21

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 08, 2018, 11:46:12 AM »

But as soon as you try to combine all your single measurements to a map, you need corrections, if the earth is spherical. It's triangulation, and the angles of triangles only sum up to 180° if the earth is flat.

If you combine them onto a spherical map, what's the problem? A map doesn't have to be flat.

Yes, if you directly project the measurements onto a model of the globe earth, then it will directly fit. But flat-earthers are right if they say, no one is carrying around globes for navigation, everyone uses flat maps.

22

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 08, 2018, 11:43:09 AM »

I know all that, and i agree with all you say, i am only playing devils advocate a bit here, and trying to think of the objections that may be raised.

As they will.

If there has to be an adjustment made to account for the spherical earth, I agree with it. It will make the spherical earth map more accurate, and confirm our knowledge of the round earth, but I am not the one you need to convince!

I know, the usual objection is, that you take a round earth into account and therefor you get nice globe. But this objection is wrong, you only get a nice globe, because your measurements were done on a globe. If the earth would be flat and you would assume a globe you would end up with a completely distorted globe.

Its the inverse problem the flat-earth believers have if they try to construct a flat map...   

23

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 08, 2018, 11:37:55 AM »

But the flaw is in the end not a flaw, it's the solution. All surveys took the shape of the earth into account, the result is a perfectly working map of the world. If they would have taken a flat-earth into account (meaning no spherical corrections), the resulting map would be full of inconsistency and contradictions.

Agree, although it wasn't a flaw in the first place. The measurements were correct all along.

If there has to be an adjustment made to account for the spherical earth, I agree with it. It will make the spherical earth map more accurate, and confirm our knowledge of the round earth, but I am not the one you need to convince!

No adjustment required. The measurements are what they are. They have to be 'adjusted' in order to represent them on a flat map, of course.

But a globe follows spherical geometry, therefor you have to correct your measurements to account for that.     

Again, no 'correction' needed, unless the results need to be interpreted on a flat surface.

I partly disagree. But maybe only, because for me some words have a slightly different meaning.

For me the single measurements as such are obviously correct. If I measure 100m, then this are 100m within the accuracy of the method applied. There is no doubt.

But as soon as you try to combine all your single measurements to a map, you need corrections, if the earth is spherical. It's triangulation, and the angles of triangles only sum up to 180° if the earth is flat.   

24

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 08, 2018, 11:11:42 AM »

If the method of measuring distance on the earth requires that the earth be a globe, then that method will be rejected as being flawed, as the earth is not a globe (as shown by EnaG)

It’s hard to find any method which does not have an element of the globe nature of the earth as part of its method, or an adjustment due to the earths shape.

However i think quantifying the adjustment, and therefore the final differences might help

But the flaw is in the end not a flaw, it's the solution. All surveys took the shape of the earth into account, the result is a perfectly working map of the world. If they would have taken a flat-earth into account (meaning no spherical corrections), the resulting map would be full of inconsistency and contradictions.

   

25

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 08, 2018, 11:07:04 AM »

The problem is not to measure a given distance between two points, the problem is to give this measurement a meaning in terms mapping.

Take this example. You measure the distance between two points A and B with a chain. The area between the two points is flat, in the sense that every part of the chain is always perpendicular to a plumb bop.

Now you take a laser at point A at height h above the ground. And you measure the distance to a correspondent point at height h above the ground at B.

On a flat earth both measurements would give the same result. On a spherical earth not. And the discrepancy increases with distance and height.

Now assume you go with your chain to another place, that is equally flat, but about h higher than the first area. Now you will get again a different result on globe earth but not on flat-earth.   

You see, on a flat-earth surveying is quite simple, because a flat-earth follows Euclidean geometry and all our measurement methods are Euclidean. They measure straight lines or assume to measure straight lines.

But a globe follows spherical geometry, therefor you have to correct your measurements to account for that.     

26

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How Far Away is the Horizon?

« on: June 08, 2018, 09:09:02 AM »

I can affirm that this is the correct answer.

What empirical observations have you done to verify this?

In the light of e.g. this quote from EnaG "This is the true law of perspective as shown by nature herself; any idea to the contrary is fallacious, and will deceive whoever may hold and apply it to practice.", there is not necessity for empirical observations.

