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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #20 on: August 15, 2018, 01:53:21 AM »
What about blindly believing in all that you are told. Is that a better life to live?

Erehps

Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #21 on: August 15, 2018, 04:53:40 AM »
No. Blindly believing anything you are told, is never good. Never assuming anything, and always asking questions is healthy. If you believe in a creator of all things, you must believe the creator gave you a brain and the ability to be a critical thinker of both the world you live in and yourself and to always be testing.

This post I am typing from my mobile phone, is utilising technology never dreamed possible 50 years ago. I have an app on my phone which can pinpoint my GPS coordinates within a couple of meters in any given built up area and also display the speed I am travelling at in a motor vehicle, train, plane, or boat. If satellites do not exist for example, I have to ask myself, "how can my phone deliver such precision information which can be tested against verifiable other facts such as the speedometer in my car, street signs, and other physical locations?"

If I upgrade my phone to a satellite phone and travel to the middle of Australia where there is no man made structures for 100s of kilometers in all directions, and I use my satellite phone to call my best mate living in New York, I have to ask the question, what processes enabled me to perform this action if there is no such thing as a satellite?

Society has evolved to point where we use every day technology which simply may not be possible with a flat earth model of the world.

Max_Almond

Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #22 on: August 17, 2018, 06:17:41 AM »
What about blindly believing in all that you are told? Is that a better life to live?

Totally agree. I once read a book written in Victorian times by a man with no real scientific background or peer support. The claims he made seem really far-fetched, but I believed them, and even argued for them with others, despite masses of contradictory evidence.

Luckily, I saw the error of my ways, and am over that now.

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Offline Tumeni

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #23 on: August 17, 2018, 07:15:24 AM »
What about blindly believing in all that you are told. Is that a better life to live?

Tom, this line crops up a lot over at YouTube, along with its friends;

"You're not awake/woke to the truth"
"You're a brainwashed glober"
and such....

You disagree with the other on one subject - the shape of the Earth - and you feel you can then paint them as some mindless drone who is soaking up falsehoods from ... someone else who wants to promote these falsehoods?

But you go through life believing things that you are told every day of the week, every day of the year. You don't look into everything in your daily life to verify it. You just get on with it, and take hundreds of people at their word, in all manner of ways.

Picking on one aspect of someone's life, that they hold to the view that the Earth is a globe, and characterising that as 'blindly believing' is just cherry-picking, pure and simple.

Now, about Venus .....   
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Nearly all flat earthers agree the earth is not a globe.

Nearly?

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Offline Rushy

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #24 on: August 17, 2018, 03:57:45 PM »
If I upgrade my phone to a satellite phone and travel to the middle of Australia where there is no man made structures for 100s of kilometers in all directions, and I use my satellite phone to call my best mate living in New York, I have to ask the question, what processes enabled me to perform this action if there is no such thing as a satellite?

This is a false way to think about things. Rather than think about what else could possibly give rise to you being able to communicate across large distances, you immediately assume it's what you've been told (that's it's a satellite). This is exactly what Tom was criticizing. HAM radio operators could communicate anywhere in the world several decades before governments started telling people they could put satellites in space. To say "the ONLY thing that make my 'satellite' phone work is a satellite" then you've swallowed the "someone told me this is how it works and I believed them" pill.

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Offline Tumeni

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #25 on: August 17, 2018, 04:29:43 PM »
HAM radio operators could communicate anywhere in the world several decades before governments started telling people they could put satellites in space.

Yes, but they didn't do this with directional microwave signals. They did it with far less directional transmitters and receivers. The higher the frequency, the more directional. 

To say "the ONLY thing that make my 'satellite' phone work is a satellite" then you've swallowed the "someone told me this is how it works and I believed them" pill.

Don't you do just that every day, in all manner of ways, though, in your daily life?

I have a satellite dish on the front of my house. The cable from the dish goes into the satellite receiver box, and into the TV. Apart from connection to the household power, it's not connected to anything else. I know where it's pointed, I know where all the local TV transmitters and mobile masts are, and it's not pointing at any of them. Its orientation corresponds with where the satellite operating my local provider's service is stated to be. I don't see anything else that could be providing this signal.

