You don’t need ships and water either. Ride across Iowa (RAGBRAI) on a bicycle. The grain towers in the last town recede in the distance behind; then, magicially, they appear in the forward horizon (the next town). Yes, the spacing of towns and grain elevators dates back to when distances were done by how far a horse and loaded wagon to go round trip in a day.
I remember being on a road trip with my family driving from Chicago to Denver. I was little but I recall my first sight of the Rocky Mountains. I thought great! They are right there on the horizon!
But, of course, I was only seeing the tops of the mountains and we still had a lot more boring driving ahead of us (this was well before any kind of in car entertainment beyond a book or staring out the window for hours so that loooong ride to the mountain I thought was close has stuck with me.)
They’ll argue there are changes of elevation involved. You have to strip their arguments down to the least possible variables, and even then will you witness true ignorance.
For instance, some of their primary mantras are “water cannot bend” and “water always finds its level”. But take them to or show them pictures of the causeway at Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana, and they’ll still come up with some bullshit argument.
I do think a lot of them are trolling. But then I’ve started to believe that about a lot of conspiracy theorist. Let’s take Birthers for example. Some people might have had genuine doubts about whether Obama was born in the United States, but I think most people who espoused that particular position did so just to be a pain in the ass to Democrats.
This paper looks at the correlation between flat earth and anti-vax believers (among other CTs).
From the paper:
People who believed in conspiracies, rejected the covid-19 vaccine, or preferred alternative medicine were more likely to endorse the mythical causes of cancer than their counterparts but were less likely to endorse the actual causes of cancer. These results suggest a direct connection between digital misinformation and consequent erroneous health decisions, which may represent a further preventable fraction of cancer.
This paper does a similar correlation across 9 common CTs or rejection of scientific knowledge (including flat earth and anti-vax).
And uncovers an interesting correlation:
Although agreement with conspiracy claims was low overall, it was significantly higher among two subgroups: Millennials, and supporters of ex-president Trump.
There are two conspiracy subreddits that I can never resist participating in, both of which are mostly filled with skeptics: FlatEarth and MandelaEffect. Flerfs of course believe the Earth is flat. True believers of the Mandela effect believe that reality shifts between universes/dimensions, and when you discover something is not how you remember, that means you changed universes. This phenomenon was started, of course, by CERN.
Both subs are mostly skeptics, but there are a minority of true believers that you can engage with. Though I suppose the word “engage” in that sentence is being charitable. They’ll mostly just yell at you for being a globetard or how they can’t be misremembering because they remember an underwear logo VIVIDLY or DISTINCTLY.
Anyway, while I haven’t subscribed to either of those subreddits, I have participated enough that they show up in my feed regularly. They are both pretty fun in a “point and laugh” kind of way.
Flerfs have the absolute best maps. They are legitimately cool if you ever played Dungeons and Dragons or enjoyed the maps in fantasy books like Lord of the Rings. Hell, they’d make fine MMO maps.
I can’t seem to figure out how to embed images from Reddit posts, so it looks like this is the best I can do. Seriously, these are cool and worth checking out:
Here is a basic map of flat earth plus what’s just beyond the ice wall:
https://www.reddit.com/r/flatearth/s/ZsNGQawrye
Here is an expanded map showing even further beyond the ice wall. I guess this is the map you need when your D&D campaign reaches epic levels: (This isn’t the one I wanted to link, but I can’t find it now and the edit window is running out. This will have to suffice.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/flatearth/s/opnYVwO78g
Here is a “more current” version of the larger map:
Here’s the ultimate map:
Whilst I’m sure there are trolls, I feel they are probably outnumbered by sincere flat earthers, whatever sincere means in this context, since their behaviour is often far from being aligned with other behaviours normally accompanying sincerity.
A lot of it seems to be correlated with or allied to some form of creationism. And the parts where that correlation is not so overt, seems to be people who just literally don’t comprehend simple geometric concepts such as perspective.
