"Everything intuited or perceived in space and time, and therefore all objects of a possible experience, are nothing but phenomenal appearances, that is, mere representations [and] have no independent, self-subsistent existence apart from our thoughts."
-Immanuel Kant
I'm coming out, FES.
This is a post I've thought about writing for a long time, but I haven't because it isn't strictly zetetic. I've been reluctant to speak out because I needed to be sure of my own mind. But it's a new year, and it's time to start the discussion.
The earth is flat. I know that as surely as I know my own name Observations support this. I can see it as clearly as the colour of the sky. Down is down, the horizon is actually the vanishing point, and we exist in a closed system distinct from all other celestial bodies. Our earth is flat.
The earth is stationary. It does not rotate or move in any way relative to perceived space around us. We see evidence of this because objects farther from the hub do not exhibit effects of centripetal force. Universal acceleration could account for the force we perceive as gravity, but my instincts say that this force is something still undefined. All our interpretations may be wrong.
The earth is infinite, but not (in my opinion) in the way some infinite plane theorists think. More on this later.
Some observations can also support a spherical earth. The southern sky, lunar phases, eclipses, have been used to support a spherical earth. This interpretation is wrong.
What follows is hypothesis.
Our earth is flat because it was engineered that way. It was designed for us. It's our puzzle. I am of the belief that we live inside a simulation.
The simulation becomes more advanced as we solve the puzzles before us. Our predecessors believed that the earth was flat because all observations supported that conclusion. They still do.
The simulation began to introduce subtleties that seemed to contradict their findings. The spherical, geocentric model was widely accepted because all observations seemed to support that conclusion. They still do.
The heliocentric model arose because the simulation evolves. It becomes more complex as our model of the universe becomes more complex. We're being tested.
Those first observations, of a flat and stationary earth, were correct. The remain valid today, we're simply being fed more complex data, possibly to see what we'll do with it. The "curved shadow" on the moon during an eclipse. The retrograde motion of planets. The inscrutability of quantum mechanics. The seemingly arbitrary limitations placed on physics such as the speed of light and the conservation of angular momentum. All of these things are, to me, clear indication that we're being tested by an overseer. I do not know its purpose.
Our earth is an infinite plane around which phenomenological evidence of various "truths" manifest. In this model, Antarctica is a discrete continent and there is no ice wall. Rather than expanding off into an infinite ocean, however, the infinite plane of our earth simply loops back onto itself. You can never reach the edge because no edge exists. Our earth seems physical. Based upon observation and intuition alone, I do not believe it is an electronic or computerized simulation.
Or, our earth is a finite plane resolved to a disc, but the spatial dimensions around the southern hemidisc are bent to a greater extend than near the hub, perhaps by aether / UA.
We experience bending light. The curvature of light is the same as the curvature of earth in the spherical model. Those of us who support a spherical model believe the earth is round because light sometimes makes it look round. This ambiguity, as well as the ambiguity between gravity and UA, is deliberate.
I do not know who the overseers of this simulation are. I do not know the bounds or rules. But everywhere I look I see evidence of its reality.
I'm posting this in S&AS because it is not strictly a flat-earth hypothesis.
There you go. My confession.