Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #20 on: March 30, 2021, 10:38:12 PM »
Do what? So the astronauts and space tourists who have been to the ISS just think they're orbiting a globe earth when they aren't really?
Something along those lines, yes.


Now we're getting somewhere. 

So the (lets say) Space Shuttle crew ascend in the lift to board the Shuttle, which they have just seen from the launch pad.  They are familiar with the look, sound and smell of the craft from their many training sessions, and they've probably personalised it for the flight (packet of mints in the seat pocket, that kind of thing) so they've not been somehow diverted into some kind of simulator.  They can see the ground and the sky through the windshield and windows.  It launches, they feel the acceleration.  As it climbs, it pitches over onto its back and they can see the ground and ocean falling away.  The flight crew are test pilots, so they correlate the flight instrument displays with what their senses are telling them about acceleration, speed, altitude and attitude; they will smell a rat if things don't correlate.  The sky darkens, ground based features and clouds grow smaller.  Engines stop and they experience weightlessness; for several days.  As they orbit, the planet rotates beneath them, and within a few orbits they have observed the entirety of Earth from pole to pole.  At the end of the mission they decelerate, re-enter, transition to airborne flight and land. 

At exactly what point, and how, dose the deception occur?

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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #21 on: March 30, 2021, 10:40:50 PM »
Now we're getting somewhere. 
No, we're getting farther and farther away from somewhere. The question was whether these FE'ers exist. They do. This does not mean that I'm any more keen to defend them than I am to defend RE'ers.

This is ignoring the fact that you took a hypothetical scenario in which the element of deception is explicitly absent and... asked where the deception is.
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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #22 on: March 31, 2021, 08:03:28 AM »
So the Shuttle used to orbit the planet, and there was no deception?

SteelyBob

Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #23 on: March 31, 2021, 08:42:02 AM »
I'm not saying anything of the sort. I simply pointed out that people with this viewpoint exist.

Right...ok then. So some FEers think there is a space travel conspiracy, and some think that there isn't, but rather the people involved have been duped somehow. Aside from the absurdity of trying to fool somebody that they've been into space (there was a reality TV show that did this once and, even though they chose people precisely because they had zero tech knowledge and were extremely gullible, they still didn't buy it), it's difficult to see how it would be possible to do the fooling without there being a conspiracy.

More interestingly though - what do you think, Pete? Have the 500+ people who claim to have been into space actually been into space? Or are they lying, and part of the space travel conspiracy, or were they duped?

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Offline AATW

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #24 on: March 31, 2021, 09:58:11 AM »
there was a reality TV show that did this once and, even though they chose people precisely because they had zero tech knowledge and were extremely gullible, they still didn't buy it
Ha. I'd completely forgotten about that show! I did watch at the time, and tbf they did fool a few people:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4537748.stm
But they picked people who they assessed as suggestible and who had little of no knowledge of space.
They told people it wouldn't be a vertical take off and that they wouldn't be weightless. Obviously actual astronauts are weightless so if it is all fake and they're being fooled then God alone knows how you'd simulate that.
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 Pete Svarrior

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #25 on: March 31, 2021, 10:13:03 AM »
Right...ok then. So some FEers think there is a space travel conspiracy, and some think that there isn't, but rather the people involved have been duped somehow.
Sigh. I really don't want to come across as more patronising than usual (and I know I inevitably will), but I just don't know how to spell this out any more clearly, and apparently people chose to ignore my answers in favour of discussing something that they made up on the spot and found amusing.

The variant of FET which doesn't involve a conspiracy does not involve a conspiracy. As a consequence, no, it does not surmise that anyone has been "duped" - it presumes the exact opposite of that.

Again, because this question has now been asked multiple times in a row: no deception means no deception. Replacing the word "conspiracy" with "being duped" or "deception" doesn't change the implication.

More interestingly though - what do you think, Pete? Have the 500+ people who claim to have been into space actually been into space? Or are they lying, and part of the space travel conspiracy, or were they duped?
I'm famously undecided, and personally suspect that none of the current explanations have it quite right:
  • A massive Big-Brother conspiracy appears a bit too heavy-handed a conclusion to me. It's not impossible, but it's also not likely, and the amount of evidence for it is insufficient for my tastes.
  • The notion that the vast majority of people are simply mistaken seems more likely to me on the surface, but is also a needlessly sweeping generalisation.
    • However, the idea that 500 or so gullible bougies got tricked (or tricked themselves) is a pretty elegant answer that merits more consideration.
  • Any mix of the two is extremely difficult to define, especially with limited evidence. And if we can't even define it, we're quite a ways away from being able to propose it.
The issue here is that the RE brigade are trying to flip the question on its head. The Earth's flatness is experimentally verifiable, and the holes in RET are plentiful and easy to spot. We can't dismiss that conclusion on the say-so of a few hundred rich elites. FET may yet not be the correct conclusion, but the fact that it has unknowns which RET answers (in a lackluster way) is not a strong argument for or against either model.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2021, 10:16:38 AM by Pete Svarrior »
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Offline AATW

