4061

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why Skepticism Supports A Round Earth.

« on: February 03, 2018, 08:33:42 PM »

They don't tend to stick around for long - they either leave of their own volition, or we assist them in doing so (terrible reasoning and inability to adhere to simple rules tend to go hand-in-hand). But bear in mind that I also manage our social media and deal with some of our press relations. I appreciate that my word might not mean much to you, but I do promise that I've witnessed each and every example I brought up here.

I guess overall given that:
a) There are a lot of stupids in the world and
b) The vast majority of people are Round Earthers
It stands to reason that most stupids will be Round Earthers.
So I'm sure you're right. For the record, while you have come across as pretty rude in our interactions so far I have no reason to think you're a liar.

Aside from the drive by "earth is round, ur stupid" idiots, I'd say most of the regular Round Earthers on here are pretty articulate and provide evidence of their assertions. It's the flat earthers (notably Tom) who assert things without basis (other than "Rowbotham said so"), fail to answer the difficult questions or just walk away from the thread when they're shown to be wrong.

Now, you could say "we've been at this 10 years, we've had these conversations a million times, we're bored of answering the same questions" which is a fairly valid stance. But that is what the Wiki is for and the answers to these more difficult questions simply aren't there. My thread about the flat earth sun generated a few pages of debate but the more difficult questions still remain unanswered.

4062

Earth Not a Globe Workshop / Re: Notes on The Importance of Empiricism

« on: February 03, 2018, 04:50:23 PM »

If you saw half a car sticking out of the ground it is possible that the car is half-buried. Did you think about that?

I quite specifically said if you saw it "going" over a hill. So as I see it go and can see less and less of it I don't think "It's got caught in quicksand!", I think "It's going over the brow of the hill, that's why I can no longer see it".
And if it was a car then as cars generally drives on roads I would assume that it is a hill and the road continues over the other side of it.
My general experience of the world is that objects disappear from the bottom as they go over a hill (which they don't on a plane, whatever Rowbotham may claim) and that roads are not built up hills which terminate in a sheer drop. I imagine people who build roads that do would get sued quite a lot by bereaved relatives.

As I said, the direct evidence of where the sun is at sunset is from the shadows it casts. Perspective does not affect the angle or length of shadows.
And if the sun and moon are as close as you suppose then you could take observations and do some triangulation to prove that.

The level of proof and direct evidence you require seems to wildly vary depending on whether it fits in with your world view or not.
All the "proofs" in ENaG are basically Rowbotham saying "this is what I have observed". That's it. And you blindly accept it.
Anything which shows the earth to be spherical you demand an absurdly high level of proof for. A level that can never really be satisfied.
You really should look into things like cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias.

4063

Earth Not a Globe Workshop / Re: Notes on The Importance of Empiricism

« on: February 03, 2018, 10:35:10 AM »

Did you observe that the half of the sun was below the horizon?

If you did not observe that, then that cannot be the direct conclusion. You are using rationalization -- a number of logical leaps and assumptions, to make your conclusion, not empericism.

This is pretty crazy thinking. Every time you see a car or any other object going over a hill you understand what is happening. No-one thinks "Hmm, that must be some trick of perspective" or "the object is changing shape", as infants we learn how the world works - one object goes behind another opaque object and you see it disappearing behind the object.

So in this diagram the person on the left can only see the head of the person on the right, not because of some new law of perspective but because the curve physically blocks the light from the bottom part of the person



It's pretty crazy to think "I can only see the person's head, I can't observe the rest of the person so I don't know if the rest of them is still there".

The empirical evidence that the sun is physically low in the sky at sunset is the long shadows you observe. They cannot be explained by a sun being where your model thinks it is. And if you're so fussed about empirical evidence then why not take some observations from locations with known distances between and do some triangulation to determine the distance to the sun or moon. If they're as close as you supposed you wouldn't need locations too far apart to observe measurable differences in angles.

