round, but everyone believes bullshit published in $newspaper about $research because "science said so" rather than reading and evaluating the research paper, all the time. We know damn well that the the news is going to misrepresent findings, but once it gets into meme machine called journalistic narrative everyone starts taking it on faith.
Not sure why you've been downvoted, unless it's for pedantry. The Earth is indeed spheroidal, in fact an oblate spheroid - flatter at the poles and bulging at the equator due to the rotation of the earth. Modelling the true shape of the Earth is central to geodesy.
There's a danger in pedantry -- outsiders can mistake it for "see: there's no consensus that the earth is a sphere!". Having said that, the earth is not an oblate spheroid -- it's very slightly pear-shaped, and has all sorts of mountains and valleys.
To paraphrase Isaac Asimov in his essay The Relativity of Wrong: "The earth is flat" is a pretty good model. "The earth is a sphere" is much better. And "The earth is an oblate spheroid" is just a bit better than that.
So, let us consider the aim of the essay: to debunk the flat earth claim as many ways as possible. I think they did a pretty good job finding data for which the flat earth model is insufficient, but a spherical earth fits quite nicely.
> My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." -- Isaac Asimov
I think it's disingenuous to think every Flat Earther is just trolling. People are donating money to the cause, probably by someone scamming them rather than people genuinely interested in science. I think it's important to at least give those people a starting point to find the truth rather than blowing them off completely.
>If Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference as NASA and modern astronomy claim, spherical trigonometry dictates the surface of all standing water must curve downward an easily measurable 8 inches per mile multiplied by the square of the distance. This means along a 6 mile channel of standing water, the Earth would dip 6 feet on either end from the central peak. Every time such experiments have been conducted, however, standing water has proven to be perfectly level.
In fact I remember an old story of someone doing exactly that, taking up the challenge of a flat-earther. They set up surveying equipment with a scope at one end of a long placid lake, a pole at the other and one midway. When they looked through the scope at the far pole, the middle pole was clearly higher. "That doesn't prove anything," said the flat-earther, "level the transit." So they leveled the transit, and the middle pole appeared some distance below level, and the far pole some distance below that. The flat-earther declared this conclusively proved the earth was flat. You really cannot win in this situation.
I have thought a lot about why there are so many flat-Earthers, and I think I have figured out the main cause. For flat-Earthers who are sincere and not mentally disturbed, I think the problem is a general mistrust of experts and society in general.
This is because we live today in societies that are so unnaturally large. Human psychology is designed for small foraging tribes where you know everyone personally, and so can determine how trustworthy they are. And furthermore, everyone is strongly motivated to be trustworthy because otherwise they would become social outcasts and could not survive.
In large, complex societies like ours, you are continually being presented with claims by people you don't know personally and so it is quite possible to lose all trust in their truthfulness. This is especially the case in the US today where you have entities like much of conservative media that are actively working to cultivate mistrust.
Unfortunately trust in experts is absolutely essential for a large society like ours to function, and so the problem is how to restore such trust. I think that is a very difficult problem.
35 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 90.6 ms ] thread4. Other planets are spherical: This rests on the premise that earth is also a planet. This is also the problem with no. 5.
8. Shadows of sticks: The earth could be flat and the sun could be small and close.
11. Gravity: This requires that the law of gravity can be derived independently from the fact that the earth is spherical. That's not easy.
This can be done by observing the motions of other planets/moons/stars/galaxies.
If you're an adult and the type of person who doubts the shape of the earth, I don't think anything a website says would convince you.
That argument would prove the Earth is round - but not necessarily that it is spherical. A flat, round disc would also produce a curved shadow.
To play devil's advocate - you would also need to prove that it is Earth's shadow on the moon and not the Sun's shadow. For an example, I made an HD image in paint [0].
[0] https://vgy.me/8xRkJv.png
Very nice! A great demonstration of how difficult it is to be explicit about all our assumptions.
