SteelyBob

Re: Flat Earth Article: How NOT to Debate a Flat Earther
« Reply #20 on: April 06, 2021, 07:09:48 AM »
I would suggest that you start proving your version of things and stop making lame excuses that "refraction did it" and "you need to do x for me." We already know that refraction does anything that you don't like, in your poor attempt at justifying contradicting evidence.

But refraction does do it, Tom.

Refraction is easily shown in a lab, and the atmosphere refracts in exactly the same way we would expect from experiments. It's hard to predict exactly, of course, especially over long ranges, as there are so many variables, but we can say generally when it will be at a maximum. That's partly why flat earth experiments carried out over frozen lakes, for example, are so laughable - they are being conducted over precisely the kind of conditions you would want if you were trying to maximise refraction.

Things disappear over the horizon as they get more distant in exactly the way we would expect them to with our round earth and the atmosphere behaving as it does. I have yet to see a single video with anything in it that can't be explained by a round earth and a refractive atmosphere. I have also yet to see a single video with a ship, or other distant object, partially obscured from the bottom up, brought back into full view via a zoom lens or other magnifying device. The video in the wiki (https://wiki.tfes.org/Sinking_Ship_Effect_Caused_by_Limits_to_Optical_Resolution) shows a boat that is quite clearly not on the horizon - there is visible sea beyond it. And the 'home experiment' is a total joke - that's just an eyesight test. It has nothing to do with perspective at all.

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Offline AATW

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Re: Flat Earth Article: How NOT to Debate a Flat Earther
« Reply #21 on: April 06, 2021, 08:57:26 AM »
Tom knows that refraction is a factor. And he knows it's not consistent. He's literally written a Wiki page about it which contains the timelapse I have referred to:

https://wiki.tfes.org/Sinking_Ship_Effect_Caused_by_Refraction

But the Wiki page also says that

Quote
Sometimes it occurs, and at other times it does not occur

Which is demonstrably false. There is no observation where a ship sails away further and further and never sinks below the horizon. Just doesn't happen.
Unless the Bishop experiment is true of course - the results claimed, and the consistent nature of them would be revolutionary.
What a shame Tom never thought to document the result...
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline WTF_Seriously

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Re: Flat Earth Article: How NOT to Debate a Flat Earther
« Reply #22 on: April 06, 2021, 04:36:11 PM »
appeal to 'refraction' for this, we can see that you have nothing except excuses and poor arguments.

Is it safe to assume we can discount 'atmolayer' as "nothing except excuses and poor arguments" whenever you conveniently use it as your convention?
Flat-Earthers seem to have a very low standard of evidence for what they want to believe but an impossibly high standard of evidence for what they don’t want to believe.

Lee McIntyre, Boston University

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Offline Tumeni

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Re: Flat Earth Article: How NOT to Debate a Flat Earther
« Reply #23 on: April 06, 2021, 04:50:13 PM »
Like this;

If, as in experiment 2, Rowbottom had a middle (black) flag which was half the height of the (white) others around it along his line of sight ...

Did I forget to upload the picture? I think so...

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Not Flat. Happy to prove this, if you ask me.
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Nearly all flat earthers agree the earth is not a globe.

Nearly?

Re: Flat Earth Article: How NOT to Debate a Flat Earther
« Reply #24 on: April 08, 2021, 04:58:28 PM »
That's a good article in the OP. If there are contradicting observations to the sinking ship effect it is the duty of that scientist to get to the bottom of it, not to ignore it and continue repeating the dogma.

Excellent point - this has always bothered me.

I think what comes across most in this article is the fact that scientists deliberately went out to write an article called "How to Debate a Flat Earther" and they ended up providing ZERO fodder for doing so. The author of the Space.com article came out looking foolish - even without the deconstruction provided by the critique.

Is this lethargy an example of science taking "facts" for granted?