27

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 08, 2018, 08:44:52 AM »

On a sphere this will not fit together.

So the Flat Earth objection would be that this method is inherently flawed, because of distortions produced by the round shape of the earth? Sounds OK.

Yes, because at some point you have to take the spherical shape into account.

But, as I explained above, this are tiny corrections compared to the distortions you have in any imaginable flat-earth map. E.g. look at the prototypical monopolar map and check the size of Australia. The width is two to three times too large. You can't explain this with systematic measurement errors that would be orders of magnitude smaller.   

In the end, both things, the corrections surveyors have to take into account and the impossibility of a correctly scaled flat-earth map, have the same origin, the incompatibility of Euclidean and spherical geometry.   

28

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 08, 2018, 07:18:41 AM »

Can we hope that this method might be accepted and agreed upon by all to be independant of the shape of the earth?

Not entirely. If you take this chains of equal length and like in the map above build hexagons consisting of equilateral triangles out of them, this will work only on a perfectly flat surface. On a sphere this will not fit together. How do you distinguish now a shallow hill on a flat-earth from a "flat" part of a spherical earth?  Or take a shallow valley on spherical earth. In this case the chains would fit together as a perfectly regular hexagon. Same for a flat area on a flat earth. 

In end the spherical shape gives a slit offset for all the measurements, that you have to take into account depending on the accuracy you want to achieve. 

Edit: See also the Wikipedia article about the great trigonometrical survey of India. It's not explained in detail, but the problem is obvious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Trigonometrical_Survey#Correcting_deviations


Same for the Principal Triangulation of Great Britain:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_Triangulation_of_Great_Britain#Corrections

29

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 07, 2018, 03:50:51 PM »

The advantage of that method is, that you have not to measure every single distance, especially across large areas of water like oceans. And I'm not aware of severe objections by flat earth believers on the longitude/latitude system as such. I have the impression they usually accept that coordinates of places like London or Sydney, etc. are indeed known or which places are on the equator and so on.

They don't disagree with longitude/latitude as far as it measures positions. They object to inferring a distance from those positions, o/a of the circularity.

That is the whole point of my describing in detail how they measured distance in 1835 without using long/lat.

Yes, that's what I meant with metric. It gives you coordinates, but no distances. To get distances you have to assign a metric.

In the map you showed, I assume, the terrain was not flat. Is the apparent length of the edges of the triangles a measure of that? Or in other words, they always used chains of constant length but the effective distance on the map varied due to hills and valleys?

And how did they placed the cities outside the area covered by the triangles in to relation with each other? How did they defined the starting point? I assume that they did this with the help of longitude and latitude coordinates?     

30

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 07, 2018, 03:14:21 PM »

The advantage of that method is, that you have not to measure every single distance, especially across large areas of water like oceans. And I'm not aware of severe objections by flat earth believers on the longitude/latitude system as such. I have the impression they usually accept that coordinates of places like London or Sydney, etc. are indeed known or which places are on the equator and so on.

The grid of coordinates seems to be a common starting point. The disagreement is on the metric of this grid. To get this metric, its easier to go for short distances, because then the influence of the assumed shape is much smaller.

It doesn't matter if you measure 100m on a sphere as big as the earth or on a flat surface. On this length scale such a sphere can be seen as locally flat.

And you can do this in a direct measurement, with a ruler, with a laser, with a car whatever you have. But if you want to make a direct measurement on a scale of thousands of kilometers, it's getting more and more difficult. Already the definition of a straight line as shortest distance is not equivalent on a sphere and on a plane on this scale.

31

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 07, 2018, 02:36:27 PM »

If you can do that you can then look at whether there is any way of arranging those cities on a flat map so that those distances are accurately represented.

You are jumping too far forward. I want to see if FE agrees

1. we can measure short distances (say 100m)  accurately, and without circularity
2. we can measure much longer distances (say 5,000km) accurately, and without circularity
3. What this implies for shape of earth.

We have not reached (1) yet.

I think, first you have to find out how accurate you can measure longitude and latitude coordinates. Then you know the minimum distance over which you would have to do a length measurement with equivalent accuracy.

Then you have to look for the systematic error, comparing a flat surface and spherical surface on that length scale. Then you know how significant your results are.

