41

Flat Earth Community / Re: What pushed you in the direction of belief in Flat Earth Theory?

« on: June 17, 2020, 09:56:56 PM »

Yet his 'proofs' of RE are still cited today as practically its main evidence.

Maybe he was wrong about things unrelated to earth, but Samuel Rowbotham was wrong about things unrelated to earth too and you still cite him today. It's really quite disingenuous of you to be using that as a reason not to trust someone about something they could be right about, don't you think? eric dubay is wrong about a lot of things, he makes a lot of assumptions too and argues for flat earth with those assumptions, so with the same kind of logic, I guess we can just write off the possibility that he's actually right about the shape of the earth. You, Tom, are wrong about a lot of things, I guess you're not to be trusted either about the earths shape. Strange that you would use arguments that can easily be used against you. 

Everyone is wrong about things at some point, that's how you learn. You cannot discredit someone entirely just because they were incorrect about an unrelated thing.

42

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: June 17, 2020, 12:34:00 PM »

But it is okay...driving under the influence doesn't count as endangering lives in your book either...

It's obvious that it is endangering lives to drive under the influence, I never said it wasn't. Don't put words in my mouth. Even so, he wasn't shot for drink driving, was he? What's that got to do with anything.

Ok so your argument here is he had the potential to take more lethal weapons from the officers and so it was justified to shoot him? Minority Report is a fine movie for sure but in reality if he hasn't taken your shotgun you can't shoot him for taking your shotgun.

43

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: June 17, 2020, 10:25:25 AM »

I'm not all that shocked that Totallackey would be in the mindset that it was all well and good to kill someone for running away with your non-lethal weapon. Yes the drunk guy who managed to take the taser and get away from two officers was stupid for doing that but the situation didn't call for an execution.

I doubt you have any clue as to what situations an officer is trained to shoot.

Nor the mentality it takes to be a police officer.

Part of the problem is probably how they were trained and what mentality they have... There are a lot of clear cut cases of officers being on power trips and having egos that when bruised result in unlawful action from said officers. Every single officer absolutely cannot have these problems. No one should be able to become an officer of the law if that is how they think and act. IMO in the situation above, the officer shot the guy because the officer was losing control of the situation, not because he felt like he was in mortal danger.

With that said if you're stupid enough to take an officers weapon and run after being drunk driving then I'm not going to get bent of shape when you get yourself killed. Both the officer and the drunken guy were acting stupidly in the moment.

44

Flat Earth Theory / Re: RE's representation of FE: Dishonesty or Ignorance?

« on: June 16, 2020, 07:30:57 PM »

In the mainstream explanations it's strange how earths orbit is depicted as a plane around the sun when it should be shown as a corkscrew as the solar system spirals through the cosmos . It's not cyclical in globe theory but is in FE .

There is nothing strange about it.  All the planets orbit the Sun in very nearly the same plane.  The most out of line is Pluto with an orbital inclination of 17 degrees.  Solar systems develop from accretion disks which form around the equatorial planes of stars.  The Sun isn't the only case of that..we can see such disks around other stars too.

https://space.fandom.com/wiki/Protoplanetary_disk

The plane of the solar system is then inclined at 63 degrees relative to the galactic centre and so as the Sun orbits the Galaxy and carries with the planets along with it (the Sun being the closest and most significant mass in the proximity so no surprise there) and so if you take the path through space of the planets yes they would take the form of a corkscrew.

The Sun takes 230 odd million years to orbit the Galaxy so within the timescale of a human life that is barely detectable.  But the Earth only takes one year to orbit the Sun and that most certainly is noticeable and in my opinion the heliocentric model explains all that very nicely thank you.

The link I gave you, you will notice provides the same account for stellar aberration as a lot of websites do.  So I hardly think they are all wrong.

You couldn't be more wrong as you fail to understand the point made by somerled.

If the sun is moving at a speed of 828,000 kmh, that means the planets are somehow locked in a plane at the same constant rate, with the amazing Pluto keeping its 17 degree angle...

Really high fiction of the most amusing sort!

You'd only need to observe a planet and it's moons to see celestial bodies can move together. Why this surprises anyone is strange... Even then, on this website where the wiki states the hypothesis of UA... Strange that you'd challenge the notion of things moving together but not the notion that everything is moving together.

At any rate, back to the main point. If someone has any gripes with how scientists have accepted how gravity affects things, challenge it with a theory that better explains how gravity affects things. That's a start to disproving the paper in in the OP. It's not dishonest to be using the fully accepted theory of gravity... What they've done is say "here, we have observed how gravity works in nature, so we'll use that mechanic on an object to show how gravity would work on it" in this case a disk. Does it match reality? No? shocking. Don't like it? Come up with a better theory that works with everything like gravity does. Hell we even put this mechanic to practical use by putting satellites into orbit so we know its working as we think it is. We see other planets with gravitational properties that match what we expect. It'd be strange to think that we must live in some bubble where gravity doesn't exist and it must be something else, just to keep the flat earth idea.

