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Messages - AATW

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21
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 13, 2024, 07:27:53 AM »
You seem to believe that I secretly care deeply about NATO allies. I do not.
No. I believe you are part of the Trump cult and he has programmed you to believe that everything he says is good, no matter what it is. The flip side of that being you believing anything politicians he doesn’t like says is bad, no matter what it is.
It doesn’t matter to you what is said, but who says it.

Of course, there is an alternative. You’re trolling. Or, you treat this place like a debating society where you take a position you don’t really believe for the sake of debate. But you do so in a Monty Python Argument Sketch way, refusing to cede ground on any point, which renders it pointless as a discussion.

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I don't care if Estonia gets invaded. Why should I?
Well, you should because wars are, in general a bad thing. I get that you’re American and therefore barely acknowledge that the rest of the world exists. I’m mildly surprised, even impressed, you’ve heard of Estonia (maybe you haven’t, and Googled NATO members and picked an obscure one you haven’t heard of).
Anyway. Estonia being invaded wouldn’t keep me up at night either. But caring isn’t binary, there are degrees of it. I would, in general, regard it as a “bad thing”. And I certainly wouldn’t “encourage” it, which is the thing Trump said which you are desperately trying to justify.

You seem completely unable to hold the two thoughts in your head at the same time that Trump is the right man to lead the country and that he sometimes says things which aren’t that great, or aren’t true. Or maybe you just pretend you can’t do that in the interests of “debate”.

22
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 12, 2024, 07:09:13 PM »
None of what Trump said is detestable.
Because of the word I bolded. You don't care what he said, he said it so it's OK.
If someone you don't like says something then it's "bad". Again, not because of what's said, because of who said it.
You're either programmed beyond hope or trolling. It doesn't really matter which, neither leads to productive debate.

23
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 12, 2024, 08:38:50 AM »
Trump is on the right track here.
lol. There’s a good cult member.
Trump loves people like you, you’re so easy to program. Literally doesn’t matter what he says.

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You guys should pay the amount you agreed to for protection. America shouldn't protect dead beats.
Well, that seems fairly reasonable.
But encourage?
The mental backflips you do to justify anything your cult leader says or does are ridiculous. You’d come across as more credible if you were more honest. You don’t believe America should actively encourage nations to attack NATO nations just because they haven’t paid.

24
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 12, 2024, 07:15:37 AM »

25
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: February 08, 2024, 11:29:41 PM »
Holy shit will you stop electing people who should be in assisted living?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68244611

26
AATW has done nothing of the sort.  Tom clearly stated the effect was inconsistent. Which it is, despite AATW's protestations otherwise. He goes on to write that because all ships (we might as well add any object traveling on any surface) traveling away from the observer disappear from view eventually, it must be due to the horizon based on Earth's sphericity.
The effect is NOT inconsistent in the way he claims it is. His Wiki page claims that "at times it occurs and at other times it does not occur.". That just isn't true. Ships always disappear below the horizon, distant landmarks are always partially obscured. And here's the point, they always disappear bottom first. Why? Why would they if the earth is flat? I've posted the Turning Torso video multiple times on here. It's clear that the further away the picture is taken from the more of the building is hidden. Why would that be? Yes, the amount of occlusion varies depending on atmospheric conditions but it's never the case that it just doesn't happen at all.

And, as I noted, Tom is completely contradicting his claimed observations in the Bishop experiment. In that he claims he can, from a 20 inch viewer height, see 23 miles across a bay and see the distant beach all the way to the shoreline. He claims to be able to reproduce that consistently at different times of year (and thus in different temperatures, so different atmospheric conditions) so long as it's calm and clear. So which is it? Is it something he can consistently reproduce or is it inconsistent? As so often when he ties himself in knots like this, he never responded.

