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Flat Earth Believers... I DONT GET IT!!!!

Zigman66 said:
There was an interesting thought running thru this: Power makes what is presented as knowledge. Similar to history is always written by the victor. I can see where they more present themselves as free thinkers and even why they might not trust information that has been crammed down their throats. I have always been interested in science yet even in just my lifetime I have seen "facts" change. Same in political science. Mathematical science. Even more fringe types of thinking like astrology seem to have changed over the years. All these facts change due to more advanced knowledge over the years, at least I like to think so, but what do we truly know about things we have not had personal contact with?
Don't get me wrong, I have way more faith in the scientific community as a whole than I do in in any of these fringe-type opinions and studies but since we have so many different ways to self prove many things the only ones that seem to hold water are the theories and studies of the scientific masses. Not to say that one man with an outrageous sounding theory can't suddenly be the next Einstein or Galileo, It is simply that we have accrued so much knowledge that many theories are much easier to prove than they used to be.
The downside tho, getting back to those in power supplying what we are supposed to take as knowledge, when you have a world leader (pick your country, at this point) that decries any facts not personally spoken by him or her and has the benefit of media control it gets harder for the average person to know what to believe. And therein lies the problem: The masses are not as educated as they really should be. Most of history's villains were of genius level and controlled the people by promoting their own set of facts.
Personally, I think it is ALL fake news. There is no other universe outside of Android Forum. My dog told me and she wouldn't lie... I asked her!
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The main knock in the belief that those in power are writing lies in terms of science is that those in power actually has repeatedly shown very little interest or knowledge of science. Which means them covering up for it is already on thin ice.

Plus science holds everything together in a well explained cohesiveness of physical laws. For any single argument of the flat earthers, they are ignoring several laws of physics which are required to uphold another of their theories. Basically any number of flat earth theories contradict each other, wherein if one has to be true, the other has to be false. Unlike actual science where each theory strengthens each other.

All in all this just presents the failing education in majority of the world, wherein school is becoming less of something you do to learn, but just becoming a chore that you forget right after doing it. Critical thinking is also apparently at an all-time low where a lot of people are confused by simple thought experiments and relativity of each object to each other.

The very fact that snipers are able to hit targets of over 500 yards away is because they compute for the curvature and spin of the earth. That's already a mathematical proof in a real life scenario that there is a curvature, because if it didn't curve, then those additional computations should be making the bullets miss.
 
chanchan05 said:
Plus science holds everything together in a well explained cohesiveness of physical laws. For any single argument of the flat earthers, they are ignoring several laws of physics which are required to uphold another of their theories.
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And that is why it would be impossible to have a rational discussion with these people and try to convince them that they're wrong. A bit like hitting your head against a brick wall. Although you'd probably end up bludgeoning the flat earther's head against the brick wall after some time trying to argue with them.
 
Zigman66 said:
I have always been interested in science yet even in just my lifetime I have seen "facts" change. Same in political science. Mathematical science.
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You'll forgive me if I question the extent to which political science is actually a science ;). (I am of course speaking as a physicist).

Mathematics is a more interesting one: it has applications in science, but it's not itself a study of the natural world, and you could argue that it's more akin to philosophy than science (and indeed several prominent philosophers have been mathematicians).

As for "facts" changing, in science I would say that facts do not change. But you need to be very careful about what is a fact and what is an interpretation. For example if some fossil skeleton was previously classified as Compsognathus and is now classified as Archaeopterix the facts (the fossil itself) have not changed, but rather people have drawn a different lesson from more detailed study of them and a better understanding of the context around them, including other fossils discovered since and a more detailed understanding of therapod evolution that has come from their study. And science works by a process of scrutiny, critique, experimentation and correction, so changes in understanding are normal.
 
I agree and that is pretty much what I meant. I had put "facts" in quotations to try to make it a bit more obvious. I also agree about political science yet it exists, much like "alternative facts". As a philosopher-type science nut I try to keep in mind that "facts" as we know them may not be actual facts. Like you explained, the actual facts don't change, just our perception or understanding does. Given that argument, however, keep in mind it was once a fact that bloodletting was the preferred method for draining illness out of people suffering ailments of nearly any type. The idea that the illness can be carried by the blood is a fact as we know it today but the "fact" that bloodletting would cure anyone has changed. To that end leeches were also used for the same reason. Today leeches are still used in some areas for their anti-coagulant properties to aid in healing cuts and surgical areas, especially in skin grafts and surgical re-attachments. Using the leeches for bloodletting was a treatment based on their perception of fact. Further scientific research has changed the view of the fact but not the fact itself.