45

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: June 14, 2020, 07:37:45 PM »

Deliberately shooting someone in the legs, or any limbs at all, is very difficult and not a thing that police are ever trained to do. A gun is a lethal weapon and shouldn't be fired unless you're prepared to kill.

While I've never shot a moving target (with a real gun) I wouldn't have thought it to be difficult but I suppose in the moment it's a quick reaction and the officer would aim to hit regardless of where on the target, so I guess it's not a plausible solution. Though I would still question that officers reasons for pulling a gun on a person running away regardless.

46

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: June 14, 2020, 05:58:01 PM »

Is there a lesson here for the local police?

Yes, don't give a drunken guy your taser then shoot to kill him as he runs away. I mean for starters how tf does a drunken guy get hold of an officers weapon and why was his first instinct to shoot guy a few times for running in the opposite direction? They had all the information they needed to apprehend him eventually without a need to even chase him let alone kill him. The problem is the officer was stressed from losing control of the situation, he absolutely did not need to use his gun and even then fuck, shoot the guy in the legs?

47

Flat Earth Theory / Re: RE's representation of FE: Dishonesty or Ignorance?

« on: June 14, 2020, 01:20:18 PM »

Peer review is not any part of the scientific method. Repeatable experiment and observation with predictable results are .

In the OP , if the two theoretical bozos, who somehow got their mathematical masturbations into a physics journal, wanted to show the earth wasn't infamously flat then all they had to do was go out and survey the curvature and publish their results. But fkn no ! "We'll sit on our arrises and fink about it". Modern science .

Start with the assumption earth is a globe - use circular arguments to prove something that cannot be possible since your applying globe theory to something that's not a globe.
An ancient Greek whos mythical experiment has two solutions , this reportedly from a book by the fictional author Cleomedes who we know feck all about . That's the old peer reviewed mainstream theoretical (imaginary) science for you .

It's dishonesty. And no one knows how the universe works.

and your alternative?

48

Flat Earth Theory / Re: RE's representation of FE: Dishonesty or Ignorance?

« on: June 13, 2020, 04:53:23 PM »

Mainstream science is unable to advance since the peer review system stifles all knowledge gained by experiment that is contrary to the paradigm , and the paradigm then exists only in progressively senseless theory .

Experts looking at your work can learn from it or correct any mistakes and they do this constantly with each other. Knowledge is gained from sharing and challenging each other.  Why would this stifle knowledge instead? o_O The only reason I could think of that you wouldn't want your work to be checked is if you don't want to be corrected you want people to just assume you're right? Or worst case, you want everyone else to go off and do experiments entirely in secret and never share their work which is what I think some flat earthers think is the way to go, but it's really not. People work together, this is just how humans have progressed. If everyone lived in a way where we din't work together, correct, compete and challenge each other you would A) be foraging and hunting for your own food, B) be building your own home and everything in it with your own resources gathered by you, C) be having to make all your own clothes, D) would be definitely living without modern technology like the internet.

Imagine someone saying they know how the universe works and 95% of the worlds population and pretty much all experts are wrong and won't agree with them, and won't show you how they know. Who you gunna believe? That guy who's keeping his findings a secret or the 95% of experts who are sharing knowledge and correcting each other as they go? Yea...

The alternative to the scientific method and peer reviewing/checking/correcting each others work sounds pretty stupid and humans would probably still be in the dark ages.

49

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: June 13, 2020, 04:21:40 PM »

Most police officers are probably pretty sound. That's really the problem, they should all be sound. You can't deny there's something wrong going on with the recruitment when morons, racists or generally nervous people become officers.

When like in the video below you have police start threatening to shoot students outside their dorm who are very clearly just going about their business cleaning up, calling for backup with comments like "has some kind of a blunt object in his hands" which is very clearly a way for the officer to sound 'in trouble' over the radio out of context to the situation he was in(because unless the officer is an absolute moron he knew what the object was and why the student has it). While I do think this student could have handled the situation better, I still think the officer was just trying to wave his dick about trying to show his authority, the officer escalated this situation way more than needed. And on top of that it took some random old man to come along and simply say his title and the officer was like 'ok cool I believe you'.



There's so many videos of this kind of behaviour from police. It's quite clear that some officers are problematic. UK officers seem more grounded than this but I guess america is a big place.

50

Flat Earth Theory / Re: RE's representation of FE: Dishonesty or Ignorance?

« on: June 13, 2020, 01:41:56 PM »

Peer review , peer pressure , appeal to authority. Not the scientific way whichever way you put it.

