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Topics - edby

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21
Flat Earth Community / Dyer on Rowbotham
« on: May 22, 2018, 04:30:07 PM »
Dyer’s work to explode Rowbotham’s preposterous claims is summarised here
https://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/ebooks/PlaneTruth/pages/Chapter_01.html
Well worth reading – I love the test of Rowbotham's airgun claim.

Quote
I have now examined every question of any scientific importance in the book entitled “Earth Not a Globe;” and in doing so, my patience has often been sorely tried.  The great number of dogmatic assertions, the incorrect statements, the suppression of facts, and the misrepresentations found in its pages, have more than once tempted me to throw the book into the fire, as undeserving of a serious reply.  If, however, the reading of what has been written shall have the effect of removing the uneasiness of your mind, caused by the book in question, my object will be accomplished, and I shall not have laboured in vain.

Dyer labored in vain.  When The Spherical Form of the Earth was published in 1870, flat-earthism had already spread throughout the British Isles.

22
Suggestions & Concerns / Spamming
« on: May 15, 2018, 01:51:54 PM »
I received a message this morning as follows: "You have received a warning for spamming. Please cease these activities and abide by the forum rules otherwise we will take further action."

I replied to this, asking whether 'flooding' or 'spamming'. The former is basically making too many posts. The latter is posting links for commercial gain.

I was unable to reply as no address was given. I have no commercial interests, perhaps 'flooding' was meant?

Can someone from the society confirm this message was authentic, and clarify the meaning.

Many thanks,

Edby

23
Flat Earth Projects / Repeat Bedford level test?
« on: May 12, 2018, 03:17:14 PM »
I have an idea to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Wallace’s test by repeating it, in the same place, around February 2020 (less than 2 years’ time).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Level_experiment

I would welcome participation from the FE Society. The rules would conform to Wallace’s, namely (i) both sides (RE/FE) would agree to the methodology, (ii) both would agree as to what observation would prove, or disprove either theory (iii) both sides would confirm the observations at first hand.

I would be prepared to fund a decent prize. We could get sponsorship from instrument makers, surveying firms, tourist boards etc. Could make a short documentary about it or post on YouTube.

It has little scientific merit, given the science has been well understood for centuries, but might help to convince the unconvinced in a world of fake news and explosion of conspiracy theories on the internet.

And we could have a beer. I appreciate 2020 some way off, but indications of interest would be appreciated.

I will be heading off to Norfolk later this year to see if the terrain still suitable for the test.

24
Flat Earth Projects / On the size and distance of the sun and moon
« on: May 11, 2018, 02:39:15 PM »
A page on the FE wiki (here) tries to refute Eratosthenes' proof (3rd century BC) of the round earth. It notes
Quote
Eratosthenes' model depends on the assumption that the earth is a globe and that the sun is far away and therefore produces parallel rays of light all over the earth.
Correct. The article then tackles the parallel assumption, arguing that his observation can be explained if the sun is only approximately 2000 miles above the earth.

OK. But why did Eratosthenes assume the sun was much further? To understand that, we must go back to an earlier Greek astronomer Aristarchus, and his book On the Sizes and Distances (of the Sun and Moon). Using easily replicated observations based on the half moon, Aristarchus showed that the distance of the sun from the earth must be 20 times that of the earth to the moon. What an elegant and beautiful argument.

None of the Greek science was based on complex instrumentation or NASA. Just simple observations, and trigonometry.

25
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.

26
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.

27
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).

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