The Flat-Earth Conspiracy Continues To Spread Around the Globe (cnn.com) 388
An anonymous reader shares a report: "I don't want to be a flat Earther," David Weiss says, his voice weary as he reflects on his personal awakening. "Would you wake up in the morning and want everyone to think you're an idiot?" But Weiss is a flat Earther. Ever since he tried and failed to find proof of the Earth's curve four years ago, he's believed with an evident passion that our planet is both flat and stationary -- and it's turned his world upside down. [...] People in every pocket of this spherical planet are rejecting science and spreading the word that the Earth is flat. There's no clear study indicating how many people have been convinced -- and flat Earthers like Weiss will tell you without evidence there are millions more in the closet anyway, including Hollywood A-listers and commercial airline pilots -- but online communities have hundreds of thousands of followers and YouTube is inundated with flat-Earth content creators, whose productions reach millions.
A YouGov survey of more than 8,000 American adults suggested last year that as many as one in six Americans are not entirely certain the world is round, while a 2019 Datafolha Institute survey of more than 2,000 Brazilian adults indicated that 7% of people in that country reject that concept, according to local media. The flat-Earth community has its own celebrities, music, merchandise -- and a weighty catalog of pseudo-scientific theories. It's been the subject of a Netflix documentary and has been endorsed by figures including the rapper B.o.B. Each year, more flat-Earth events fill the calendar, organizers say.
A YouGov survey of more than 8,000 American adults suggested last year that as many as one in six Americans are not entirely certain the world is round, while a 2019 Datafolha Institute survey of more than 2,000 Brazilian adults indicated that 7% of people in that country reject that concept, according to local media. The flat-Earth community has its own celebrities, music, merchandise -- and a weighty catalog of pseudo-scientific theories. It's been the subject of a Netflix documentary and has been endorsed by figures including the rapper B.o.B. Each year, more flat-Earth events fill the calendar, organizers say.
Welcome... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Funny)
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Not sure it's completely the age of stupid, but it might be the age of explanation. If only someone could come up with a good experiment that proves that the Earth is a sphere... ;)
But seriously, if the Earth is a disk then every video that flatearthers show, where the camera is attached to a balloon and it's waaay up there spinning around, showing that the horizon is a straight line, would have to have been launched from the center point of the disk. Otherwise, the horizon would appear as farther on one
Re: Welcome... (Score:2)
Lets not forget that 8km id as far as you can see, and that for every 8km the surface drops 10m. Maybe they should spend more time on the ocean.
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Re: Welcome... (Score:4, Funny)
Lets not forget that 8km id as far as you can see, and that for every 8km the surface drops 10m.
I wonder how many of these people live on a coastline, including on a large lake? There are so any places where you can see only the top of a distant structure across calm water, with an obvious horizon intervening.
Besides, if the Earth were flat, cats would have already knocked everything off it.
Re:Welcome...to DiscWorld (Score:2)
C'mon we all know the earth is flat, and rides on the back of a couple of horny giant elephants riding on the back of a giant tortoise...
God rest ye Terry Prachett
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The irony is that the back of a tortoise's shell is curved. Pretty sure that whoever came up with that originally was intending to express the idea that the shell WAS the surface of the Earth. The Chinese used to believe the shape of the Earth was like an upside-down bowl sitting in water. So they knew it was *curved* but didn't know that it went all the way around. A tortoise shell or upside-down bowl (both surrounded by an endless sea) was how they imagined the world.
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There was someone who proved it, 2200 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Informative)
The Greeks knew the world was round and they measured it's size by measuring the length of shadow that two identical sticks cast at midday a few hundred miles apart on a north south longitude on the same day. Some high school geometry and the assumption that the sun is far away and it was a piece of cake. Flat Earthers are cretins who should be composted or made to live in America under Trump forever.
Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Funny)
and the assumption that the sun is far away and it was a piece of cake.
Now I knew the moon was made of cheese but this is new to me! Wait... what flavor cake?
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It was not actually the "same day".
It was another day in two different years (probably with a few years span in between).