All satellite receivers using the dominant satellite TV provider in my country point the same direction, broadly South. Even those on the south coast. Where would they be getting a signal from, if not from an equatorial satellite?
What else would it be getting a signal from?
« Last Edit: August 17, 2018, 04:41:06 PM by Tumeni »
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Not Flat. Happy to prove this, if you ask me.
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Nearly all flat earthers agree the earth is not a globe.

Nearly?

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Offline Rushy

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #26 on: August 17, 2018, 04:50:58 PM »
Don't you do just that every day, in all manner of ways, though, in your daily life?

Well, yes, of course. Everyone does. It's impossible for someone to know everything about everything, therefore we save time by making lots of small assumptions that lead to us having an incorrect perception of our own reality.


I have a satellite dish on the front of my house. The cable from the dish goes into the satellite receiver box, and into the TV. Apart from connection to the household power, it's not connected to anything else. I know where it's pointed, I know where all the local TV transmitters and mobile masts are, and it's not pointing at any of them. Its orientation corresponds with where the satellite operating my local provider's service is stated to be. I don't see anything else that could be providing this signal.

All satellite receivers using the dominant satellite TV provider in my country point the same direction, broadly South. Even those on the south coast. Where would they be getting a signal from, if not from an equatorial satellite?
What else would it be getting a signal from?

It could, for example, be one of these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_platform_station

Is it one of these? Possibly, is it something other than this AND something other than a satellite? Possibly.  You once again demonstrate an incorrect attitude of "I can't fathom it could be anything OTHER than what I've been told that it is." This is a common and incorrect assumption. You can't assume something is the way it is, merely because you can't comprehend or imagine the idea that it isn't the way you've been told it is. This is how we end up with the majority of the world believing in one religion or the other.

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Offline AATW

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #27 on: August 18, 2018, 11:16:37 AM »
What about blindly believing in all that you are told. Is that a better life to live?
Like reading in a book which has been largely forgotten by history that horizon always stays at eye level and blindly believing that book and not doing any experiments yourself despite being shown multiple ways of testing this for yourself? Note: Looking out your window and seeing the horizon appears to be roughly at eye level is not a controlled experiment, horizon dip at "normal" heights cannot be perceived but it can be measured.

If the good people at Sky tell me that my satellite dish is pointing at a geostationary satellite then yes, I do just believe them because I can't think of any possible reason they would lie to me about that. They just put a dish on my house, it is pointing at something, my TV works. Yes, it could be they are secretly using some other technology but why on earth would they lie about any of that? Unless the space agency (note, not NASA, Sky satellites were put up by the European Space Agency) are lying to them, so Sky do believe that their systems work that way but the European Space Agency are faking it for them somehow. But, again, why would they? The launches were witnessed, the satellites can be tracked, it seems to be a very elaborate, pointless ruse if it is one.

Ultimately, no-one goes around questioning everything they are told, nor do they blindly believe everything they are told.
I have never checked that the people at Thames Water really do filter my water properly, I don't routinely test my tap water. So I do "blindly" trust that they are doing their jobs properly. But there's no reason they wouldn't and I'm not aware of huge cholera outbreaks in the UK so I have good reason to trust them.

I have no reason to either trust or distrust space agencies but the technology which they say use satellites demonstrably works and they have no particular reason to lie about it - you could make up a reason like money laundering which I think is the go to FE reasoning but that is mere speculation. Same with all the footage from space, is it technically possible to fake it all? I'd say in this day and age probably yes (although note that we've had footage from space for well over 50 years now when FX were nowhere near as advanced). But is there any evidence that they have faked it? YouTubers claiming they see a wire or green screen isn't hard evidence, has any analysis of the pictures and footage been done by someone who knows what they are talking about when it comes to detecting fakery? Amateurs just asserting that things "look fake" isn't evidence.

FE thinking is irrational because like any conspiracy theory it involves seizing on any scrap of evidence which seems to back it up (often in this case that evidence is just a misunderstanding of the science) and disregarding or calling fake without basis the tsunami of evidence pointing in the other direction. You can always prove yourself right if you disregard any evidence showing you to be wrong. And all because some dude in the Victorian era who has been largely forgotten by history wrote a book which is full of ideas which no serious scientist agrees with. Odd.
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 Tumeni

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #28 on: August 18, 2018, 02:00:53 PM »
It could, for example, be one of these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_platform_station

No, it could not. They're still in development, according to that page. That was at the beginning of this year. I've had my satellite system far longer than that, as have millions of others. 