4064

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The moon

« on: February 03, 2018, 08:24:46 AM »

We can't just assume how much bodies will rotate infinitely into the distance, or that bodies will descend forever without intersecting with the horizon. What evidence was ever produced to corroborate those assumptions? We need evidence, not leaps of logic.

That would work way better if you had any evidence at all for most of your claims about Flat Earth.
It's quite hard to argue with someone who doesn't regard logic as admissible.
As I said, shadows are your evidence. If you can find a way to produce the long shadows you see at sunset using an object and a torch in a dark room without laying the torch on the floor then I'd like to see it.
If the sun is where you claim it is at sunset then our shadows would be no more than twice our height. But they clearly are much longer.
That proves the light source is physically low in the sky, not just appearing to be by some magic perspective law which doesn't reflect reality in any way.
Shadow angle and length does not alter because of your "perspective". A physical light source emits photons at a certain angle and hits a physical object.
That angle depends on the physical relationship between the two objects.

4065

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The moon

« on: February 02, 2018, 10:53:51 PM »

It's not a "what if." It's a "where's the evidence?" Elucid predicts that an overhead receding body will never reach the horizon. They will approach each other forever, slowing infinitely as they approach, and never touching. Where is the TEST of this assumption that the universe operates in this continuous manner? His theories about how things should behave at long distances are untested.

It's pretty self evident that a receding body overhead won't reach much less intersect the horizon. I drew this before



And yes, yes, I know you're going to shout "but, perspective!" but think about it. How do you see something? Light from a source bounces off an object and into your eyes.
Photons bouncing from the top and bottom of the person on the right can travel in a straight line to the person on the left's eyes. So he can see the whole person.
As the person on the right gets further away all that changes is the angle at the eye which gets smaller and so the image formed on the person's retina gets smaller.
At some point the person will no longer be visible because of limitations in the person's vision. At that point some magnification would bring the person back into view, unless there was another limiting factor like atmospheric conditions.

On a plane the person will not sink below the horizon, they will be visible for as long as the person's vision allows because there is always clear line of sight between the people.
With a sun 3000 miles high (how is that triangulation experiment coming along by the way to prove that distance is correct?) and 6000 miles away the sun will clearly be above the horizon at all times. And even if you think perspective works in some way which...well in a way which it just doesn't work in, all you have to do to prove that the sun is PHYSICALLY on the horizon is observe long shadows at sunset. Those just cannot be cast by a sun which is where your model says it is. Because the angle and length of shadows cast is determined by the PHYSICAL relationship between the light source and object, not perspective. I previously suggested doing an experiment in a dark room with an object and a torch. The only way of casting long shadows will be to place the torch on the ground so it is physically on the same level as the object.

4066

Flat Earth Theory / Re: So I just want to have a civil conversation.

« on: February 02, 2018, 01:31:24 PM »

Round-earthers lead you to believe that the Earth is round and is spinning. If that balloon rose 100,000 ft into the air over a period of an hour, how come it didn't end up on the other side of Earth but only 1-2 miles from its starting point? A flat Earth can explain this better.

By that logic under UA the atmosphere would have been long since squished into the earth.
This answers your question better than I can. In brief, the atmosphere is rotating with the earth. If it weren't the wind speeds would have long since killed us.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/1193/why-does-the-atmosphere-rotate-along-with-the-earth

4067

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Booking a flight

« on: February 02, 2018, 10:33:26 AM »

Well, FE acknowledges that their map isn't perfect, and there's a lot of debate within FE about which map to use. What RE needs to show is not that the AE map is wrong on distance, it's that we have enough distance measurements between 4 points to ascertain that no flat map can have these distances together.

This was done at some length in this thread.

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6633.0

Tom started by putting the numbers into a triangle calculator and saying that because the angles added up to 180 the earth must be flat.
Of course, all a triangle calculator does is tell you the angles of a triangle on a flat plane given 3 side lengths which it can always do if the 3 lengths are such that they make a triangle.
When that was pointed out he started claiming that the distance from NY to Paris was unknown and that no-one accurately knows how fast planes fly anyway.

