Are "flat-earthers" an actual thing?

Not even a few hundred miles , more like 15 miles. Where do the Rocky Mountains go when you get more than 15 miles away from them? Why can't you see them anymore on the horizon yet you can clearly see the sun and the Moon

It is not necessary to read the whole PDF, as once you’ve gone through 2 or 3 examples, you can see that he repeats the same mistakes, probably all 16 times.

In your excerpt, he suggests that “Google Maps does its best to demonstrate the flight path…”, only to find that “Google Maps flight paths do not match reality”. All 16 examples depends on his proving the first point, rather than taking it for granted that it is so, and that globe-earthers would stand by the first point.

More generally, his method is faulty:

- Google Maps is not the correct way to find actual flight paths

- Nor is drawing straight lines on Gleason’s map

We could equally draw straight lines on a polar projection centered on the north pole (see map below) for all the northern hemisphere flights, and equally “prove” the globe earth makes perfect sense. All we have really done is change the vantage point of the eye of the viewer, keeping the globe model unchanged.

It was painful to read the author explain his understanding of the “great circle”, and fail to understand that the shortest line on the surface of a globe between two points in the northern hemisphere will appear to curve up, when viewed at the level of the equator, and two points in the southern hemisphere will appear to curve down, while points that cross the equator will form an “S” curve. This effect is exaggerated and more visible on some flat projections, like Mercator. We can see all of this in the Lufthansa image I provided above.

The direction and magnitude of the curvature of the great circle, as a function of eye-position, can be easily demonstrated with a basketball, placing the straight line as if it were the equator, and looking at it as if you were above the equator, then rotate the basketball upwards to see the upwards curve, and downwards to see the downward curve.

When you change your vantage to the north pole (like Gleason’s map) the nature of the line depicting the “great circle” between any two points changes with the change of vantage point of the beholder.

I won’t go into detail into the catalog of failures to understand the globe model he is attempting to disprove, repeating many popular flat earther mistakes, like which direction is up and down on a globe, or, as anyone who has flown in a plane can confirm, you don’t “feel” the velocity, but only “acceleration”, etc.

The last point to show his failure to do complete research is his insistence that there are no explanations for deviations from the optimal “great circle” shortest path between two airports. A modest amount of research indicates at least three reasons to deviate (besides unplanned emergencies): 1) economic reasons — where do passengers want to go, and how many?; 2) safety reasons — emergency landings require being near airports; and 3) the jet stream.

Here is a polar projection of the globe where the flat-earther can play “connect the dots”:

dude stop being the moron and going on and on with the tedious arguments

We Know the Earth is a sphere because you cannot look out the window and see the Himalayas or the Rocky Mountains

If the Earth was really flat you could see the Himalayas from any point on Earth. It's the simplest way to shut down any discussion without the need for all these tedious excursions

Why can I see the sun and the moon on my Horizon but I cannot see the Himalayas or the Rocky Mountains

Also believing in Jesus or Buddha or Krishna or Yahweh or Mormonism, is just as ridiculous as Flat Earth

You're telling me God decided to reveal himself to Palestinian goat herders 2000 years ago but doesn't make himself plainly known to the rest of humanity

It's just as ridiculous as believing in Flat Earth, and it shows that people are blind fools who are easily indoctrinated into nonsense

Flat earthers believe in the Earth being flat the same way Christians believe in the power of Jesus. It's a ridiculous Fairy Tail but people still believe it

We Know the Earth is round because we can look out our windows and see the sun and the moon rising and setting on the horizon but we cannot see any tall mountain ranges from more than 15 miles away. Case closed!

Stop going on and on with the nonsense

It looks like this guy tried to set up a rival conspiracy but it didn't gain much traction. Still, I would love to attend a convention where the flat earthers argue with the hollow earthers.

https://www.amazon.ca/World-Top-Secret-Scientific-Scriptural/dp/1481136852

Of course the earth is not flat like a mirror. Its going up and down. Thats why you cant see things further away. You just extrapolate it has to be a round shape. Sorry but its an easy mistake to make

MidFootStriker wrote:

dude stop being the moron and going on and on with the tedious arguments

We Know the Earth is a sphere because you cannot look out the window and see the Himalayas or the Rocky Mountains

If the Earth was really flat you could see the Himalayas from any point on Earth. It's the simplest way to shut down any discussion without the need for all these tedious excursions

Why can I see the sun and the moon on my Horizon but I cannot see the Himalayas or the Rocky Mountains

…

We Know the Earth is round because we can look out our windows and see the sun and the moon rising and setting on the horizon but we cannot see any tall mountain ranges from more than 15 miles away. Case closed!

Stop going on and on with the nonsense

There is always hope that something will one day click for at least a small few. I did see one guy in the UK converted, based on a view of sunken mountains in the horizon.

