41

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: I wanted to ask people about this

« on: June 18, 2019, 06:27:27 AM »

I'm guessing English may not be your first language. I am impressed by your ability to speak multiple languages, but I fear something is getting lost in translation.
As they say, a picture is worth 1000 words. Draw us a diagram.

42

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: I wanted to ask people about this

« on: June 17, 2019, 08:46:28 PM »

People who think the earth or sea is a sphere tell me this:Sea lines are arcs with very small radians.
but,If what they say is true,
I should like to know, from the point of view of a man in the middle of the sea, how, in the case of radians, the sea lines in all directions close on the spherical surface of the sea?
If this "arc" could be closed, the left and right ends of the sea line should have a pronounced twist at any observer's Angle, because the closed sea line looks like a lying circle that is an ellipse, and the two ends of the ellipse look like this.Isn't it?

I'm not sure what you mean. I don't see where this "twist" is coming from that you describe. Can you explain further?
As for a picture or diagram of this, I suggest https://earth.google.com/web
If you enable the Gridlines, you get lat & long lines. Are those the "sea lines" you are talking about? I don't see them twisting. Please let me know if I can help further.

43

Flat Earth Community / Re: Friendly Discussions to Build Consensus

« on: June 17, 2019, 06:06:12 PM »

Tom, we haven't heard from you in over a week. What do you think about the idea of facts? Maybe that could be a way to structure our conversations more productively.
totallackey, that sound good to you?

44

Flat Earth Theory / Re: International Space Station

« on: June 16, 2019, 10:58:09 PM »

Hey ya'll. I don't know how much help this is, but this type of post doesn't really generate a lot of interest from the FEs here. I like to try to help, so let me do my best... so first, why no interest in this?
1) You're a newby poster
2) You're a RE poster
3) You're posting something that has been discussed at some length in the past.

So you do need to understand that while you're welcome to post here, this isn't a topic that is going to interest the FEs here. Put yourself in their shoes. Why would they want to talk about this?

Ok, so if this has been discussed at some length, what did they say? Here's the tl;dr: (WARNING: This is a summary made by a RE, so ... somebody is going to say this is unfair, but this is the best I got)
There is no unified FE point of view... lots of different answers
TFES is very different from what you encounter on YouTube and other places. On YouTube, you get, "satellites are fake." Not as much here.
Some folks here will tell you they believe that satellites are real, and they are kept aloft with super secret technology like this:
"All satellites use the Biefeld-Brown effect to orbit above the surface of the Earth."
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2031282#msg2031282
Other folks suggest that once you get up high enough, the Universal Acceleration that causes flat Earth gravity will catch your satellite and keep it aloft.

I know, around this point you're thinking, "they can't be serious." Yeah. You and me both. Maybe they are, and maybe they aren't, but they do say these things. /shrug

45

Flat Earth Community / Re: Friendly Discussions to Build Consensus

« on: June 14, 2019, 07:07:54 PM »

Wikipedia has this to say: "A fact is a thing that is known to be consistent with objective reality and can be proven to be true with evidence. For example, "this sentence contains words" is a linguistic fact, and "the sun is a star" is a cosmological fact. Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States" and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated" are also both facts, of the historical type. All of these statements have the epistemic quality of being "ontologically superior" to opinion or interpretation — they are either categorically necessary or supported by adequate historical documentation.

Conversely, while it may be both consistent and true that "most cats are cute", it is not a fact (although in cases of opinion there is an argument for the acceptance of popular opinion as a statement of common wisdom, particularly if ascertained by scientific polling). Generally speaking, facts transcend belief and serve as concrete descriptions of a state of affairs on which beliefs can later be assigned.

The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability — that is whether it can be demonstrated to correspond to experience. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means".

This makes sense to me. Could this define a common plattform, or are there issues with this?

This is brilliant. I think that we need to give our FE friends the benefit of eliminating this part, "Standard reference works are often used to check facts." I think we can all agree with the rest of it, but we would not want to accept any existing reference work as fact without verification. Sound fair?

