1

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Great NASA Conspiracy

« on: May 01, 2016, 07:25:14 PM »

No, it might seem super-human to you, just as acrobats, mathematicians, and magicians might seem super-human to you.
They aren't, they just know things you don't and possess skills that you lack.

I can't tell if this is supposed to be a veiled insult. Anyways, just telling me "no you're wrong" isn't terribly likely to convince me.

"The Turk" fooled people for over a hundred years. The Fatima illusion (aka "miracle of the sun") also continues to beguile people. As do space agency rocket launches, whose setup is not unlike Copperfield's vanishing of the Statue of Liberty.

So a hoax machine (which only fooled people for 50 years) is analogous to a worldwide conspiracy? An unexplained phenomenon is? How do these things demonstrate the cooperation and foresight necessary to secretly rule the world?

By the way, why would anyone possibly want to secretly rule the world? It seems to me that ruling a country would be sufficient for any ego.

Do you think they give all information to all people along with a pamphlet to take home to the fam? Does the guy working the popcorn stand in the theater also know how all the performing magician's tricks are done?

One thing you seem to be completely unaware of is the compartmentalized nature of information, and how certain secrets are treated as the "holy of holies" which only a select few will ever be allowed to see the workings of.

Compartmentalization works for keeping secrets. But your conspiracy needs to actively rule the world, not just stay in hiding. To do that it needs to influence a lot of decisions, all of which is a potential source if evidence.

2

Flat Earth Theory / Re: questions

« on: May 01, 2016, 12:44:25 PM »

I also have a question: Do you know what punctuation is?

3

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Great NASA Conspiracy

« on: May 01, 2016, 12:41:50 PM »

You mean this? "But back to NASA and the rest of the space agencies (that we commoners are meant to believe are different entities, just as we are meant to believe our governments are controlled by different entities... it's all part of maintaining a divide-and-conquer Hegelian dialectic) - they reveal themselves as frauds in their hoaxy astronaut videos all the time."

I don't see an issue with that statmente. Check out the Chinese space walk:

Yes, that is what I meant. Whether or not you take issue with the statement is beside the point. You asked why we were debating a conspiracy secretly running the world. There is your answer.

4

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Great NASA Conspiracy

« on: May 01, 2016, 08:44:35 AM »

How are they "secretly running the entirety of civilization"?

Look at Setec's post again. He claims a conspiracy across all world governments (and Youtubers).

5

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Great NASA Conspiracy

« on: May 01, 2016, 08:18:30 AM »

The military does a very good job of keeping plans to their advanced weaponry off the internet, for example. An organization able to keep a secret is not unheard of.

Sure, but the claim wasn't that the secret couldn't be kept. The claim was that the amount of foresight and cooperation required would be super-human. Keeping some technical designs secret for a limited time (until the method becomes common knowledge) is not the same as secretly running the entirety of civilisation.

6

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Some perspective on perspective

« on: May 01, 2016, 07:56:18 AM »

Where have we observed perfect circles?

Nowhere. Which is why I said observation is based on euclidean geometry, not the other way round. We don't observe perfect circles or parallel lines. But euclidean geometry does also account for non-perfect circles and almost-parallel lines, so that observation doesn't conflict with the geometry.

In any case, you have shifted the question. The original point was that converging parallel lines only conflict with euclidean geometry if a.) you fail to account for the fact that the lines aren't actually perfectly parallel and b.) you fail to account for the fact that moving the observer makes the lines appear parallel once more.

7

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Some perspective on perspective

« on: May 01, 2016, 07:27:33 AM »

It certainly does not work at the vanishing point of railroad tracks, as the math says that they do not touch, when they observably do touch. The observation is evidence that the world model as they described it is wrong.

Only if you cherry pick some observations and ignore others. Euclidean geometry is perfectly in accordance with observation since observation is based on euclidean geometry.

8

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Great NASA Conspiracy

« on: May 01, 2016, 06:17:02 AM »

What makes you think you would be privy to their infighting?

In addition to what rounder has said, even if the infighting would not be visible, it would likely fraction the conspiracy into smaller entities. At which point we basically have countries or "power blocks" again, which is pretty much what the world actually looks like. What I know about human psychology suggests to me that the world would be splintered into factions which would cooperate on common goals yet disagree on details. Which is exactly what the world actually seems to be like. On the other hand, assuming a shadowy cabal in control of everything suggests a level of control and cooperation which is in opposition to both psychology and outside appearance, which gives the theory a rather low prior probability.