Is your simple argument enough to shutdown discussion? You’d think so. Yet, if it is not complete disregarded and forgetten, some flat-earther will reply with some kind of “law of perspective” babble-science that makes it too tiny to see, or the atmosphere makes hazy all but the brightest and largest of objects. After all, can you see the sun on a cloudy day, or the moon on a cloudy night? Can you see to drive in a dense fog? In LA, you can rarely see the mountains, except after it rains, and then they are quite visible from distance much farther than 15 miles.

The thing is, flat-earthers fail to grasp how flat the globe is over human scales. If you measure the center of a 100 mile radius, to the edge on the surface of an earth sized globe, it drops less than 3/4ths of a degree. That’s simple trigonometry.

Meanwhile, flat earthers should develop an app/website like this, to help prove their realities:

Okay good points

But I still think objects Vanishing Over the Horizon is the simplest way to show the Earth is round

Just take a pair of high-powered binoculars on to any boat and you can literally watch the land disappear over the horizon oh, and you can see elevated structures as the last Point Vanishing so it shows it's not due to atmosphere or anyting

You can do the same thing with a car if you have an unobstructed View

Just like it's a known thing to Sailors that you can see the mask of ships sail first coming over the horizon

It works best if you are sailing away from a tall building like the Hancock building which sits right on the coast of Lake Michigan in Chicago

I'm surprised someone doesn't film video using a high-power camera to show that it clearly vanishes from the bottom off slowly over the Horizon

Anyway this proves that it's not atmosphere or anything because why would you still be able to see the top of the building when the bottom becomes obscured by the curvature of the Earth

Like I said I think it's the simplest way to shut down debate if you really explain it and the person is at all reasonable

But like I said the thing that people fail to realize is that people are not unbiased creatures who look for rationality they are very ingrained creatures who have strong natural and learned predispositions

Hall Monitor wrote:

Hmm well...

One portion of the Nile River flows for a thousand miles with a fall of only one foot. Parts of the West African Congo, according to the supposed inclination and movement of the ball-Earth, would be sometimes running uphill and sometimes down. This would also be the case for the Parana, Paraguay and other long rivers.

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.

What, no, but good troll.

Honestly, the notion of Earth being flat or round depends on what you believe regarding the construct of reality. It is very possible it is flat but appears round to us, just as it is seemingly round but really appears flat. Imagine we are actually a simulation being watched on a screen. Our whole universe, Earth and all, could be entirely flat in 2-D even though it appears 3-dimensional to both those in the simulation and those observing the simulation. You watch TV, correct? When a picture of Earth comes onto the screen, does it appear spherical of flat to you? If we are part of the program, we may never actually be able to know the truth....then, what you perceive is all that really matters. It can be round to one person and flat to another, all while they both exist in the same reality. It is like asking the cat whether he is alive or dead when it he hiding in the box.

By this logic nothing is true or false so it's not really at all useful

I mean maybe sticking Forks in electrical sockets send you directly to heaven so we shouldn't worry about kids safety at all. but that's not the world anyone lives in. Maybe you should communicate your next message here by sending it in a bottle out to sea and imagining that we will get it regardless

Also very good points, assuming “the person is at all reasonable”. The reason threads like this can go on until the horizon, is that it is not a science versus science debate.

I’m no psychologist but here is what I see:

- flat earthers are a collective of people who generally misunderstand the role of science. True scientists know that many things we consider “scientifically proven” today, will be disproved later by more sophisticated observations. Recall everyone used Newtonian physics for centuries before Einstein proved it wrong. True scientists don’t try to prove things “right”, but try to prove things “wrong”, as that is where real progress is made.

- you can see this in their terminology. Science is not a way of approaching observations and attempting to model and explain them, and using these models to design more sophisticated observations, but something that you can choose to “believe”, and something you can change, like you would change clothes. Science is only learned by indoctrination and brainwashing and enforced by authoritarian conspiracy.

- the mindset that this is how science works is also a mindset that is easily exploitable and malleable, as you replace models with other models, without a true understanding of all the implications, and pretend that simplified models are absolute truths.

- science can make people uncomfortable, when they don’t understand the increased complexity needed to model the real world.

- I see a group of people who want to remove that discomfort, by replacing what they don’t understand with something they do understand, and supported by things they want to believe.

- I see a group of people who want to believe in conspiracies, so they can blame others for causing their discomfort.

Recently I watch the “Behind the Curve” documentary, and I could see a group of people really excited that they found a place, and a group of people, where they really felt like they belonged. With the internet, people can find each other, and have conventions where they can feed off each other and build their ideas and confidence.

