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Flat Earth Discussion

I was surprised to find that this belief is still widespread, but I've done some research and found that there are 'flat-earthers' all around the globe!
 
Karadra said:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/...us_people_who_believe_that_the_earth_is_flat/

Currently there is a thread on Ask Reddit about why people believe in the flat earth hypothesis.
As I said in a comment in the thread, it would be nice to get a discussion going because it has from a scientific stand-point a certain psychological value to it.
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Google Earth is a flat earther's worst nightmare...unless Google is in on the conspiracy to fool the rest of us into thinking the earth is round.

Of all the CTs out there, this one baffles me the most. The fake moon landing conspiracy has a lot more meat on the bone compared to the flat earth theory.
 
Flat Eartherism, at least in whatever current form, seems to be related to the "You can't trust whatever people in authority tell you" crowd.

If you listen to any Flat Earthers it almost never seems to be about the shape of the Earth itself but some broader point cloaked in that performance art language about not trusting "the official story" or vague conspiratorial nonsense about how some single entity controls all the news or other sources of information.

As with a lot of stuff that is so over the top nonsensical it's hard to for a rational person to believe they are being serious part of me is tempted to just call them all Poes and go about my day, but that rationalization has its own set of problems as well.

Do I think that a statistically significant percent of people, even the tiny percent it would take to qualify as an extreme fringe, exist that honestly on an intellectual level think the Earth is flat? Errrr... maybe. It's hard to be sure. I think, although I'm hardly married to this opinion and am fully ready to be wrong on it, that it's more a character act about how the facts don't matter as much as being an individual or not being part of the herd or something over inane pseudo-rebel nonsense.

I think that was is being done is a passion play, an ongoing role playing skit where we're supposed to learn the "moral" that being factually right isn't all that important, probably with some of its adherents far deeper down the rabbit hole then others.
 
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^^^There it is^^^. Doesn't matter how outlandish the belief, some people just think you can't go along with the establishment.

Also, I can't work up any interest in what Shaq personally thinks about the cosmos, much as I am not on the edge of my seat over Kim Kardashian's geopolitical musings.

ETA: whoopsie, wrong flat earth thread. Weird that there is more than one
 
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kookbreaker said:
From all I have read it is a minimum of 1000 yards. Some FE loons triumph that the Marine Sniper Manual does not mention the Coriolis effect, but somehow ignore that the manual specifically says its instructions only work up to 1000 yards.
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Long range artillery might be a better example - I believe they have to take both curvature and coriolis into account (not that it would matter to a true believer)
 
CORed said:
Until the rise of the flat earth fad, I thought you couldn't get any dumber than chemtrails, but I was wrong. If something dumber than flat earth comes up (and I can't begin to think what that might be), I think there is no hope for humanity.

Of course, for level of harm in stupid, anti-scientific ideas, anti-vaxers seem to be the champions. Believing the earth is flat is relatively harmless, aside from sheer stupidity. Convincing people not to vaccinate their children will cause some of those children to die needlessly.
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Flat earth is definitely dumber than hollow earth. Hollow earth doesn't deny what can clearly be seen, it denies what can not be seen.

I'm not convinced that anyone actually believes the hollow earth, at least some of the proponents are having a good laugh and some are just selling books to rubes.
 
Finster said:
Long range artillery might be a better example - I believe they have to take both curvature and coriolis into account (not that it would matter to a true believer)
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Yep in ballistic gunnery we use to take that into account
 
Some of the FE stuff on RubeTube includes huge doses of Christian fundamentalism, with phrases like "firmament of the heavens" sprinkled in as "evidence". Seemed to me like a weird mashup at first but I suppose it's not very far from talking snakes to the earth as a big Frisbee.
 
smartcooky said:
Well said you clueless, skill-less wizard!!
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That's not entirely correct. If Rincewind had never opened the Octavo and had one of the Great Spells lodge in his head, there's no telling how good he might have been as a wizzard (with two z's).
 
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Finster said:
Long range artillery might be a better example - I believe they have to take both curvature and coriolis into account (not that it would matter to a true believer)
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Absolutely.
Both are calculated into the standard firing charts redlegs use.
 
Most of us just use the handy charts in the firing tables to work it out.

It's been a couple of years, but I believe that the compensation for the rotation of the earth is found at Table J.
 
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