We interrupt this program to bring you . . . correct information based on solid, reasonable facts.
Salar de Uyuni — Why So Flat?Let's learn. Salar means salt flat in Spanish. Uyuni originates from the Aymara language and means a pen (
enclosure). Salar de Uyuni can be loosely translated as
a salt flat with enclosures.
Salar de Uyuni is part of the Altiplano of Bolivia in South America. The Altiplano is a high plateau that includes fresh and saltwater lakes as well as salt flats (also known as salt pans), and is
surrounded by mountains with
no drainage outlets.
Salar de Uyuni is in a
basin, which is like a
bowl or
cavity in the earth’s surface. It’s covered by a few meters of
salt crust, which has
extraordinary flatness. The crust serves as a source of salt and
covers a pool of brine, which is exceptionally rich in lithium (70% of the earth's supply comes from this place). The brine is a saturated solution of sodium chloride, lithium chloride and magnesium chloride in
water.
So there’s the
water, which
levels out in the basin, the
layer of crust forming
on top. It is surrounded by mountains and
has shores . . .
like a lake, which I pointed out with Lake Pontchartrain.
The salt flat has a very
stable surface that is
smoothed by
seasonal flooding when nearby Lake Titicaca overflows and discharges into Poopó Lake, which then
floods Salar de Uyuni, and Salar de Uyuni has
no drainage outlets. Even if there was a curve in the salt pan’s surface, during flooding the water would
pool by the shores, cover the middle, and
level on the surface. However, that’s not necessary because the
water dissolves the salt surface and keeps it
leveled.
As a result, the variation in surface elevation is less than 3 feet 3 inches over the
entire 4,086 square mile area.
There are few areas on earth that are as flat.
How far are you seeing in these pictures? Not as far as you might think, but you can't tell if you don’t know what you’re looking at and don’t have enough information to
self-correct incompetence. You’re not seeing the
entire Salar de Uyuni salt flats, but rather looking from the shores near the gateway tourist town of Uyuni towards a few “
islands,” which are actually the remains of the tops of ancient volcanoes submerged during the era of Lake Minchin (the massive glacial lake that once covered the region), and are home to colonies of rabbit-like viscachas.
Don't be so smug, arrogant, haughty, and proud. This is why you're not finding your earth-curve.
"What's the earth coming to when flat things are described as round? Does that make round things flat?" It's not coming to much of anything. What's round is round, what's flat is flat, spatial recognition skewed, and alarming lack of facts. Doesn't quite rhyme, but it'll do.
You can't get enough curve in the earth to get the water to flow downhill. Hmm. Well I can understand your frustration if you're hoping to accomplish that in one of the most level spots on earth that doesn't even have a drainage outlet. Crikey, that must suck!
"If there's less than one inch of water, and the earth slopes, shouldn't all the water flow downhill to the sides, leaving the center dry?" It's very difficult to arrive at the logical and appropriate conclusion when you don't have correct facts. Even perception becomes lost in translation.
"Anything to the contrary is asinine." Funny, I don't feel very
asinine.
"And an even bigger mystery is... WHERE DID ALL THE BRAINS DISAPPEAR TO?" Speak for yourself, I've still got mine. Maybe you're not asking the right questions.
We've definitely established you can't science. But then, you don't believe in science because you've ruled it out with
non sequitur reasoning.
A. Evolution is fake.
B. Science teaches evolution
C. Therefore science is fake
And used non sequitur reasoning to arrive at false conclusions:A. Science says the earth is round
B. Salar de Uyuni is very flat
C. Therefore the earth is flat
I gots me an edumacation. My indoctrination (conditioning, programming, brainwashing, etc.) has taught me to thru-think subjects, researching them thoroughly, asking the right questions, searching for factual information with a truly open mind untainted by bias, willing to examine the facts from all angles as I build a foundation while self-correcting and adjusting along the way. The result is: arriving at correct conclusions that the evidence supports, while understanding that further evidence will need to be considered and conclusions reconsidered as I continue to correct and adjust. Analytical thinking, critical thinking, fact checking, digging through all available resources and reviewing them thoroughly (not just for confirmations, but also for errors), searching for understanding, and realizing that learning is an ongoing process. I frequently say that, the more I learn and the more I know, the more I realize I have to learn and the more I realize how much I really don't know. That is the beginning of wisdom.
Here's a synopsis under
Avoid Illusions of Knowing from the excellent book "
Make It Stick."
At the root of our effectiveness is our ability to grasp the world around us and to take measure of our own performance. We’re constantly making judgments about what we know and don’t know. Learning to be
accurate self-observers helps us to make good decisions and reflect on how we might do better next time. We need to be sensitive to the ways we can
delude ourselves.