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #26 on: March 31, 2021, 10:20:12 AM »
The Earth's flatness is experimentally verifiable
If this were true then why would FET not be the prevailing view?
In fact things like EA are attempts at explaining why experiments do not produce the results you'd expect on a flat earth.
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"

SteelyBob

Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #27 on: March 31, 2021, 12:25:33 PM »
Sigh. I really don't want to come across as more patronising than usual (and I know I inevitably will), but I just don't know how to spell this out any more clearly, and apparently people chose to ignore my answers in favour of discussing something that they made up on the spot and found amusing.

The variant of FET which doesn't involve a conspiracy does not involve a conspiracy. As a consequence, no, it does not surmise that anyone has been "duped" - it presumes the exact opposite of that.

Again, because this question has now been asked multiple times in a row: no deception means no deception. Replacing the word "conspiracy" with "being duped" or "deception" doesn't change the implication.


Not patronising - really useful actually, thank you. I think the reason that you're being asked the question a lot is because it is not intuitively obvious how there couldn't be some deception, somewhere. I'm unclear, as I suspect many others are, as to how somebody could simply mistake a sequence of monumental events in their life for space travel when, in fact, they weren't in space and, critically, how that chain of misunderstanding could occur without a massive degree of deception occurring. So if somebody, for example, is on a long-duration mission to the ISS (or thinks they are), then for there to not be a conspiracy, everybody involved has to genuinely believe that they are going to the ISS. So the people designing the equipment, fuelling the rocket, the people strapping them in, the people tracking it on radar, talking on radio, the caterers(!), the people rescuing them after re-entry several months later...they all have to genuinely believe it happened. So where exactly do these mistaken astronauts go for several months at zero g, if not into orbit? Can you describe a credible scenario whereby they don't go into orbit, but nobody deceives anybody?

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Offline RazaTD

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #28 on: March 31, 2021, 12:42:26 PM »
Sigh. I really don't want to come across as more patronising than usual (and I know I inevitably will), but I just don't know how to spell this out any more clearly, and apparently people chose to ignore my answers in favour of discussing something that they made up on the spot and found amusing.

The variant of FET which doesn't involve a conspiracy does not involve a conspiracy. As a consequence, no, it does not surmise that anyone has been "duped" - it presumes the exact opposite of that.

Again, because this question has now been asked multiple times in a row: no deception means no deception. Replacing the word "conspiracy" with "being duped" or "deception" doesn't change the implication.


Not patronising - really useful actually, thank you. I think the reason that you're being asked the question a lot is because it is not intuitively obvious how there couldn't be some deception, somewhere. I'm unclear, as I suspect many others are, as to how somebody could simply mistake a sequence of monumental events in their life for space travel when, in fact, they weren't in space and, critically, how that chain of misunderstanding could occur without a massive degree of deception occurring. So if somebody, for example, is on a long-duration mission to the ISS (or thinks they are), then for there to not be a conspiracy, everybody involved has to genuinely believe that they are going to the ISS. So the people designing the equipment, fuelling the rocket, the people strapping them in, the people tracking it on radar, talking on radio, the caterers(!), the people rescuing them after re-entry several months later...they all have to genuinely believe it happened. So where exactly do these mistaken astronauts go for several months at zero g, if not into orbit? Can you describe a credible scenario whereby they don't go into orbit, but nobody deceives anybody?

You also have to consider that ISS is literally out there. It is easily observable and it is literally streaming the shape of the Earth. The denial is so strong with this one.
A rational man

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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #29 on: March 31, 2021, 01:08:16 PM »
If this were true then why would FET not be the prevailing view?
Change takes time, and we do have a schooling system that (in our case) is tailored towards raising good Tory voters, and not people who think critically.

You also have to consider that ISS is literally out there. It is easily observable and it is literally streaming the shape of the Earth.
And?

I am going to ask one last time that you stop wasting our time. Figure out what you're arguing against before you post again.

I think the reason that you're being asked the question a lot is because it is not intuitively obvious how there couldn't be some deception, somewhere. [...] Can you describe a credible scenario whereby they don't go into orbit, but nobody deceives anybody?
I don't know about "credible" - it's not a position I hold, and arguing for things I don't believe doesn't come easily to me. As far as I understand, the argument comes down to the fact that most of the "obvious" differences between FE and RE cosmology are actually not obvious at all, and most would be nigh-indistinguishable. Weightlessness under UA would be identical to weightlessness under the mainstream RET+Gravitation model (as opposed to other RET models, which I hope we can agree are false), and as a consequence of EA, the Earth could very well appear vaguely spherical if viewed from sufficiently far away.