9

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Great NASA Conspiracy

« on: May 01, 2016, 05:23:27 AM »

I became aware of NASA being a complete and total fraud when I was still a ball-earther and believed FE was nothing more than a psy-op meant to fool people. I was a top-notch astronomy student in school and a voracious reader of hard-science books. Heh, I still have my 3 volumes of the Feynman Lectures on Physics.

As it happens, nearly all of the well-known flat-earth "proponents" are indeed fraudulent. I can't think of a single FE YouTuber who is not a shill (not to mention a Satanist) with an unstated mission to discredit the idea. This they do by putting forth nonsense "proofs" relating to crepuscular rays and similarly deliberate strawmen.

But back to NASA and the rest of the space agencies (that we commoners are meant to believe are different entities, just as we are meant to believe our governments are controlled by different entities... it's all part of maintaining a divide-and-conquer Hegelian dialectic) - they reveal themselves as frauds in their hoaxy astronaut videos all the time. The onboard the ISS videos are surely the worst offenders. Though, much like a magician's show, if you don't know to look for deception (and what sort of deception to look for), they can appear convincing. If anyone has a favorite ISS video that they can't figure out how it could be fake, please post it and so I can help point out things wrong with it if we are to assume it is actually real footage onboard a contraption in orbit.

And I assume the perpetrators of this conspiracy are not human? Because I have certainly not seen any indications that humans can cooperate on such a scale for a long timeframe without internal fighting.

But it's good to know that it's all Hegel's fault again.

10

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Some perspective on perspective

« on: May 01, 2016, 05:14:39 AM »

The phenomena of beam divergence is certainly a curiosity, particularly because a laser beam is supposed to be straight due to photons between a series of mirrors and a glass amplifier to produce an extremely bright and straight beam of light.

According to whom is a laser beam "straight"? How would mirrors an amplifiers result in parallel photons?

It may be argued that some of the photons are not straight, but then the divergence should have a central hot spot as the beam diverges.

Why? Do you refer to a focal point?

If their theory doesn't match observations it means the theory is wrong and must be modified or discarded.

According to Kant, Euclidean Geometry isn't a theory in the traditional sense. It's based on an a-priori understanding of space, not on observation.

If the math can't calculate things far away accurately, what reason is there to use that math for things that are far away?

Define " accurately".

Maybe the photons coming from the tracks are hitting your eye in a way that the photons are touching (or getting as close as they physically can to each other). It has not been demonstrated that the effect is due to "lack of resolution". The human eye is incredibly sensitive. Tests have been done where the human eye can detect a single photon in a dark room.

A photon is the physical manifestation of that object at distance, after all. This society seeks to ask and explore such vexing questions, not mindlessly scream that "NO, they DO NOT TOUCH".

Even if you want to call the photons emitted a "physical manifestation", the image they produce in you brain isn't.

11

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Zeteticism - how exactly does it work

« on: April 30, 2016, 09:48:16 AM »

The whole point is to observe them at work.

They were designed, build and tested on the ground. There is plenty of observations to choose from. But you, of course, dismiss them as inadmissible.

You have the key words and presumably access to Google. Dr. Rowbotham's experiments are laid out very clearly (with accompanying diagrams) in Zetetic Astronomy. The entirety of the book should still be the top result of a search for that title. Why wouldn't you know that if you truly cared to follow up on this discussion? The answer, of course, is that you don't.

Ah, so if I don't put in the work, it means I don't care to have a honest discussion. But the same standard doesn't apply to you, even though you claim to already know how to find the answer.

It's rather like a Kindergarten game. "I know, but I won't tell you."

Your posturing might mean more if you hadn't been petulant and rude from the get-go. I'm free to respond to your thread just as you were free to start it. The fact that I didn't simply confirm your preconceived notions about the Earth, Zeteticism, and our Society doesn't mean I'm being unhelpful. I realize that Rowbotham having posed a hypothesis all along was the crux of your argument and that you're agitated over it having collapsed after being gently poked, but how about reserving a little dignity? Insult me if you absolutely must, just please leave the Society out of it.

Internet trolling 101: When faced with counterpoints, simply repeat the claim and act as if you had already won the argument.

Honestly, a bit of creativity wouldn't hurt.

But it's good to know that asking questions is being rude and petulant, while quoting only parts of posts and ignoring what you cannot address is apparently fair and honest debating. It explains a lot about how discussions around here go.