Problems with poor judgment are we usually don’t know we have it combined with the sheer scope of the ways our judgment can be led astray. We’re all hardwired to make errors in judgment. Good judgment is a skill we must acquire to become an
astute observer of our own thinking and performance.
We start at a disadvantage because, when we’re incompetent,
we tend to overestimate our competence and see little reason to change. We are readily misled by illusions, cognitive biases, and the stories we
construct to explain the world around us and our place in it.
To become more competent, we must learn to recognize competence when we see it in others (no man’s an island) and become more accurate judges of what we ourselves know and don’t know, adopt learning strategies that get results, and find objective ways to track our progress.
Our understanding of the world is shaped by
hunger for narrative, which rises out of our discomfort with ambiguity and arbitrary events. This urge to
resolve ambiguity is very potent, even when the subject is inconsequential.
Discomfort with ambiguity and arbitrariness is even more powerful in our need for rational understanding of
our own lives. We strive to fit the events of our lives into a cohesive story that accounts for our circumstances, things that befall us, and the choices we make (and their consequences).
We gravitate to the narratives that best explain our emotions.
The chapter goes on to explain how when memory is recalled and reconstructed (our memories are very imperfect and inaccurate), they are subject to many influences (you can really see how the Mandela Effect kicks in here). Then it moves on to the subheading “Unskilled and Unaware of It.”
Essentially, incompetent people
lack the skills to improve because they are unable to distinguish between incompetence and competence. They
overestimate their own competence and, failing to sense a mismatch between their performance (or progress) and what is desirable, see no need to try to improve.
A huge reason for this problem is that these people seldom receive
negative feedback about their skills and abilities from others in everyday life. Essentially, we learn from our mistakes, and when we lack the information to
self-correct, we need external correction. Many people don’t correct the incompetent person because nobody likes to deliver the bad news. Also, when people receive negative feedback, they must come to an
accurate understanding of why the failure occurred. (Consider me the friend who's not afraid to give you negative feedback, the friend who tells you you've got a snot hanging out of your nose, your zipper's down, and you have toilet paper stuck to your shoe, and you look ridiculous; fix it.)
For success, everything must go right. Failure can be contributed to any number of external causes: it’s easy to blame the tool for what the hand can’t do. Furthermore, some people just aren’t astute at reading how other people are performing and are less able to spot competence when they see it, impairing their ability to make
comparative judgments about their own performance. (I would add that some people also mistake incompetence in others for competence and are thus not only unable to self-correct, then compound their own incompetence.)
The means by which we navigate the world rely on our perceptual systems, intuition, memory, and cognition, with all their tics, warts, biases, and flaws. When it comes to learning, what we choose to do is guided by our
personal judgments of what works and what doesn’t, and we’re
easily misled. We must combat
illusion and misjudgment by replacing subjective experiences as the basis for decisions with a set of
objective gauges outside of ourselves. We need
reliable reference points, like cockpit instruments, and make a habit of checking them, then we can make good decisions about where to focus our efforts, recognize when we’ve lost our bearings, and find our way back again.
Again, I see people who are obsessed with looking at the surface and don't bother to look just below the surface and see the truth, which is in the facts. For all that the flat earthers (and most all hardcore conspiracy theorists) claim they are truthseekers, they don't look very hard, they don't look in the right places, and they don't look beneath the surface. Despite the fact that they are trying so desperately to lift the veil they perceive is over everyone's eyes, they stand still, staring, eyes wide shut.
Perception and
spatial recognition problems are a common thread I'm seeing, and
comprehension failures are likely a result of a narrow mindset that skims information for factoid snippets that will substantiate hypotheses while blindly overlooking very important contextual facts and information that would otherwise give a person a more balanced and complete picture. The result is a custom-designed book (narrative) of self-assembled psuedo-knowledge missing pages and entire chapters. To the outside observer it's blaringly obvious, but to the one on the inside looking out, they've boxed themselves in while trying to think outside without actually trying to
venture outside and truly change their perspective, resulting in thinking with limitations.
How can you be a progressive thinker when you lack the basic skills to think progressively?Maybe you need to get perspective from a better vantage point rather than ruining such a beautiful place with such quackery and silly nonsense.
Is this is valid research?! Is this a valid experiment?! Is this valid reasoning?!"Go to the wide photo at the bottom of the page.
a) Copy the photo to your computer and enlarge it to fill your screen from top to bottom.
b) Put your thumb nail on the horizon.
c) Move the photo from the left, and all the way to the right.
— There is no curvature.
— There is no peak in the center."
Seriously? Using that reasoning, let's go out and crush people's heads using just our forefinger and thumb (one more finger: must work even better!!).
Remember: LOOK BELOW THE SURFACE OR YOU'LL GET EATEN ALIVE!!!"Oh! What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."—Sir Walter Scott (And often the one we're deceiving is our self.)