The whole point of the peer review system is to protect the paradigm.

Ok so, this isn't an exact equivalency but imagine you're in school and you're doing a test like everyone else but at the end instead of handing it in to be marked you sit there and say to the teacher "I won't hand this to you to check through because this is peer pressure... But it's totally all correct and there's no need for you to double check so just give me my A". then afterwards you go around telling your classmates how all your answers were totally correct and you start teaching them what you wrote in your test as answers and they totally believe you because you totally got an A so why wouldn't they? Can you see how this is just not going to happen? Surely you can see why the teacher needs to go through your test papers and mark it, and tell you where you went wrong? Can you see how telling your fellow students the potentially wrong answers would hinder their education as well?

51

Flat Earth Theory / Re: RE's representation of FE: Dishonesty or Ignorance?

« on: June 12, 2020, 05:05:23 PM »

Peer review , also known as peer pressure , is a method of control of scientific endeavour.

That sounds like something someone would say if they knew their paper had incorrect information and didn't want it pointed out to them... The whole point in peer reviewing is to get multiple expert opinions to fact check your work. Is there any other reason you wouldn't want your research to be published and peer reviewed by the scientific community?

52

Flat Earth Theory / Re: RE's representation of FE: Dishonesty or Ignorance?

« on: June 12, 2020, 11:30:01 AM »

A paper from Physics Education, Volume 53, Number 4 (2018)

Flat Earth theory: an exercise in critical thinking

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6552/aac053/pdf

In the references I see:

Samuel Rowbotham - Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe
Eric Dubey - atlanteanconspiracy.com
William Carpenter - One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is not a Globe

So no, I don't see that researchers are refraining from linking to FE content and addressing FE content and websites. This is something you appear to be making up.

What they likely aren't going to do is take your wiki as an official source information and rightly so.

The information isn't only on the wiki. Mainstream science websites also discuss gravity in FE. Again, the researchers have failed to do any amount of research into this.

Ok fair, so lets use gravity as an example. Can you show a peer reviewed paper showing how gravity correctly works in a flat earth that is backed up with evidence which can then be cited in a paper? So far the papers in this thread have referenced a visual representation and another paper referencing to show what a flat earth argument as general examples of peoples false claims. it's a direct study of flat earthers and their mindsets... Of course they're going to show examples of this.

Again, apologies as I should still have worded my first post better, but I don't want to be sent to angry ranting for basically saying that you're considered a crazy person on the internet with a wiki wondering why people aren't taking you seriously. Publish some of your research to be peer reviewed instead of complaining about how you think people are being dishonest for not knowing you or your ideas exist in a dark corner of the internet... What I mean when I say they won't cite the FE wiki in a paper as a source of information is that it's written by any random people just like wikipedia and as you've seen stamped below every flat earth video on youtube, information from said videos aren't to be considered factual (for or against flat earth) "The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD), and China until the 17th century." Or in other words, youtube is actively saying take these videos with a grain of salt because we are long past the idea of flat earth now. They can't really cite youtube or wikipedia or the FES wiki as some kind of correct source of information when the source of those things are unverified ramblings of internet people.

TLDR; wikis and youtube isn't a verifiable source of information to back someones findings. Sourcing youtube like "look at this person's false claims for an example" isn't really the point you want to be making... and "here's a visual representation to show what my findings look like" still aren't citing for sources of information. But I'll be fair to you, links to youtube and maybe wikipedia are linked in papers, which is why I've said a few times I should have been clearer, so again, apologies for that.

53

Flat Earth Theory / Re: RE's representation of FE: Dishonesty or Ignorance?

« on: June 12, 2020, 09:21:23 AM »

I didn't say it wasn't hard to find. youtube videos and an obscure wikis aren't likely going to be used in scientific papers.

Then why does this one link to several youtube videos in the references?

for visualization of their point it would seem. There's no groundbreaking new information in said videos and they aren't citing them for information, rather just to visualize what they're talking about. I should have worded my previous post better, apologies.

To describe a flat Earth, we use a simple model of a thin disc with a uniformly distributed mass. This approach allows for rather simple calculations to demonstrate what would the gravitational field of such a system be: for visualization, we refer the reader to some instructive video simulations [6, 7].

What they likely aren't going to do is take your wiki as an official source information and rightly so. Publish some papers on how you've concluded how gravity works, have those papers peer reviewed. Don't expect them to peer review and cite the FE wiki as a source of information.

54

Flat Earth Theory / Re: RE's representation of FE: Dishonesty or Ignorance?

