6 ms·

The problem is these can all be refuted without too much trouble: 1) Flight plans only look curved because you are using a map projection that assumes a spheri

The problem is these can all be refuted without too much trouble: 1) Flight plans only look curved because you are using a map projection that assumes a spherical globe. If you use the right flat earth map you will find that flight paths follow straight lines. 2) Clouds and distances still exist in a flat earth and the clouds float above the earth. This is why they are detectable by radar. 3) Weather patterns exist on the flat earth because the sun moves across it and heats it unevenly. 4) An ant on a perfectly flat desk can also see much more from an elevated vantage point. Are you claiming desks are also spherical? 5) No one is claiming the stars nor the flat earth is stationary. Both can rotate around various axes and the resulting movement can be predicted. 6) The north star sits slightly above the plane of the flat earth and far to the north so that it appears north from any vantage point on the earth. This is just because of its distance. 7) The constellations differ depending on latitude because of the refraction of the atmosphere. This bends the light rays. 8) Tides are caused by the pull of the moon as it traverses above the flat earth and attracts the water in the ocean. 9) The other planets are also flat and only appear round because they are tidally locked with respect to the earth.

TameAntelope 5y ago
This is a good comment, because it illustrates exactly what I'm talking about w/r/t predictability. If what you've written here can help you accurately predict the answers to questions you don't know, then you might be onto something. However, there is no predictive value in any of what you've written here, so while they may be, to some, "refutations", they are not in any way useful. If there were actually any flat earthers who cared about reason, because of the lack of predictive value (not to mention the contradictory/unprovable nature of what you've written here), they would not remain flat earthers for very long.
- hvidgaard 5y ago
  I usually propose a rather simple, albeit not cheap, experiment for this. 1. Find a sufficiently large "shallow" body of water. 2. Build a number a number of masts/poles in a straight line, all with an identical height over the water. Now when standing at the shore and looking at the masts I predicts one of two things. a. you can see all masts in their entirety with a telescope, or b. you can see less and less of the masts the further away they are. There are actual places with power lines that satisfy this requirement. For b. you can use high school math to reason about the curvature needed to explain the results. There is no such sound logic (to my knowledge) explaining this for a flat surface.
  - IAmEveryone 5y ago
    You can also watch any sailing vessel on its way towards (or away from) you.
  - BurningPenguin 5y ago
    A wise man in ancient time did this by comparing shadows in different places. Can't remember his name though. But he was quite close with his calculations. It doesn't need to be expensive. Just wait for noon. Then hop in a car/bus/train/whatever and do the same at the same time next day somewhere else. It helps if the shadow-casting thing is the same height.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
      That was Eratosthenes of Cyrene: The simplified method works by considering two cities along the same meridian and measuring both the distance between them and the difference in angles of the shadows cast by the sun on a vertical rod (a gnomon) in each city at noon on the summer solstice. The two cities used were Alexandria and Syene (modern Aswan), and the distance between the cities was measured by professional bematists.[16] A geometric calculation reveals that the circumference of the Earth is the distance between the two cities divided by the difference in shadow angles expressed as a fraction of one turn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_Earth's_circumference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_Ea...
    - eesmith 5y ago
      Here's Philip Morrison showing how to do a similar experiment, from the 1980s TV series "The Ring of Truth". https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc?t=567 https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc?t=567 They found a road that was almost due north and south (US 183 from Bassett, NE to 370 miles south in Coldwater, KS). They measured the elevation of Antares at its zenith one night, then again the next. From that they get the change in latitude. Combined with odometer data and some estimates for wiggles, and end with a result about 5% larger than the best-known solution. Their measuring instrument was a Ryder van dubbed "The Van of Eratosthenes." As an aside, later in the same episode is when I learned about GPS. https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc?t=2968 https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc?t=2968 . "This is the future of mapping."
- aeternum 5y ago
  Yes, I believe it was Feynman that said something along those lines: Anyone with an imagination can come up with an idea about how the world is. The extreme difficulty is in ensuring it is consistent with everything that has been seen before.
- CodeWriter23 5y ago