But that particular day had special properties ... bonus points if you can figure without wikipedia which four days in a year are prime candidates for that :P
Re: Welcome... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, disinformation is and always was a thing, there isn't any "fix" for that. The internet has created an environment where information on being able to prove this stuff for yourself is widely available, so if anything we should be having less of this, and yet we're seeing the opposite.
The problem, in a nutshell, is what came about 30 years after the internet, which is the social media bubble, where no matter what contrary belief you have or no matter how taboo the subject, you can find many other like-minded people in large numbers, all without the risk of exposing your real identity. Eventually when people are convinced that there's a large enough following, even when there isn't, they become disinhibited and go public about it, leading to a positive feedback.
You can almost certainly bet that there are foreign state actors behind at least some or possibly all of these disinformation campaigns, for example Russian Times had a news piece suggesting that 5G could kill you, broadcast only outside of Russia, with the intention of putting the rest of the world behind Russia. Wouldn't be surprised if a state actor wasn't at least partially fueling the flat Earth movement.
Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Interesting)
Many years ago I thought about joining the Flat Earth Society. I read about them and thought they where some kind of group like the Church of the Sub genius. A club or group that doesn't take itself seriously.
I got a hold of some of the literature, I guess my brain didn't register the full implication of what I was reading till I was half way through what I was reading. Slowly the lights came on, these idiots are for real. I guess that sometimes the brain encounters something so stupid it has a problem processing it.
No, I didn't join but that was an hour of my life wasted .
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Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Insightful)
When they can make money spouting bullshit on YouTube and sell tickets to conferences, they will spout bullshit on YouTube and sell tickets to conferences.
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like, the early 1990s, before The September The Never Ended
I started university, and got my first Unix account, in September 1993. I'm sorry.
Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have anything to be sorry for. You where the kind of people that we where used to having. The September That Never Ended was caused when AOL plugged itself in to Usenet. Instead of a few hundred new users where the stupid one eventually filter themselves out leaving us with only the good ones. What we got was a endless stream of newbies every month for ever. The September That Never Ended was first spark that destroyed Usenet as a communications medium.
But despite the name The September that Never Ended did, indeed, end. AOL finally left usenet but by then the damage was done. Usenet was done as a useful communication tool.
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That actually sounds about right. There was a newsgroup, alt.sci.flat-earth, or something like that. That would have been where I first heard about them.
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Not as much fun as alt.pave.the.earth or its sister group alt.chrome.the.moon though.
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alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk
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alt.ensign.wesley.die.die.die
Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Interesting)
these idiots are for real
Nope. They're having a laugh. It started out as a relatively small group making a joke, and grew to a larger group engaging in fun thought experiments along the lines of "Presuming the world is flat, how could you account for...". This is what started getting them attention, and that uninformed attention and media reporting resulted in trolling (flat Earthers trolling normies). That trolling made them even more popular on the internet.
In the process, they surely picked up a few morons who aren't in the joke. But the vast majority of them are in it for the lulz at this point, and there's still a lot of them who enjoy crafting theories that work with observational data and a flat Earth.
Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Insightful)
While I think part of what you're saying is true—that what began as a funny rhetorical exercise has turned into a form of trolling—I think you're underestimating the "few morons" that were picked up along the way. The people who actually believe this crap are the most ardent defenders because trolls are lazy. While I think some of the true believers are just stupid, I think the majority are mentally ill.
One thing we tend to overlook when it comes to internet conspiracies is that they provide the mentally ill with obsessive outlets. But then there's people who are just stupid who also latch on to these ideas.
I have no idea what the solution to this problem might be, or if there even is one, but I think it's important to acknowledge the consequences of Poe's law. Like 90% of the time a troll, an idiot, and a mentally ill person are indistinguishable on the internet.
Re:Welcome... (Score:4)
* [https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/11/18/1646210/intel-to-remove-old-drivers-and-bios-updates-from-its-site Intel To Remove Old Drivers and BIOS Updates From Its Site] â" 18 November 2019
What a crock.
NASA Video from ISS [youtube.com]
Since the invention of cameras in space, which goes back at least to the Apollo program, you believe in the round earth the same way you believe in lions and elephants and giraffes: you've seen them on TV.
