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Post by Tikobe on May 8, 2017 16:08:04 GMT -4
I read the arguments of Flat Earthers. There were four things that stood out to me (I took the liberty of altering these arguments to remove the lack of context in them and to make them more understandable). These things got me so triggered that I decided I had to discuss it with someone and lacking a social life I decided to put them here.
"Antartica covers the whole bottom, and we're not allowed to go there for seemingly no reason. Not to mention, no one has flown north-to-south, only east-to-west."
If we've flown east-to-west, that proves the earth is round by itself. There is no way to go east and arrive in the west unless the earth is round, because by going with the flat earth idea we would've reached the eastern edge of the earth. Unless you wanna say the earth is a can. That doesn't prove the earth is flat though.
"Things like the round earth and even heliocentrism are theories and laws. Laws are just sets of rules and theories can't be proven. Therefore, we shouldn't considered these things to be established facts."
What?
The earth being round and heliocentrism aren't theories and they aren't laws. We've established this already, folks.
"Even if a man works as a flight operator, he clearly doesn't know what he's thinking if he says that gravity already adjusts the flight path of a plane so that it doesn't fly off the Earth."
Come again, please? I mean, they teach you about ethos in high school. You don't need a degree to understand credibility.
"We don't know what causes gravity, so we shouldn't speak as if we understand it."
We do though. We've known since the 20th century. We call it "general relativity." And frankly speaking, we understand it perfectly. There's a fabric called spacetime. Put mass on spacetime and it creates an inward curve much like how a trampoline is after you stand in it's center. Because of this curve, things naturally fall in. The reason why planets don't fall into the sun and the reason why the sun doesn't fall into the center of our galaxy is because of an outward release of energy.
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2017 16:57:06 GMT -4
I think it's been well established that flat-earthers aren't the most intelligent folks
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Post by Eternity 2.0 on May 8, 2017 18:02:20 GMT -4
Can we also talk about the fact that a lot of them think that the Earth is the ONLY flat planet?
Like, they're perfectly willing to accept that Mars is round, but since we live on this one it must be flat???
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Post by Tikobe on May 8, 2017 18:10:34 GMT -4
Can we also talk about the fact that a lot of them think that the Earth is the ONLY flat planet? Like, they're perfectly willing to accept that Mars is round, but since we live on this one it must be flat??? Oh yeah. One person I saw said that Earth had to be flat or otherwise we wouldn't be able to see the moon and sun at the same time. One also said that the Moon was also a disk because it has the same valleys and craters look at us regardless of the moon's "supposed" orbit. I mean, you know, the moon has a synchronous orbit, most moons in the solar system do, but you know. It's whatever. |
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Post by MrStilts on May 8, 2017 19:14:11 GMT -4
As I understand it, the "Flat Earth Society" as a whole was made just as an ironic joke. If you were speaking to actual members online, they were probably just trolling you.
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Post by Tikobe on May 8, 2017 20:09:46 GMT -4
As I understand it, the "Flat Earth Society" as a whole was made just as an ironic joke. If you were speaking to actual members online, they were probably just trolling you. Actually, a lot of them weren't members of that group. They literally believed the Earth was flat. |
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Post by MrStilts on May 8, 2017 21:12:27 GMT -4
Oh, well then they're just a bunch of halfwits who can't tell a bullshit joke from a serious statement. I wouldn't mind them so much, the internet has enough lunacy to gawk at as it is.
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2017 21:17:11 GMT -4
You underestimate how stupid people can be, Stilts
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Post by MrStilts on May 8, 2017 21:23:27 GMT -4
I am perfectly aware of the levels of dumb some humans can achieve, that's why I was skeptical whether Tikobe knew actual Flat Earthers are aware if their own joke.
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Post by Bannanachair on May 8, 2017 23:12:56 GMT -4
Marked; I'll share my own two cents on this later.
