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I won't call a basketball 'not round' because it has a rough surface, would you? The highest mountain or deepest canyon on earth are roughly 10 km above/below s
by Koiwai 6y ago
I won't call a basketball 'not round' because it has a rough surface, would you?
The highest mountain or deepest canyon on earth are roughly 10 km above/below sea level, compared to the radius of earth it's way smoother than a basketball.
As for the flat earthers, you assumed they would accept another concept that stars are very far, if they resides not far above us, that could kinda explain that.
For the record I'm not a flat earther, please do not downvote me because of the previous paragraph.
- function_seven 6y agoI still stay the Earth is round, but not because of the relative roughness or smoothness of the surface. Oblate spheroids are round in the same way my dinner plate is round!
- j7ake 6y agoIn the end it depends on what you want to predict from your assumptions that tell you whether it’s okay to assume a ball is round or the roughness matters. Would you call a golf ball round? Depends. If you want to calculate how a golf ball travels upon being hit by a golf club, then you’re going to get more predictive results if you consider the dimples in the golf ball. If you only want to calculate the number of balls you can fit in a bag, by all means ignore the roughness. Just as in the flat earth debate: it’s perfectly reasonable to assume flat earth when planning your bike trip, but the assumption breaks down when you want to fly large distances. For me it is all about knowing which models and abstractions are useful in which contexts rather than philosophising what is “real”.