Positive and zero scalar curvature are an Illuminati plot. The earth is a Poincaré disc!
Blaming NASA for misinformation? Earth-based observers realized the planet was a sphere for a couple thousand years at least.
If you want to prove to yourself that you are standing on the outside of a roatating sphere build an accurate sundial. You will see why this is if you do.
Eratosthenes for the win.
ETA: Classical Greece gets all the press, but the Hellenistic period was when a lot of what we call Western science was founded.
But even if you stay in one place, a accurate sundial has to account for the rotation and shape of the Earth.
First the pointer, because it’s pointing to the sun, indicates your latitude. And the hour indicators get shorter around noon because you’re on a spinning object.
I’m enjoying this thread too much.
But to add, yep, you’re absolutely correct. You only need a wider baseline to establish the size. The sphere was obvious to Greek philosophers even before Eratosthenes.
Do you by any chance have a reinvented ocarina?
How do you feel about Bud Abbott?
It’s the map industry! They created the ‘speher theory’ just to sell ‘globes’ since the maps didn’t run that good!
The moon? And Cruithne, kinda.
Triangulation (tetrahedrulation?) is pretty easy, but I thought that you had to include relativistic effects to get high accuracy. Perhaps that’s done in hardware though…
Don’t forget ‘people with two sticks, an assistant and some free time’ (viz. Eratothsenes) in your Grand List Of Conspirators.
Another unity conspiracy theory, where pretty much everyone must be a member of THEM trying to cover up “the truth”.
Astronomers = THEM.
Airline pilots = THEM
Astronauts = THEM
Radio amateurs = THEM
Anyone who makes GPS work = THEM
…
Debating a flat earther is like debating a young Earth creationist. It’s pointless because they clearly either aren’t capable of or are unwilling to think rationally. If they were, they wouldn’t hold the position they do in the first place.
“OK, now show us the photos of Earth taken without the fish-eye lens!”
Obviously NASA is hiding what they found underneath the flat Earth . What could it be. . . diamonds? Lost civilization? Hell?
What happens when the flat-earthers and hollow-earthers bump into each other?
Actually the same thing, if I understand correctly. Flat earthers are YECs who have actually bothered to look at the biblical passages that describe the cosmology of the ancient Israelites (a flat earth protected from an infinite ocean by a metallic sky dome, which has hatches in it to allow rain to enter, etc, cf Genesis 1-2 and Job 38 among other places ). And instead of maintaining a cognitive dissonance that some things in the bible are literally so and other things are not (which is what non-flat earth creationists do), they declare the entire world allied in a diabolical conspiracy to decieve the few real true christians of the truth of the matter.
Flat earhers are sort of the non-hypocritical wing of YEC. I can almost respect them, while pitying them for their need to adhere to a “literal” reading of their holy book even if that forces them to drive themselves insane.
A.k.a. “when worlds collide.”
What’s with the quotation marks around “humans”? I get that these people are stupid, but if anything, that makes them typical of humans in general.
That makes sense. I was originally going to say it was as pointless as debating any creationist, but then I realized the problem with debating a non-YE creationist is different. Still pointless, but for a different reason. Namely, that when you start with the premise that there is a being in the universe who is literally capable of doing absolutely anything and everything, it’s literally impossibly to disprove that. The closest you can come is to prove that such a being is unnecessary.
I can certainly empathize with the feeling of futility when debating flat earthers and creationists, but I disagree.
On an internet forum, you would be right 99% of the time, but if you are not one of THEM in their eyes and have many hours to spend on delving into complicated subject matter you really can crack that wall. But it requires patience, a lot of it, and you may have to suffer aggressive rethoric, attacks on your character and intelligence etc.
It is challanging, but worthwhile, to find the right approach for that particular person, without using any dishonest debating tricks and without reciprocating aggressive or emotional behaviour. “Just” identify the knowledge gaps and missing critical thinking tools and try to inform from a place of compassion.
I often find that talking about the philosophy of the scientific method, critical thinking and epistomology are better recieved than directly discussing the subject. YMMV