I propose that any verifiable, repeatable observation would be considered factual by all. The INTERPRETATIONS and CONCLUSIONS drawn from any given observation is something we would need to discuss further. There are also observations that are inconsistent. There is a lot of talk about these. If an observation is demonstrably inconsistent, then each individual observation is still factual, but we can also gather that they are inconsistent. Like if I flip a coin and it comes up heads, that much was factual. If I deduce from this that the coin will always come up heads, that is probably not going to fly as a fact. I can do 3 coin tosses in a row and get 3 heads, and now we'd start to think maybe it IS heads every time. But then on the 4th time, I get a tails. So all 4 coin tosses are factual, but the statement, "it always comes up heads" is clearly not. One more point that's often overlooked is that we can establish the RANGE of values we get even with this inconsistency. After tossing the coin many times, we can establish that we get "heads" and "tails", but we never get "banana." Furthermore, we can establish that we get heads about 50% of the time and tails about 50% of the time. (Depending on the coin, it IS possible to get "edge" in very rare cases, but I digress.)

Edit: There are also certain observations made in error or deliberately fraudulent. These are a dangerous area for friendly discussions. Let's agree to start from a position that the observer was genuine, but they may have made some mistake. If we can identify the mistake, we can react accordingly.

So I would like to invite all of our FE contributors to weigh in on this. Can we establish certain facts that we would all agree on within this type of framework - stressing that the CONCLUSIONS will NOT be considered facts, but that the observations would?

46

Flat Earth Community / Re: Friendly Discussions to Build Consensus

« on: June 14, 2019, 05:08:42 AM »

I do not believe issues to be perfectly certain and as I wrote, it is not required.

Great! Consensus. It is not an issue for anyone here if we cannot achieve perfect certainty.
Do we also agree that we DO wish to eliminate the impossible and the highly improbable?

47

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki - Tom Bishop Experiment

« on: June 13, 2019, 12:43:02 AM »

I encourage everyone to dig deeper. Don't just speculate and say, "it could be refraction." Dig in and figure out whether or not it really could have been.

The problem is that no one does dig deeper. They say look this picture, based on what I see, proves the earth is round.

Based on that logic, based on the time lapse shown the earth alternates from between being flat and being round throughout the day.

Does it though? At what time stamps does this image indicate that the Earth is flat? At what times does it show round? Have you checked any numbers to back any of this up?
It is not my intention to tell you the answers. I'd suggest you go and work them out for yourself.

48

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki - Tom Bishop Experiment

« on: June 12, 2019, 09:35:13 PM »

here:



these observations were made at the same day, same place, same altitude.

at 7:00 AM the opposite shore is clearly visible.
at 11:30 AM the opposite shore has mostly set  behind the horizon
at 11:36 AM the opposite shore has come back into view
at 12:32 PM the opposite shore has set behind the horizon again.

at 1:32 PM at 64.7 degrees the opposite shore is visible.
at 1:41 PM at 64.9 degrees the opposite shore has set behind the horizon again.


same day, same cloud cover, roughly the same time, same place, same altitude, almost the exact same temperature yet dramatically different observations.

That's a really cool video, and it tells us A LOT!
You can see not only the water level appearing to rise and fall, but you can see other features rising and falling. I would say that this video demonstrates pretty conclusively that atmospheric refraction is a thing, and that it varies throughout the day.
One might be tempted to see this video, throw up their hands, and declare, "It's impossible to tell anything with this kind of refraction going on!" But let me just suggest, the refraction seen here can be studied. You can tell how much the refraction changed during that day. By extension, you could do a longer observation to get the full variation of refraction. You can describe how the refraction varies with height. You can tell which direction the refraction changed when.
You can correlate your findings with the various prediction models and judge how well each model did.

I encourage everyone to dig deeper. Don't just speculate and say, "it could be refraction." Dig in and figure out whether or not it really could have been.

