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Refuting the Flat-Earth theory
#31
RE: Refuting the Flat-Earth theory
(March 30, 2023 at 1:41 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:
(March 30, 2023 at 12:45 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Anyone who is ‘on the fence’ about the shape of the Earth is already lost. It is so grindingly, creakingly, crushingly obvious what the shape of this planet is that anyone who says, ‘Gee, I’m still not sure’ is ready to consider arguments that ducks are made of cheese.

Boru

Young people who are hearing this for the first time would be helped by a rational version of that bullshit.

young people who can navigate to this site is unlikely to be hearing this for the first time.
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#32
RE: Refuting the Flat-Earth theory
(March 30, 2023 at 6:18 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:
(March 30, 2023 at 1:41 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: Young people who are hearing this for the first time would be helped by a rational version of that bullshit.

young people who can navigate to this site is unlikely to be hearing this for the first time.

Where did I say I only do that here?
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#33
RE: Refuting the Flat-Earth theory
(March 30, 2023 at 12:45 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:
(March 30, 2023 at 6:33 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: I refute nonsense for a good reason: If we don't then only their version is available to the fence-sitters.

Anyone who is ‘on the fence’ about the shape of the Earth is already lost. It is so grindingly, creakingly, crushingly obvious what the shape of this planet is that anyone who says, ‘Gee, I’m still not sure’ is ready to consider arguments that ducks are made of cheese.

Boru

It's not obvious. If it were obvious, Aristotle would not need to make his famous three arguments for that: ships disappearing bottom first, shifting constellations as one goes north or south, and the shadow on the moon during lunar eclipse always being round (rather than sometimes round and sometimes elliptical).
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#34
RE: Refuting the Flat-Earth theory
(March 30, 2023 at 10:25 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote:
(March 30, 2023 at 12:45 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Anyone who is ‘on the fence’ about the shape of the Earth is already lost. It is so grindingly, creakingly, crushingly obvious what the shape of this planet is that anyone who says, ‘Gee, I’m still not sure’ is ready to consider arguments that ducks are made of cheese.

Boru

It's not obvious. If it were obvious, Aristotle would not need to make his famous three arguments for that: ships disappearing bottom first, shifting constellations as one goes north or south, and the shadow on the moon during lunar eclipse always being round (rather than sometimes round and sometimes elliptical).

A few hundred years BC someone had to at least make a best guess with the knowledge available.

Aristotle is off the hook for needing to do anything.  He is quite dead.
  
“If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.” — Confucius
                                      
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#35
RE: Refuting the Flat-Earth theory
(March 30, 2023 at 10:25 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote:
(March 30, 2023 at 12:45 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Anyone who is ‘on the fence’ about the shape of the Earth is already lost. It is so grindingly, creakingly, crushingly obvious what the shape of this planet is that anyone who says, ‘Gee, I’m still not sure’ is ready to consider arguments that ducks are made of cheese.

Boru

It's not obvious. If it were obvious, Aristotle would not need to make his famous three arguments for that: ships disappearing bottom first, shifting constellations as one goes north or south, and the shadow on the moon during lunar eclipse always being round (rather than sometimes round and sometimes elliptical).

You know what 5 divided by 2 is wasn’t obvious to the cavemen either, right?
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#36
RE: Refuting the Flat-Earth theory
(March 30, 2023 at 10:25 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote:
(March 30, 2023 at 12:45 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Anyone who is ‘on the fence’ about the shape of the Earth is already lost. It is so grindingly, creakingly, crushingly obvious what the shape of this planet is that anyone who says, ‘Gee, I’m still not sure’ is ready to consider arguments that ducks are made of cheese.

Boru

It's not obvious. If it were obvious, Aristotle would not need to make his famous three arguments for that: ships disappearing bottom first, shifting constellations as one goes north or south, and the shadow on the moon during lunar eclipse always being round (rather than sometimes round and sometimes elliptical).

It may not have been obvious twenty four centuries ago, it's pretty obvious now. A little thing called 'accumulation of evidence'.

Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
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#37
RE: Refuting the Flat-Earth theory
(March 31, 2023 at 3:53 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:
(March 30, 2023 at 10:25 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote: It's not obvious. If it were obvious, Aristotle would not need to make his famous three arguments for that: ships disappearing bottom first, shifting constellations as one goes north or south, and the shadow on the moon during lunar eclipse always being round (rather than sometimes round and sometimes elliptical).

It may not have been obvious twenty four centuries ago, it's pretty obvious now. A little thing called 'accumulation of evidence'.

Boru

The problem is that not everybody knows how to interpret the evidence.
When I first heard the "ships disappearing bottom first" argument, back when I was a 5th-grader, I thought "Waves seem like an obvious explanation, not the Earth being round.". Somebody had to explain to me why waves are not a good explanation for that.
For the constellations shifting as you go north or south, Flat-Earthers often say "Well, that can also be explained by stars being very close to us, not just by the Earth being round.". That is, of course, incorrect, because if that were caused by the stars being close to us rather than the Earth being round, constellations would have different shapes depending on where we look at them. But not everybody realizes that.
The Aristotle's argument from lunar eclipse seems to be rather weak (How do you know the moon get its light from the Sun? How do you know it's the Earth's shadow on the moon, rather than the shadow of some other celestial body?), and Flat-Earhters probably cannot be blamed for not accepting it.
Fast-forward to the modern age when we can see time zones and GPS working and the dip of the horizon from an airplane... Not everybody realizes that time zones, the way they are, can only be explained by the Earth being round. Not everybody even knows about polar day and polar night at Antarctica, much less has thought about it to realize that it proves the Earth to be round. Not everybody understands how GPS works well enough to understand how it proves the Earth is round, how we can prove that it receives signals from the satellites rather than land-based emitters (that, if GPS devices received signals from land-based emitters, they would need more than 3 signals to determine their location). And not everybody knows about the dip of the horizon (which is, in my opinion, enough to prove the Earth is round to any remotely reasonable person).
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#38
RE: Refuting the Flat-Earth theory
(March 31, 2023 at 1:00 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote:
(March 31, 2023 at 3:53 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: It may not have been obvious twenty four centuries ago, it's pretty obvious now. A little thing called 'accumulation of evidence'.