« on: June 12, 2020, 09:03:26 AM »

I didn't say it wasn't hard to find. youtube videos and an obscure wikis aren't likely going to be used in scientific papers. There's a reason even the Wikipedia website isn't cited as a source in papers, let alone the FES wiki and some crazy people on youtube. Even wikipedia has given a reason for this;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia

it just isn't a reliable source of information to be using youtube and FES's wiki.

55

Flat Earth Theory / Re: RE's representation of FE: Dishonesty or Ignorance?

« on: June 12, 2020, 08:01:21 AM »

I’d call it dishonesty if there were any actual established model of flat earth, and ignorance in the sense that they probably couldn’t find many published papers researching a flat earth. Why wouldn’t they use the established mechanics of gravity in their paper? Sorry to say but YouTube videos and an obscure wiki is not exactly showing any kind of decent foundation of research to be used. If you wanted people to use what you think is the correct gravity solution maybe consider publishing some papers on flat earth for the scientific community to have something to peer review?

56

Flat Earth Community / Re: Did Rowbotham use Conspiracy Theories?

« on: June 10, 2020, 04:37:26 PM »

Don't assume. Observe and conclude. Bring meaningful data to the table. "Thinking" about "assumptions" and what you do and don't personally find credulous is a useless waste of time.

It seems we're saying near enough the same thing? It would be assuming to suggest that allies hide and cover up illegal activities for each other, because by definition you'd have to assume they were doing that.

57

Flat Earth Community / Re: Did Rowbotham use Conspiracy Theories?

« on: June 09, 2020, 05:03:52 PM »

I think it's unfair to assume allies won't call each other out on stuff. There is turmoil in almost every small or large organization, country or whatever else. individual people trying to one up each other, various agendas that motivate people to 'grass' on others. It would be naive to think that just because two people are in Nato or the UN that they would always defend and cover up each others wrong doings.

58

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Occams razor according to Flat Earth

« on: June 06, 2020, 12:00:03 PM »

Well, even though light 'wibbles' and bends slightly it's a bit different from the sweeping, large arcs of curvature that would be needed for the earth the be flat. That's not to say that it isn't the case either, but we've seen light being more straight than bent. Although this is a subject I tend not to consider proof of 'anything' since, obviously no matter if light is straight, wibbling or massively curves the end result is you seeing the thing on the other end of the light so you'd really have to prove 'how' light is bending, not 'if' it is.

59

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Some question that I think could be interesting

« on: June 06, 2020, 11:51:27 AM »

science isn't fake news

Medical and psychiatry science that treated homosexuality as an abnormality was praised in the 50's and 60's, and is shunned today. And it's not because today's researchers any smarter.

You only get funded by supporting the present social norms, FYI. No one is going to fund electroshock therapy research for homosexuality. Society already decided that it's okay.

In other news, society has moved on from slavery and from sending children down the coal mines.

Society moves on, Tom. You cannot present something with the benefit of 60-year hindsight as a dismissal of everything that goes on today

As you admit that it was society who decided that homosexuality was okay, rather than science, you are admitting that science is not truly independent and impartial. If science has to bend itself to what society thinks is good and bad at the present time to get funded, that makes it generally untrustworthy and fake news.

Scientific truths change because "society moved on"... Funny flip flopping justification of bias in science there.

Scientific "truths" change, or scientific practices? Stem cell research is considered ethically bad by society, but the science behind it is pretty sound and would benefit us all. That's not to say I agree'd with trying to torture the homosexuality out of people but if you considered it "research" back then if it yielded results or not, if it was wrong to do or not it doesn't mean it wasn't scientific in some way. In the end that's the point in science isn't it? To find out what works, what doesn't. I'm not sure why you would think that the way society judges what scientists can and can't do would make the science any more or less 'truth' so much as limiting or allowing science to happen.

60

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Occams razor according to Flat Earth

« on: June 05, 2020, 12:54:21 PM »

When I look out of my window and observe a vast expanse of land or ocean waters, it looks like its continuously flat. That would be the simplest explanation.

Great. I am glad that we agree that FE is the simplest explanation to this.

Any credibility you may have left starts to dwindle every time you cherry pick a quote from someone to twist their point. It's quite obvious what he's saying. At first glance you don't get the full picture of things. At first glance you might see a shape and say "yep, case closed thats it" but it's not that simple. Any argument you make suggesting that you can just observe the earth being flat in such a simple manner is pointless, because you cannot. This goes back to what I was saying in another thread about isolated observations.

Also arguing that modern phones look like witchcraft to people of the past is just silly. We know the technology for a smart phone exists but a regular joe cannot make a smartphone themselves, so what then, is Apple lying and actually using witchcraft? Is that really your mindset Tom? What's your simplest argument for how smart phones were made? because you sure as hell can't make one so I guess it really is simply magic. God forbid you rely on other people knowing what they're doing to make it for you and trust that they aren't using magic.