49

Flat Earth Community / Re: Friendly Discussions to Build Consensus

« on: June 12, 2019, 06:49:53 PM »

Let's dive into that. What makes you so adamant that perfect certainty is required or even desired?

I'll try to describe why for me, it is not. I'm really more an engineer than a scientist. I design things, and I want them to work - ideally on the first try. For this, I need a working model that can predict what my thing will do. Will that bit hold up to its stress load? How much energy will it take to get this thing started? etc. What I need is a model that I can use to design my thing on paper. I need enough confidence that when I build my thing, it'll actually work. If my model is good enough, my thing should work. If my model was too inaccurate, my thing will surely fail. So all I need is a model accurate enough. It doesn't need to be perfect. In fact, I know it won't be. I'm going to build in a good margin of error into the strength of my parts to account for that type of thing.

Perfect certainty is not required.

I believe most RE adherents exhibit the urgent "need," for certainty.

It is expressed by statements such as, "This [insert example here] demonstrates spherical earth perfectly..."

FE adherents seldom engage in this type of behavior.

Welcome back totallackey.
Let me remind everyone once again that this thread is not here for debate. We're trying to avoid arguments here.
I was asking Tom how he felt about the certainty issue. He had said he thought that science must prove itself absolutely. I have pointed out that is really not my point of view of it.
Please tell us how you feel about the need for certainty.
Speaking for myself, I was probably clear already. I personally feel no need for perfect certainty. Instead, I'm looking to separate the possible and the likely from the impossible and the unlikey.

50

Flat Earth Community / Re: Friendly Discussions to Build Consensus

« on: June 12, 2019, 04:07:59 AM »

Some of this stuff is drifting dangerously into debate again.
We're not arguing. We're talking. We all understand we have different takes on it. The difference is we want to listen to the other side as they tell us why they think the way they do.

51

Flat Earth Community / Re: REs netiquette

« on: June 11, 2019, 12:07:38 AM »

But yes, ultimately the hope here is that interest among a specific demographic dies out.

I'd appreciate it if you'd be willing to clarify that one. I can't help but wonder whether I fit into your demographic. If I'm not wanted, please tell me so.

52

Flat Earth Community / Re: Friendly Discussions to Build Consensus

« on: June 08, 2019, 11:31:07 PM »

If science can't "prove" stuff, what good is it?
1) Science can disprove things. That's not hard.
2) Science can describe things with a degree of confidence. In science, we like to have a confidence level at "5 sigma" or better. (As you've seen, there seems to be some fudging on that from time to time.)
3) Science can build a model that can be used to make accurate predictions. That model may not be perfect, but if we can describe what the limitations of the model are, it can be extremely useful.

If we went through life believing that things were true because someone 'explained' why it occurred, we would be prone to believe in all sorts of things. There are many failed sciences in history, now considered to be pseudosciences, which have created elaborate explanations for natural occurrences but went out of favor due to a lack of experimental demonstration.

Exactly! That's how science works. We're always looking for something better. In the meantime, the best we've got is ... the best we've got. That's not a criticism.

A round earth can be demonstrated. Why should that be impossible? The phenomena used to determine things about the Round Earth Theory need only to be cross-correlated to provide controls for a given explanation.

I agree completely. The ability to cross-correlate all aspects of a model is crucial.

If the distance to the sun could be determined with multiple triangulation methods, that would provide demonstration of the matter. For example, Aristarchus used the phases of the Moon to measure the sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon. During a Half Moon, the three celestial bodies should form a right angle. By measuring the angle at Earth between the Sun and Moon, his method shows that the Sun is 19 times as far from the Earth as the Moon, and thus 19 times as big, which is far different than the current Transit-of-Venus method. If we question Aristarchus' ability to measure angles, a modern version of his method to come up with an agreement with current theories would provide confidence of truth. In contradiction, the history of the sun's distance tells a story of disagreement and conjecture.