12

Flat Earth Community / Re: New to this

« on: April 29, 2016, 02:40:27 PM »

Woody---I see you're back to being the good Woody. 

People are personally responsible for what they bring into this world.  You are wrong that scientist aren't responsible.  They bare more responsibility for the destruction their inventions cause than the rest of us.  Oppenheimer had the choice not to work on the Manhattan project.  They would have found someone else because brains are cheap.  But, he, the poor wretch we call Oppenheimer, would have still been better off.      What Oppenheimer did was akin to giving a loaded gun to a disturbed child except on a larger scale.   

You are engaging in apologetics which is an exercise in religious devotion.  And you say science isn't your god?  I don't believe you.

Before calculus people relied more in intuition and simpler ways of measuring.  Forging iron, for instance, couldn't really  be monitored by measuring parameters so much as judging by the color of the metal; or the smell or the sound.  A blacksmith doesn't need to be a scientist.  Science basically means knowledge but the word 'science' isn't really well defined.

I have no political stance.  I quit voting.  I have no trust for any authority outside of the Gospels.  All countries are guilty of human rights abuses, genocide and hegemony.   All governments are protection rackets.   The human race is divided between the lucky and the unlucky; politics doesn't have much to do with it.  It has always been such.  There is a class of man that will thrive no matter where he is what is going on around him.   Then there are those of us who never get a break.   

I like being contentious.  I don't deny it.  I am disgusted with the human condition and sometimes I let my resentment get the best of me.   But I wish no ill to come to anyone.   Even if I don't like them I still don't want anything bad to happen to them.  Hatred and rage?  Witnessing hatred and rage is traumatic.  I don't hate anybody.  I have no criminal record.  I have no record of violence or perversion.  I respect my neighbors property.  I have deference for the fairer gender.

Without liquor and drugs our society would crumble.  We are living in a dying culture.   Art and music are a joke.  Science is dead and also a dead end.  Depression and anxiety are the plagues of our time.  Science has not helped except for in a limited sense.  Like Frankenstein they have created a monster and they can't control it.

People do not need science to be happy or healthy.   They can live a long time without science.  Science is dangerous and scientists are irresponsible and you saying scientists aren't responsible is a cop out and shows you to be philosophically shallow.

Beauty is often mistaken for goodness as Tolstoy pointed out.  Science is a tool and as such is innocuous but holding science as a value and believing in it as the only way to discern truth is a religious belief.  It is pure hubris and just a way for people to stroke their egos and feel like they are smart.   And don't we all love it when our egos are exalted?!   But none of us is smart.  We all have aptitudes.   Some of us are gifted but the gifted are rare.   And there is no such thing as a gifted scientist.

We have been seduced but our lover doesn't really care for us.   She will use us and then leave us a broken shell with no heart to speak of.  It's going to get worse before it starts to get better.

Pardon me for being personal, but this collection of platitudes sounds a lot like teenage angst to me.

It's easy to utter some broad ranging statements to give the appearance of widsom. It is a lot harder to actually acquire real knowledge about how things work. Have you ever tried to find out what "science" is and how it works? There have been philosophers who have shown what science does and how it works based on a systematic approach, you are simply ignorant of them. So the one who is suffering from hybris is you: You are the one who thinks he has all the answers without looking at what other people have thought and written down before him. You dare be judgemental of others, but what have you done that warrants such confidence?

13

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Separation of Church & Science | Intelligent Design and the Flat Earth

« on: April 29, 2016, 04:50:05 AM »

We experience the illusion of freedom, nothing more.  Your own actions are determined by cause and effect just as much as outside events are.  You might feel like you freely make choices, but you don't decide what your internal influences are.  You don't have any control over how angry you feel, how patient you feel, how happy you feel, etc.

How do you know it is an illusion? An illusion is an appearance which does not conform to reality. But you don't know the reality. All you have is appearances. Things appear to be determined by cause and effect. But aren't cause and effect the illusion? After all, you cannot observe cause and effect without the principle already formed. You cannot prove it's reality unless you assume it as the premise. It is just as much in your mind as the appearance of freedom. You may be able to say that empirical reality is, by definition, determined by cause and effect. But your own consciousness isn't part of the outside world, and so you cannot know whether it is governed by the same principles.

As to your feelings and outside influences: Who says you cannot decide against them? Who says you cannot influence your feelings? Lot's of people seem to think you can determine how you feel by thinking the right thoughts. Sure, we don't know that we're free, for the same reason we don't know we're unfree. But it is possible. We have the appearance of freedom in our minds. In the absence of evidence of the reality, which can never be obtained, we are allowed to assume our freedom, just as we assume the appearance of the outside world is actual reality.

