[Westprog]

There are all kind of obvious dismissals of flat Earth theory, from the existence of the horizon, the view from space, whether or not some proponent of FE theory had a doctorate or not, and so on. But the biggie, the one that really counts, is the structure of the Earth that we all know.

Imagine taking little balls of modelling clay, each representing an airport. Then we cut lengths of wire, according to flight times. Then we join the balls together. Gradually, we get a shape. The interesting thing is that there's really only one shape possible. It's not possible to connect everything together on a flat plane. It just doesn't work. That's the real reason why no flat Earth map has ever been made. We have a shape.

And how do we know these distances aren't faked? We've heard claims here that we can never really know the distances between cities. How can we ever know?

The answer is simple. There are literally billions of people testing these distances, every day. Flights and vehicles and ships. We've an example of someone on this very thread who navigates around the world using these maps and distances.

We can believe that the maps are wrong, and the distances are unknown. But then how does anyone find their way anywhere? How is it that people can book flights, or drive cross-country, or sail around the world, unless these maps and distances are right? And literally billions of people rely on this information.

Fundamentally, the premise of FE is that there's some loophole here. There's enough wriggle room in those distances. Even if someone can drive from LA to Toronto and check the mileage, maybe there's some uncertainty, a fiddle factor. But that only works by not looking too closely. We know, if we really think honestly, that these distances are being checked over and over and over, by almost every human being on the planet. People look out of the window of their planes and see mountains and seas and fields of ice just where they are supposed to be.

Don't be fooled that the missing flat Earth map is in any way compatible with the everyday experience of ordinary people. That interlocking structure of distances only resolves to one shape.

I assume that this will shortly result in another ban, or maybe just a warning. That's to be expected. I also don't expect to convert any believers. There's an infinite capacity for rationalisation. But this is where FE loses contact with what people experience every day. It's not a matter of some piece of astronomy, or some observation that people can persuade themselves isn't real. It's the whole world. It's how people live every day.

[Tontogary]

Westprog, you are probably right, I recon by proving the Charlatan Rowbotham to be incorrect, we are skating a fine line, too many awkward questions and a ban results!

If Charlatan Rowbotham is the person the FEers all quote and follow with lemming like faithfulness, i would suggest they read and understand the words of his preface to EnaG.


“The true business of a critic is to compare what he reads with known and provable data, to treat impartially the evidence he observes, and point out logical deficiencies and inconsistencies with first principles, but never to obtrude his own opinions. He should, in fact, at all times take the place of Astrea, the Goddess of Justice, and firmly hold the scales, in which the evidence is fairly weighed.

I advise all my readers who have become Zetetic not to be content with anything less than this; and also not to look with disfavour upon the objections of their opponents. Should such objections be well or even plausibly founded, they will only tend to free us from error,”

When weighing up Evidence, on one side on the side of RE is the overwhelming evidence, the empirical observations, (that Zetetics place so much reli
Acne upon, indeed a founding principle) the experiences of millions, if not billions of people, on the other hand, the flawed, crude and often misunderstood results of “experiments (only 15 of them to “prove” that the earth is flat in chapter 2), the lack of a map, the age of the writings, dismissing any science or research done in the last 170 years, then if a GENUINE zetetic were to balance that evidence, they would surely be able to come to one conclusion, that the earth was an oblate spheroid, or at the very least (possibly by not understanding the basic laws of physics or science) they didnt have a damn clue what the shape was!

[pinecone]

Thanks to taking the time to discuss this.

The intention of the exercise is to suggest that the map is "pinched" at the top, but equally "pinched" at the bottom, seemingly forcing us into a none planar model.  I suppose I could add a third itinerary to show that it also bulges in the middle.  I am in earnest here trying to explain the flight data that we do have.

There is nothing to explain. There is no Flat Earth map. What you are combating is a map used for visualization purposes only. We don't know if there are one or two poles; or the nature of those continents.

What you have provided may be a basis to create some kind of map, but it is not a contradiction against the Flat Earth map, since it doesn't exist.

Yes it is a basis for a map: it suggests that the times to get around the northern latitudes are similar to those of southern.  So any map that doesn't have a "wrap around" problem would have to account for that.  The earth could be a tube and it would work out, but I don't see how any arrangement of continents on a flat surface would account for this data.