It is an obvious truth only to you and re-adherents. Given the great amount of evidence right up against us, and the well-documented instances of space agencies of various countries fabricating data, the alternative evidence can be summarily dismissed.
As discussed, evidence from space agencies is just part of the alternative evidence. The earth's shape was known for thousands of years before we had the ability to launch things in to orbit. Your "great amount of evidence" seems to amount to you looking around and thinking "looks flat to me". Can you really not understand why that is not sufficient to determine the shape of the earth? Let's try this. If the earth is flat, what shape is it? I mean is it round? Square? Another shape? Does it go on forever? Your honest answer surely has to be you don't know. Your observations don't give you enough information to determine that. It's the same with the overall shape of the earth. Your observations don't just leave one possibility, so aren't sufficient to determine the reality.

27
When somebody makes some image that is coming from their mind, they are "fabricating' it.
The implication in the way you use that word is that they are trying to deceive. This is untrue.
If it were they wouldn't mark visualisations as such, they wouldn't state when images are composites.

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Some are, some aren't. The blue marble is just a photo, taken with a camera on film. The same for earthrise.
They are not point-and-shoot.
Yes they are.

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/blue-marble-photo-50th-anniversary-snap-scn/index.html

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The iconic photo, known as “Blue Marble,” was taken by NASA astronauts Eugene “Gene” Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt on December 7 using a Hasselblad camera and a Zeiss lens, about 45,000 kilometers (28,000 miles) away from home, as the Apollo 17 crew made its way to the moon.

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"Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!" Bill Anders shouted at fellow astronaut Jim Lovell. "You got a colour film, Jim? Hand me a roll of colour, quick, would you?"
"That's a beautiful shot," said Lovell as Anders clicked the shutter and captured what has become one of the world's most famous photographs.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230511-earthrise-the-photo-that-sparked-an-environmental-movement

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I fixed that last part, as there is nothing to support the claim it is required.
it doesn't need supporting, it's an obvious truth. Someone referenced the story of the 5 blind men and the elephant above and it's a good analogy. The men all felt different parts of the elephant and came to different conclusions about what an elephant must be like. None of them had enough data to be correct. In the same way, looking around your local area and thinking "looks flat to me!" is not sufficient to determine the reality of its shape, that observation can be explained in multiple ways. One of which is that the earth is flat, but alternative evidence shows that it is not.

28
These people are accepted by the gullible populace as experts, when all they are doing is producing more science fiction, just like Hollywood. Fabrication. You buy into it willingly, as do many others.
This is simply untrue. You're mixing up two things. Three really.
The first is images which are visualisations - depictions of exoplanets and so on. Those aren't "fabrications". When they mark them as visualisations they're not "admitting" anything. This language implies an attempt at deception. If there was attempt at deception then why would they mark them as visualisations? These things are created to stir the imagination. You're not far off with science fiction, but like much science fiction it's based in reality. They use the data they have about exoplanets and use that to visualise what they might look like. They're not making any claim that they're real photos. And it's certainly not all they are doing.
The second is composite images, or images which have been enhanced. These are real photos, they've just been processed digitally. Like I said, you do this too every time you take a panoramic picture or use your phone's colour balance or cropping tools. This processing is done to make the images clearer, and does not indicate any deception or fakery.
Then there are just photos. There are plenty of those. Sure, the versions you see online are probably compressed and that might mean they have artefacts in, that doesn't mean the originals have been manipulated in any way and NASA have the raw versions on their website.

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The scans (not actual photos in the sense of point-and-shoot camera like here on earth) taken from high up are stiched together.
Some are, some aren't. The blue marble is just a photo, taken with a camera on film. The same for earthrise.

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The flat map exists.
Does it? Cool. Can you link me to it. The Wiki has multiple maps on it, which one is definitive?

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The supposed distances between various points on the earth are extrapolated only from the given travel times.
This is incorrect. Travel times are a reasonable proxy for distance, but you can use Google Maps to find the distance between places and compare it with measurements you take mistake. There's a reason that as you zoom out the curve of the earth is now shown. Before that the world was extensively surveyed. There's a whole field of geodetic surveying which takes the earth's curve in to account.

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The actual straight-line distances are not known as they are not able to be taken due to the methods used for long-distance travel where waypoints are not visible at ground level.
Also not true. It hasn't been true for centuries since Harrison cracked the problem of accurate timepieces at sea - using those and combining it with celestial observations meant that ships knew where they were. And it's definitely not true in the era of GPS.