You've got an excellent point here, but I would say your logic is flawed somewhat. We are faced with quite a puzzle here. Instead of throwing out the observations altogether, let's try to work the puzzle. How can it be that one observation gives us the answer 19, and another gives us 400? Here's what I've got:
a) One of these observations is wrong.
b) Both of these observations is wrong.
c) The margin of error on the pair of observations overlap.
According to mainstream science, the truth of the matter is that the original measurement was rather inaccurate. If Aristarchus' method were used again with better accuracy, the results should be consistent with the other methods. The Aristarchus method would remain less precise, but its error margin should contain the modern accepted value. Do you agree with this assessment?

If one could find cross-correlation between different techniques, that demonstrates the truth of the matter. This is how other sciences work to demonstrate their explanations. Multiple methods, multiple scenarios, to demonstrate a truth.

As an example, there are many different radiometric dating methods. If each of those dating methods agrees that a given sample is about the same age, this gives us confidence for the accuracy of that method. If they vary wildly with each other, it shows that something must be incorrect. This is an obvious thing which should be done, right?

We generally do not demand cross-correlation between different techniques before we accept a scientific discovery to be, "the best we've got so far." Back to the earlier topic, we understand that science is always evolving, so the science of any given moment is simply, "the best we have so far."

That said, we really prefer to have such cross-correlation. Going further, when we try for cross-correlation and fail to get it, this highlights a major flaw in the science. There are examples of this in modern science today. When this happens, we do not throw out everything and give up. Instead, we work with the best models we have while we search for more clues.

This is not a "it's impossible to prove anything" discussion. Demonstration is possible. Standard scientific competency is desired, and achievable, for these matters. Once multiple methods are involved to correlate results to verify explanations it transforms the observation and interpretation into an experiment. The interpretation is corroborated by independent methods. No longer is the matter mere speculation. It has become demonstrated.

Given the incredible effort of all of humanity to interpret and describe this theory, this level of simple scientific quality control should be an easy slam dunk. Anyone who promotes integrity in science should champion the suggestions and statements above.

From my research I do think that people have tried, and failed, to do what I have described, and so the stories are kept to the simple observation-and-interpretation ones. The information is all there, if one were to look and document it, of science's failed and contradicting efforts to determine the properties of the RET. I'll continue to document it on the Wiki when I have the time. It most certainly is not a resolute story of agreement and success. The truth will come out, sooner or later.

I want to remain friendly here, but your Wiki documentation is rather offensive to me, so let's just not discuss it.

As I've said, it's not a debate. Let's build consensus. We agree that cross-correlation is strong evidence, and failed correlation indicates a flaw.

But what do we do when there is a failed correlation? I would hope that we could agree that repeatable measurements are still genuine - even if they don't agree with each other. I hope we can agree that if they do not agree, there must be an explanation for that. The most obvious explanation to begin with is the margin of error involved with any empirical observation.

An excellent example of this is the measurement of the gravitational constant G. As you've pointed out, the scientists' estimations of their own accuracy preclude them all being correct. There is simply no way they can all be correct to within the accuracy they claim. The most obvious explanation for this is they have overestimated their accuracy. There are other possibilities (remote possibilities), but the accuracy explanation seems most likely. Of all the possibilities, the suggestion that the correct number lies outside the range of ALL the experiments is EXTREMELY unlikely.

53

Flat Earth Community / Re: ISS Open For Business

« on: June 08, 2019, 02:53:18 AM »

Do you really think that would suddenly change everyone's mind?

What if the FE community all pooled together and sent up someone "trustworthy"? Yeah, I don't think this is super realistic, but let's imagine for a bit. Let's say that there was some FE paragon that went up there and relayed their experiences back to the rest of us. Maybe that could change some minds?

I would back that and pledge some money, but I have no illusions that it would change anything.
AFAIK, there is no person qualified to be this FE paragon. There's a lot of mistrust among the different sorts of FEs.
I've been seeing Mark Sargent's name mentioned here, but I'm quite confident that he's a fraud. Obviously others will disagree, but I just wanted to drop that in there for everyone to think about.