As far as fueling stops I have never experienced such a thing.  I understand that this was true during the days of prop planes, but I have never heard of anyone buying a "non-stop" ticket and there being a stop for whatever reason.  Also, the majority of these routes are over water.  There would be no place to refuel.  As to industry terms, I goggled and got this: "Non-stop means pretty much what it sounds like—that the airplane is not scheduled to land between its origin and destination."
https://thepointsguy.com/2014/12/12-confusing-travel-industry-expressions-and-what-they-mean/

Thanks.

If a bus had to stop and fill up its tank at some point along its 29 stop route, would the bus company advertise that the bus made 29 stops or 30 stops?

Perhaps you missed the phrase "the airplane is not scheduled to land"?  That suggests not going to the ground for whatever reason.  Also there's still the question of where you would land as the trips are over oceans.

Thanks.

[Westprog]

Yes it is a basis for a map: it suggests that the times to get around the northern latitudes are similar to those of southern.  So any map that doesn't have a "wrap around" problem would have to account for that.  The earth could be a tube and it would work out, but I don't see how any arrangement of continents on a flat surface would account for this data.

When you've a choice between a map that doesn't actually exist, and a map that actually works, it shouldn't be very difficult to choose between them. We travel constantly around the world, and rely for that travel on a single understanding of the shape of the world. If we didn't have that understanding, we couldn't set out over the open sea and expect to arrive thousands of miles away without an error.

I don't know what FE advocates think happens on ships and planes when they're planning a journey. Do they think there's a set of The Real Plans hidden away, which they use? Or do they think that the fact that the distances and directions they use, which work on a round Earth, somehow also work on some flat Earth map that hasn't been figured out yet? I tend to think that they've just decided that despite all the evidence, we're all using a flat Earth map, but just don't know what map it is.
 

[Tontogary]

Yes it is a basis for a map: it suggests that the times to get around the northern latitudes are similar to those of southern.  So any map that doesn't have a "wrap around" problem would have to account for that.  The earth could be a tube and it would work out, but I don't see how any arrangement of continents on a flat surface would account for this data.

When you've a choice between a map that doesn't actually exist, and a map that actually works, it shouldn't be very difficult to choose between them. We travel constantly around the world, and rely for that travel on a single understanding of the shape of the world. If we didn't have that understanding, we couldn't set out over the open sea and expect to arrive thousands of miles away without an error.

I don't know what FE advocates think happens on ships and planes when they're planning a journey. Do they think there's a set of The Real Plans hidden away, which they use? Or do they think that the fact that the distances and directions they use, which work on a round Earth, somehow also work on some flat Earth map that hasn't been figured out yet? I tend to think that they've just decided that despite all the evidence, we're all using a flat Earth map, but just don't know what map it is.

I can promise you that it is not a conspiracy, we do not have any magical extra set of distances or secret charts.

We calculate the distances using spherical trigonometry, and more these days put in our route to the electronic chart display and information system which calculates the distance of the route we plot.
We use on line and on board published distance tables to calculate ETA, and, more importantly, to work out how much fuel to carry, and food to stock up with.
If we were wrong we would run out of fuel!

Our positions, although calculated by GPS these days. (Dont know how that works without satellites!) are also backed up by all of the navigating officers (4 of them) taking regular sun and star sights to calculate our position using spherical trigonometry, that they learn in navigation schools and colleges.

How any one of them happen to luck out and get a position right if the earth is flat, the sun is 3000 miles away along with the moon and stars is a miracle!

Or we could actually be on a round earth, and what we do is correct, and we are not lying through our back teeth!

I think i will need to i start a new topic and pick apart Charlatan Rowbothams fanciful lies one at a time where i can, and i certainly can where he has made pretty obvious errors when it comes to navigation and talking about ships, or navigation, magnetism, cartography, tides, etc of which was obvious he had no clue about.

[TomInAustin]

There are many possibilities. There are single-pole and two-pole Flat Earth models with an infinite number of continental configurations.

