The Flat Earth "Theory" is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard because of the simple fact that if it turned out to be true, if NASA came out and said "Eyup, we were bullshitting everyone the whole time."
Not a damn thing about my life would change.
There's no "The Secret" level nonsense where because this one thing is true I am suddenly empowered to free myself from the chains of society or reality. There's no "Ah, but your honor I'm a Sovereign Citizen, that means actually the murder I comitteded isn't illegal and you owe me a check for 69 Billion Dollars as punishment for wasting my time"
There's not a damn thing to be gained from it.
For a certain group of people, science and life have gotten too complicated, and they want to feel special with special knowledge (often coupled with a distorted god belief), so they fall in the conspiracy theory rabbit hole.
And flat earth is actually one of the more dangerous conspiracy theories too, according to this chart, as it is usually not the only conspiracy these people believe in.
As with many things, the underlying problem creating conspiracy theorists is the mediocre high school dropouts need to feel superior to others in a world that values you for your skills and education. American Psychological Association: "The researchers found that overall, people were motivated to believe in conspiracy theories by a need to understand and feel safe in their environment and a need to feel like the community they identify with is superior to others."
If you can't develop a sense of pride by working hard to create actual merit, why not just fake it by grouping together with a bunch of other flunkies to be like "actually, we're all better than you, because you're all just sheep who believe what the government tells you!"
Bonus points if you combine this line of thinking with some other forms of discrimination, but even traditionally marginalized groups can fall prey to this trap. I'm not sure how to solve it, perhaps a stronger social safety net would prevent people from losing their grip on reality just to feel safe from perceived threats. Then again to quite a few people "black people" and "women" and "people from other countries" and "trans people" are threats so perhaps nothing we do can make them feel safe enough to stop being annoying online
I love how UFOs are more grounded in reality than flat Earth. Lol
That’s because they come from inside the Hollow Earth. Which you’d know already if you’d done your own research.
That’s because they exist. Probably not aliens and such, but any object seen flying that’s not identified is a UFO.
dangerous
It killed that guy with the home built rocket
It's in the top category on that site, which is also all antisemitic — I haven't noticed a religious side to flat earth believers (aside from their belief in their idea of the shape of the planet)
I’ve heard quite a few flat earthers who claim that “they” are hiding god by hiding the true shape of the earth (according to the flat earthers obviously)
According to them the Bible tells them the world is flat and there’s a dome separating the waters above from the waters below.
Alright so hear me out you guys, what if the whole thing was just a long-running prank? Nobody actually believes the earth is flat, but the Flat Earth Society is like the mafia - once you're in, you're in for life. And they have a Fight Club sign right at the entrance to the clubhouse so everybody knows they have to play it cool when outsiders are around.
I think it's genuinely just people trying to make money at the top. They don't believe a word they say, but they keep making money from idiots so they keep doing it.
Yours is more likely, mine is more fun
I remember figuring out on my own that the Earth is spherical when I was 6 years old and I witnessed big ships disappearing from the bottom up over the horizon.
There was this one video where flat-Earthers tried to prove the Earth was flat, so they recreated the experiment by Eratosthenes and accidentally proved the Earth was round. I can't find it right now but it's hilarious.
This past December, The Final Experiment went down to Antarctica to take a video of the 24 hour sun. It's causing much consternation among flat earthers.
There was one guy who designed what is actually an elegant experiment, placing several vertical surfaces, signs basically, with holes in them in a straight line a distance apart at the same elevation above sea level. If the Earth is flat, one should be able to see straight through all of the holes in the signs; if the earth is round, the holes will curve down and away. He observed that they curved down and away. Then of course proceeded to make up bullshit about how his own test was invalid.
Yes, that's it! I must have gotten confused about what video it was.
Wasn’t that the Netflix movie behind the curve
To be perfectly fair, when the guy said the test was inconclusive, he was right... To a point.
His failure was that he only did the test once and in one location, which just proves a hill/valley could be playing a factor in the results. To have true empirical results, the test would need to be done at multiple locations, each a random but sizable distance apart.
The scientific method relies on repeatability and reliability in data to provide proof to anything and he wasn't really using either.
Flat earthers: "We only believe what we can see for ourselves!"
Also flat earthers: "And then there is a great ice wall around it and then there are other earths just like ours in other pockets like that"
Have you run across big earth theory? it is quite possibly more insane than every other conspiracy theory ive heard because its like all of them together.
It gets funnier. A millionaire flew two flat earthers to the south pole where they proceeded to live stream the 24 h sun. Its called "the final experiment". Yet one of the flat earthers still said the earth was flat.
Emblematic of our times.
Explanation: Not only did the ancient Greek philosopher Eratosthenes (born and raised in what-is-now Libya) know the earth was spherical, he used that knowledge to measure the circumference of the earth - with two sticks and some carefully applied mathematical thought - to an astounding accuracy!