Let's say you can measure 100m with an accuracy of 1m. That's one percentage of error. And on the same distance you can measure the degrees latitude/longitude with 1% accuracy. 10000km you can then measure with an accuracy of 10km if you know the corresponding coordinates. Discrepancies for flat-earth maps can reach errors in the order of 50%. That's far beyond your accuracy...

And I guess no one can deny that we can measure 100m with an accuracy of 1m. But I have no feeling about how accurate you can measure degrees of longitude/latitude.   

32

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 07, 2018, 01:02:14 PM »

The mapping of the world in means of distances in kilometers on one hand, and the system of longitude/latitude on the other hand was done long before GPS was even invented. It's not recently that people in Australia know how far two cities there are apart from each other. The same for any other country in the world, north and south, it doesn't matter. The same with respect to coordinates. The whole system was introduced hundreds of years ago.

Therefor it is just known, how to calibrate a degree of longitude or latitude around the world.

You know the distance in coordinates and kilometers between LA and New York, and you know the distance between Paris and Berlin in coordinates and kilometers. And you know the distances between New York and Paris in coordinates, and from the other two known distances you can now conclude what is the distance between New York and Paris in kilometers. And then you can compare this to all possible maps that came up to your mind.

The same you can do with lots of other cities that are distributed around the world. And as far as I know, up to now no one found ever any contradiction assuming a globe earth, while in any up to now presented flat-earth conceptual map the contradictions in some areas are so obvious that anyone immediately will notice them.   

33

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 07, 2018, 12:15:02 PM »

Accuracy is always relative. If you put the chain on the ground and the ground is not flat, this will give you an error if you later compare this with the coordinates.

You could use a laser and measure the direct distance between two points at a given height above the ground. But of course there is some inherent error due to the spherical shape of the earth that is more and more significant the larger the distance is.

Before you decide on the method, you should ask yourself, what level of accuracy do you need? If you want to measure the length of the equator or the distance between two cities on different continents, an error of the order of a kilometer would be acceptable. If you buy piece of land, you may want to know its size on the scale of few centimeter.   

If you look at the typically discussed conceptual flat-earth earth maps, you have obvious discrepancies in the order of several hundreds up to several thousands of kilometers in some regions. E.g. in the southern hemisphere of the prototypical monoplar map. Therefor I would say, to rule out any proposed map by finding at least two points where the distance does not fit, you only need an accuracy of a kilometer or so.   

Go to Australia, drive 100 km with your car, measure the coordinates and you have a more accurate calibration as you would need to show that a coordinate mapping for a monopolar map in the southern hemisphere cannot work. 

34

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Circularity Objection

« on: June 07, 2018, 10:38:39 AM »

In principle you only need a few short distance calibration measurements. You choose random spots around the earth, measure a fixed distance and determine the longitude/latitude coordinates of the start and end point. Then, by interpolation you can calibrate the whole longitude/latitude grid. Of course, you have to assume that the grid is regular, without discontinuities, arbitrary contractions or elongations. But beyond this, the method is independent of the supposed underlying shape.   

35

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Mods on this forum are biased and rubbish

« on: June 07, 2018, 06:48:56 AM »

.  He can totally do everything you can do.

Yes, you're right, but I never neglected that. My point is the other way round. I never called him a moron or said "fuck you" to other people. It's not the way I prefer to communicate or discuss with other people.

What I don't like, is to be forced into such discussions. And I don't see any forum rule, that says, if you're post is removed that is followed by an insult by the moderators.

And it tells me a lot about the people here, if they think that's something needed and appreciated.

I don't know how this works in the US, but if this would be a forum in Europe, the owner of the forum would get into sever trouble for treating people in that way or tolerating that behaviour...

36

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Mods on this forum are biased and rubbish

« on: June 06, 2018, 11:33:12 AM »

It's not about how often he is posting, that's obvious that he stays out of the most discussions. I'm talking about the occasions where he is doing it. And upon them you will hardly find a post that does not qualify as a low-content post according to your own forum rules.

Okay. Show me. I've gone through a fair few pages of his posts and haven't found that to be the case.

Again: If you have cases you'd like to present, do so. Don't just tell me that they totally-for-certain exist. I don't care about that.