There are a few problems keeping us from devising a map. As an example; flight routes don't exist between all possible airports, or in all directions around the earth without regard to fuel efficiency.

Also, recent investigations have shown that there has been some imprecision with the word "nonstop." The term "nonstop" in the travel industry does not count fuel stops. Only the stops which pick people up or drop people off are counted. As an example, a bus route that stopped at 29 stops to transfer people would be advertised as "29 stops," even if the bus driver stopped for fuel at some point along the way.

We will require your participation in such discussions to see progress. Unfortunately there is a lack of participation on this forum.

It is quite obvious that non-stop flights between continents do not stop for fuel.   Serious question Tom, have you ever done any intercontinental travel?  Say the US to Europe, Australia or any south pacific points? 

It is quite obvious that airliner speeds are well known as are flight durations.   I attempted to get you into a discussion on mapping based on flight times converted to miles with an acceptable margin of error.  Where were you?

[Westprog]

I can promise you that it is not a conspiracy, we do not have any magical extra set of distances or secret charts.

Ah, but you would say that!

We calculate the distances using spherical trigonometry, and more these days put in our route to the electronic chart display and information system which calculates the distance of the route we plot.
We use on line and on board published distance tables to calculate ETA, and, more importantly, to work out how much fuel to carry, and food to stock up with.
If we were wrong we would run out of fuel!

Our positions, although calculated by GPS these days. (Dont know how that works without satellites!) are also backed up by all of the navigating officers (4 of them) taking regular sun and star sights to calculate our position using spherical trigonometry, that they learn in navigation schools and colleges.

How any one of them happen to luck out and get a position right if the earth is flat, the sun is 3000 miles away along with the moon and stars is a miracle!

Or we could actually be on a round earth, and what we do is correct, and we are not lying through our back teeth!

I think i will need to i start a new topic and pick apart Charlatan Rowbothams fanciful lies one at a time where i can, and i certainly can where he has made pretty obvious errors when it comes to navigation and talking about ships, or navigation, magnetism, cartography, tides, etc of which was obvious he had no clue about.

Navigation is now taken for granted. We all have access to devices that will tell us where we are, and direct us to somewhere else, and tell us how long it will take. But for most of human history, it was a fundamental limitation of human history. Finding longtitude was a puzzle that baffled humanity for hundreds of years.

And it has always, always been predicated on a spherical Earth. Anyone who's tried to travel across the sea to other lands has needed to plan their route with the basic assumption that the Earth is round. There are log books preserved from thousands of voyages, all of which rely on the sphere.

[pinecone]

Are there any actual FE's here?  I'm interested in a serious conversation!

[JohnAdams1145]

The fundamental problem with any flat map of Earth is it is geometrically impossible given the distances between all pairs of 4 points on Earth. There is no need to point to a specific map. Said map cannot exist by the rules of geometry.

This is addressed in a thread that quickly turned upside-down. https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6633.msg121952#msg121952

Here, the geometry is shown to be inconsistent with a Flat Earth, and therefore the FE people decide to deny that the distances were measured correctly.

[Westprog]

Are there any actual FE's here?  I'm interested in a serious conversation!

Which do you want?

[Westprog]

The fundamental problem with any flat map of Earth is it is geometrically impossible given the distances between all pairs of 4 points on Earth. There is no need to point to a specific map. Said map cannot exist by the rules of geometry.

This is addressed in a thread that quickly turned upside-down. https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6633.msg121952#msg121952

Here, the geometry is shown to be inconsistent with a Flat Earth, and therefore the FE people decide to deny that the distances were measured correctly.

This is the fundamental hole in the theory. I gave a facetious (possible ban-garnering) answer when someone asked for a serious engagement with FE theorists on this idea. This is not possible, because when you have billions of people making use of calculated travel distances for their daily lives, the pretence that they are all wrong is simply not credible. It's a ludicrous, reality denying claim. The distances/travel times we all know to be real aren't compatible with anything but a sphere.

[juner]

Are there any actual FE's here?  I'm interested in a serious conversation!

Which do you want?

Refrain from off-topic, low-content posting in the upper fora. Since you have a lot of warnings already and a ban, it seems you still haven't grasped how to post in the upper fora. Have a week off to review the rules.