According to Cleomedes' On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies, around 240 BC, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth in Ptolemaic Egypt.[8] Using a vertical rod known as a gnomon and under the previous assumptions, he knew that at local noon on the summer solstice in Syene (modern Aswan, Egypt), the Sun was directly overhead, as the gnomon cast no shadow. Additionally, the shadow of someone looking down a deep well at that time in Syene blocked the reflection of the Sun on the water. Eratosthenes then measured the Sun's angle of elevation at noon in Alexandria by measuring the length of another gnomon's shadow on the ground.[9] Using the length of the rod and the length of the shadow as the legs of a triangle, he calculated the angle of the sun's rays.[10] This angle was about 7°, or 1/50th the circumference of a circle; assuming the Earth to be perfectly spherical, he concluded that its circumference was 50 times the known distance from Alexandria to Syene (5,000 stadia, a figure that was checked yearly), i.e. 250,000 stadia.[11] Depending on whether he used the "Olympic stade" (176.4 m) or the Italian stade (184.8 m), this would imply a circumference of 44,100 km (an error of 10%) or 46,100 km, an error of 15%.[11] A value for the stadion of 157.7 metres has even been posited by L.V. Firsov, which would give an even better precision, but is plagued by calculation errors and false assumptions.[12] In 2012, Anthony Abreu Mora repeated Eratosthenes's calculation with more accurate data; the result was 40,074 km, which is 66 km different (0.16%) from the currently accepted polar circumference.[10]
In 2021, mathematicians Matt Parker and Hannah Fry calculated the circumference of the earth by going up to a point of known altitude and measuring the angle down to the horizon, giving them a very accurate 5500 km, which is 34500 km off (86%).
I like how Bill Nye explains it:
The existence of the North Pole star and the Southern Cross is enough evidence that the earth is round. On a flat earth, you should see the same constellations no matter where in the earth you are.
The Southern Cross was so important for celestial navigation on the southern hemisphere it’s in multiple flags (Brazil, Australia and New Zeeland, for example).
My favorite proof, and really it's the reason I don't argue with flat earthers anymore. The fact that the sky appears to rotate about two points opposite each other in the sky is unassailable proof that the Earth is round. If someone is willing to just ignore that, there's literally no point talking to them about anything
What if they just go "but what if the stars are fake?"?
Ooh good one. I wonder what the flat earth explanation for this is.
Anyhow, the persistent belief in something like a flat earth isn't really a question of evidence.
To most people the way we understand the world around us is through the scientific method. As in I have not personally observed the results of testing vaccines on thousands of people to ensure that they are safe, but others have and others have reproduced their findings, so I'm happy to accept their published assertions.
However, there's plenty of people for whom the scientific method is merely one belief system amongst many, and you can simply choose which group resonates with you.
Additionally science tells us all sorts of unpleasant things about ourselves that we don't really want to hear. Why would I want to listen to "science" telling me I need to exercise more when this nice lady on facebook tells me that this crystal can realign my chakras and restore my health.
Yup, all it takes is a single set of eyes, even a mediocre sence of direction, and a decent memory for stars on the celestial sphere for one person to definitively prove the Earth is round. If you can accurately measure stars, you don't even need to do Erastosthene's challenge with the sun.
I talked to a guy that worked in one of the deepest underground mines in Kirkland Lake, Ontario. He said one of his bosses, a highly educated libertarian nut job was a flat earther and would debate his workers on a regular basis about it. I told him they should ask for more danger pay because at one point they might drill through the flat earth plain and fall into space .... or land on a turtle.
Then they start talking about "as above, so below" in that water is both above and below us (with no distinctive* collectively agreed upon measurements).
There's are so many weird-ass suppositions.
small voice Oblate spheroid.
The "science"tists keep changing their story. First it's flat, then it's a sphere, then it's an obligatory spherical, then it's a pear
You know who hasn't changed their story? The ancient peoples who didn't have accurate maps. They've maintained the flatness of the earth for thousands of years, so it must be the right answer
It's turtles all the way down, young man.
There is literally so much evidence that anyone can perceive with their own eyes if they want to. You can easily observe the curvature of the earth anywhere with objects visible across an open plain or water.
We can't prove in a way that they would believe.
100%. I watched a video on TFE where there was a minister guy saying the Earth is flat because the bible says so and that any evidence to the contrary is manufactured by (literally) Satan and the US government and that they may not be able to prove it one way or the other, but they have to have faith in the word of God.
There's literally nothing you can say to that.
Why do we need to convince them in the first place? I see them as the equivalent of internet trolls, they know they’re wrong and half the fun is moving the goalposts.
I remember when some of them tried to prove it was flat, and ended up proving it was round.
Well, this is a simulation. All observations and measurements can and will be falsified by the designers of the simulator. What can ya do?
Oh, let's be fair here...
He had to hire a guy to count lots and lots of steps too.
Eratosthenes' experiment could just as easily prove a smaller, closer sun
The best proof is that you can look at the Sun and the moon with your eyes (maybe use a filter for the sun) and see them not change size throughout their path along the sky, which proves that they aren't getting appreciably closer or farther
Of course it's not spherical, it's wider at the equator and lumpy
and lumpy
Barely. Shrink it down to the size of a pool/billiards ball and Earth is actually smoother.
They also can't prove for sure that the earth is flat
TFE was a breaking point for the cult of the insane, it did some good, but they're all clearly insane.
I hold fast with my position in extremist satire that anyone who thinks this way should simply be terminated for the good of our species, call it eugenics if you want, i call it culling the catastrophe. (again, this is satire)
But the earth is round, like a pizza
Mmm pizza balls
Eratosthenes is a word I can only hear in Carl Sagan's voice.
What do Eratosthenes' proclivities have to do with astronomy