High content posts?

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=9854.msg154386#msg154386

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=9575.msg150824#msg150824

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=8460.msg142361#msg142361

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=7985.msg134868#msg134868

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=7898.msg134851#msg134851

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=7003.msg127379#msg127379

Just a random collection of posts over the last months.

See also his tendency to add little implicit or explicit insulting remarks, like in the last post ("I really try to keep it simple for RE logicians").

What would he do with a post by me starting with "I really try to keep it simple for FE logicians"?

37

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Mods on this forum are biased and rubbish

« on: June 06, 2018, 11:06:59 AM »

I can not take his posts, move them to angry ranting just for the purpose of insulting him.

Nobody does that. Posts get moved out of the upper if they don't belong to the upper. The purpose is to keep the boards compliant with the rules.

I have no problems with moderators doing there job, and cleaning up threads, removing posts if they do not go along with the forum rules and style.

Good. You're making progress.

But to comment all removed posts with insulting remarks, is an abuse of the role as moderator.

Abuse? Goodness gracious. Nobody's forcing you to read stuff in AR.

My proposal, should you choose to accept it, is that we restrict your access to Angry Ranting. You're clearly too sensitive for it, and you lack the restraint to stop viewing things which upset you. We could help you out with that one.

I only read them, cause I was looking what happened to my post.

It's not too sensitive. I told you, if you need this low level of discussion for your personal satisfaction, I'm fine with that. But I don't like to be involved in this.   

38

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Mods on this forum are biased and rubbish

« on: June 06, 2018, 11:02:27 AM »

See my post here:

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=9867.msg154653#msg154653

I have, and after reading a few pages of junker's recent posts, I responded as follows: Junker hardly ever posts in the upper. I've addressed the one recent case that you've been whinging about.

It's not about how often he is posting, that's obvious that he stays out of the most discussions. I'm talking about the occasions where he is doing it. And upon them you will hardly find a post that does not qualify as a low-content post according to your own forum rules.   

39

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Mods on this forum are biased and rubbish

« on: June 06, 2018, 10:59:09 AM »

So I've read this whole thread and I can't sit by and stay silent any longer.
Hex.  Junker is a mod but he's also a member.  He has all the rights and privledges you do.  Thus, if he wants to call you a moron in AR, he can call you a moron in AR.  He is not bound to some higher standard you've made in your head. 

No, the rights and privileges are not equal. I can not take his posts, move them to angry ranting just for the purpose of insulting him. He can do whatever he likes with my posts.

I have no problems with moderators doing there job, and cleaning up threads, removing posts if they do not go along with the forum rules and style. That's fine. But to comment all removed posts with insulting remarks, is an abuse of the role as moderator. 

40

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Mods on this forum are biased and rubbish

« on: June 06, 2018, 10:53:48 AM »

Hex, I agree that the moderation is not entirely fair and neutral. Even Pete conceded there is some bias.
But it's not true to say the core flat earth believers can post whatever they like.
It's more that they've become core members because they don't post whatever they like.
I've seen Tom post stuff that I know a new RE member would have been warned for and he hasn't been.
But if Tom went completely postal at someone then I don't think he'd get away with it.
(Much as I have problems with his debating style I have to concede he remains remarkably calm under some serious bombardment).

Regarding low content post, they can do. Go to the profiles of them and look through the lists of posts by them and count all the one-liners they post. And then go through the forums and compare their posts with the posts by other people that got a low-content warning by Junker and you will see that the bias is eye-catching.

Or compare the posts Junker moved to angry ranting and compare them to posts by flat-earther believers where they rant about NASA, scientists, etc. calling them liars, fake, stupid, etc.  Good example is the post where this Bishop guy called entire Astronomy non-scientific on the same level as Astrology. On the other hand if you call flat-earth theory a pseudo-science chances are quite high to get a warning. 

Other example I posted above, where Junker insulted a so-called flat earthers as such, while a few posts later a round earther for something very similar got an implicit warning.

The excuse was, that poor Junker was provoked and we have to understand his reaction. But it seems to me, to provoke Junker you just have to disagree with his flat-earth believe. I'm pretty sure that if the roles where assigned the other way round in this dispute, the argumentation would be turned around also.