[stevecanuck]

Has anyone explained the purpose of saying the earth is round if it's really flat. What is achieved by perpetuating the lie?

[WTF_Seriously]

Has anyone explained the purpose of saying the earth is round if it's really flat. What is achieved by perpetuating the lie?

It's all a great conspiracy so governments all over the world can continue to fund all kinds of different  endeavors and keep the cash coming in or something like that.

[stevecanuck]

Has anyone explained the purpose of saying the earth is round if it's really flat. What is achieved by perpetuating the lie?

It's all a great conspiracy so governments all over the world can continue to fund all kinds of different  endeavors and keep the cash coming in or something like that.

Right, I thought so. But, of course, that leads me ask how a round earth brings in money where a flat one doesn't.

[stevecanuck]

Has anyone explained the purpose of saying the earth is round if it's really flat. What is achieved by perpetuating the lie?

It's all a great conspiracy so governments all over the world can continue to fund all kinds of different  endeavors and keep the cash coming in or something like that.

Also, every cartographer in the last 400 years has been in on the hoax. However, it would have been harder to fund expeditions 400 years ago if flat earth distances were given (the surface area of a flat earth is about 2.5 times that of a round earth), so that makes no sense.

[Tom Bishop]

For over 300 years, from the early 1500's to the mid 1800's, cartographers depicted California as an island off the coast of the United States. So I wouldn't be keen to bring up the ancient perfect practice of cartography if I were you.

What makes you think that between the mid 1800's and 1900 everyone in the world decided to stop plagiarizing and actually conduct an accurate exploration of the earth?



From the 1500's to the 1800's California was depicted as an island:

18 Maps From When the World Thought California Was an Island

GLEN MCLAUGHLIN WANDERED into a London map shop in 1971 and discovered something strange. On a map from 1663 he noticed something he’d never seen before: California was floating like a big green carrot, untethered to the west coast of North America.

He bought the map and hung it in his entryway, where it quickly became a conversation piece. It soon grew into an obsession. McLaughlin began to collect other maps showing California as an island.

“At first we stored them under the bed, but then we were concerned that the cat would pee on them,” he said. Ultimately he bought two cases like the ones architects use to store blueprints, and over the next 40 years filled them up with more than 700 maps, mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries. In 2011, he partly sold and partly donated his collection to Stanford University, which has digitized the maps and created an online exhibition.

The old maps represent an epic cartographic blunder, but they also contain a kernel of truth, the writer Rebecca Solnit argued in a recent essay. “An island is anything surrounded by difference,” she wrote. And California has always been different — isolated by high mountains in the east and north, desert in the south, and the ocean to the west, it has a unique climate and ecology. It’s often seemed like a place apart in other ways too, from the Gold Rush, to the hippies, to the tech booms of modern times.

The idea of California as an island existed in myth even before the region had been explored and mapped. “Around the year 1500 California made its appearance as a fictional island, blessed with an abundance of gold and populated by black, Amazon-like women, whose trained griffins dined on surplus males,” Philip Hoehn, then-map librarian at UC Berkley wrote in the foreword to a catalog of the maps that McLaughlin wrote.

Maps in the 1500s depicted California as a peninsula, which is closer to the truth (the Baja peninsula extends roughly a 1,000 miles south from the present-day Golden State). Spanish expeditions in the early 1600s concluded, however, that California was cut off from the mainland. Maps in those days were carefully guarded state secrets, McLaughlin says. “The story is, the Dutch raided a Spanish ship and found a secret Spanish map and brought it back to Amsterdam and circulated it from there,” he said.

In 1622, the British mathematician Henry Briggs published an influential article accompanied by a map that clearly showed California as an island. Briggs’ map was widely copied by European cartographers for more than a century.

The beginning of the end of California’s island phase came when a Jesuit priest, Eusebio Kino, led an overland expedition across the top of the Sea of Cortez. He wrote a report accompanied by a map in 1705 that cast serious doubt on the idea of California as an island. It took more exploration, but by 1747 King Ferdinand VI of Spain was convinced. He issued a decree stating that California was — once and for all — not an island. It took another century for cartographers to completely abandon the notion.