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The routes taken are the routes based on the celestial sphere routes that have transcribed down to the flat earth plane, routed by the star patterns overhead.
This is just incorrect. They're based on the great circle route between those two points.

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There is no distortion on any useful travel map.

Right. Because travel maps generally deal with a very small portion of the world. Which brings us back to where we started. You can't tell the shape of the earth just by looking around and thinking "looks flat". Any more than you can look at your hand and declare there are no germs on it because you can't see them. For objects which are too big or too small to observe directly in normal circumstances "alternative evidence" is required.

29
Why be careful when the word fabricate is exactly what they do. You wrote it yourself, naturally accompanied by the "they have my blessing," reasons.
The implication in the way you're using the word is that they are creating fake images intended to fool you.
Creating visualisations of what they imagine exoplanets might look like, or of future missions, isn't deceptive so long as they clearly indicate that's what the image is. Which, as you said at the start, they do. You used the word "admitting" - even that word implies they're up to something. When they clearly mark visualisations as such that isn't an admission, it's just clarity and transparancy.

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The composites are stitched together to match whatever image the editors wish to produce.
True up to a point, but in order to make a composite you have to have a series of photos of the object you're making a composite of. I visited the Grand Canyon some years back and I have some panoramas of where I was. Those are composite images, but in order to create that composite I had to be at the Grand Canyon. The images aren't faked.

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Four elements?

I think you mean 4 states of matter.
I'm not sure I do.

https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/4270_The_Four_Elements.html

But in any case those aren't the 4 states of matter either, that model was replaced by a better one when a better one came along.

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The flat earth works.
Does it, though?
It's not even possible to make a flat map with the known distances between cities being represented to a consistent scale.
There always has to be some distortion. Why? If the earth is flat then it should just be a matter of scaling down.

30
Space agencies have already admitted to fabricating images and altering the images released to the public.
Well, firstly, let's be careful about the word "fabricating". Space agencies do produce images which are intended to show what future missions may look like, or they're imaginings of what, say, exoplanets may look like. But, as you say, they're always clearly labelled as such so they're not evidence of anything underhand going on. They're not claiming they're real pictures of something.
As for altering yes, they admit they're producing composite images, they admit they're enhancing images. As I said, every time you take a panorama or use your phone's photo editing tools you are altering an image. That doesn't mean the image is fake.

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The flat earth was the accepted model before the globe earth model.
Right. Like there being 4 elements - earth, water, fire, air - was an accepted model before we understood about real elements. Like Newton's model of gravity was the accepted model before Einstein. As we, as a species, have understood more about nature newer models have always replaced older ones. The globe earth model replaced the flat earth one - that happened thousands of years ago. The heliocentric model replaced the geocentric one. That happened centuries ago. But the point is when that happens the newer model replaces the older one because it's better - it makes predications, it fits better with what we observe.
 

31
I agree. The "alternative evidence," should be assessed and checked for reliability.

It seems it is fairly lacking, given the multitude of alterations and outright fabrications offered by the presenters.

It should be instantly rejected.
Well fair enough. I’m interested to know what you mean by alterations. I “alter” photos all the time - I crop them, use tools to change the colour balance. Sometimes I create composite images (that’s what a panorama is, your camera or phone stitches multiple photos together). None of these “alterations” indicate the photo is in any way fake.
I’m also interested what you mean by fabrications. You can allege things are fabricated, that doesn’t make you correct.

But photos/video from space are only part of the evidence for space travel. There’s also witness testimony, from astronauts and now some private citizens. There’s the fact rocket launches can be witnessed. There’s the technologies we use daily which rely on satellites. There’s the ISS which can be directly observed from the ground.

It’s worth noting that space exploration is not the only evidence for a globe earth. The earth being a globe was the accepted model for thousands of years before we had the ability to launch things in to orbit and beyond. Space travel is the final nail in the FE coffin, which is why a common FE tactic is to simply call it all fake. But space travel is only a small part of the evidence for a globe earth. Just looking around and saying “looks flat to me” is simplistic, you need to look at alternative evidence to determine the true shape. Space travel is simply part of that alternative evidence.