4068

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How come "sun sink" and not "sun shrink?"

« on: February 01, 2018, 11:48:45 PM »

Wow. That really is a load of gibberish...

I think the answer to the OP, or the FE answer, is some kind of magical atmospheric magnification which means the sun doesn't appear to sink.
But then you have the problem of a sun 3000 miles above the earth appearing to intersect the horizon.
Tom can shout "perspective" all he likes, for the long shadows you see at sunset and for clouds to be lit from below the sun must be physically on the horizon.

4069

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Disproof: Clouds lit from below at sunset.

« on: February 01, 2018, 11:03:52 PM »

Can we just get a show of hands here: how many of you agree that the fact that clouds are lit up from below totally, completely, and utterly destroys the silly FE hypothesis, and that Tom’s spooky perspective nonsense is ridiculous? Me, me, me!

Well, actually...I don't entirely agree with that.
I have explained with a diagram and proved with an experiment that for clouds to be lit from below the sun's light must be coming from below the level of the clouds so either the light is bending OR the sun is physically below the level of the clouds.
Tom dismissed my experiment because I "just moved the camera". This is true, but he is suggesting that "just moving your hand" will change the angle of the shadow from pointing downwards to upwards even if your hand is still physically below the level of the light source. I could do the experiment again by moving the object instead and so long as the object is still physically below the level of the light source you'd get the same result.
I've also suggested he do an experiment to see if he can reproduce the effect of long shadows at sunset with a light source at the angle his flat earth model claims the sun must be at during sunset.
None of this actually proves a spherical earth, but it does prove that the sun can't be where the FE model as outlined in the Wiki claims it is at sunset, unless the light is bending somehow to make it appear as if it's on the horizon. Perspective doesn't cut it.

4070

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why Skepticism Supports A Round Earth.

« on: February 01, 2018, 10:45:13 PM »

I find that it is more likely for someone to be skeptic of something which does not give a coherent awnser (FET) compaired to something with one coherent awnser (RET)

Well, that's your opinion. Who are we to tell you otherwise? Personally, I consider the opposite to be the case (some coherent RE'ers exist, but the vast majority say things like "if the Earth is flat then what do compasses point to?" or "Explain how it can be night in the southern hemisphere but, day in the northern hemisphere"), so I draw the opposite conclusion.

Come on. That just isn't true. You've been here longer than me so maybe that is your experience but since I've been here I haven't seen many round earthers saying anything that silly.
Compare and contrast with Tom who says stuff like claiming no-one knows how far NY is from Paris, sunset is caused by perspective, moonlight is cold and that lampposts "see" a raised hand on the horizon and so aim their photos up at it despite the lamp physically being above the level of the hand.

Most of the difficult questions REers pose about things like the spotlight sun remain unanswered - what keeps it in the sky, what causes its orbit to keep changing to cause seasons and lunar phases, why we can't see it at night when we can see the moon (i.e. how can the rays shining sideways from it be powerful enough to reflect to earth but the rays shining diagonally from it not reach us). There's not even an agreed FE map, so how do the airline industry get people around so reliably? The FE model as outlined in your Wiki doesn't seem the slightest bit coherent and doesn't match observations.

4071

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Planes running into the earth

« on: February 01, 2018, 01:44:59 PM »

I think the variation of g is caused, in their model, but some made up force like "Celestial Gravitation"?
As for the air, good question. I have no idea what keeps the atmosphere from flying off into space in their model if there's no gravity.
I know some FE models have a dome over the earth so maybe it's that.

4072

Flat Earth Theory / Re: GPS cannot work without satellites.

« on: February 01, 2018, 01:39:49 PM »

A number of possibilities could be happening. Youtube and the rest of the internet discuss much more about the space hoax than we do. As a curious mind I encourage you to delve into the matter.

It's interesting that you discount the possibility that the earth is actually spherical and satellites are orbiting it and GPS works exactly as all the people who know what they're talking about say it does.