What is interesting in that documentary is that over the course of 90 minutes, several flat-earthers performed experiments actually “proving” rotation and earth curvature, but remained in denial. “Bob” spent more than $20,000 on a gyroscopic experiment that showed a 15 deg per hour rotation of the earth, and wanted to continue improving the experiment, as he wasn’t comfortable with the answer. The documentary ends with an experiment that shines a light through holes in a panel, only to find they have to lift the light way above their head, much higher than predicted, but still refused to accept that this was necessary to compensate for curvature. I don’t recall if this was in the documentary, but I seem to recall (memory is sketchy), the infamous Mark Sargent witnessed a helicopter experiment (?) but still refused to accept the outcome was as predicted by a globe earth.

They remain in denial, because accepting these complicated realities would bring back the discomfort they were avoiding, and they could no longer blame the authorities for fooling them.

But I could be completely off base here, as I am no psychologist. As a true scientist, I’m willing to listen to competing theories, and have this one proven wrong.

rekrunner wrote:

I don’t recall if this was in the documentary, but I seem to recall (memory is sketchy), the infamous Mark Sargent witnessed a helicopter experiment (?) but still refused to accept the outcome was as predicted by a globe earth.

Sorry — it wasn’t the Discovery Channel helicopter disappearing below the horizon behind a lake experiment but a National Geographic boat on a lake experiment with a striped flag, where the stripes slowly disappeared one stripe at a time as the boat sailed away. A group of flat-earthers, led by Mark Sargent, were invited and present to witness it, appreciating the scientific enthusiasm, and dismissed the plainly visible result captured by a high zoom camera as caused by “heat”. All the flat-earthers agreed in solidarity.

Sorry, might've been explained already somewhere but, in the flat earth model, how does gravity work? As far as I can tell, gravity only makes sense if you consider the earth a sphere.

I'm quite happy there are a few people trying to prove the world is not a globe, it's how science works. I'm pretty certain they won't disprove the globe earth, but they might find out something useful, maybe more about refraction, who knows.

But I have no time for the conspiracy theorists who routinely disbelieve everything we already know, but will blindly follow any baseless conspiracy theory.

Science is based on standing on the shoulders of giants, conspiracy theory is based on not wanting to understand science.

It's perfectly reasonable to believe in a single conspiracy theory, because there have been actual conspiracies. But the people who blindly follow any old baseless conspiracy theory are not being reasonable.

It's only a small step from believing in a flat earth to believing we are controlled by shape shifting lizards and other wacky, and largely anti-Semitic, conspiracies.

The pseudo-explanations of the stars, moon, sun, seasons, eclipses, gps, map distortions etc from the flat earthers require such complex explanations and leave many unanswered questions, whereas these things are simple on the globe earth. And Occam's razor tends to be true.

Buzzed Aldrin wrote:

crete wrote:

This picture and all others like it must be an elaborate hoax

http://muskokagoddess.com/wp-content/uploads/planet-earth-space.jpg

Uhhhhhhhh... Welcome to 1972. Just look at your picture. NO STARS!!!??? Doctored much? Ever wonder why there are no stars in the Apollo mission photos? Because they were taken in a Burbank studio! You're a cog in the great machine, maybe it is time to start questioning things, my friend.

The zionists who run Hollywood would never use studio resources to produce footage that makes white gentiles look like they conquered a space challenge like the moon landing. Studios have made it their mission to try to humiliate and undermine white America, for over 100 yrs. They'd never participate in a scheme to make the gentile space program to look that good. Especially becsuse former German scientists after the war helped with the strategy/technology

The fake moon landing rumors/conspiracy theories are anti white narratives.

We landed on the moon. It kills every zionist leftist commie that it happened. They literally can't stand white gentile men accomplishing such greatness but there was nothing they could do about it at the time. They responded as years went by of creating a story that it was fake.

Lead Foil Hat XVI wrote:

Honestly, the notion of Earth being flat or round depends on what you believe regarding the construct of reality. It is very possible it is flat but appears round to us, just as it is seemingly round but really appears flat.

Of course this is your take. Nothing you say exists in reality. Your version of it, of course. But not actual reality.

You're like a cartoon character,

Probably been mentioned but the hilarious Netflix documentary Beyond the Curve showed a mixture of grifters, the mentally ill and the educationally subnormal. I particularly liked them proving the earth rotates using a very expensive laser gyroscope they bought gleefully imagining that this would provide the "proof" they wanted. The cognitive dissonance that resulted was entirely predictable.

Still, the Flat Earth folks get equal opportunity to exercise their debate chops just like the climate and vax denying folks, dressing up their arguments with all sorts of Rube Goldberg-like logic and creative Science!

This is America! Land of the Free and Whacky!

I guess William Shatner is part of the big conspiracy. So, promoting "space travel" on TV and movies wasn't enough, he had to actually go up there.

;-)

You are completely off base. You're still using Newtonian physics to answer the questions.