14

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Separation of Church & Science | Intelligent Design and the Flat Earth

« on: April 28, 2016, 05:40:03 PM »

Free will is a myth.  We are all the products of our internal and external influences.

Who is writing this post then? Blind causality?

We all experience freedom first hand. But obviously all experience of outside events is already framed in terms of cause and effect, so we don't perceive it in others.

15

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Occam's Razor and FET

« on: April 26, 2016, 05:33:33 PM »

... He gathers some Fir (a type of tree) wood and heats it by rotating a stick. A flame occurs, but no warmth, and when the flame dies there is a pile of tiny hats....

Thanks Dr. Seuss.

Seriously though, this is an amazing illustration! Bonus points for the legit anagram.

I cannot take credit for that, I took the example from a clever little short story titled The Study of Anglophysics

16

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Occam's Razor and FET

« on: April 26, 2016, 05:20:13 AM »

I wouldn't go quite that far. You CAN gain knowledge, to a certain extent. For example, if multiple observations happen to result in the same theory, then you can be increasingly confident in that theory. It is unreliable, but it IS possible to gain knowledge this way.

The main problem is that nothing is falsifiable. Once an observation leads to a theory, that theory can't be proven false. This leads to hundreds of weak little theories that only explain a single observation, but nothing else.

Edit: Sorry for being so pedantic. I am ashamed.

I don't think you're being pedantic. Precision is kinda important in discussions like this one.

My problem is this: Without a hpyothesis (explicit or implicit), you don't know what experiments to conduct. You don't know what the data will tell you. There is an unbridgeable gab between experience and understanding if you are not allowed to make guesses.

Imagine a scientist and a Zeteticist find themselves in a strange world where they don't know the rules. They need to make a fire for the night. The scientist makes the hypothesis that fire in this strange world works like it does in ours, i.e. an oxidisation process. He gathers some Fir (a type of tree) wood and heats it by rotating a stick. A flame occurs, but no warmth, and when the flame dies there is a pile of tiny hats. The scientist now knows that fire does not work like in the real world. After thinking on it for a long time, he notes that the words "heat" and "fir" contain the letters for "fire" and "hat". He guesses that in this world, reactions occur by combining words, not atoms. He goes out testing his hypothesis and finds that it fits with observations.

Meanwhile, the Zeteticist looks at the trees and the grass. He observes it looks basically like our world. He wants to make a fire, but concludes he has insufficient data to figure out how it works. He looks at the scientists experiment. This new data he also registers. He realizes that the names for the things before and after the reaction match up. Unfortunately this doesn't tell him how fire works. He decides to test how the wood tastes. It tastes like wood should taste. This he also registers. He still doesn't know how fire works.

17

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Separation of Church & Science | Intelligent Design and the Flat Earth

« on: April 26, 2016, 05:08:17 AM »

I'm assuming I'm OP, even though a lot of that doesn't seem to correlate to my position whatsoever.

First and foremost there is no limit to the Creator. I never implied that. The implication is that evolution and the big bang are not sound logically. Another important thing worth mentioning, and has been mentioned --i forgive you for not reading all 8 or so pages of this-- is evolution excludes God, and is an alternative to Creation. Creation does NOT exclude evolution, though I'm more inclined to believe that it has not been demonstrated how a single cell can turn into a fish into an ape into a man. Another thing that evolution has absolutely no answer for is the Origin of Life. I've been accused of conflating evolution and origin of life, via stupidity and or malicious intent, repeatedly. However we know this basic tenet of existence: Life comes from other life. There is no answer for that first spark of Life within the confines of Godless modern cosmogony. There is no example of an inorganic compound becoming an INFINITELY and INFINITESIMALLY complex living being, even a single celled organism.

You seem to be a believer in Creation, but you must realize you are at odds with even an atheist scientist, who's personal agenda is to remove God from the equation. You can say he can't be anti-god but isn't that what atheism is in the first place? Agnosticism is maybe what you are referring to, someone that admits they can't prove or disprove God's existence. There is, in my opinion, an active malevolent agenda to condition people into believing life is a meaningless, fleeting, material thing. What better way then to remove God from creation, and teach people they are a lucky accident on a speck in the Universe. This is the implication. This is the accepted dogma. I'm not making this up. It is evolution vs creationism education being debated across the country, even though I went to public school in the North East and evolution was completely and totally taught as a fact.