Possibly, is it something other than this AND something other than a satellite? Possibly.

Only possibly. Probably not.   
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Nearly all flat earthers agree the earth is not a globe.

Nearly?

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Offline Dr Van Nostrand

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #29 on: August 20, 2018, 07:34:16 PM »
It would be completely rational to believe in the flat earth in the days when we didn't have the capacity to know what the earth was really like.

Since Zettys only believe what they experience personally (what they test personally, what they see personally), they won't have the capacity to know anything beyond themselves. In an existence that stretches far beyond what we as individuals can sense, they can believe whatever they choose and consider it rational.


 
Round Earther patiently looking for a better deal...

If the world is flat, it means that I have been deceived by a global, multi-generational conspiracy spending trillions of dollars over hundreds of years.
If the world is round, it means that you’re just an idiot who believes stupid crap on the internet.

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Offline Bad Puppy

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #30 on: August 21, 2018, 04:28:51 AM »
With all the evidence of a round earth present, I would think that blindly calling such evidence fake because it contradicts what you believe is irrational.
Quote from: Tom Bishop
...circles do not exist and pi is not 3.14159...

Quote from: totallackey
Do you have any evidence of reality?

BillO

Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #31 on: August 21, 2018, 10:34:53 PM »
What about blindly believing in all that you are told. Is that a better life to live?
Been away, so sorry for the late response.

Who does this Tom?

I fell a lot of the flock here do, as all they do is misquote the work of others and link to their favorite youtube video or flat earth crusader.   I'm not sure what post secondary education you had, but where I went we were asked to show everything we studied from first principles.  For example, we just weren't told F=MA, we had to derive it using mathematics then demonstrate it in the lab.

If you had any training in science you would realize that one of the basic tenets of science is to be skeptical.

You for one do an awful lot of quoting and misquoting.   Would you care to just present original work from now on?

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Offline RonJ

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #32 on: October 07, 2018, 01:53:58 AM »
You can believe anything you want.  In my case I believe that the earth is a sphere.  This is the only thing that makes sense.  Before I retired, I was a Merchant Marine officer.  I worked on ships 6 months of each year.  My job was providing communications and technical help.  On the last ship I was on I was 'riding herd' on 4 different satellite systems.  Each day I would take a look to see where the antenna was pointing.  I would also note the position of the ship in the world.  We would use many different satellite systems and mostly they were in geosynchronous orbit above the earth's equator.  This meant that the satellites would be about 25000 miles up.  It is well known that you can't get a satellite signal much above 70 North latitude.  This is because you would have to point the dish below the horizon and the earth and/or sea would block the signal.  If the earth was flat this wouldn't be necessary and my job would have been a lot easier.
You can lead flat earthers to the curve but you can't make them think!

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #33 on: October 07, 2018, 07:53:27 AM »
It is well known that you can't get a satellite signal much above 70 North latitude.  This is because you would have to point the dish below the horizon and the earth and/or sea would block the signal.  If the earth was flat this wouldn't be necessary and my job would have been a lot easier.

You are using the "the sun should never set of a flat earth" logic, despite that on a flat earth it must do so.

Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #34 on: October 07, 2018, 08:02:39 AM »
It is well known that you can't get a satellite signal much above 70 North latitude.  This is because you would have to point the dish below the horizon and the earth and/or sea would block the signal.  If the earth was flat this wouldn't be necessary and my job would have been a lot easier.

You are using the "the sun should never set of a flat earth" logic, despite that on a flat earth it must do so.
He is not, what do you not understand?

Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #35 on: October 08, 2018, 01:24:45 PM »
It is well known that you can't get a satellite signal much above 70 North latitude.  This is because you would have to point the dish below the horizon and the earth and/or sea would block the signal.  If the earth was flat this wouldn't be necessary and my job would have been a lot easier.

You are using the "the sun should never set of a flat earth" logic, despite that on a flat earth it must do so.
He is not, what do you not understand?
It's extremely close to circular reasoning/logic on the FE side. Essentially "The Earth is flat, and the sun sets. Therefore any claim that the sun wouldn't set on a flat Earth is based on X" where X is often faulty logic, or someone not understanding some part of that persons particular FE model. I've seen a couple of answers in this regard, but imo it's treading dangerously close to circular reasoning.

