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Flat Earth Community / Re: 1/3 of millennials not sure if earth is round

« on: May 10, 2018, 04:51:36 PM »

Note that logical validity is a very strong test. An argument is logically valid if it is impossible that the premises are true, and the conclusion false.

However most of stick with 'highly improbable' rather than 'impossible'. It is indeed remotely possible that 50 different government agencies in many different countries have colluded. But highly unlikely IMO. I speak from experience (see my other comment in the conspiracy theory thread).

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Flat Earth Community / Re: 1/3 of millennials not sure if earth is round

« on: May 10, 2018, 04:42:26 PM »

It's 'science' and the stuff they brainwash... sorry, 'teach' in schools that is the problem. All we are seeing now is an awakening of people that are questioning things that we are told not to question. Oh but 'science' says it, therefore it MUST be true. No, its not.

As I pointed out separately, argument from authority is one of the standard logical fallacies. 'S says that p' does not logically imply that p.

We should question everything.

It's still a rhetorical device though, so it's a valid argument. It just relies on their credibility.

‘p is credible, therefore p’ is also invalid. There are plenty of things that are credible, but false. It is credible that the earth is flat, for example.

edby is the best person on this site. No, seriously, edby is why I stay on this site.

?

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Flat Earth Community / Re: 1/3 of millennials not sure if earth is round

« on: May 10, 2018, 04:34:53 PM »

It's 'science' and the stuff they brainwash... sorry, 'teach' in schools that is the problem. All we are seeing now is an awakening of people that are questioning things that we are told not to question. Oh but 'science' says it, therefore it MUST be true. No, its not.

As I pointed out separately, argument from authority is one of the standard logical fallacies. 'S says that p' does not logically imply that p.

We should question everything.

1004

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Distances between cities

« on: May 10, 2018, 04:31:59 PM »

There is a good post on the accuracy of flight times/distances here https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=9213.0 . However the argument based on that depends on a Flat Earth map. Clearly the flight data is inconsistent with that data, but it is simple for an FE defender to say 'Ah but the true FE map does not look like that'.

The demonstration I have put forward is a general one: given four cities and six distances, and assuming the distances are correct, it is impossible for any FE map to correspond to that data.

Any map at all.

So either the FE supporter denies geometry (non-Euclidean geometry, that is) or the argument centres on the accuracy of flight timing, on which there is copious data.

Silence on all of my three (?) posts so far. Let's see.

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Flat Earth Theory / Distances between cities

« on: May 10, 2018, 03:06:59 PM »

There are some other threads on this, but those rely on flight times being inconsistent with existing ‘flat earth maps’. The objection to that of course is that there is no flat earth cartography, and no one is saying that existing FE maps are correct.

There was also a strange claim by Tom Bishop in this thread https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6633.0 about the angles of a triangle.

Here is a challenge that doesn’t rely on angles or any existing map, but simply on observed distances between cities. FEers are absolutely welcome to challenge that asumption, but then the argument can move on. If I take the distances given here https://www.distancecalculator.net, which should be absolutely consistent with flight times (please challenge if not).

London – Cape Town 5988m
London – Buenos Aires 6922m
Buenos Aires – Cape Town 4273m
London – New York 3465m
Buenos Aires – New York 5304m
Cape Town – New York 7816m

Note I am using four cities and six distances. I believe this is the absolute minimum needed for the challenge, though I haven’t proved it.

The challenge is to represent those distances on a flat piece of paper. For my part, I drew the lines in the order shown above, using the distance in miles divided by 1,000 in centimetres. Thus the distance London – Cape Town is 6.988 cm = about 7cm. 

For the rest you will need a schooldays compass. Whatever the order you draw, you will find it possible to draw 5 of the six lines accurately on a piece of paper.
The challenge is the sixth line. I ended up with Cape Town – New York. Unfortunately I measured that at 6.7cm, whereas the ‘official’ distance corresponds to 7.8cm, i.e. more than a 1,000 miles out.

My challenge to flat earthers is to reproduce that experiment above, in a way that is consistent with the FE assumption. If you want to challenge the distances themselves, i.e. the data source, the argument can move on.

The simplest explanation, in accordance with Ockham’s razor, is that the paper could be folded, say on the hinge New York- Cape Town. Then you can travel the shorter distance under the paper. In real life, you could drill a huge tunnel under the Atlantic, and avoid flight sickness.

This whole thing is about the scientific method, which is about constructing a model of reality, and seeing whether it matches our observations of reality. The model here was a flat piece of paper with lines drawn between points. I found this did not match the observations.

