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In all fairness though, I don't have good reasons to believe most of consensus science other than appeals to authoritative sources. It gets me wondering how I

In all fairness though, I don't have good reasons to believe most of consensus science other than appeals to authoritative sources. It gets me wondering how I could emperically test the things I supposedly know.

krapp 9y ago
> In all fairness though, I don't have good reasons to believe most of consensus science other than appeals to authoritative sources. In all fairness, flat-earthers do the same thing, they just substitute appeals to authority with denials of authority. Blanket skepticism no more intellectually valid than blind faith. Also, ironically, while there may be many scientific truths which are difficult for the lay person to understand and verify, the roundness of the earth isn't one of them[0]. [0]https://www.popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round https://www.popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round
- xelxebar 9y ago
  That popsci article should really be "10 pieces of evidence that are consistent with the round Earth model". Most of them aren't super easy to reproduce either. > Blanket skepticism no more intellectually valid than blind faith. This sounds vaguely like a moral judgement to me. What does "valid" mean here? I find it less inciteful, and more useful, to take a pragmatist approach. Was Newton wrong and Einstein right? Even if we call Newtonian mechanics "wrong" it's certainly super useful. In the same way, thinking of the Earth as flat is pretty darn useful in daily life. I'd bet a pretty penny that almost everybody operates with an implicit "flat Earth" model in their head for mundane tasks. On the other hand, the Round Earth model is probably super useful to sattelite engineers. If the Flat Earthers start doing cool space science or something, I'm more than happy to encourage them.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Newtonian mechanics wasn't wrong, it wasn't right enough at certain scales - AFAIK, it correctly predicted the orbits of all of the planets except Mercury, whose proximity to the sun was close enough that relativity had to be taken into account to explain it. However, flat Earthers aren't "wrong" in the same way that Newton was, they don't simply have an alternative model of reality which is useful in its own peculiar way. Newtonian mechanics and Einstein don't contradict each other, and one doesn't override the other. Flat Earthism, meanwhile, is like the crackpot who denies all this newfangled quantum timespace relativity mumbo jumbo and refuses to believe in anything but Newton, because Newton is simple and obvious. It doesn't refine and augment existing knowledge, it denies its validity altogether. Thinking of the earth as being flat at human scale is simple and obvious. Thinking of the earth in its entirety as being flat is simple and obvious and wrong in ways that even the ancients could figure out. There's no domain in which that's useful.
Spooky23 9y ago
You can trivially deomonatrate that the earth is round using basic tools available 2000 years ago. You of course have to trust the math isn’t some conspiracy theory, but the ancient Greeks were able to measure the earth’s circumference.
- xelxebar 9y ago
  > You can trivially deomonatrate that the earth is round using basic tools available 2000 years ago. It's not actually so trivial. There are simple observations that are consistent with a Round Earth model, but it's pretty difficult to nail things down rigorously and precisely. Anyway, it's sort of interesting to me that you even bring that up. My comment didn't really claim anything about Flat Earth at all; it was more an open statement about the epistimics of scientific knowledge among non-experts. The fact that you and one other commenter come to defend Round Earth, seems to suggest a sort of belief tribalism in our current science-oriented zeitgeist.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    Questions about rigor and precision are a function of your goal. The goal is to determine if a Round Earth model is a more useful model than a Square or Disk Earth model. I've demonstrated it empirically to my own satisfaction. I've seen the Southern Cross right at the horizon from the Florida Keys, but not visible father north. I've seen that the North Star rises higher in the sky as I've gone north. And in summer I've seen that the daytime is much longer in Michigan than Florida, and how the sunlight in the evening goes through the windows of the north side of buildings, which it doesn't really do in Miami. I've driven across the US and seen that the sun rises a couple of hours later in the West than the East. I've been below the Equator, and seen Orion cross the sky upside down, while the Southern Cross and the Magellanic Clouds were high in the sky. I also got confused when driving because it turns out my sense of direction was based on the expectation that the Sun should be in the south at midday, not in the north. I was once at about 55 degrees north latitude, in early December, and the sun was low in the sky at noon. By measuring the shadow length I calculated the latitude to within a couple of degrees. (This calculation does require knowing the axial tilt, which I have not independently measured.) These are all consistent with a Round Earth model, and not at all consistent with any description of a Flat Earth model that I've come across. Now of course it's possible to say that I've not measured the radius of the Earth to sufficient precision, or demonstrated that the diameter between the poles is shorter than the equatorial bulge. But that's changing the goalposts. I did not have to appeal to any authorities to confirm that the round earth model is a much better fit to my observations than a flat earth one. Why are you not able to make similar empirical tests? If you are able to carry them out, why are they not enough for you? The TV series "Ring of Truth" from the 1980s tried to address the question of how you can test things out for yourself. One of the things they did, in such a way that you could reproduce their work, was to drive along a long north-south road and measure the elevation change in a star. From this they could estimate the size of the Earth. They call it the "Van of Eratosthenes." You can see it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRY2SkMTafc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRY2SkMTafc . Again, there's no reason to trust what the said. Rather, you can use it to reproduce their methods yourself, which is the sort of empirical test you asked about.