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Offline AATW

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #36 on: October 08, 2018, 01:59:49 PM »
It is well known that you can't get a satellite signal much above 70 North latitude.  This is because you would have to point the dish below the horizon and the earth and/or sea would block the signal.  If the earth was flat this wouldn't be necessary and my job would have been a lot easier.

You are using the "the sun should never set of a flat earth" logic, despite that on a flat earth it must do so.
No, the sun must set on earth because we observe it to do so. If light travels in straight lines then the sun would never set on a flat earth if you're at altitude.
There would be clear line of sight between you and the sun at all times. The only solutions to this are:

1) The sun being a literal spotlight although there is no explanation how this would work.
2) Some mechanism like EA which would bend the light upwards so there would come a point where we can't see it. That would mean objects in the sky being illuminated all night though which is not what we observe
3) The earth isn't flat.

I know you go for option 4, some made up version of perspective which doesn't match observations, but that is you just using the "the earth is flat therefore everything else which shows it isn't has to be explained somehow" logic.
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 markjo

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #37 on: October 08, 2018, 04:39:00 PM »
You are using the "the sun should never set of a flat earth" logic, despite that on a flat earth it must do so.
No, it's more like using Occam's Razor.  Which explanation is simplest and makes the fewest assumptions:
1) The round earth rotates until the sun appears to set below the horizon  (RE heliocentrism)
2) The sun sets below the horizon as it orbits the round earth  (RE geocentrism)
3) The earth ends at the horizon and the sun sets below the horizon as it orbits the flat earth  (Ancient small disc FET)
4) The sun is always 3000 miles high but sun unexplained trick of perspective or other phenomenon causes the illusion of the sun setting (large Flat earth)  (Modern large disc/infinite plane FET)
Abandon hope all ye who press enter here.

Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -- Charles Darwin

If you can't demonstrate it, then you shouldn't believe it.

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #38 on: October 08, 2018, 05:29:13 PM »
You are using the "the sun should never set of a flat earth" logic, despite that on a flat earth it must do so.
No, it's more like using Occam's Razor.  Which explanation is simplest and makes the fewest assumptions:
1) The round earth rotates until the sun appears to set below the horizon  (RE heliocentrism)
2) The sun sets below the horizon as it orbits the round earth  (RE geocentrism)
3) The earth ends at the horizon and the sun sets below the horizon as it orbits the flat earth  (Ancient small disc FET)
4) The sun is always 3000 miles high but sun unexplained trick of perspective or other phenomenon causes the illusion of the sun setting (large Flat earth)  (Modern large disc/infinite plane FET)

No Markjo, no one ever demonstrated what perspective does at long distances. That's called an assumption. It's not a "trick," its called a lack of demonstration, and ignorance, on Elucid's part for how the world works.

Only once you prove that the perspective lines never meet, in the setting of a continuous universe, can you use that argument at all.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2018, 05:30:54 PM by Tom Bishop »

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Offline markjo

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Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« Reply #39 on: October 08, 2018, 06:21:24 PM »
You are using the "the sun should never set of a flat earth" logic, despite that on a flat earth it must do so.
No, it's more like using Occam's Razor.  Which explanation is simplest and makes the fewest assumptions:
1) The round earth rotates until the sun appears to set below the horizon  (RE heliocentrism)
2) The sun sets below the horizon as it orbits the round earth  (RE geocentrism)
3) The earth ends at the horizon and the sun sets below the horizon as it orbits the flat earth  (Ancient small disc FET)
4) The sun is always 3000 miles high but sun unexplained trick of perspective or other phenomenon causes the illusion of the sun setting (large Flat earth)  (Modern large disc/infinite plane FET)

No Markjo, no one ever demonstrated what perspective does at long distances. That's called an assumption. It's not a "trick," its called a lack of demonstration, and ignorance, on Elucid's part for how the world works.

Only once you prove that the perspective lines never meet, in the setting of a continuous universe, can you use that argument at all.
Tom, correct me if I'm wrong, but modern large disc/infinite plane FET is the only model that claims that perspective has anything to do with the setting of the sun.  Therefore it seems that it's the responsibility of the supporters of that model to demonstrate what perspective does at long distances.
Abandon hope all ye who press enter here.

Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -- Charles Darwin

If you can't demonstrate it, then you shouldn't believe it.