54

Flat Earth Community / Re: Friendly Discussions to Build Consensus

« on: June 08, 2019, 02:46:19 AM »

Everyone please remember this is a friendly discussion to BUILD CONSENSUS. We aren't debating here.
Please keep in mind that Tom is outnumbered here at least 3 to 1. Let's all be extra sensitive to that, please.

Here I disagree. Science is explicitly NOT in the business of "proving" anything.

That is certainly not what I learned in my education. I have been under the impression that science had a mission to find the truth about nature.

We must reject "Seems to" and seek "Demonstrated to".

I'd like to just focus on this part, and I think we should be a bit more careful tossing around inflamatory words like "pseudoscience". This is a friendly discussion.

I agree that science IS on a mission to find the truth. Normally, I'd go along with the "about nature" part as well, but recently, a whole segment of FEs have weaponized that "about nature" part. In the interest of keeping things on the friendly, perhaps it's best we set that aside.

I also really like the use of the phrase, "Demonstrated to".

The problem that we're bumping into is very much one of nuance. Words are imprecise. What's the difference between, "seems to" and "demonstrated to"? To me, those are precisely the same thing. Perhaps there's a subtle connotation to "seems to" that makes it less rigorous than "demonstrated to". I think I'd go along with that. I figure the likelihood of something could be placed onto a scale something like this:
proven not
certainly not
probably not
completely unsure
probably
seems to be
demonstrated to be
proven to be

What is science trying to do? Well any of it is good science, honestly - just as long as you say what you mean clearly enough.

So about "proof". That's a tough word. It all depends on just what it means. If you get right down to it, "proof" could be taken to mean perfect knowledge with absolutely no chance of being incorrect. That is something we can get in mathematics, but many well-known scientists have been very explicit that science doesn't go there. I like to say, "I can't even prove that you exist." So if you're going to insist on that type of proof, science won't get you there.

If science can't "prove" stuff, what good is it?
1) Science can disprove things. That's not hard.
2) Science can describe things with a degree of confidence. In science, we like to have a confidence level at "5 sigma" or better. (As you've seen, there seems to be some fudging on that from time to time.)
3) Science can build a model that can be used to make accurate predictions. That model may not be perfect, but if we can describe what the limitations of the model are, it can be extremely useful.

55

Flat Earth Community / Re: REs netiquette

« on: June 07, 2019, 09:36:22 PM »

I have come to the conclusion that average FE don't want to debate it. They want to learn about it from other FE. The FE'ers who bother to debate on forums long term mainly do so to strengthen their models. Whereas the average FE don't have that motivation. They want to learn, not argue with strangers about it.

The RE seem more than willing to spend many hours of their life researching topics for us, free of charge, which is generous and invaluable.

However, the debate forums which improve the technical aspects of FET should ideally be a secondary feature to a tube website of some sort with a constant stream of Flat Earth videos, which provide information, research, opinions, in order to continue the growth which was seen on YouTube. The videos can be hosted on YouTube and the new and popular videos from selected channels can be displayed. All we need to find is some platform which can facilitate this.

I agree with Tom.
What I have seen here agrees with what I have seen on other platforms. I have continually reached out and tried to begin collaborative dialogues with the goal of arriving at objective truth. As Tom says, FEs are more interested in sharing ideas between themselves, and are decidedly not interested in my ideas.
I agree with OP Bikini Polaris, that the FEs probably don't much appreciate the opinions of the REs. The mistake Bikini Polaris makes is holding that idea that the FEs have any wish to participate in that type of debate.
There are certainly some FEs on here who enjoy debating for debate's sake, but I've not encountered any who are open to the idea that these discussions could ever change their opinion about the shape of the Earth.

56

Flat Earth Community / Re: ISS Open For Business

« on: June 07, 2019, 08:48:08 PM »

It wouldn't make any difference. That's not some kind of criticism of flat Earthers. That's just being realistic. Right now, there are 6 human beings in space. That's right now. There have been 536 people who have gone to space. Think about it seriously. What if that 6 became 8? Would that make any difference? What if that 536 turned into 5360? Do you really think that would suddenly change everyone's mind?