  Flat earthers care about firsthand observation more than reason. Reason is simply defeated by relying on false facts aka “believing”. This is why that crazy rocket dude ended up dead in the Nevada Desert last year, he was literally trying to see for himself what the shape of the Earth is. I -believe- the earth is round. But the intellectual honesty I’ve taken from The flat earthers tells me I have delegated my source of truth on that topic to others whom I am trusting to relay the truth. Maybe one day I’ll get into orbit and see for myself. With my own eyes. But that is beside the point of what I learned from them. I learned any time I outsource what I think is true to third parties, there is a risk of me believing a lie. Because people lie sometimes. And sometimes they draw conclusions based on assumptions and conjecture. My thought process is non-binary or more honestly, tri-state. I have true, false, and I have not observed that to be either true or false.
  - Ao7bei3s 5y ago
    But I haven't delegated my source of truth! I have done first hand observation! 1. I regularly do video conferences with friends and colleagues on other continents; I can see if its light or dark in their windows. I have personally verified that some of my friends and colleagues and their places exist. 2. I have seen many ships disappear behind the horizon, and I have seen mountains disappear behind the horizon from ships; I have verified the accuracy of Vesselfinder (by comparing transits through lines in Vesselfinder with what I can see) and checked that it is at the expected distance. (I was curious about the delay.) 3. I have watched the ISS (once even trailed by the ATV) and it was right where HeavensAbove said it would be. And 90 minutes later I did it again. I have personally verified the basic math behind circular orbits. 4. I have experienced changing radio band propagation conditions consistent with a day/night cycle that is different in different places. Such as grayline DX, which is good propagation along the day/night line. Which implies the day/night line is real. And based on the reports I received I know it matches the map. I have built some transmitters and receivers myself. 5. I have flown between continents, been jetlagged and changed my clock's time (or maybe changing my wristwatches time is changing the sun and causing the jetlag?). I have watched the entire flight through windows, so I know I traveled very far. 6. I have seen the motion behind Foucault's pendulum over enough time (I've been to the museum long enough to verify that the pendulum plane rotates as expected, and I saw nobody messing with it in any obvious way.) We also did the same experiment in school. In school, we did the math for the Coriolis force, and talked about how it comes up as a significant factor in unexpected places (e.g. railway). Someone would talk. 7. I've observed the direction of the toilet swirl, and whirlpools in lakes. 8. I've experienced tide levels and swum with/against tide currents (sometimes even in the same place). I have also seen the moon in the sky and I think if it would be inconsistent someone would've noticed by now. 9. I've seen the shape of day/light boundary on the moon. Now that's the moon, but that one's clearly spherical, which is one data point. 10. I had a trusted fried, but he's got a PhD in astrophysics now, so he must be in on it and we cannot be friends anymore. /s And I'm just some nerd, I haven't done too many experiments. I'm sure I could still extend the list, but of course there's no point since neither of us believe in the flat earth "theory". There's no intellectual honesty in coming up with fake experiments like flat earthers do (if they even go to the trouble). Before 2020, I thought flat earth like conspiracies were harmless fun (and I still think that a significant number of flat earthers are just having fun), and maybe they are. But after spending several hundred hours "discussing" many conspiracy theories (people I know and care about started believing very outlandish ones, like chemtrails and 5G causing covid) the last two years, and first hand witnessing intellectual incompentence (complete math illiteracy down to calculating a percentage, complete rejection of the concept of mathematical proofs, zero concept of scale e.g. of organizations and communities, complete refusal to read original research, insisting on "reading between the lines" to interpret texts claims made in texts into the opposite) I have come to see conspiracy theories and fake or un-intellectuality (is that a word?) as very dangerous (the "can cause death" type of danger).
danbruc 5y ago
4) An ant on a perfectly flat desk can also see much more from an elevated vantage point. Are you claiming desks are also spherical? Not true. From any non-zero height above an infinite flat desk you can see the entire desk.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  How do you you know that light travels in straight lines? Maybe it travels in curved lines! In fact, that's how mirages form. (A good response to this, of course, is to ask for a model for how much the light curves. A vague description is not a predictive, scientifically-testable model, unless it's a very wrong description.)
  - danbruc 5y ago