I probably could have kept it short and simple by merely staying with my first sentence ;)
 
chanchan05 said:
Plus science holds everything together in a well explained cohesiveness of physical laws.
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Not really. Physics is as much faith-based as most religions. The biggest difference is that Science shows many more miracles in practice than do the aforementioned religions.

Seriously, does anyone here (with the possible exception of Hadron) really know what the weak force does? Or is not weirded out by quantum entanglement vis-a-vis the so-called absolute limit of c?

For that matter, how are the effects of magnetism not freakin' magical?
 
I was watching a few different shows regarding string theory and Higgs-Bosun and still have a hard time wrapping my head around them
 
I believe there is so much that can't be explained but you can see its effects in various ways.

I am extremely scientific and have very good grasp of maths and science but I am definitely not narrow minded like a lot of other people in my same field.

Everyone I have ever met has almost always disregarded certain spiritual elements as utter bull shit but what they don't realise is that there definitely without a shadow of a doubt are certain influences that we are subject to.

Only certain people are able to actually sit there and realise it and see it.

You cant see it... You can't touch it... But it's definitely there...

I believe there are all kinds of waves that we haven't even begun to understand yet but people will always take the popular belief that it's a load of bull shit because it's much safer to agree with the masses.

"Might = right" (which is not the case at all)

Often in history so many times have the mass majority always agreed with the massive popular opinion but they have proven much later to be totally wrong.

Everyone used to always believe that the earth was flat and anyone who didn't agree was seen as mad or problematic or bad news.

It's funny how the most popular things to say and believe all gets turned on its head later when the truth is finally released.

Sometimes sadly the truth is never revealed and the criminals and deceivers get away with their sinister crimes.

I'd rather go down and believe in what I believe as the truth rather than what the masses blindly follow and believe :)

I'd rather be one ugly blinding guiding light that even if it is much later in life finally is the truth after all than one big cess pool of beautiful lies.

People love to do what is easy and go with the masses. :)
 
chanchan05 said:
The very fact that snipers are able to hit targets of over 500 yards away is because they compute for the curvature and spin of the earth. That's already a mathematical proof in a real life scenario that there is a curvature, because if it didn't curve, then those additional computations should be making the bullets miss.
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question..
in this example.. a Bullet..
I am not sure that the earth curvature is part of the correction...

Speed
wind
and.... Gravity.

right? i cant see how curvature affects a bullet.
what am i missing?

building a long bridge.. engineers need to take in the curvature of the earth. so that parts line up.
 
science has to correct things all the time.

Pluto is a good example.

math and quantum science.. with time... dimensions... there is a lot of room for recalculation.
which is miles beyond my brain
 
And take the coriolis effect into serious consideration as well :)

This is why a sniper trying to assassinate his / her target at a long distance must take the coriolis effect into serious consideration or they could easily miss their target and then get wasted!


 
The above video actually explained it pretty well. It has to do with the fact that the earth is rotating while you are firing so the speed of that rotation does have an effect on bullet travel. But to maybe get more of a layman's view try this example: If you were riding in the passenger seat of a car holding a slingshot with ammo of your choice, try hitting a road sign while your other person is driving at 30 mph. Then try it at 60 mph. Chances are you might have hit the sign once or even twice at the first speed but I doubt you would hit it at all at the second speed. The reasons are that your calculations (aiming) at the first speed would be quite difficult at the first speed because not only are you compensating for the angle but the ammo is also already traveling at 30 miles an hour in a tangent from your target. You would have to calculate how much compensation you would need at that speed. The calculations for 60 mph don't just double, I believe they are multiplied by a factor of 4 (any mathematician out there please feel free to correct me) so now the calculations become even more difficult. Now try the exact same experiment with trying to hit the signs after you pass them. The calculations are entirely different. This is one of the biggest reasons hunters are told not to try to hit a running target. Most can't calculate these variances in the few seconds you have to hit the target, especially because the targets rarely run in straight lines or planes.
 