McLaughlin, who’s now 80, spent most of his career as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. He says the maps dominated his home decor for much of the past four decades. But no more. “I do miss them, but it’s time to let them go,” he said. “I’ve had a good long run with them.”

[stevecanuck]

For over 300 years, from the early 1500's to the mid 1800's, cartographers depicted California as an island off the coast of the United States. So I wouldn't be keen to bring up the ancient perfect practice of cartography if I were you.

What makes you think that between the mid 1800's and 1900 everyone in the world decided to stop plagiarizing and actually conduct an accurate exploration of the earth?



From the 1500's to the 1800's California was depicted as an island:

18 Maps From When the World Thought California Was an Island

GLEN MCLAUGHLIN WANDERED into a London map shop in 1971 and discovered something strange. On a map from 1663 he noticed something he’d never seen before: California was floating like a big green carrot, untethered to the west coast of North America.

He bought the map and hung it in his entryway, where it quickly became a conversation piece. It soon grew into an obsession. McLaughlin began to collect other maps showing California as an island.

“At first we stored them under the bed, but then we were concerned that the cat would pee on them,” he said. Ultimately he bought two cases like the ones architects use to store blueprints, and over the next 40 years filled them up with more than 700 maps, mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries. In 2011, he partly sold and partly donated his collection to Stanford University, which has digitized the maps and created an online exhibition.

The old maps represent an epic cartographic blunder, but they also contain a kernel of truth, the writer Rebecca Solnit argued in a recent essay. “An island is anything surrounded by difference,” she wrote. And California has always been different — isolated by high mountains in the east and north, desert in the south, and the ocean to the west, it has a unique climate and ecology. It’s often seemed like a place apart in other ways too, from the Gold Rush, to the hippies, to the tech booms of modern times.

The idea of California as an island existed in myth even before the region had been explored and mapped. “Around the year 1500 California made its appearance as a fictional island, blessed with an abundance of gold and populated by black, Amazon-like women, whose trained griffins dined on surplus males,” Philip Hoehn, then-map librarian at UC Berkley wrote in the foreword to a catalog of the maps that McLaughlin wrote.

Maps in the 1500s depicted California as a peninsula, which is closer to the truth (the Baja peninsula extends roughly a 1,000 miles south from the present-day Golden State). Spanish expeditions in the early 1600s concluded, however, that California was cut off from the mainland. Maps in those days were carefully guarded state secrets, McLaughlin says. “The story is, the Dutch raided a Spanish ship and found a secret Spanish map and brought it back to Amsterdam and circulated it from there,” he said.

In 1622, the British mathematician Henry Briggs published an influential article accompanied by a map that clearly showed California as an island. Briggs’ map was widely copied by European cartographers for more than a century.

The beginning of the end of California’s island phase came when a Jesuit priest, Eusebio Kino, led an overland expedition across the top of the Sea of Cortez. He wrote a report accompanied by a map in 1705 that cast serious doubt on the idea of California as an island. It took more exploration, but by 1747 King Ferdinand VI of Spain was convinced. He issued a decree stating that California was — once and for all — not an island. It took another century for cartographers to completely abandon the notion.

McLaughlin, who’s now 80, spent most of his career as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. He says the maps dominated his home decor for much of the past four decades. But no more. “I do miss them, but it’s time to let them go,” he said. “I’ve had a good long run with them.”

The vast majority of which were depicted on a round earth (I assume there are exceptions). The point of mentioning cartographers of old is that they plotted routes based on a round earth. Fast forward to now, and every single word-wide route be it by air, land, or water, is plotted on a round earth, and every single trip based on those routes accurately predicts distance and direction from any A on earth to any B.

Anyway, the question still remains - Why the hoax if the earth really is flat?

[GreatATuin]

There's a wiki page on the conspiracy: https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Conspiracy but it really doesn't say much. It focuses on a "space travel" conspiracy.

But the scientific knowledge of a spherical Earth predates NASA by centuries. We even had a pretty good estimation of its oblateness by the beginning of the 19th century.

Some flat Earthers seem to distance themselves from other conspiracy theorists and claim a global conspiracy isn't needed, but space travel is only a part of the equation. Faking the launch of several hundred people from about 45 different countries would already require some extraordinary global conspiracy (and you'd wonder why they don't keep it to a lower number if it's fake).