Non-belief requires maintaining an active Grand Conspiracy Postulate.
Planar geometry master class: distance matrix for Winnipeg, Tierra del Fuego, Port Moresby, Addis Ababa. All units km. Directly from Google, mainly their air-travel subsystem.
_____T______P______A
W 11,939 12,628 12,193
T________12,134 11,906
P_______________12,166
(Slashcode effs with the spacing.)
Hmm, what geometric figure is composed of four equilateral triangles, with four vertices and six identical edge metrics?
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It's like a troll pyramid scheme... It's trolls all the way down.... until the last layer.... they are the true idiots
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You should see the garbage being spewed about ancient monolithic sites,
You probably mean megaliths and/or stone age.
There are plenty of interesting movies on YT that are not "garbage".
E.g. about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Fact is: there is a kind of dark history in mankind history, dark as in he original meaning of the word: we don't know what happened, we don't know what existed.
The ice ages probably destroyed so much we can never imagine what was before. Or know there was nothing.
Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, welcome to the age of trolls.
My personal theory is that not one in a hundred self-professed flat Earthers actually, truly believes this nonsense, but enjoy seeing the palpable consternation of rational people twisting their brains into knots trying to figure out how people could believe something so ludicrous. Others may enjoy the challenge of coming up with preposterous theories to "prove" the earth is flat, and getting a reaction from others. Likewise, when asked in a poll, I'll bet a lot of people respond in such a way as to deliberately confound the pollsters with stupid answers like this (7% sounds reasonable). In fact, I'd wager more more people misunderstood the question or simply made a mistake in answering than truly believe the earth may be flat.
So, sorry, I don't buy it. I'm sure there are some people that are so truly gullible or are just contrary or paranoid enough that they fall for the fake science or conspiracy nonsense, but I think the true believers are fairly rare.
Re:Welcome... (Score:4)
Could it be that they're all trolls? Like the Gary Larson cartoon: "Wait a minute, isn't anyone here a real sheep?"
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It depends what you mean by "actually, truly believe", I think.
You're suggesting that 99.5 out of 100 flat-earthers are just trolls and doing it for the lols. I think that number is probably more like 1/10 are trolling. You're seriously underestimating just how dumb and stupid a lot of people truly are if you think 99.5/100 people know it's fake and are just trolling.
Of the remaining 9 in 10, probably 8 of them have some level of 'belief' that it's true, like they're just "open minded" and "I haven't seen a
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How many people believe that 6000 years ago dinosaurs roamed the earth and helpfully used their teeth to open coconuts for us? You treat it as an individual intellectual phenomenon while it is a social phenomenon.
Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Personally, I identified 2 groups of "Flat Earthers". The crackpot idiots that believe the bullshit and the ones that figured out that you can have an easy income by selling the bullshit to the first group.
Kinda like in other religions where you have believers and priests, with pretty much the same relationship.
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But how can the Earth be hollow, with entry/egress holes at the poles, if it's flat?
How to spread stupidity (Score:2)
The number one way it spreads is apparently via youtoob:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/st... [bbc.com]
What you did there (Score:2)
Re:What you did there (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What you did there (Score:4, Funny)
That joke fell a bit flat, didn't it?
If God dropped the flat Earth, would it land with the buttered side down . . . ?
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That joke fell a bit flat, didn't it?
If God dropped the flat Earth, would it land with the buttered side down . . . ?
That would depend on it's value.
NASA (Score:4, Interesting)
So... the myriad of pictures from satellites, NASA, are all what? Fake?
Re:NASA (Score:4, Insightful)
So... the myriad of pictures from satellites, NASA, are all what? Fake?
I wasted a few minutes reading that article, so the TL;DR version is: yes, they are all fake and coordinated by a massive multi governmental conspiracy. Weather satellite images are fake, moon landing was fake, even that publicity stunt where the guy sky-dived from 110K feet (which clearly showed the curvature of the earth) was fake.