There are no doubt some prominent charlatans knowingly fuelling this idiocy for their own gain, just like there are with creationism, maybe it’s exactly like that, except that creationism has had a little more time to settle out and for the scum to float to the top.
For a significant part of them it is attention seeking performance art.
You cannot be moderately intelligent and curious and not get that:
- satellites are real, you can see them with the naked eye, your phone talks to them.
- any FE model of the earth fails to explain seasons or shorter and longer days and a whole host of easily observed phenomena.
- the “southern wall” really doesn’t stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. A hypothesis like “Santa exists” is more difficult to debunk and most adults seem to manage.
- Navigation on a moderate scale doesn’t work with tools that presume a flat earth, even the most basic stuff like a sextant works on the principles of a globe. Everybody can go out and try to navigate with a flat earth as their model and quickly find out that isn’t getting them to their destination.
Ignoring these points is required to “believe” in a flat earth. And I just don’t buy it. They’re all trolling.
If we stop giving them attention it will go away.
There’s your problem. These are people who haven’t fully grasped that things look smaller when they are further away
My BIL wore this t-shirt while in the MOMA on a trip to NYC …
Someone asked him if it was some sort of modern artwork.
Here’s a good tongue-in-cheek argument to make to the flat earthers.
Of course the Earth can’t be flat. If it was, cats would have knocked everything off the edge of it by now!
A local excavation and paving contractor is fond of stating that the earth is not nearly as flat as most folks think, but he can help with that.
There was a time where I only rarely encountered flerfers, on general discussion forums like this. And sure, those people were likely trolling.
But now? There are communities of flerfers that just spend all day talking to each other. That make detailed posts for years “debunking” the kinds of things that you listed. Who are they trolling?
And sure, it’s fckdumb, but so are most CTs, YEC and election deniers etc. While FE might be more dumb than those things, the same lack of understanding of how to evaluate claims, and excitement of being one of the people able to see through the matrix, can take a person to any silly belief, there’s no limit.
I realized something, more in the political sphere (but I’ll avoid saying which party I’m thinking of, so as not to hijack): It can be a powerful thing when you tell people who are poorly-educated and ignorant: you are really the smart one. You are smart, because you can see through the phoney messages to the deeper truth. Don’t let all those snobby “intellectuals” talk down to you.
I’ve wondered if anyone — no, literally anyone — in fact cared about the tan suit.
Also not to hijack,
Not party, they distrust Republicans only slightly less than Democrats. I’ve never hear a Flerf, who’s politics were discernable, that wasn’t a Right-winger.
In, at least, one case a full-on Nazi apologist. That being Eric Dubay.
Adolf Hitler was actually a vegetarian, animal-lover, an author, an artist, a political activist, economic reformer and nominated for a Nobel Peace prize. He enacted the world’s first anti-animal cruelty, anti-pollution and anti-smoking laws. Unlike the demonic portrait that history has painted of him, Hitler was beloved by his people and he wanted nothing but peace.
Eric Dubay - Quotes - IMDb
I’m sure there are Leftist and atheist Flerfs but, AFAICT, they’re black swans.
(If you’re really into this you’ll know the callback in that sentence.)
SciManDan (a YouTuber whose mainstay is debunking Flat Earth nonsense and other tinfoil hattery) gets asked very frequently if he thinks they’re trolling and his answer is that he doesn’t think they are; he’s gone to far greater depths on the topic than most people do, so I think I am inclined to take his word for it.
It’s worth noting that putting up web pages full of nonsense, or creating and uploading videos to YouTube or elsewhere are things that have a fairly low bar to entry, and both web design and video editing are two-dimensional art forms. There is no particular reason why anyone making flat earth content would be prevented from doing so, just because they don’t fully understand how the real world has three axes of dimension.
When do flat-earthers believe the “round earth” hoax began?
You would probably get a different answer to that from every FE you asked. Most probably involving NASA, but at a time that pre-dates NASA in all likelihood.
Probably with that dubious Eratosthenes fellow?
He was Greek, of course, and we all know they have some unsavoury habits…