But then there are the mariners, aviators, astronomers, cartographers, geologists, all the people working with anything related to satellites, among others. All of them work with an oblate spheroid model of the Earth and would be supposed to notice if it didn't match reality. Yet they all seem to be happy with this model.

Of course, it doesn't tell us "why". But first, I can't see "how".

[macattack]

The only hoax here is people trying to convince others that the Earth is flat, when they know its obviously spherical.  This belongs on a an episode of Punk'd.  In the grand scheme of the universe, if you are a true flat earther, you need to get on the right side of history, otherwise you are destined to be erased from nature. We don't evolve backwards.

  Let's see, if I wanted to learn about the body who would I consult?  A subject matter expert on the body: aka a Doctor.
  If I wanted a subject matter expert on space, I'd consult an astronomer.
  If I wanted a subject matter expert on rockets, I'd consult a rocket scientist. Yes we have these.

  The Earth is spherical, science fact.  Just because you don't understand a science concept doesn't mean that isn't possible   Ask a scientist, do your research to understand physics, chemistry, biology.
 
   
 

[stevecanuck]

I'm still waiting for an FE believer to explain the purpose of this massive lie that the earth is round.

[Pete Svarrior]

I'm still waiting for an FE believer to explain the purpose of this massive lie that the earth is round.

If you do not have anything to add to a thread, do not post in it. Warned.

[stevecanuck]

I'm still waiting for an FE believer to explain the purpose of this massive lie that the earth is round.

If you do not have anything to add to a thread, do not post in it. Warned.

??

I started this thread. I named it. It's about a question that nobody who believes in FET has even attempted to answer. How is that being off-topic? It IS the topic. Please rescind the warning.

[Pete Svarrior]

??

I started this thread. I named it. It's about a question that nobody who believes in FET has even attempted to answer. How is that being off-topic? It IS the topic. Please rescind the warning.

"I don't like the fact that nobody responded to my very cool thread in a way I like" is not a helpful contribution to any thread, and you being the OP does not change that. Furthermore, whining about moderation in the middle of a thread is hardly helpful either.

The warning stays. In the future, if you need help with moderation action, do so in the right place.

[RhesusVX]

It's all a great conspiracy so governments all over the world can continue to fund all kinds of different  endeavors and keep the cash coming in or something like that.

I call that tax! The thing is there are all manner of ways the governments all over the world can rinse cash from us and otherwise funnel it into their bank accounts without the shape of the Earth being a factor.

If indeed there is a grand conspiracy, as @GreatATuin says, it would have to go way beyond just NASA and space travel, but that to me seems like the biggest threat to debunking FET and hence gets most of the attention.  Could be wrong.

But, let's for one minute suppose that the Earth is indeed flat, that there is an ice wall impenetrable to mere mortals, and the governments the world over are doing everything they can to maintain the round Earth image and perception. According to some aspects of FET, the actual Earth goes beyond the visible ice wall and so maybe in that belief, there could be resources beyond our reach that governments use to control the distribution of wealth.  I dunno', just speculating based on what I've read, but I'm with @GreatAtuin on this, first I'd love to know "how" they are keeping it up.

[Jade]

I, too, want to ask the question "why?" It isn't an argumentative question; it is extremely valid. The magnitude of this conspiracy to perpetuate a round earth myth is huge. The amount of people that would have to be in on it, combined with the absolute secrecy they've been able to maintain, makes the question very valid.

So not to be argumentative, but why the round earth hoax? I've seen many vague comments about gov't conspiracies, but zero actual explanations. Given the global climate of distrust and war, how would all countries be able to both war with each other, and work with each other to continue to perpetuate the myth? That info in itself is extremely weaponizable given the massive secret.

It really is a completely innocent question. Wouldn't it be problematic if people believe round earth is a myth, but they have absolutely no reason for it?

[jack44556677]

No "global" hoax or conspiracy is required for humanity to be stupid and wrong as it always is.

The assumption that the earth was spherical was first posited by someone that sat on their ass (while diddling their boy slaves, undoubtedly) and made it up over 2000 years ago.  It shouldn't cause any shock that they were wrong (or at least easily/likely could be), and only minor shock at the fact that prior to nasa et al (if you believe everything you see on tv) that the assumption had never been validated by anyone, ever.