They apparently also don't believe any business travelers have actually flown between all different parts of the globe either, since the fact that even one individual has flown from the US to Japan, from Japan to India, from India to Europe, and from Europe to America neatly disproves their "theory".
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Personal importance bias. If you watch "Behind the Curve" that one woman on there mentions that she doesn't believe anything that hasn't happened to her personally. So if she's never traveled around the world on a few transoceanic flights or been to orbit or the moon, then she doesn't believe it can happen. She's a special kind of ignorant.
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That seems less dangerous then the Christians, Jews and Muslims though. If she only believes her eyes, at least she isn't sitting there believing in a sky fairy that no on has ever seen.
Yeah, I realize she probably is a Christian too. People aren't necessarily consistent with their own beliefs. We do amazing mental gymnastics to fit contradictory shit into our heads all the time.
Re:NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
I love the fact that the same government that can't even stay running 100% of the time can orchestrate a *perfect*, 0 mistakes fake footage campaign across 11 presidents and several cycles of republican/democrat control of various houses of government. Not to mention bring on board every other government on Earth who will always play ball and continue the conspiracy, again, with 100% accuracy... /rolleyes
Re:NASA (Score:5, Interesting)
I love the fact that the same government that can't even stay running 100% of the time can orchestrate a *perfect*, 0 mistakes fake footage campaign across 11 presidents and several cycles of republican/democrat control of various houses of government.
Well, you have to realize these guys generally also believe in a shadow government (which through time has manifested itself as the "trilateral commission", the Freemasons, Templars, etc.) which has been in place for thousands of years and which actually controls the sham governments you and I see. They controlled the Pharaohs, they controlled the Caesars, and they still control the Trumps, the Merkels, and the Putins. So their counter to your statement would probably be to point to that nebulous, hidden organization.
Layers upon layers, it's turtles all the way down.
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Re:NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the religious nuts have already shown where it leads if you give bozos like that an inch. Next you hear is that they demand their bullshit to be taught at school.
Re:NASA (Score:5, Funny)
So... the myriad of pictures from satellites, NASA, are all what? Fake?
Do you mean pictures of the Coriolis Effect on weather patterns? And how they spin in different directions in the north and south?
That is not "proof" of a round earth. The Coriolis Effect can be explained by a spinning sphere. It can also be explained by a spinning disk. Roll a ball across a spinning schoolyard roundabout and see for yourself.
The difference is that with a sphere, it would be symmetrical in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, while the effect would be asymmetrical with a disk.
But it is NOT symmetrical. Hurricanes and typhoons are more frequent and stronger in the Northern Hemisphere. By far.
List of Atlantic hurricane records [wikipedia.org]
List of the most intense tropical storms [wikipedia.org]
Ergo, the earth is flat.
Now, I already know what the round-earthers are going to say next: “So then why do cyclones rotate clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and CCW in the North?”
There is a simple and obvious explanation for this: In the Northern Hemisphere, most people drive on the right. But in the Southern Hemisphere, people in Australia, NZ, South Africa, and India, drive on the left. As cars pass in opposite directions, a vortex of air is generated between the vehicles. Since angular momentum is conserved, this spin builds up in the atmosphere, until it reaches the low-pressure cells where the cyclones form.
The original name was actually CARiolis Effect for this reason, but it was later changed to CORiolis as part of the flat-earth coverup.
Also, before some pedant objects and says “Yeah, but India is in the Northern Hemisphere”, let me point out that this is technically true, but the "equator" is an artifact promulgated by the round-earthers. Also, the annual monsoons carry the angular momentum of the Indian air back across the "equator "when they retreat southward at the end of the rainy season.
Re:NASA (Score:5, Funny)
This also neatly explains why there are no tornadoes in England.
The English drive on the left, cancelling out the angular momentum from the rest of the Northern Hemisphere.
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It's stupider than that. If the earth were flat, the sun would rise everywhere at the same time (other than, perhaps, places behind mountains). You can demonstrate this with a flat surface and a flashlight. It can't be otherwise. So the existence of time zones is conclusive proof that either A) the earth is not flat, or B) other flat earthers are part of the conspiracy .
Guess which answer the flat earthers choose.