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Post by Bannanachair on May 9, 2017 10:02:46 GMT -4
Okay, I'd like to share my two cents on the four things that you commented on here, if that's fine with you. I read the arguments of Flat Earthers. There were four things that stood out to me (I took the liberty of altering these arguments to remove the lack of context in them and to make them more understandable). These things got me so triggered that I decided I had to discuss it with someone and lacking a social life I decided to put them here. "Antartica covers the whole bottom, and we're not allowed to go there for seemingly no reason. Not to mention, no one has flown north-to-south, only east-to-west." If we've flown east-to-west, that proves the earth is round by itself. There is no way to go east and arrive in the west unless the earth is round, because by going with the flat earth idea we would've reached the eastern edge of the earth. Unless you wanna say the earth is a can. That doesn't prove the earth is flat though. I've seen more intelligent ways of wording this argument. The gist of this argument when argued intelligently is that a flat Earth is disc-shaped, with the Arctic circle in the middle and Antarctica along the rim of the disc, circling it in it's entirety. They then go on to argue that moving around the world, traveling east until you arrive back at your original location, you are actually just going in one giant circle that's so large that close up it appears as if it were a straight line. The farther you get away from the arctic the larger that circle would be, and for the northern hemisphere, that is actually true. However, that argument breaks down if you try to travel around the world in a circle in the east-west direction in the southern hemisphere, as that would require a larger circle than to travel around the equator - obviously for anyone who's made the journey that's false, but the fact of the matter is that most people simply haven't made that journey. "Things like the round earth and even heliocentrism are theories and laws. Laws are just sets of rules and theories can't be proven. Therefore, we shouldn't considered these things to be established facts." What? The earth being round and heliocentrism aren't theories and they aren't laws. We've established this already, folks. Okay, they have a point here if you want to use the scientific definition of theory, but also they don't. What they're relying on is the layman conflating the words "theory" and "hypothesis". It's easiest to explain the difference between the two by detailing the process by which people come up with theories: - First, people make observations. For instance, the fact that the sun rises.
- Then, they make hypotheses about these observations. For instance, "the sun will rise tomorrow" is a hypothesis because it either can or can not happen, but there is no way to conduct an experiment on.
- Next they come up with experiments to test these hypotheses. To borrow from Aztec mythology, the hypothesis is that human sacrifice is required for the sun to rise. The experiment to conduct would be to go a day without having any human sacrifice and see if the sun rises.
- With a number of experiments on a related issue under their belt they come up with a theory. A theory is simply a mathematical model which can be used to make falsifiable predictions about the world; as such, evolution, heliocentricity and the Earth being round are technically theories even though they are correct.
It is worth keeping in mind that you need a substantial amount of evidence to even come up with a theory, so basically any theory already has quite a bit going for it.
"Even if a man works as a flight operator, he clearly doesn't know what he's thinking if he says that gravity already adjusts the flight path of a plane so that it doesn't fly off the Earth." Come again, please? I mean, they teach you about ethos in high school. You don't need a degree to understand credibility. This argument doesn't make particularly much sense, but I think that what they're talking about is accelleration due to gravity not necessarily being caused by gravity as we know it but rather the flat earth accelerating upwards at 9.81m/s 2. As any high-school physics student can tell you, those two are mathematically equivalent, so therefore citing gravity as proof does not count as sufficient evidence in and of itself. They are correct that the fact that we can observe acceleration due to gravity is not indicative of the Earth being round; they are wrong in ignoring the fact that if you look out to sea you'll see the mast of a ship appear before it's hull. "We don't know what causes gravity, so we shouldn't speak as if we understand it." We do though. We've known since the 20th century. We call it "general relativity." And frankly speaking, we understand it perfectly. There's a fabric called spacetime. Put mass on spacetime and it creates an inward curve much like how a trampoline is after you stand in it's center. Because of this curve, things naturally fall in. The reason why planets don't fall into the sun and the reason why the sun doesn't fall into the center of our galaxy is because of an outward release of energy. I thought that they were talking about gravity in the earlier one. Basically read what I had to say there. Also, they are technically correct that we don't fully understand gravity - you cite general relativity, but general relativity mixed with quantum physics gives you some really screwy results that don't make much sense. At the moment people are thinking of string theory, quantum gravity, etc. as the solution, but it's a heavily debated topic and we simply don't have enough energy to test the more complex theories of gravity. And, as I mentioned earlier, they are correct in saying that gravity does not weigh in on this in the slightest, but they are wrong for belaboring that point instead of trying to refute valid arguments against their ideas. |
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