    Now you are shifting the goal posts. From the difference between a sphere and a plane assuming light travels in straight lines to questioning whether light travels in straight lines to begin with. How do you you know that light travels in straight lines? Maybe it travels in curved lines! You turn on a light source and look at how the light spreads. Light does not - besides a tiny bit of diffraction - bend into the shadow area behind obstacles. In fact, that's how mirages form. You obviously have to perform your experiments under control conditions, so pick a time and place with negligible variation in index of refraction of the atmosphere. Or measure and account for it.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      > Now you are shifting the goal posts. I don't know that I am; you were the one to bring up the implicit “light travels in straight lines” assumption with your claim about ants on a flat table. Obviously if I think the earth is flat, I don't believe that. > Light does not - besides a tiny bit of diffraction - bend into the shadow area behind obstacles. It depends how much distance you give the light. Shadows are noticeably blurry if your hand is close to the light source. > You obviously have to perform your experiments under control conditions, so pick a time and place with negligible variation in index of refraction of the atmosphere. You're never going to get a situation where the air temperature is consistent enough for this; it varies by height (as does pressure). And, again, unless you can show me that “index of refraction” is a thing that applies to air, I'm not going to believe something as ludicrous as Snell's Law. (After all, isn't the speed of light a constant? The whole derivation rests on the assumption that it varies depending on the medium!)
usrbinbash 5y ago
What about this one: A flat shape is impossible because the gravitational field would be vastly different on a planar body than on a spherical one, as I go further from the center of mass the further I go towards the edge. And how gravity works can easily be demonstrated in a lab setting.
- soco 5y ago
  Flat-earthers already "changed" the physics of light propagation. I guess they would have no troubles bulls*tting their way out of gravity as well because none of them has actually the math/physics/etc basics to prove themselves wrong (what's a lab anyway, a brainwashing tool of the lying elite?).
- aeternum 5y ago
  Can it actually be demonstrated in a lab that gravity non-planar? One interesting explanation I've seen by the flat earthers is that gravity does not exist, instead the flat earth is simply under constant acceleration at 9.8m/s^2.
  - titzer 5y ago
    Yes. Very precise measurements of gravity on Earth have shown that, although it always points to the Earth's center, the force of Earth's gravity varies by latitude a tiny bit[1] (because Earth is a rotating oblate spheroid) and by elevation (because gravity varies by distance between center of masses). Neither of these can be accounted for on an accelerating disk Earth. [1] https://www.britannica.com/science/gravity-physics/Acceleration-around-Earth-the-Moon-and-other-planets https://www.britannica.com/science/gravity-physics/Accelerat...
jusssi 5y ago
Day length in Helsinki, Finland today is 6 hours, 53 minutes. It is now noon. Day length in Melbourne, Australia today is 14 hours, 25 minutes. The sun just set half an hour ago. If you know someone who lives in those places, you can call them for confirmation (unless they're part of the conspiracy). How do you explain the observations with flat earth?
- aeternum 5y ago
  The explanations I've seen are akin to a lamp above shining onto a desk. The lamp moves across the plane of the desk and moves closer to the desk as nears Finland and further away as it moves toward Australia.
ajuc 5y ago
The problem is - explanations for each of these demand different flat earth models. Often several different flat earth model for several cases of one of these points. For example to make 10 different flight paths over the pole make sense on flat earth you need 10 different flat earth maps contradicting each other. The only way to make all the flight paths make sense is round Earth. Same with weather, day-night and seasons - you can get some of them with different flat earth models, but these models contradict each other. To get all the daily and yearly patterns at the same time you need round Earth. As for tides I'd like to see even one good flat earth model where moon is visible in the correct place on the sky at the same time looking from equator, north hemisphere and south hemisphere. Most flat earth models put moon 180 degree away from "center of flat earth" opposite of the sun, which is obviously wrong (cause you can see moon and sun at once in many places). And there's such problems with each point. But that's not a problem, because flatearthers don't want to have a consistent model of reality, they just want to think The System is out there trying to deceive them. So it's fine having 100 different contradicting models that explain one thing each.
welterde 5y ago
> 9) The other planets are also flat and only appear round because they are tidally locked with respect to the earth. Much harder to argue for this these days now that amateur telescopes/decent camera optics have become reasonably cheap and cameras too. Jupiter has a rotation period of only ten hours, so one can easily see it rotate within one night. The sun takes a bit longer since it has a rotation period of 25-38d (depends on the latitude which is quite interesting) and if there are no sun spots it's kind of hard to tell.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