57

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki - Tom Bishop Experiment

« on: June 06, 2019, 11:50:05 PM »

Didn't last long.

Descended into visible vs. tangible waffle, and deletion of non-aligned comments within a day or so...

I was saddened by this. I watched the video where he read in the manual on the auto-level that it used "gravity" to level itself, and therefore he is rejecting it... You know... because there's no such thing as gravity.

58

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: GPS and the Orbital Coriolis Effect

« on: June 05, 2019, 09:16:55 PM »

This is a fairly easy situation to resolve under Special Relativity.

You might want to inform the scientists who worked on the LISA space antenna.

LISA is quite a different story. IIRC, LISA does form a ring. So it would depend on exactly how the cluster orbits. I don't even know in what way they are planning to have the cluster rotating. I would PRESUME that the folks designing this thing would have considered this. I shall endeavor to investigate that a bit.

Just so I understand you correctly, you are of the opinion that the folks who designed LISA did NOT consider the Sagnac effect?

As for the rest of your comments on "STR", do you mean Special Relativity? Where does the T come from?

59

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Let's investigate how viewing distance works.

« on: June 05, 2019, 09:06:35 PM »

As far as I understand, the 1/60 of a degree rule doesn't change if you look with naked eye or through a telescope, right?  0.2/48000 = 0.0000042 = (arcrad) 0.000238° = 0°00'00"86.

I believe the 1/60 of a degree rule is strictly for the naked eye. Telescopes reduce that angle.

60

Flat Earth Community / Re: Friendly Discussions to Build Consensus

« on: June 05, 2019, 07:16:04 PM »

You say "So far, it has been my experience that virtually everything I was taught in a science class has checked out."

Of course that will be the case. If you lived in Ancient Greece at a time when the supernatural ruled and Aristotile taught that flies spontaneously generated from rotting meat, what reason would you have to doubt him? All of Aristotile's teacher buddies in the pantheon seem to agree. After all, you have seen flies swarming around rotting and decaying substances all the time, often multiplying in numbers. Spontaneous Generation confirmed! It is only natural to observe and interpret that this is where they must come from.

Opinions were not significantly swayed until experiments were performed almost two thousand years later:

This is an excellent point. When I learn some new science fact, I question it, and then I am convinced by the self-same argument that convinced the person who discovered it. If they were blind to some shortcoming, I am likely to be blind to it as well.

All societies will have explanations and interpretations for nature. It "seems to check out" is not enough. If there is no direct experimental exploration and verification of an idea, any interpretation of nature invalid.

It is the responsibility of science to prove itself absolutely, not "seem to check out".

Here I disagree. Science is explicitly NOT in the business of "proving" anything. We often use the word "proof," but rarely do we mean that in the mathematical sense. In fact, I suggest that science is all about "seems to check out."

We make mistakes, and we go down blind alleys, but we keep on trying to check it out. Any hypothesis is solid right up until it isn't.

I think this right here is our core difference of opinion. Your posts seem to create a pattern that suggest exactly what you're outlining here. You seem to have a philosophy that anything short of perfect mathematical certainty is simply "unknowable."

Let's dive into that. What makes you so adamant that perfect certainty is required or even desired?

I'll try to describe why for me, it is not. I'm really more an engineer than a scientist. I design things, and I want them to work - ideally on the first try. For this, I need a working model that can predict what my thing will do. Will that bit hold up to its stress load? How much energy will it take to get this thing started? etc. What I need is a model that I can use to design my thing on paper. I need enough confidence that when I build my thing, it'll actually work. If my model is good enough, my thing should work. If my model was too inaccurate, my thing will surely fail. So all I need is a model accurate enough. It doesn't need to be perfect. In fact, I know it won't be. I'm going to build in a good margin of error into the strength of my parts to account for that type of thing.