When I was young we didn't have satellite TV or GPS, we had 3 TV channels (much excitement when the 4th started in the UK when I was 8 ) and maps. People weren't marching in the street because of the lack of entertainment or devices which could tell you exactly where you are at any point. How exactly do you think satellite TV came about? Do you think the satellite TV people called NASA and conversation went something like:

NASA: "Hello?"
Sky: "Hello, is that NASA?"
NASA: "Yes"
Sky: "I understand you can put things into orbit?"
NASA: "Er...yes. Yes we can. Piece of cake *stifles giggle*"
Sky: "Great! 'Cos we have this idea for beaming TV into people's homes from a satellite."
NASA: "Right..."
Sky: "So...can you help us with that? We just need a few satellites putting up to beam signals which people will receive via aerials attached to their houses"
NASA: "Umm...we're a bit busy right now..."
Sky: "We're willing to pay Shouldn't be too difficult for you clever chaps, right?"
NASA: "Er...we'll have to get back to you"

And presumably after the phonecall a somewhat panicked conversation took place internally in NASA about how they're going to fake TV signals from "space". As I said in another thread, my TV stopped working when my neighbour put some scaffolding up and blocked the signal. So it IS pointing at something. What do you think that is?

Same with GPS. It demonstrably works. It's crazy what mental backflips you do to try and explain how it can without satellites.

Meanwhile you blindly accept Rowbotham's "proofs" which generally amount to little more than him stating something and then claiming that it is proven because it matches his own observations. Case closed! As I will keep reminding you, we're talking about a man who claimed it was "proven" that the moon is translucent. There is a school of thought which says that this should cast some suspicion on his other "proofs"...

4073

Flat Earth Theory / Re: NASA can't lie, Earth is round

« on: January 31, 2018, 03:15:35 PM »

Of course, if she could get an official score report / statement from the College Board substantiating her claim, I'd reconsider.

You would. My point is that someone with a conspiracy theory mindset would not.
They start with a belief and work everything around that. So anything which shows them to be wrong is either ignored or called fake.
It's an easy (but lazy) way of "proving" yourself right.

4074

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Hemispherical star differences?

« on: January 31, 2018, 09:27:05 AM »

I'm interested to know what these objects are suspended on.
And what parallax measurements have been done to measure their distance.
And why spectroscopy can be done on the light from them which shows what they're made of and red shift and therefore movement.
I'm always amused/bemused by the impossibly high level of proof required by flat earthers for well established scientific ideas while they then claim things like "suspended objects" or "atmospheric disturbances" with absolutely no evidence.

4075

Flat Earth Theory / Re: NASA can't lie, Earth is round

« on: January 31, 2018, 09:09:29 AM »

I like that idea.  We can't say that we know certain things must be there, but we can say that it would be extremely weird to do all that for a lie.  Also, if so many people are in on it, then I have an idea for you.  One, realize how stupid this idea is, and two, learn how to be a GPS person or weatherman and tell us that they told you to lie.  Of course, then you'd be proved wrong and we all know how scared of that you are.

The problem with the conspiracy theory mindset is that it is impossible to argue with. Not because the arguments are so well thought through but because it doesn't use any logic or reason. It starts with a conclusion (the earth is flat, the moon landings were faked or whatever). I'm never sure where these conclusions come from but everything else is then worked around it. Any evidence which shows the conspiracy theory is wrong is dismissed or declared to be part of the conspiracy. How does one argue with that?

The moon landing conspiracy arguement goes something like:

"We never went to the moon, you can't prove it really happened"
"But...it's all on film, there are a load of photos of it"
"Fake! All done in a studio"
"But...most of the people who went to the moon are still alive as are many of the people who worked on the missions"
"They are lying, that's all part of the conspiracy"
"OK, but there are lunar reflectors which we use to measure the distance to the moon. How did they get there?"
"How do you know we put them there? They could be naturally occuring"

And so on. It's like my silly kangaroo thing. You can never prove kangaroos exist to me if I start with the premise that they don't and then either dismiss evidence that they do as fake or claim that the evidence is all part of the conspiracy.
It's a mess of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance.
For the record, I do believe that kangaroos exist!

