4 ms·

This was really interesting and I feel like I learned a bit more about how to deal with unreasonable people on the internet (and maybe recognize if I'm being un

by idrios 9y ago

This was really interesting and I feel like I learned a bit more about how to deal with unreasonable people on the internet (and maybe recognize if I'm being unreasonable myself?) > ...even if there is a slim chance beliefs on the margin may eventually gain wide consensus (as happened with the proposals of the round Earth in Archaic Periods and continental drift before the mechanism of plate tectonics...) After reading this line, I'm curious how this article would read with an example that was once a fringe theory that ultimately did gain widespread consensus.

colejohnson66 9y ago
I was taught in elementary school (college age now) that people thought the Earth was flat until Columbus came alone to prove everyone wrong. That false statement that has some widespread consensus. My parents were taught it also.
- vidarh 9y ago
  That one is a particularly weird one, given that there are so many obvious and well known examples to counter it. Case in point, Dante's Divine Comedy (EDIT: Which the linked article does mention at the end) - completed 1320 - contains a very explicit description of the earth being round, complete with describing time differences due to the sun rising and setting at different times (Purgatory explicitly mentions that at the same time there is sunset in Jerusalem, midnight over the Ganges, and sunrise in Purgatory which he placed as a physical place on the opposite side of the earth), and how the stars would be different on different sides of the earth. It'd be one thing if the evidence was all obscure, but somehow this myth managed to take hold despite the fact that one of the most famous literary works in history counters it (I guess that tells us something about how few people actually read the classics as opposed to just read about them). (there are of course many other, and earlier, sources of evidence refuting this myth, but Dante provides one of the clearest and most explicit and, most importantly, famous ones)

by idrios 9y ago

colejohnson66 9y ago

I was taught in elementary school (college age now) that people thought the Earth was flat until Columbus came alone to prove everyone wrong. That false statement that has some widespread consensus. My parents were taught it also.

vidarh 9y ago
That one is a particularly weird one, given that there are so many obvious and well known examples to counter it. Case in point, Dante's Divine Comedy (EDIT: Which the linked article does mention at the end) - completed 1320 - contains a very explicit description of the earth being round, complete with describing time differences due to the sun rising and setting at different times (Purgatory explicitly mentions that at the same time there is sunset in Jerusalem, midnight over the Ganges, and sunrise in Purgatory which he placed as a physical place on the opposite side of the earth), and how the stars would be different on different sides of the earth. It'd be one thing if the evidence was all obscure, but somehow this myth managed to take hold despite the fact that one of the most famous literary works in history counters it (I guess that tells us something about how few people actually read the classics as opposed to just read about them). (there are of course many other, and earlier, sources of evidence refuting this myth, but Dante provides one of the clearest and most explicit and, most importantly, famous ones)