E.g. a lot of the presented arguments presuppose an understanding of geometry, and that it applies to our universe. But for most people, that amounts to trusting mathematicians and physicists, which is in turn founded on trust in the scientific system and ultimately logic itself.
...and yet the same people place absolute faith in arguments supporting the flat earth merely because it defies orthodoxy, and also believe the pseudo-scientific rationales behind them.
As tempting as it may be to then pivot from my statements here and snark about people of a religious mindset different than yours, or ethical or political mindset different than yours, bear in mind that many such people engage with the world just fine. The sort of thing that we actually call mental illness is a qualitative cut above that sort of thing.
Ultimately, the message was that thoughts and feelings of mentally impaired people do have no bearing on their illness, or if it did, you wouldn't care. Then why comment, if you don't care?
No, you did. I said they were either deliberately playing or mentally ill, and that you must take that into account if you want to understand. It's the opposite of calling people morons. That was something you brought to this discussion.
Edit: I mean, sure, you show some interest, hence my question was actually honest. I didn't expect an honest answer given the attitude, but I had to ask.
2. Trying to make the claim that this word is completely innocuous, is very unbelievable unless we are to assume you are typing this from a wormhole into the past before this entered mainstream vocabulary.
3. If you were attempting to use the term in a more clinical fashion, you've completely failed to apply it correctly.
This is where it becomes obvious that you think that mentally ill -- the way you used it -- was completely innocuous, objectively true. Hence I might as well, by your own standards, call you a moron, or at least mentally ill, until the opposite is proven. That is, you might indeed be a Psychologist, and not an impostor, but otherwise your use of the term in a more clinical fashion is likewise incorrectly applied, very very likely. Sure this discussion is a waste of your time, if you are an idiot who doesn't understand "these people". PS: This is fun, blaming other people for their faults,not very helpful, but certainly fun getting a sense of superiority. I'm sure you are trying to say the right thing, but between lack of qualification and even contradicting yourself, you didn't, I'm sorry.
Funny to hear it framed that way, because most of the flat earth trolls - if you can get them to admit to their game - do it to mess with people who take it on faith that the existence of system means that it can produce results. The general person over-assumes "science's" ability to deliver all the time.
Maybe the Earth really is round, but everyone believes bullshit published in $newspaper about $research because "science said so" rather than reading and evaluating the research paper, all the time. We know damn well that the the news is going to misrepresent findings, but once it gets into meme machine called journalistic narrative everyone starts taking it on faith.
See also: the 'sun is cold' troll and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFPtjXFfczM
To paraphrase Isaac Asimov in his essay The Relativity of Wrong: "The earth is flat" is a pretty good model. "The earth is a sphere" is much better. And "The earth is an oblate spheroid" is just a bit better than that.
So, let us consider the aim of the essay: to debunk the flat earth claim as many ways as possible. I think they did a pretty good job finding data for which the flat earth model is insufficient, but a spherical earth fits quite nicely.
> My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." -- Isaac Asimov
In fact I remember an old story of someone doing exactly that, taking up the challenge of a flat-earther. They set up surveying equipment with a scope at one end of a long placid lake, a pole at the other and one midway. When they looked through the scope at the far pole, the middle pole was clearly higher. "That doesn't prove anything," said the flat-earther, "level the transit." So they leveled the transit, and the middle pole appeared some distance below level, and the far pole some distance below that. The flat-earther declared this conclusively proved the earth was flat. You really cannot win in this situation.
This is because we live today in societies that are so unnaturally large. Human psychology is designed for small foraging tribes where you know everyone personally, and so can determine how trustworthy they are. And furthermore, everyone is strongly motivated to be trustworthy because otherwise they would become social outcasts and could not survive.
In large, complex societies like ours, you are continually being presented with claims by people you don't know personally and so it is quite possible to lose all trust in their truthfulness. This is especially the case in the US today where you have entities like much of conservative media that are actively working to cultivate mistrust.
Unfortunately trust in experts is absolutely essential for a large society like ours to function, and so the problem is how to restore such trust. I think that is a very difficult problem.