Boru

The problem is that not everybody knows how to interpret the evidence.
When I first heard the "ships disappearing bottom first" argument, back when I was a 5th-grader, I thought "Waves seem like an obvious explanation, not the Earth being round.". Somebody had to explain to me why waves are not a good explanation for that.
For the constellations shifting as you go north or south, Flat-Earthers often say "Well, that can also be explained by stars being very close to us, not just by the Earth being round.". That is, of course, incorrect, because if that were caused by the stars being close to us rather than the Earth being round, constellations would have different shapes depending on where we look at them. But not everybody realizes that.
The Aristotle's argument from lunar eclipse seems to be rather weak (How do you know the moon get its light from the Sun? How do you know it's the Earth's shadow on the moon, rather than the shadow of some other celestial body?), and Flat-Earhters probably cannot be blamed for not accepting it.
Fast-forward to the modern age when we can see time zones and GPS working and the dip of the horizon from an airplane... Not everybody realizes that time zones, the way they are, can only be explained by the Earth being round. Not everybody even knows about polar day and polar night at Antarctica, much less has thought about it to realize that it proves the Earth to be round. Not everybody understands how GPS works well enough to understand how it proves the Earth is round, how we can prove that it receives signals from the satellites rather than land-based emitters (that, if GPS devices received signals from land-based emitters, they would need more than 3 signals to determine their location). And not everybody knows about the dip of the horizon (which is, in my opinion, enough to prove the Earth is round to any remotely reasonable person).

(Bold mine)

But you aren’t dealing with remotely reasonable people. You’re dealing with Flat Earthers, who are already aware of the multiple lines of evidence that the Earth is (mostly) spherical and have chosen to reject it. These people are hopelessly stupid and you are wasting your time dealing with them.

Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
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#39
RE: Refuting the Flat-Earth theory
(March 31, 2023 at 1:14 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:
(March 31, 2023 at 1:00 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote: The problem is that not everybody knows how to interpret the evidence.
When I first heard the "ships disappearing bottom first" argument, back when I was a 5th-grader, I thought "Waves seem like an obvious explanation, not the Earth being round.". Somebody had to explain to me why waves are not a good explanation for that.
For the constellations shifting as you go north or south, Flat-Earthers often say "Well, that can also be explained by stars being very close to us, not just by the Earth being round.". That is, of course, incorrect, because if that were caused by the stars being close to us rather than the Earth being round, constellations would have different shapes depending on where we look at them. But not everybody realizes that.
The Aristotle's argument from lunar eclipse seems to be rather weak (How do you know the moon get its light from the Sun? How do you know it's the Earth's shadow on the moon, rather than the shadow of some other celestial body?), and Flat-Earhters probably cannot be blamed for not accepting it.
Fast-forward to the modern age when we can see time zones and GPS working and the dip of the horizon from an airplane... Not everybody realizes that time zones, the way they are, can only be explained by the Earth being round. Not everybody even knows about polar day and polar night at Antarctica, much less has thought about it to realize that it proves the Earth to be round. Not everybody understands how GPS works well enough to understand how it proves the Earth is round, how we can prove that it receives signals from the satellites rather than land-based emitters (that, if GPS devices received signals from land-based emitters, they would need more than 3 signals to determine their location). And not everybody knows about the dip of the horizon (which is, in my opinion, enough to prove the Earth is round to any remotely reasonable person).

(Bold mine)

But you aren’t dealing with remotely reasonable people. You’re dealing with Flat Earthers, who are already aware of the multiple lines of evidence that the Earth is (mostly) spherical and have chosen to reject it. These people are hopelessly stupid and you are wasting your time dealing with them.

Boru

But maybe many Flat-Earthers are not aware of multiple lines of evidence the Earth is round. Maybe many of them have only heard the Aristotle's arguments, their supposed refutations, and think all the arguments for the Earth being round are about as weak as the Aristotle's argument with lunar eclipse. You know, like I used to think back when I was a Flat-Earther.
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#40
RE: Refuting the Flat-Earth theory
(March 31, 2023 at 1:40 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote:
(March 31, 2023 at 1:14 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: (Bold mine)

But you aren’t dealing with remotely reasonable people. You’re dealing with Flat Earthers, who are already aware of the multiple lines of evidence that the Earth is (mostly) spherical and have chosen to reject it. These people are hopelessly stupid and you are wasting your time dealing with them.

Boru

But maybe many Flat-Earthers are not aware of multiple lines of evidence the Earth is round. Maybe many of them have only heard the Aristotle's arguments, their supposed refutations, and think all the arguments for the Earth being round are about as weak as the Aristotle's argument with lunar eclipse. You know, like I used to think back when I was a Flat-Earther.

Is this something that you've studied systematically?
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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