krapp 9y ago

> In all fairness though, I don't have good reasons to believe most of consensus science other than appeals to authoritative sources. In all fairness, flat-earthers do the same thing, they just substitute appeals to authority with denials of authority. Blanket skepticism no more intellectually valid than blind faith. Also, ironically, while there may be many scientific truths which are difficult for the lay person to understand and verify, the roundness of the earth isn't one of them[0]. [0]https://www.popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round https://www.popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round

xelxebar 9y ago
That popsci article should really be "10 pieces of evidence that are consistent with the round Earth model". Most of them aren't super easy to reproduce either. > Blanket skepticism no more intellectually valid than blind faith. This sounds vaguely like a moral judgement to me. What does "valid" mean here? I find it less inciteful, and more useful, to take a pragmatist approach. Was Newton wrong and Einstein right? Even if we call Newtonian mechanics "wrong" it's certainly super useful. In the same way, thinking of the Earth as flat is pretty darn useful in daily life. I'd bet a pretty penny that almost everybody operates with an implicit "flat Earth" model in their head for mundane tasks. On the other hand, the Round Earth model is probably super useful to sattelite engineers. If the Flat Earthers start doing cool space science or something, I'm more than happy to encourage them.
- krapp 9y ago
  Newtonian mechanics wasn't wrong, it wasn't right enough at certain scales - AFAIK, it correctly predicted the orbits of all of the planets except Mercury, whose proximity to the sun was close enough that relativity had to be taken into account to explain it. However, flat Earthers aren't "wrong" in the same way that Newton was, they don't simply have an alternative model of reality which is useful in its own peculiar way. Newtonian mechanics and Einstein don't contradict each other, and one doesn't override the other. Flat Earthism, meanwhile, is like the crackpot who denies all this newfangled quantum timespace relativity mumbo jumbo and refuses to believe in anything but Newton, because Newton is simple and obvious. It doesn't refine and augment existing knowledge, it denies its validity altogether. Thinking of the earth as being flat at human scale is simple and obvious. Thinking of the earth in its entirety as being flat is simple and obvious and wrong in ways that even the ancients could figure out. There's no domain in which that's useful.

Spooky23 9y ago

You can trivially deomonatrate that the earth is round using basic tools available 2000 years ago. You of course have to trust the math isn’t some conspiracy theory, but the ancient Greeks were able to measure the earth’s circumference.

xelxebar 9y ago
> You can trivially deomonatrate that the earth is round using basic tools available 2000 years ago. It's not actually so trivial. There are simple observations that are consistent with a Round Earth model, but it's pretty difficult to nail things down rigorously and precisely. Anyway, it's sort of interesting to me that you even bring that up. My comment didn't really claim anything about Flat Earth at all; it was more an open statement about the epistimics of scientific knowledge among non-experts. The fact that you and one other commenter come to defend Round Earth, seems to suggest a sort of belief tribalism in our current science-oriented zeitgeist.
- eesmith 9y ago
  Questions about rigor and precision are a function of your goal. The goal is to determine if a Round Earth model is a more useful model than a Square or Disk Earth model. I've demonstrated it empirically to my own satisfaction. I've seen the Southern Cross right at the horizon from the Florida Keys, but not visible father north. I've seen that the North Star rises higher in the sky as I've gone north. And in summer I've seen that the daytime is much longer in Michigan than Florida, and how the sunlight in the evening goes through the windows of the north side of buildings, which it doesn't really do in Miami. I've driven across the US and seen that the sun rises a couple of hours later in the West than the East. I've been below the Equator, and seen Orion cross the sky upside down, while the Southern Cross and the Magellanic Clouds were high in the sky. I also got confused when driving because it turns out my sense of direction was based on the expectation that the Sun should be in the south at midday, not in the north. I was once at about 55 degrees north latitude, in early December, and the sun was low in the sky at noon. By measuring the shadow length I calculated the latitude to within a couple of degrees. (This calculation does require knowing the axial tilt, which I have not independently measured.) These are all consistent with a Round Earth model, and not at all consistent with any description of a Flat Earth model that I've come across. Now of course it's possible to say that I've not measured the radius of the Earth to sufficient precision, or demonstrated that the diameter between the poles is shorter than the equatorial bulge. But that's changing the goalposts. I did not have to appeal to any authorities to confirm that the round earth model is a much better fit to my observations than a flat earth one. Why are you not able to make similar empirical tests? If you are able to carry them out, why are they not enough for you? The TV series "Ring of Truth" from the 1980s tried to address the question of how you can test things out for yourself. One of the things they did, in such a way that you could reproduce their work, was to drive along a long north-south road and measure the elevation change in a star. From this they could estimate the size of the Earth. They call it the "Van of Eratosthenes." You can see it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRY2SkMTafc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRY2SkMTafc . Again, there's no reason to trust what the said. Rather, you can use it to reproduce their methods yourself, which is the sort of empirical test you asked about.