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One can understand something and not believe it is true. I'm sure flat earthers understand the concept of a sphere or more specifically a oblate spheroid. They

One can understand something and not believe it is true. I'm sure flat earthers understand the concept of a sphere or more specifically a oblate spheroid. They just don't believe that earth is that shape.

deleted 3y ago
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JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> I'm sure flat earthers understand the concept of a sphere or more specifically a oblate spheroid This isn’t understanding the concept of a spherical planet. The radial symmetry of gravity, for instance, is critical to understanding why penguins aren’t constantly falling off Antarctica. Someone can understand the physical possibility of a sphere without grasping the fuller concept.
- ta8645 3y ago
  > The radial symmetry of gravity, for instance, is critical to understanding why penguins aren’t constantly falling off Antarctica. I don't understand how your point challenges the notion that people can understand something while not believing it. A flat earther can understand how gravity protects penguins on a sphere, but not believe that it is relevant to the flat disk they inhabit.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    Fair enough, I wasn’t disputing the general assertion. Just the narrow point that flat earthers tend to understand the model they’re dismissing. In my experience, they do not. A spherical earth isn’t simply implausible, it’s impossible to them.
Nevermark 3y ago
> One can understand something and not believe it is true Of course. "Belief" is subjective. It requires no fact or reasoning, and is independent of "understanding", so can correlate with it or not. > I'm sure flat earthers understand the concept of a sphere or more specifically a oblate spheroid. Your example isn't quite what I was talking about. A rational person can understand and believe in a relationship between spinning and oblate spheres, without logically concluding that the Earth is a sphere, spinning or oblate. Relevant "understanding" questions would be, do they understand General Relativity? The Higgs field? The Coriolis Effect? Gravitational density maps? The topology of airport locations and travel times, the topology and latencies across the internet, land, sea and orbital, the ring of geocentric satellites? Etc. Understanding any of those things, means understanding: why large masses pull themselves into (spinning oblate) spheres, that Coriolis torque is a measurement of speeds varying across latitude, or that travel and communications map to a sphere, or that anyone can directly view an unbroken circle of satellites directly above the unbroken ring of the equator, etc. All without getting mired in someone's unilaterally subjective "beliefs".

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> I'm sure flat earthers understand the concept of a sphere or more specifically a oblate spheroid This isn’t understanding the concept of a spherical planet. The radial symmetry of gravity, for instance, is critical to understanding why penguins aren’t constantly falling off Antarctica. Someone can understand the physical possibility of a sphere without grasping the fuller concept.

ta8645 3y ago
> The radial symmetry of gravity, for instance, is critical to understanding why penguins aren’t constantly falling off Antarctica. I don't understand how your point challenges the notion that people can understand something while not believing it. A flat earther can understand how gravity protects penguins on a sphere, but not believe that it is relevant to the flat disk they inhabit.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  Fair enough, I wasn’t disputing the general assertion. Just the narrow point that flat earthers tend to understand the model they’re dismissing. In my experience, they do not. A spherical earth isn’t simply implausible, it’s impossible to them.

Nevermark 3y ago

> One can understand something and not believe it is true Of course. "Belief" is subjective. It requires no fact or reasoning, and is independent of "understanding", so can correlate with it or not. > I'm sure flat earthers understand the concept of a sphere or more specifically a oblate spheroid. Your example isn't quite what I was talking about. A rational person can understand and believe in a relationship between spinning and oblate spheres, without logically concluding that the Earth is a sphere, spinning or oblate. Relevant "understanding" questions would be, do they understand General Relativity? The Higgs field? The Coriolis Effect? Gravitational density maps? The topology of airport locations and travel times, the topology and latencies across the internet, land, sea and orbital, the ring of geocentric satellites? Etc. Understanding any of those things, means understanding: why large masses pull themselves into (spinning oblate) spheres, that Coriolis torque is a measurement of speeds varying across latitude, or that travel and communications map to a sphere, or that anyone can directly view an unbroken circle of satellites directly above the unbroken ring of the equator, etc. All without getting mired in someone's unilaterally subjective "beliefs".