OK.. i see...
i learned something new today

the movement.. spin of the earth.. moves the target...
time of the bullet in movement... the earth rotation.. can move the target.

that makes sense.
again... real world proof ... round planet.

thank you.
 
I'd question that physics involves an act of faith in the same way: it is, after all testable, quantifiable and repeatable. If a religion could achieve that it wouldn't be religion but magic. Of course physical theories do consist of the application of abstract concepts (energy, momentum, charge) to abstract entitities, many of which cannot be directly perceived (electrons, protons, etc), and any half-decent physicist knows that there's a difference between the theory the the thing itself. But then "directly perceived" is a phrase that's fraught with difficulty: we have no direct perception of reality, just interpretations, models that we form from information filtered from a few very limited and imperfect senses. So the idea that understanding the universe involves positing entities which we cannot see should not be a surprise. Nor the idea that the universe behaves very differently on scales(*) that are far from our everyday experience: so much of the "weirdness" of quantum mechanics comes from trying to apply pictures of how the world works on human scales to its behaviour on sub-atomic scales and finding that those pictures don't work, but really what right do we have to expect that they should?

So yeah, the weak force isn't especially mysterious, or no more so than the electromagnetic force and much easier than the strong force. Gravity is the weird one (anyone with a working quantum theory of gravity, please let us know!). As for what the weak interaction does, the "every day" answer is beta decay: and since the chains of reactions going on in the Sun include beta decays, and the main hydrogen fusion chain would be impossible without them, it's a lot more important to us than you'd guess.

Magnetism, I will grant you, is not something that anyone would have invented unless they were forced to ;).
 
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The Coriolis effect is interesting, because it's another thing that's "unnatural" in a flat Earth (i.e. another place where you have to add complexity to your ideas to "explain" what we observe), and also because it's not the only pseudo-force you experience in a rotating coordinate system.

Of course you could produce a Coriolis effect on a flat world if that world was rotating (maybe the elephants are walking in circles around the turtle's back). The problem is that that cannot account for the direction shift as you cross the equator. So I'm sure they have to invent some different reason to explain the patterns of winds we observe.

But there's also centripetal acceleration, which has a measurable (though small) effect on measurements of gravitational acceleration at different latitudes and also depending on your motion (East-West or West-East). It's straightforward enough (with a bit of mathematics) to account for the measured effects using the idea that you are making your measurements on the surface of a rotating sphere, but rotation on a flat disc (say with the North pole in the centre and Antactica around the edges) would get it completely wrong, since the effects would keep getting larger as you go South rather than peaking at the equator (where you are furthest from the axis of rotation) - the same problem they have with explaining Coriolis effects, but with a different behaviour (independent of your motion relative to the surface). And of course centripetal acceleration would require that a plumb line on a rotating flat Earth would not hang vertically, and would become less vertical the further from the centre you got (as opposed to being vertical at the poles and equator and offset by a changing amount inbetween - up to a maximum of about 0.1 degrees, if you are curious).

So I suspect they "solve" this by assuming that the Earth is not rotating and adding something else to account for large scale wind patterns, and waffle if faced with centripetal effects (or the combination of Coriolis and centripetal known as the Eötvös effect).

Which raises another question: how do they explain tides? The Earth breathing in and out...?
 
The elephants and turtle are animals and they have to breathe, right? THAT was easy to explain! Physicists always have to overthink things :cool:
 
Dngrsone said:
Not really. Physics is as much faith-based as most religions. The biggest difference is that Science shows many more miracles in practice than do the aforementioned religions.

Seriously, does anyone here (with the possible exception of Hadron) really know what the weak force does? Or is not weirded out by quantum entanglement vis-a-vis the so-called absolute limit of c?

For that matter, how are the effects of magnetism not freakin' magical?
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Hadron explained it better than I could have.

In the case of flat earthers, the theories they postulate don't even go into the quantum mechanics of that level of physics. It could all almost be explained by basic high school physics if they cared to listen in class.

Anyway, I wonder how flat earthers even explain the extended days and nights in the north pole (since they don't believe the south pole exists). Do they think that the sun wobbles in the sky?
 
chanchan05 said:
Do they think that the sun wobbles in the sky?
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