TameAntelope 5y ago

This is a good comment, because it illustrates exactly what I'm talking about w/r/t predictability. If what you've written here can help you accurately predict the answers to questions you don't know, then you might be onto something. However, there is no predictive value in any of what you've written here, so while they may be, to some, "refutations", they are not in any way useful. If there were actually any flat earthers who cared about reason, because of the lack of predictive value (not to mention the contradictory/unprovable nature of what you've written here), they would not remain flat earthers for very long.

hvidgaard 5y ago
I usually propose a rather simple, albeit not cheap, experiment for this. 1. Find a sufficiently large "shallow" body of water. 2. Build a number a number of masts/poles in a straight line, all with an identical height over the water. Now when standing at the shore and looking at the masts I predicts one of two things. a. you can see all masts in their entirety with a telescope, or b. you can see less and less of the masts the further away they are. There are actual places with power lines that satisfy this requirement. For b. you can use high school math to reason about the curvature needed to explain the results. There is no such sound logic (to my knowledge) explaining this for a flat surface.
- IAmEveryone 5y ago
  You can also watch any sailing vessel on its way towards (or away from) you.
- BurningPenguin 5y ago
  A wise man in ancient time did this by comparing shadows in different places. Can't remember his name though. But he was quite close with his calculations. It doesn't need to be expensive. Just wait for noon. Then hop in a car/bus/train/whatever and do the same at the same time next day somewhere else. It helps if the shadow-casting thing is the same height.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    That was Eratosthenes of Cyrene: The simplified method works by considering two cities along the same meridian and measuring both the distance between them and the difference in angles of the shadows cast by the sun on a vertical rod (a gnomon) in each city at noon on the summer solstice. The two cities used were Alexandria and Syene (modern Aswan), and the distance between the cities was measured by professional bematists.[16] A geometric calculation reveals that the circumference of the Earth is the distance between the two cities divided by the difference in shadow angles expressed as a fraction of one turn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_Earth's_circumference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_Ea...
  - eesmith 5y ago
    Here's Philip Morrison showing how to do a similar experiment, from the 1980s TV series "The Ring of Truth". https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc?t=567 https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc?t=567 They found a road that was almost due north and south (US 183 from Bassett, NE to 370 miles south in Coldwater, KS). They measured the elevation of Antares at its zenith one night, then again the next. From that they get the change in latitude. Combined with odometer data and some estimates for wiggles, and end with a result about 5% larger than the best-known solution. Their measuring instrument was a Ryder van dubbed "The Van of Eratosthenes." As an aside, later in the same episode is when I learned about GPS. https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc?t=2968 https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc?t=2968 . "This is the future of mapping."
aeternum 5y ago
Yes, I believe it was Feynman that said something along those lines: Anyone with an imagination can come up with an idea about how the world is. The extreme difficulty is in ensuring it is consistent with everything that has been seen before.
CodeWriter23 5y ago
Flat earthers care about firsthand observation more than reason. Reason is simply defeated by relying on false facts aka “believing”. This is why that crazy rocket dude ended up dead in the Nevada Desert last year, he was literally trying to see for himself what the shape of the Earth is. I -believe- the earth is round. But the intellectual honesty I’ve taken from The flat earthers tells me I have delegated my source of truth on that topic to others whom I am trusting to relay the truth. Maybe one day I’ll get into orbit and see for myself. With my own eyes. But that is beside the point of what I learned from them. I learned any time I outsource what I think is true to third parties, there is a risk of me believing a lie. Because people lie sometimes. And sometimes they draw conclusions based on assumptions and conjecture. My thought process is non-binary or more honestly, tri-state. I have true, false, and I have not observed that to be either true or false.
- Ao7bei3s 5y ago