We seem to have discovered Schrödinger's Idiot, someone who is a "genius" and scores 1595 on their SATs and yet has no ability to think logically or rationally. It's funny how outraged she is if someone questions her SAT score and thus calls her a liar given how many people she is calling a liar with her conspiracy theories. And we could do the exact same thing with that:

"I got 1595 on my SAT"
"I don't believe you, you are lying"
"How dare you! Here is a scan of my certificate" (I'm English btw, I have no idea if you get a certificate)
"Fake! You have Photo-shopped that to change the score."
"Here is my teacher/parent/friend, they can vouch for my score"
"They are lying too, they are part of the great SAT Score conspiracy with you"

It's exactly the same mentality, start with a conclusion and then dismiss anything which shows that conclusion to be false. Impossible to argue with people who think like that. The only reason I bother is for the benefit of other people who may see the posts and hopefully can think a bit more rationally.

4076

Flat Earth Theory / Re: NASA can't lie, Earth is round

« on: January 30, 2018, 03:48:28 PM »

NASA can't lie? Why not? No one is saying that NASA is intentionally lying about the earth's shape. Rather, NASA is lying about space travel and simply faking earth images according to what is already established and accepted by most. And the reason why NASA would fake space exploration is explained in the wiki: embezzlement.

The earth is flat because it's not necessarily a planet. Why exactly do you believe the earth must be a planet? And your version of gravity isn't accepted by flat earth theorists in general. Satellites? Can you actually prove that satellites exist? Because I sure as heck can't. Regardless, there are more than one flat earth models. One model of William Carpenter asserts that the flat earth spins on its axis. And, no, the round earth theory has not been proven true.

Clearly NASA could be lying. And the explanation in the Wiki is not impossible. But you understand that NASA are not the only people who have put things or people into space. A lot of countries have space programs now and they'd all have to be lying about them. Things have been put in space for lots of reasons. There are weather satellites - are the images you see on weather forecasts all CGI as well? Are meteorologists all "in on it"? The satellite which makes my satellite TV work was not put up by NASA and my TV does work. When my neighbour did some work on their house their scaffolding blocked the signal and they had to briefly move the dish to make it work again. So it's pointing at something and the something is making my TV work. What is it pointing at? Are the satellite TV industry all "in on it" too? The GPS works on my phone, I'm on a work trip in Poland right now, I just checked it and I'm exactly where it thinks I am. So how does that work? Are the GPS people all "in on it" too? And then there's the ISS which you can see from earth. NASA publish a website which tells you where and when.
Someone posted a video of it taken from earth and you said something silly about how maybe it's a balloon.
7 private citizens have been to the ISS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism#List_of_flown_space_tourists
I guess they are all lying too, along with all the regular astronauts and cosmonauts (over 500 people have been into earth orbit so far)?

Can I prove satellites exist or that the earth is (roughly) spherical? Well, if you're going to be a purist about it the only thing one can really prove is mathematical theorems. They exist within the limited language of mathematics in which theorems can be proven based on various axioms. Nothing else can be proven absolutely. But can satellites and a spherical earth be proven beyond reasonable doubt? That is subjective but I would suggest the vast majority of people would say yes.

GPS works.
Satellite TV works.
The ISS can be seen from earth as can some other satellites.
Over 500 people from over 25 countries have been into space, including 7 private citizens who paid for the experience.
Multiple countries have taken and published pictures of the globe earth.
Long shadows at sunset prove that the sun is physically intersecting the horizon, those shadows cannot be cast by a sun 3000 miles above a flat earth and 6000 miles away horizontally.
Objects disappeaing below the horizon cannot be explained on a flat plane.
The airline industry manage to reliably get people around the world using great circle routes plotted on a globe as do the cruise line industry.