I suppose you could argue there was a warp in space-time that explained the discrepancy. OK, but the very simplest explanation (going back to Ockham) is that the earth is roughly spherical. This is what science is about.

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Flat Earth Community / Re: What Makes conspiracy Theorists believe.

« on: May 10, 2018, 01:03:53 PM »

A point on collusion of govt agencies. As a general principle, the more widespread the supposed collusion, the less likely it is.

I have worked as an advisor to various government agencies for the greater part of my career. I am now retired, and have no reason to support any existing agency. Far from it.
My experience is that those who work in government are generally good people, are honest, and believe passionately (sometimes mistakenly) in what they do. I have experienced malpractice, but mostly within department level. The reason is that a large bureacracy, like any organisation, is composed of competing departments or units, often with conflicting objectives, and there is generally great rivalry. Any malpractice, if discovered by another department, is likely to be seized upon and capitalised to the political benefit of that department. It is the same in any organisation, public or private.

The main job of senior managers is to make sense of what subordinate departments are saying, and to settle the endless political rivalries.

And that is just within the organisation. Different government agencies in the same country tend to mistrust each other. Different agencies in different countries, forget any kind of collusion or cooperation.

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Flat Earth Theory / Stand up proof

« on: May 10, 2018, 11:31:15 AM »

Not mythbusters, but metabunk https://www.metabunk.org/stand-up-to-detect-the-curve-of-the-earth.t8364/

Not disputing the claim that simply standing up can reveal parts of distant objects hidden by the horizon, but failing to understand the geometry. It seems implausible that changing your height by 5-6 feet can reveal say 20-30 feet of the distant object.

My only explanation is that it's like a 5' wall that is close to you. Sitting down, you can't see any of a 5,000 foot mountain. Stand up, so you can see over the top of the wall, and you can see the whole mountain. But the question is what is the analogue of 'top of the wall' in the case of the horizon? Must be much closer to you than the distant object is to it.

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Flat Earth Community / Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?

« on: May 10, 2018, 10:14:22 AM »

Hi, I have just joined this forum. My main interest is in the question of human rationality. Are humans rational? What do we mean by ‘rational’? Why do some people believe things that the majority of other people regard as not rational? My background is logic and philosophy, as well as the history of science and the question of scientific methodology. I am the co-author of this book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Duns-Scotus-Time-Existence-Interpretation/dp/0813226031 on medieval logic and philosophy.

I am also fascinated by fringe and unorthodox theories, such as the phantom time hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis and things like that.

My question is whether it is rational or not to believe in the Flat Earth hypothesis. Some thoughts. (i) the fact that great majority of people disagree with you, including the scientific establishment, is not enough to prove irrationality. Irrationality is the persistency of maintaining a belief which is inconsistent with what is self-evident. (ii) For the same reason, it is not necessarily irrational to ignore pictures taken from space, authoritative statements from the scientific establishment etc. The pictures could be fake, the authorities could be misleading us. ‘Argument from authority’ is one of the forms of fallacy. ‘Authorities say that p’ does not imply ‘p’. (iii) But it is irrational to maintain what is logically inconsistent. If p logically implies q, it is inconsistent and irrational to accept p but deny q.

I never questioned RE before. I was shown a globe at primary school. This does not prove RE, of course. I was also familiar with the usual stories about ships disappearing below the horizon, and I knew that the ancient Greeks had established RE by a simple experiment by Eratosthenes, a Greek astronomer who had heard that in Syene the Sun was directly overhead at the summer solstice whereas in Alexandria it still cast a shadow. Aristotle also observed that there are stars seen in Egypt and Cyprus which are not seen in the northerly regions.

When I looked more recently I was interested to find so many simple demonstrations of RE. I won’t go through these here, but as a traveller I am interested in flight times. Flight times in the Southern Hemisphere are seemingly inconsistent with any kind of flat projection. For example, if I print out a flat projection, I measure the map-distance from London to Cape town as 6cm, Miami to Cape town as 10 cm. But the ratio between these is different from the flight times. You can repeat this for many other destinations: the result is always inconsistent with a flat projection, but consistent with the standard RE model.

There are other simple experiments. I was fascinated to learn from another site (mythbusters) that simply by standing up you can reveal a lot more of objects apparently below the horizon when sitting down. I don’t understand the geometry of this, but it is compelling.

Sorry for such a long OP. In summary, I am interested whether FEers are rational or not, and I would like to understand their take on the apparently simple demonstrations of the RE model (as opposed to demonstrations based on the authority of the scientific establishment, the government, experts etc).