In essence, to my best understanding of these proponents' beliefs, astronauts would go into "orbit" just fine - they would simply misinterpret their surroundings as congruent with RET, because RET is a good attempt at simulating reality.
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SteelyBob

Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #30 on: March 31, 2021, 01:36:39 PM »
Weightlessness under UA would be identical to weightlessness under the mainstream RET+Gravitation model (as opposed to other RET models, which I hope we can agree are false),

If you're in an ISS-type vehicle above a flat earth, how can you be 'weightless' (ie 0g) and maintain your distance from the surface? If the earth is accelerating, then you're either colliding with it because you're in freefall, or you're accelerating as well, in which case you aren't at 0g.


Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #31 on: March 31, 2021, 01:39:07 PM »
If this were true then why would FET not be the prevailing view?
Change takes time, and we do have a schooling system that (in our case) is tailored towards raising good Tory voters, and not people who think critically.


The tall order for FETers to change the prevailing view goes much further than just for folks in the UK.

The prevailing RET view is also true in China, India, Japan, S. Korea, N. Korea(!), Iran, Egypt, Brazil, Norway, Iceland, Singapore, Belorussia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Israel, Thailand, Austria, The Czech Republic, Russia, Portugal, Ethiopia, the UAE...(well, one could list every political entity because in my understanding none exist in which FET is currently the prevailing view, and indeed, it's a phenomenon that only exists in a handful of countries at the moment right now anyway, even in small numbers).

My substantive point here isn't just that it goes well beyond 'fixing' the school system to stop raising "good" Tories in Britain. All of these places have quite diverse schooling systems, and yet all of them produce citizens who generally believe in RET, not FET.

Change is indeed hard if you're going against literally the whole world...










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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #32 on: March 31, 2021, 01:51:13 PM »
The tall order for FETers to change the prevailing view goes much further than just for folks in the UK.
Yes, I provided a British person with a British example. I don't think that's particularly controversial, and I don't think you're making any breakthroughs by pointing out that there are other countries than the UK. Perhaps we could not distract ourselves with pointless drivel?

My substantive point here isn't just that it goes well beyond 'fixing' the school system to stop raising "good" Tories in Britain. All of these places have quite diverse schooling systems, and yet all of them produce citizens who generally believe in RET, not FET.
Your "substantive point" is that I used one country as an example, rather than discussing each of them individually. Great. Now let's get back on topic.

and indeed, it's a phenomenon that only exists in a handful of countries at the moment right now anyway, even in small numbers
This statement is fundamentally false, we've argued it too many times to care to recall. If you want to read the papers, you will. If you don't, I won't force you. That said, ignoring the changes that surround you might not be a good idea, especially when that ignorance forms the backbone of your worldview.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2021, 01:54:09 PM by Pete Svarrior »
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Offline Iceman

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #33 on: March 31, 2021, 01:56:47 PM »
Pete, are there any diagrams to demonstrate how EA would cause the earth to appear spherical to astronauts?

The diagrams on the wiki do a good job demonstrating the concepts for observers on the ground, I'm just struggling to picture how it would work from the ISS ~250 km above earth, or from the vantage of Apollo astronauts.

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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #34 on: March 31, 2021, 02:04:19 PM »
Pete, are there any diagrams to demonstrate how EA would cause the earth to appear spherical to astronauts?
Not that I'm aware of. Might be a question for other FE groups.

Not that I think the concept would be particularly different. In short, a curved Earth with straight light rays is visually identical to a flat Earth with curved light rays. This concept does not change with the observer's position.
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Offline Iceman

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #35 on: March 31, 2021, 02:17:18 PM »
Pete, are there any diagrams to demonstrate how EA would cause the earth to appear spherical to astronauts?
Not that I'm aware of. Might be a question for other FE groups.

Not that I think the concept would be particularly different. In short, a curved Earth with straight light rays is visually identical to a flat Earth with curved light rays. This concept does not change with the observer's position.

Yea, not a big deal. I have a much easier time picturing things in the 2D, cross-sectional view. I agree that the same principles would work to create a potential equivalence...just having a hard time developing the picture in my head as an observer looking down onto things in a more 3D scenario.

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Offline RazaTD

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #36 on: March 31, 2021, 03:09:53 PM »
If this were true then why would FET not be the prevailing view?
Change takes time, and we do have a schooling system that (in our case) is tailored towards raising good Tory voters, and not people who think critically.