  But I haven't delegated my source of truth! I have done first hand observation! 1. I regularly do video conferences with friends and colleagues on other continents; I can see if its light or dark in their windows. I have personally verified that some of my friends and colleagues and their places exist. 2. I have seen many ships disappear behind the horizon, and I have seen mountains disappear behind the horizon from ships; I have verified the accuracy of Vesselfinder (by comparing transits through lines in Vesselfinder with what I can see) and checked that it is at the expected distance. (I was curious about the delay.) 3. I have watched the ISS (once even trailed by the ATV) and it was right where HeavensAbove said it would be. And 90 minutes later I did it again. I have personally verified the basic math behind circular orbits. 4. I have experienced changing radio band propagation conditions consistent with a day/night cycle that is different in different places. Such as grayline DX, which is good propagation along the day/night line. Which implies the day/night line is real. And based on the reports I received I know it matches the map. I have built some transmitters and receivers myself. 5. I have flown between continents, been jetlagged and changed my clock's time (or maybe changing my wristwatches time is changing the sun and causing the jetlag?). I have watched the entire flight through windows, so I know I traveled very far. 6. I have seen the motion behind Foucault's pendulum over enough time (I've been to the museum long enough to verify that the pendulum plane rotates as expected, and I saw nobody messing with it in any obvious way.) We also did the same experiment in school. In school, we did the math for the Coriolis force, and talked about how it comes up as a significant factor in unexpected places (e.g. railway). Someone would talk. 7. I've observed the direction of the toilet swirl, and whirlpools in lakes. 8. I've experienced tide levels and swum with/against tide currents (sometimes even in the same place). I have also seen the moon in the sky and I think if it would be inconsistent someone would've noticed by now. 9. I've seen the shape of day/light boundary on the moon. Now that's the moon, but that one's clearly spherical, which is one data point. 10. I had a trusted fried, but he's got a PhD in astrophysics now, so he must be in on it and we cannot be friends anymore. /s And I'm just some nerd, I haven't done too many experiments. I'm sure I could still extend the list, but of course there's no point since neither of us believe in the flat earth "theory". There's no intellectual honesty in coming up with fake experiments like flat earthers do (if they even go to the trouble). Before 2020, I thought flat earth like conspiracies were harmless fun (and I still think that a significant number of flat earthers are just having fun), and maybe they are. But after spending several hundred hours "discussing" many conspiracy theories (people I know and care about started believing very outlandish ones, like chemtrails and 5G causing covid) the last two years, and first hand witnessing intellectual incompentence (complete math illiteracy down to calculating a percentage, complete rejection of the concept of mathematical proofs, zero concept of scale e.g. of organizations and communities, complete refusal to read original research, insisting on "reading between the lines" to interpret texts claims made in texts into the opposite) I have come to see conspiracy theories and fake or un-intellectuality (is that a word?) as very dangerous (the "can cause death" type of danger).

danbruc 5y ago

4) An ant on a perfectly flat desk can also see much more from an elevated vantage point. Are you claiming desks are also spherical? Not true. From any non-zero height above an infinite flat desk you can see the entire desk.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
How do you you know that light travels in straight lines? Maybe it travels in curved lines! In fact, that's how mirages form. (A good response to this, of course, is to ask for a model for how much the light curves. A vague description is not a predictive, scientifically-testable model, unless it's a very wrong description.)
- danbruc 5y ago
  Now you are shifting the goal posts. From the difference between a sphere and a plane assuming light travels in straight lines to questioning whether light travels in straight lines to begin with. How do you you know that light travels in straight lines? Maybe it travels in curved lines! You turn on a light source and look at how the light spreads. Light does not - besides a tiny bit of diffraction - bend into the shadow area behind obstacles. In fact, that's how mirages form. You obviously have to perform your experiments under control conditions, so pick a time and place with negligible variation in index of refraction of the atmosphere. Or measure and account for it.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    > Now you are shifting the goal posts. I don't know that I am; you were the one to bring up the implicit “light travels in straight lines” assumption with your claim about ants on a flat table. Obviously if I think the earth is flat, I don't believe that. > Light does not - besides a tiny bit of diffraction - bend into the shadow area behind obstacles. It depends how much distance you give the light. Shadows are noticeably blurry if your hand is close to the light source. > You obviously have to perform your experiments under control conditions, so pick a time and place with negligible variation in index of refraction of the atmosphere. You're never going to get a situation where the air temperature is consistent enough for this; it varies by height (as does pressure). And, again, unless you can show me that “index of refraction” is a thing that applies to air, I'm not going to believe something as ludicrous as Snell's Law. (After all, isn't the speed of light a constant? The whole derivation rests on the assumption that it varies depending on the medium!)