Of course all of Creation would be precious to the Creator. I do agree with that. I don't doubt for a second that there are possibly thousands, or millions of other planets that have life on it like ours. I don't pretend to be special in that sense. I am strictly bringing to light the agenda in which the Creator is being actively removed from the Creation in society. You should be able to tell by the degradation of values and morals and even the family structure itself just how effective this agenda has been.

Perhaps, though, maybe you missed the intent of this post in the first place. I didn't come here to debate creation/evolution/big bang at all. I came here to discuss the inherent error with trying to debate the shape of the Earth within the confines of the scientific community. As you can see I've been staunchly rebuked, and even attacked personally for my belief in God-- of which I'm in the majority of humanity. To try to discuss the Earth possibly being flat in that same arena is a disaster.

I do, however, want to thank you for taking the time to weigh in on the discussion. Discourse and debate are great ways to find the truth of a situation, but not always the best way to come to understand someone. Just because one doesn't believe the same exact things as another, that doesn't make them any less worthy of having a say. If my treatment here is any indication, you can see just how judgemental and close-minded we have become as a society. America in particular was built upon the principle of giving the minority a say in how there life is ran, built upon allowing dissenting voices to be heard, not silencing them.

Of course, I must be trolling if I believed that those principles are dear to our leaders or the general public anymore.

Ah yes, the "degradation of values and morals" is inevitably down to some shadowy "agenda" by evil (insert favorite enemy here). Suddenly, when things go wrong, everyone else is responsible, not the religios? Perhaps we would see less of a degradation if the churches had not decided, in the age of enlightenment, to staunchly stand their ground, and gotten themselves reduced to the "God of the gaps"? Perhaps they would be more successfull in teaching values and morals if their systems would not be based do much on hate and exclusion, but rather on love and unity?

Sure there is a lamentable lack of values and morals in todays society. But instead of blaming everyone else and their shadowy "agenda", it would probably more effective to actually try to communicate your values again.

18

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Occam's Razor and FET

« on: April 25, 2016, 06:44:11 PM »

Was that really so hard? Or are you saying that people have told you multiple times, and you simply didn't like it - because reasons?

Perhaps you'd like to try where others have failed? All I have received is evasive maneuvers and vague allusions. No-one has even bothered taking up a single one of my questions (the original ones, in the OP). If there is so much easily available on the subject, certainly it would be easy to answer my queries?

There is a good reason why Zeteticism isn't widely practiced. The main way to prove or disprove a theory is by making predictions based on that theory, then setting up an experiment to test whether those predictions prove to be true or not. If the results of the experiment contradict the predictions, then the theory is false. If the results are consistent with the predictions, then that is evidence that the theory is correct.

A Zeteticist (is that the correct word?) can't do this. They have to generate a new theory from scratch after each and every experiment. If the same theory is generated after every experiment, then you can gain confidence that that theory is correct. However, if the theories aren't the same, there is no way to test inconsistencies between the theories. Are both theories true? Do they contradict each other? The only way to answer these questions is to make predictions based on the theories, and then test the predictions. A true Zeteticist can't do this.

It's worse than that. You flat out cannot arrive at any conclusions by just piling up information. You can never gain knowledge based on random experiments - and without a hypothesis, randomness is all you get.

19

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Occam's Razor and FET

« on: April 25, 2016, 02:48:02 PM »

So the question is, which set of theories best explains all the observations that science attempts to explain: the RET set that says that this massive apparent research activity is actually being carried out, with real data being transmitted from real satellites, or the FET set of theories that features a Vast Fixed-Wing Conspiracy trying to con us into believing that space travel and exploration and satellite launches have actually taken place (no one knows how to get satellites to orbit a flat earth)? Your call.

You're of course right about Occam's razor. I have remarked that fact in several threads. Usually the result is stubborn silence from the FES-crowd. Sometimes someone will invoke "Zeteticism", but no-one has been able to tell me exactly what "Zeteticism" is or how it works.

Those FET adherents that are not outright trolls don't believe in the scientific method - and by extension Occam's razor - because reasons.

20

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How does a Full Moon appear Full for everyone?

« on: April 22, 2016, 08:05:31 AM »

We operate from experiment to experience here, and do not tolerate merely imagining how things would be in a perfect world.

Sig'd.  What a beautiful statement of our aims.

Isn't "experiment" merely a part of "experience"? The difficult task is getting from experience to knowledge.