Science it (Score:3, Informative)
There are a number of experiments that a person can run, and that flat earthers HAVE run, that show the earth is not flat. If those results don't falsify their hypothesis, they won't be convinced by more experimentation.
A couple examples:
- The precision gyro experiment
- The light gated through some apertures along a straight canal experiment.
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No, it was clearly to keep you on the phone longer so they could make more money.
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There are a number of experiments that a person can run...
- The light gated through some apertures along a straight canal experiment.
-due to the mirage effect, turns out optical experiments are a bit ambiguous. You can get the result that the Earth is flat, curved down, or even curved up, depending on whether there's a temperature inversion.
An easier experiment: find a friend who lives 1000 miles or more away. Find a day when the sky is clear. Exactly when the sun touches the horizon, phone them and ask whether the sun is on the horizon for them, too.
(if the friend is located due north or south, you have to do this near the equinoxes,
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Point being, if Aristotle could figure it out, surely one of these geniuses could do it too, if they really had an open mind.
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Re: Science it (Score:2)
Maybe theyre just living in a different Matrix simulation than the rest of us? Lol
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Even easier: a couple of protractors and a phone call.
Caller 1 (in New York): I measure the north star at 40 degrees above the horizon.
Caller 2 (in Miami): I measure the north star at 25 degrees above the horizon.
Hmmm... how could that be possible on a flat earth? Oh, I forgot. The entire sky is a giant projection screen onto which God displays round-earth consistent lies to fool the evil, atheist scientists. Because God. A flat earth, with aforementioned screen, is proof that God exists and loves us. Someh
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Also - spending a few bucks and sending a camera to the edge of space on a balloon and observing the curvature on the camera's pictures. Unless of course you think The Men In Black "got" to your camera between the time it left your hands in the balloon and when you recovered it a couple hours later of course.
The stupid, it burns. (Score:2)
since he tried and failed
Well, at least he tried, let's give him that. Next time, maybe he should do it with his eyes open.
OTOH, I don't believe we'll colonize any other planets -- the gravity well is just too deep. I hope I'm wrong, but I tried to throw and keep a ball up in the air and failed, so that's that.
Finally, an explanation! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why the GPS system (predicated on a more-or-less spherical Earth) is such a miserable failure and never works.
Clown world is flat (Score:2)
Airline pilots? (Score:4, Insightful)
Any pilot who thinks the earth is flat should in no way have any sort of flying license. That's just scary.
If the Earth were flat... (Score:4, Funny)
Humor aside, goto an area of land of level elevation (colloquially known as "flat") that has a tall tower and then drive a ways from it; once you get far enough away, besides become "smaller," in spite of the land being "flat," you see less and less of the base. I wonder why...
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breakfast cereals?! fruit bats?! churches?! very small rocks?!
A duck!
Okay ... (Score:2)
"I don't want to be a flat Earther," David Weiss says, ...
Ever since he tried and failed to find proof of the Earth's curve four years ago, ...
You mean ever since he failed to believe established facts and actual evidence?
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Nature's gift (Score:2)
Where IS the edge? (Score:3)
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So...where IS the edge, and all the photos and videos of it?
Presumably there is some sort of wall (maybe a force field LOL) to keep people from falling off and prevent the oceans from draining........
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Or maybe it's like those old Sierra On-Line games, where going too far on either side seamlessly loops you back to the other side.
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So...where IS the edge, and all the photos and videos of it?
Presumably there is some sort of wall (maybe a force field LOL) to keep people from falling off and prevent the oceans from draining........
And here I thought no one could beat the Zero to Stupid speed record set by Scientology's story of Xenu.
I was wrong.
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I just ... (Score:2)
he community merely believes that space does not exist, the world sits still and the moon landing was faked. The jury is out on gravity -- but as Davidson notes, no one has ever seen it.
*smacks forehead*
Spherical Earth? Flat Earth? (Score:2)
A sphere? A flat disc? You're all morans.
There is only one conspiracy that everyone can agree on: the Earth is a cube!