32
Once again, there seems to be no answer as to why one would feel inclined to accept the "alternative evidence," of supposed "space travel" in lieu of personally gleaned observation. Plenty of swings, but too many whiffs.
Because the personally gleaned observations are not sufficient to determine the reality of the shape of the earth.
Those observations could indicate the earth is flat, but they are also consistent with us living on a very large globe. And there are other possibilities. The only way to determine the truth is "alternative evidence".

This is true of lots of things, our personal observations alone aren't sufficient alone to determine reality, we have to augment those observations with "alternative evidence" - obviously that evidence should be assessed and checked to make sure it is reliable, as best you can.

33
Also, those sinking ship observations have been studied and debunked
And your source for that is...your own Wiki page. Come on, dude!

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The effect is not consistent and and tends to change constantly.
This is incorrect by the way you define "inconsistent" on that Wiki page. You say:

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It has been found that the Sinking Ship effect is inconsistent. At times it occurs and at other times it does not occur.

My emphasis. That part is simply not true. It is true that the level of refraction varies with atmospheric conditions and that does vary the distance to the apparent horizon, but the claim that at times the sinking ship effect does not occur is not true. There is no observation of a ship going away from the observer and never sinking below the horizon.

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Bobby Shafto, who came to our forum as a Round Earther (and presumably still is), was interested in this in apparent honesty (more than most people who have come here) and has looked at the material and concluded that the sinking ship effect is not consistently reproducible, and he has also concluded that the sinking doesn't even match the RE curvature.

In the video he's saying the camera height is 45ft and the platform is just under 17 miles away.
A simple earth curve calculator which does not take refraction into account says the target hidden height should be 51ft.

This is some documentation of that oil-rig:

https://www.boem.gov/sites/default/files/about-boem/BOEM-Regions/Pacific-Region/DPPs/DPP_1_1971-08-Proposed-Installation.pdf

From page 20:

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The production deck will be located 37 feet above mean low low water and the drilling deck located 61 feet above the same reference. The drilling .deck will be 80 by 125 feet. The top of the drilling derrick will be at an elevation of 223 feet above the water level

So you should always be able to see the drilling deck and above. Without refraction you wouldn't be able to see the production deck. In some of those photos it appears you can, but as we've noted refraction exists and is variable depending on atmospheric conditions. In some of those photos the legs of the rig are completely hidden. What are they hidden by?

You claim in the Bishop experiment that:

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With a good telescope, laying down on the stomach at the edge of the shore near Lovers Point 20 inches above the sea level it is possible to see people at the waters edge on the adjacent beach 23 miles away near the lighthouse. The entire beach is visible down to the water splashing upon the shore.

You're claiming that from a much lower viewer height and a further target distance. And you go on to claim that:

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Provided that there is no fog and the day is clear and calm, the same result comes up over and over throughout the year."

Why weren't you getting the inconsistencies which you now claim occur?

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None of these depict the earth as one might expect if it is a globe with radius of 3959 miles without the optical effects of an atmosphere under varying conditions."

They certainly don't depict a flat earth. In all of the photos some of the rig is hidden. If your Bishop experiment result is accurate you should be able to see all the rig from a viewer height of 20 inches. Can you?

34
Wherever I have been, the majority of it was flat, aside from hills/valleys/dales.
I just don't know what you mean by that. For one thing, as you say there are hills and valleys and so on. So it isn't flat. Secondly, the formula the FE community love to quote is 8 inches per mile squared - not completely accurate, but it's close enough for most practical purposes. The point being, even if the earth was a perfect sphere, a point a mile away would only be 8 inches lower than you. How do you think you could discern that?
I don't know what you'd be expecting to see, if we live on a globe, that you're not seeing.

35
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 01, 2024, 01:29:18 PM »

36
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: January 31, 2024, 04:59:29 PM »
The case honk lined to was a defamation case, just like the case in the screenshot was a defamation case. Trump also called Stormy names which 'defamed' her character. But alas, in the end it was Stormy who was told to pay Trump and not Trump who was told to pay Stormy.
So she has to pay him $300k, and he has to pay E. Jean Carroll $83 million.
I guess that pretty much evens out.

