I know many FE’s are trolls, but for the true believers, how do they explain the simple things like the hull of a ship disappearing from view before the sails as the ship is leaving the shore?
I guess similar question for sunset/sunrise being different at different locations
Perspective, visual angle of attack, you need a P90,000, ect.
Do topologists limit their studies to the object being deformed? Or are there models where the space around the object is deformed as well? I have no idea what a reasonable application of such a model would be, but I am neither a topologist nor a physicist.
I mean if a bowl can be topologically equivalent to a sphere, I can’t see why a pancake isn’t.
Point taken: let me pivot. For simplicity, imagine a geocentric model, with the sun rotating around the earth. That can be modeled as a sphere (the earth) inside another sphere (the shell containing the sun). Now flatten that system into a pancake. The sun rises, the sun sets, but I’m not sure whether the light rays in between the earth and the outer shell get very weird.
Man, the trolling possibilities for flat earthing are endless. “I’m not a geographer, so I couldn’t say whether the earth is flat or not. I say we leave these things to the experts.”
“Teach the controversy!”
If the earth is flat, where does the sun go when it sets? Beneath the flat earth? How do timezones exist?
If the sun isn’t going behind the ground, why does it disappear at all?
Refraction.
I’m not going to play ‘roleplay the scenario where you are the only sane person in the room’.
That’s been covered a couple times in this thread already. They’ll claim refraction, perspective, etc.
Their answer is that the sun is “local”, which to them means it’s a few dozen miles above the earth inside the firmament. They won’t engage with any questions involving the December equinox in the Southern Hemisphere.
Again, there’s a failure to grasp the concept of perspective (the most common root cause of all in flerfs arguments). If the sun is small and local and night happens because the sun is moving away from the local area, we should expect to see its angular size increase in the morning and decrease in the evening.
How do they deal with Eratosthenes’s measurement that the sun is 7 degrees from vertical at Alexandria on midsummer day and overhead at Aswan? That was the basis for his calculation of the earth’s diameter. How do they deal with eclipses?
Fallaciously but vehemently.
There seems to be a misconception that people are generally open to examining the world and developing models to explain their observations and/or modify any existing models they have in their heads, especially when presented with direct evidence to contradict their beliefs.
This is so far beyond the historic norm as to be laughable.
There’s also a misconception that we have gotten better about such things, especially in the last century. That one might be true to some small degree but only to a small degree
“The sun is only a few thousand (or hundred) miles away so the rays aren’t actually parallel.”
It’s very simple!
Parallel,
Not parallel,
And the moon shines by its own light, just like it says in the Bible. It wanders in front of the sun for a solar eclipse. (Just don’t ask them to show their work predicting one.)
Now ask them about lunar eclipses and they pretty much say “squirrel!”
They demand photograph proof, but when you show them photographic proof they yell “CGI!” And they want NASA to put on a mission just for them.
It is great fun after they say there are no southern hemisphere flights to hear from people who have taken the flights they say don’t exist.
Or in other words: “What even is perspective? How do I into perspective?”
Seriously, more than half of flat-earthism is just the failure to grasp that faraway things look smaller. I’ve even heard it as an argument about the sizes of the moon and sun - like ‘how can the sun be 865,000 miles across and look the same size as the moon, which we’re told is only a couple thousand miles across? Explain that NASA!!!’
Where’s Dermot Morgan when you need him?
Can they not look at a rock or a ball (or anything), and then walk 50 feet away and look again??
And have they never looked in the rearview mirror of their car and noticed that the car behind them fits in a mirror of a few inches?
These appear to be people who are just not very good at connecting dots or transferring a principle observed clearly in one place, to any other context.
My brother’s son and his wife are feeling terrible having learned that their 4-year-old child has a hearing disability. They had been disciplining him for not following directions.
Everyone has cognitive impairments to one degree or another and if you’ve been paying attention during your lifetime you’ll recognize that most of them aren’t fatal but they can be limiting. Not everyone is cut out to be a surgeon or a fighter pilot. A moment’s reflection on politics should also make it clear that things look very different to different people.
Some cultures have managed to settle on a more or less scientific approach to learning while others are still untangling themselves from the grip of lore, superstition and quackery (very much a regional trend in the US).
In politics, it seems clear to me that a sizable component of the “digging in of one’s heels” is driven by an urge to say “fuck you” to one’s opponents. Trolling.
So in that regard yes, most flat Earthers are trolls.
Dead, sadly.