There is still a lot of (indoctrination towards) ancient greek worship about (and the pedophilia they so adored...). It is the foundation of fraternities and many other "traditions" and is generally rife within "academia".  One can't help but wonder what else about the world might be different if they had spent less time fondling, admiring, and worshipping each others balls thousands of years ago (and things they imagined resembled them with no adequate reasons or reasoning)

Perhaps we were too busy venerating/idolizing instead of scrutinizing.  One of the MANY flaws of the modernists is they stupidly think that there is no reason to study the past.  The foundations of science are back there, and what egregious flaw (that we have grandfathered in, due to greek ball worship and other things) is inevitably there will only be found through rigorous scrutiny/critical evaluation.

The existence of a hoax, or not, is irrelevant to the shape of the earth, and to determining it with certainty.  Discussion of conspiracy and hoax, although entertaining at times, is red herring and distraction from the real topic at hand.

Speaking of which, back to the OP's question.

IF there were a conspiracy to hide the true shape of their world from "average citizens/employees/peasants" it would likely be for the purposes of warfare and domination.

For example, we know now that the american continent was well known by the aristocracy in europe for centuries (if not millennia) before columbus, was likely the source of the copper from the bronze age, and was on many of their maps.

It was very important to them to lie to their slaves/employees/citizens/peasants to stop them from leaving to try and have a better lot in life (or at least the possibility for one).

In war, there are really only two things - topography and subterfuge, and bad maps tick both boxes in a major way.

What if there were somewhere better to go? Just hypothetically of course

[Jade]

The existence of a hoax is extremely relevant given that you are suggesting that the truth is being hidden from the entire populous. There has to be a reason. The powers that be that are manipulating our very existence.. they desire the human population to be stupid and wrong? Why? To be Kings of the Dipshits?

The suggestion that this hoax was created by ancient european aristocracy who knew and planned for there to be a global-dominating force that they literally could not grasp (I'm having a tough time knowing which science is real vs. which science is fake, and yet extremely plausible and sensical; as well as what was known in this ancient time and kept secret from the populace, and where that advanced knowledge came from),  doesn't make sense.

Why exactly, if the USA was destined since the beginning of time to be the dominant force on a war-like planet, did the USSR participate in the space race? Were they participating in this hoax? Obviously, we (the royal) did not go to the moon, but the USSR claims to have been; and during a time that we were beefing. So why would they participate? Why would they not weaponize this flat-earth truth and use it against us? Are all wars fake? Are other countries helping to perpetuate this falsehood that leads to US global domination, because that is the plan? If war is fake, why the lies? What benefit does the globe gain from taking a perpetual war-like stance vs. a peaceful existence based on advancement? (This all reminds me of a plot line in Stargate SG-1)

What does this world get from hiding the knowledge that the earth is flat? This is an extremely relevant question, as it is the entire reason why this secret is supposedly being kept secret to such a vast degree that science isn't actually science, NASA plays with tidlywinks, and pilots everywhere are participating in this myth. The reason for the hoax is literally everything.

[WTF_Seriously]

The existence of a hoax, or not, is irrelevant to the shape of the earth, and to determining it with certainty. 

Which has been done, unless you believe in the conspiracy that all the evidence has been faked.  Flat earth can't exist without the conspiracy theory because the conspiracy is the only way to discount the volumes of evidence of the spherical model.

[Tom Bishop]

Space travel is fake. Everything else is pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is anything that doesn't follow the scientific method, ie. lacking experimental confirmation and relying on observational interpretation.

[WTF_Seriously]

Space travel is fake.

The conspiracy has to be true for flat earth to be real

Everything else is pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is anything that doesn't follow the scientific method, ie. lacking experimental confirmation and relying on observational interpretation.

You mean like universal acceleration and electromagnetic acceleration?  Your statement describes everything flat earth theory relies on.

[Tom Bishop]

There are equivalence principle experiments which acts as experimental verification for UA. EA is pending testing, and may be untestable.

Choosing to point out the perceived weaknesses in FE when RE is called a pseudoscience is an admission that RE is pseudoscience and lacks experimental verification. That's like a "Yeah, it is pseudoscience, so?"