37
The size of the earth is a statement you make solely based on the "alternative evidence."
True. Although by "alternative evidence" that isn't just photos from space. I've travelled enough to be confident that the world is pretty big, whatever shape it might be. But here's the point: an observation of a flat horizon, if that's what we are talking about, does not tell you what shape the earth is. It may rule some possibilities out - like us living on a very small sphere - but it doesn't give us enough information to leave only one possibility.

The earth could be flat or a sphere of a certain size and the point is that observation of a flat horizon doesn't distinguish between those two possibilities. Either of them being true would yield the same observation. And there are probably other possibilities which would yield that observation.

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Everywhere I have been on this earth, it is personally perceived to be flat. That never changes.
What observation have you made which has led you to that conclusion?

38
"If I perceive the Earth to be flat while I'm right up against it, why should I blindly assume that the alternative evidence is better?"
So I asked him what evidence he's talking about. What observation has he made which leads him to "perceive the Earth to be flat".
I then guessed he might be talking about a flat horizon and explained why that is not evidence for a flat earth, given the earth's size. That observation is not sufficient to determine the shape of the earth. But maybe he's not talking about that in which case I await his response.

I went on to explain how our perceptions are not necessarily sufficient to determine reality. Our senses are limited and fallible.
I was also clear that he shouldn't blindly accept alternative evidence as better. As with anything we can't observe directly, we have to use weight of evidence to arrive at a belief.

But to answer his question properly I need to understand what he means when he says he "perceives the Earth to be flat".

39
Do you have a worthwhile reply that answers the question posed by Roundy?
The more fulsome reply to his question was in the part of my post you haven't quoted.
The TL;DR bit was merely a summary.

40
Where does this leave Flat Earth Theory? Just fine, as it turns out, as long as one accepts Electromagnetic Acceleration as a necessary component of FET. The same effect that might cause the illusion of a horizon might also cause large flat objects to appear round from a great distance.
In which case what's the differentiator between FE and RE? What observation can you make to distinguish between the two models if FE + EA = RE, in terms of what we observe? Presumably there's some difference which makes you lean towards one model over the other.

Indeed, I think the immediate evidence with my own eyes is more likely to be reliable than pictures from many thousands or more of miles away. I guess it's more of a philosophical position than anything else. If I perceive the Earth to be flat while I'm right up against it, why should I blindly assume that the alternative evidence is better?
Firstly, I'd be interested to know what you think the "immediate evidence" of your own eyes tells you.
There's two things about that. If you're talking about a flat horizon then you surely understand that on a sphere of sufficient size the observation would be indistinguishable from a flat plane? So that observation is not sufficient to determine the reality. Secondly, whatever observations you're talking about, you know that our senses are limited and fallible? There are things we can't see with the naked eye that are real - germs, UV light, etc. And there are things we see which aren't real. Optical illusions are a good example, these horizontal lines appear curved but they are in fact straight:



So drawing conclusions just from looking at stuff is a bit dangerous.
Secondly, you shouldn't "blindly assume that the alternative evidence is better". You shouldn't blindly assume anything. For anything we can't directly observe we can only base conclusions on the evidence presented to us. I've never been to space but I've seen a shuttle launch. I've seen the videos and photos from space missions and seen expert analysis of them (as opposed to some dude who doesn't know what he's talking about saying "BuT wHeRe ArE tHe StArS?!!!"). I've read books about the Apollo missions and I've been to talks by astronauts. I've covered above the evidence that the ISS is real and satellite dishes really are pointing at something in the sky. If it is all fake then a lot of effort is being put into making it all look real, and for what? So, on balance, I'm inclined to believe it isn't all being faked.

TL;DR - be careful about basing beliefs just on your observations. They're not necessarily going to lead you to the correct conclusions. And with many things we can't observe them directly, so the best we can do is base conclusions on the weight of evidence.

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