usrbinbash 5y ago

What about this one: A flat shape is impossible because the gravitational field would be vastly different on a planar body than on a spherical one, as I go further from the center of mass the further I go towards the edge. And how gravity works can easily be demonstrated in a lab setting.

soco 5y ago
Flat-earthers already "changed" the physics of light propagation. I guess they would have no troubles bulls*tting their way out of gravity as well because none of them has actually the math/physics/etc basics to prove themselves wrong (what's a lab anyway, a brainwashing tool of the lying elite?).
aeternum 5y ago
Can it actually be demonstrated in a lab that gravity non-planar? One interesting explanation I've seen by the flat earthers is that gravity does not exist, instead the flat earth is simply under constant acceleration at 9.8m/s^2.
- titzer 5y ago
  Yes. Very precise measurements of gravity on Earth have shown that, although it always points to the Earth's center, the force of Earth's gravity varies by latitude a tiny bit[1] (because Earth is a rotating oblate spheroid) and by elevation (because gravity varies by distance between center of masses). Neither of these can be accounted for on an accelerating disk Earth. [1] https://www.britannica.com/science/gravity-physics/Acceleration-around-Earth-the-Moon-and-other-planets https://www.britannica.com/science/gravity-physics/Accelerat...

jusssi 5y ago

Day length in Helsinki, Finland today is 6 hours, 53 minutes. It is now noon. Day length in Melbourne, Australia today is 14 hours, 25 minutes. The sun just set half an hour ago. If you know someone who lives in those places, you can call them for confirmation (unless they're part of the conspiracy). How do you explain the observations with flat earth?

aeternum 5y ago
The explanations I've seen are akin to a lamp above shining onto a desk. The lamp moves across the plane of the desk and moves closer to the desk as nears Finland and further away as it moves toward Australia.

ajuc 5y ago

The problem is - explanations for each of these demand different flat earth models. Often several different flat earth model for several cases of one of these points. For example to make 10 different flight paths over the pole make sense on flat earth you need 10 different flat earth maps contradicting each other. The only way to make all the flight paths make sense is round Earth. Same with weather, day-night and seasons - you can get some of them with different flat earth models, but these models contradict each other. To get all the daily and yearly patterns at the same time you need round Earth. As for tides I'd like to see even one good flat earth model where moon is visible in the correct place on the sky at the same time looking from equator, north hemisphere and south hemisphere. Most flat earth models put moon 180 degree away from "center of flat earth" opposite of the sun, which is obviously wrong (cause you can see moon and sun at once in many places). And there's such problems with each point. But that's not a problem, because flatearthers don't want to have a consistent model of reality, they just want to think The System is out there trying to deceive them. So it's fine having 100 different contradicting models that explain one thing each.

welterde 5y ago

> 9) The other planets are also flat and only appear round because they are tidally locked with respect to the earth. Much harder to argue for this these days now that amateur telescopes/decent camera optics have become reasonably cheap and cameras too. Jupiter has a rotation period of only ten hours, so one can easily see it rotate within one night. The sun takes a bit longer since it has a rotation period of 25-38d (depends on the latitude which is quite interesting) and if there are no sun spots it's kind of hard to tell.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]