Of course he wants to be a flat earther (Score:3)
I see this with lots of out there groups and hobbies. Cults are one. And pipe (smoking) clubs. And gun clubs. And table top gaming.
What they all have in common is they're a community that is under some form of outside attack or pressure. I'll leave it up to the read if the attacks are justified or not, but the fact remains that when you've got a community that has strong opposition of one kind or another they tend to accept all comers. e.g. it doesn't matter how much of a spaz, nerd or freak you are, there's someone out there who will accept you as is if only to have another body to fight the good fight.
There's a kind of nerd who is a nerd not because they're introverts like me, but instead because they lack social graces. As a nerd I've met many of them, and they're among the most unfortunate people on earth. The Extroverted Nerd's in for a nasty life. Unlike regular introverted nerds who don't usually want to be around people all that much they're only comfortable around folks. But folks aren't comfortable around them. Sometimes because they're physically unattractive, sometimes because of their sexuality (being a transexual nerd is not a tough lot in life), or sometimes because they can't read a room or body language in the slightest.
I've watch these nerds over the years seek out human companionship, and they always end up in a group that's facing some sort of adversity. It can be dangerous when they're recruited for some of the nastier things out there. Hell, the flat earth is harmless in comparison to the white supremacists, race realists and actual religious cults.
Still, I'd like to live in a word where none of this happens.
Marketing Scheme (Score:5, Insightful)
mapping (Score:3)
For all I know there is some conformal mapping or alternative geometry that can represent a moving, rotating sphere as a stationary plane and the laws of physics can be transformed to make the math all work out for all the observable objects in motion upon and around it.
Maybe it would be a useful way to visualize some problems. But if such a mapping exists then why not accept the convention of a near-spherical earth as being equivalent?
Unless you really have another agenda altogether that has nothing to do with a search for truth.
You only need 2 sticks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You only need 2 sticks (Score:5, Informative)
If you live at a sailing port, on a clear day, you can see a ship disappearing from view as it sails away. If you then climb a tall hill, the ship comes into view again. Sailors knew the earth is round practically forever. They could see the effects.
Just so you know... (Score:4, Insightful)
I hear more about Flat Earth from Slashdot than any other place on the net. In fact I think here and reddit are the only places talking about it. Do you folks have nothing better to do than rage against people that believe stupid things? At which point are you going to realize that you are now part of the problem of the spread of this ideology?
Streisand Effect? Do you feel me?
Flat earth trap (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the day, FE believers don't believe in the globe because they simply don't WANT to believe the earth is a globe. There is no evidence you can provide, no proof you can supply that will change their minds. At best, all the debunking simply serves to educate 3rd party observers who are not knowledgeable about science and are curious about the questions that FE's pose. Now, the people who are heavily involved in spreading FE clearly have a financial motive. Their youtube channels and merchandise sales and now conferences provide a steady stream of income.
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I suggest they all walk to the edge...
I would like personally like to see the edge. I invite any flat-earthers to take me there and show me. Perhaps we can see what's on the bottom of the earth. How does gravity behave at the edge?
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*Roughly.
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Actually, it's an oblate spheroid [wikipedia.org].
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Heh. It's more perfectly spherical than the best made pool ball every manufactured, too.
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Amen brother
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Humanity is just flat out doomed...
I think we'll come around eventually...
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That is planely false.
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Healthy skepticism is good otherwise you are susceptible to being gullible.
Pseudo-skepticism is unhealthy as it means you are unable to learn anything outside your myopic perspective.
However, ignoring overwhelming evidence doesn't make it go away. Only a complete fool ignores it.
Look at these people, anti-vaxxers, climate-change-deniers, drug laws, the various variants of religion, political ideology, etc.
Ignoring overwhelming evidence is something the masses do just fine. I would go so far that to say that for most people it is a core skill.
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Most flat earthers are essentially Christian ultra-creationists who extend their creationism to space and physics, and some anti-vax belief is creationism-driven as well.
Also, "pot is perfectly safe" is just a slight oversimplification. I always find it funny that you can suddenly transform any conservative businessdroid into an Occupier by bringing up the renewable energy or pot industries.