The trouble with flat earth mentality is you start with the premise that the earth is flat with no real basis other than "the horizon looks flat" and you then insist on an absurdly high level of proof for anything which shows you wrong.
It's like me insisting that kangaroos don't exist.

So you show me a picture of a kangaroo and I say "FAKE, that's CGI, it's part of the great kangaroo conspiracy"
So you introduce me to some people who have been to Australia and seen some in the wild and I call them liars.
So you take me to a zoo and we visit one and I say "That's just a puppet"
and so on.

There is no way you can prove this to me if I either ignore all your evidence about it or just call it fake. You can do this with anything and it's what you do about the spherical earth. The level of proof you demand is impossibly high, meanwhile you accept the flat earth model despite not even having an agreed map and pretty much nothing about your model reflecting observations.

4077

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Humanity Star satellite

« on: January 30, 2018, 03:31:15 PM »

Thank you for your insightful comments. Satellites are caused by Satan. Got it.

I KNEW it!

I'm always bemused at the crazily high level of proof FErs demand for things like this and the strangely low level of proof they require for flat earth "evidence" which generally boils down to "The horizon looks flat" and "Rowbotham said so" (bearing in mind Rowbotham thought that moonlight was cold and the moon was translucent).

The old "balloon" explanation really doesn't hold any water. How would anyone manage to make a balloon move at the speed a satellite does or appear at the exact location tracking websites say it will.

4078

Flat Earth Theory / Re: NASA can't lie, Earth is round

« on: January 30, 2018, 01:59:27 PM »

See my post on the humanity Star satellite. You can track it, and if you're lucky, you can observe it. Proof of satellites. Moving on.

In the thread about the ISS where someone posted a VIDEO OF IT, Pikel queried whether it could be a balloon. 
For a "genius" she does say some silly things.
I have no idea why NASA would publish a website of where and when you can see the thing, something so easily to verify, if they were faking it all.
And there's the live feeds.
If it is all fake they're sure making it hard for themselves.

4079

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Planes running into the earth

« on: January 30, 2018, 09:10:03 AM »

This is making my head hurt a bit but I think overall you're right, this would work.
Pretty much nothing else about your model does but I'll give you this one. 

4080

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Disproof: Clouds lit from below at sunset.

« on: January 29, 2018, 10:06:43 PM »

That side view scene does not properly incorporate perspective. See the p-brane video that talks about those kind of scenes.

Well, it does "properly" incorporate perspective in that it doesn't incorporate it at all. Because it doesn't need to. My diagram shows how silly your claim is. The person has moved their hand so it looks from their perspective as if the distant light is below the level of their hand. But in real life lamps are taller than people so the shadow is still angled downwards.

I have watched the video.
p-brane is wrong about perspective.
Rowbotham is wrong about perspective.
You are wrong about perspective.

Think about how a shadow is cast. Photons from a light source hit an object. The angle of the shadow depends on the PHYSICAL relationship between the light source and the object.
Long shadows at sunset prove the sun is physically on the horizon. As I said you can prove this with an object and a torch in a dark room. Put the object on the floor and do an experiment. See if there is any other way of casting long shadows other than putting the torch near floor level. A sun 3000 miles high and 6000 miles away horizontally simply cannot do that.

To add:

The crazy claim that:

The distant lamp post is now looking up at your hand. The distant lamp post has the opposite perspective. It sees you at the horizon and it sees your hand slightly above the horizon, and therefore its photons are angled upwards at it.

From the person in my excellent diagram's perspective the lamp does look like it is above his hand.
From the person looking from the side's perspective - whose point of view I have drawn - you can see that the lamp is physically above the level of the person's hand. Of course it is. Lamp posts are taller than people.

If your claim was correct then the person with his hand up would see the shadow angled upwards, the person standing at the side would see it angled downwards because of their different perspectives. How can you possibly think that is so? The shadow is angled how it is angled for both people.