You also have to consider that ISS is literally out there. It is easily observable and it is literally streaming the shape of the Earth.
And?

I am going to ask one last time that you stop wasting our time. Figure out what you're arguing against before you post again.

I think the reason that you're being asked the question a lot is because it is not intuitively obvious how there couldn't be some deception, somewhere. [...] Can you describe a credible scenario whereby they don't go into orbit, but nobody deceives anybody?
I don't know about "credible" - it's not a position I hold, and arguing for things I don't believe doesn't come easily to me. As far as I understand, the argument comes down to the fact that most of the "obvious" differences between FE and RE cosmology are actually not obvious at all, and most would be nigh-indistinguishable. Weightlessness under UA would be identical to weightlessness under the mainstream RET+Gravitation model (as opposed to other RET models, which I hope we can agree are false), and as a consequence of EA, the Earth could very well appear vaguely spherical if viewed from sufficiently far away.

In essence, to my best understanding of these proponents' beliefs, astronauts would go into "orbit" just fine - they would simply misinterpret their surroundings as congruent with RET, because RET is a good attempt at simulating reality.

I find it hard to believe you can't understand the significance of being able to observe ISS and its streams as a problem for the FE. Some people even flashed a light towards ISS which appeared on its stream: https://www.universetoday.com/93987/amateur-astronomers-flash-the-space-station/

There really is no excuse to say it is fake anymore.

If on the off chance you aren't being disingenuous and literally can't understand the significance of this: The ISS stream very clearly shows a Round Earth.
A rational man

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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #37 on: March 31, 2021, 03:11:47 PM »
There really is no excuse to say it is fake anymore.

If on the off chance you aren't being disingenuous and literally can't understand the significance of this: The ISS stream very clearly shows a Round Earth.
Right. I've asked enough times. Take a short break to see if it helps you.
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Offline WTF_Seriously

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #38 on: March 31, 2021, 03:15:40 PM »
Pete, are there any diagrams to demonstrate how EA would cause the earth to appear spherical to astronauts?
Not that I'm aware of. Might be a question for other FE groups.

Not that I think the concept would be particularly different. In short, a curved Earth with straight light rays is visually identical to a flat Earth with curved light rays. This concept does not change with the observer's position.

Yea, not a big deal. I have a much easier time picturing things in the 2D, cross-sectional view. I agree that the same principles would work to create a potential equivalence...just having a hard time developing the picture in my head as an observer looking down onto things in a more 3D scenario.

In a static sense, the EA vs. round view is an interesting scenario.  However, space travel is not static.  We aren't talking about folks who fly to a stationary object and then sit there viewing the earth.  We're talking about folks who've traveled over the surface and view how it's changed beneath them.  EA can't account for how craft circles the globe.
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.

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Offline Action80

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Re: About the conspiracy
« Reply #39 on: March 31, 2021, 03:32:06 PM »
If this were true then why would FET not be the prevailing view?
Change takes time, and we do have a schooling system that (in our case) is tailored towards raising good Tory voters, and not people who think critically.

You also have to consider that ISS is literally out there. It is easily observable and it is literally streaming the shape of the Earth.
And?

I am going to ask one last time that you stop wasting our time. Figure out what you're arguing against before you post again.

I think the reason that you're being asked the question a lot is because it is not intuitively obvious how there couldn't be some deception, somewhere. [...] Can you describe a credible scenario whereby they don't go into orbit, but nobody deceives anybody?
I don't know about "credible" - it's not a position I hold, and arguing for things I don't believe doesn't come easily to me. As far as I understand, the argument comes down to the fact that most of the "obvious" differences between FE and RE cosmology are actually not obvious at all, and most would be nigh-indistinguishable. Weightlessness under UA would be identical to weightlessness under the mainstream RET+Gravitation model (as opposed to other RET models, which I hope we can agree are false), and as a consequence of EA, the Earth could very well appear vaguely spherical if viewed from sufficiently far away.

In essence, to my best understanding of these proponents' beliefs, astronauts would go into "orbit" just fine - they would simply misinterpret their surroundings as congruent with RET, because RET is a good attempt at simulating reality.

I find it hard to believe you can't understand the significance of being able to observe ISS and its streams as a problem for the FE. Some people even flashed a light towards ISS which appeared on its stream: https://www.universetoday.com/93987/amateur-astronomers-flash-the-space-station/

There really is no excuse to say it is fake anymore.

If on the off chance you aren't being disingenuous and literally can't understand the significance of this: The ISS stream very clearly shows a Round Earth.
The ISS stream does not show a globe earth. It may show round, but no globe.
To be honest I am getting pretty bored of this place.