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A Man Named Parallax — Parallax Forums

A Man Named Parallax

ercoerco Posts: 20,244
edited 2020-08-18 14:47 in General Discussion
The earth is flat! Jump to 8:00.

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  • It can't be flat, all the cats would have knocked everything over the edge by now.
  • erco wrote: »
    The earth is flat! Jump to 8:00...

    Apropos of nothing, but I live about 2 miles from where "Parallax" did his experiment.
  • I had to chew on this statistic a bit: "Only 82% of people have always believed the earth is a sphere". Unfortunately we don't get the benefit of seeing the wording of the underlying question that generated this statistic. That is a problem for me. The wording of the question is *important* if you want to draw anything meaningful from the stat.

    If I was ever asked "have you always believed the earth was round?", I would have to honestly answer "no". And by his math, that puts me squarely in the "idjit" category (which I won't 100% deny. hehehe).

    I think all of us, given honest introspection, at one point believed the Earth was flat. This is a natural consequence of human development. As a child we base our initial views of the world upon our own experiences and observations. Our young world consists almost entirely of a very small patch of land, parents and a few friends, and ME-ME-ME. So OF COURSE we would have said "the Earth is flat. I can see it is flat". Unless of course you live in the mountains in which case an equally valid answer is "no, it is all mountains!". Either answer, flat or mountainous, would be a very reasonable position to take initially. And then comes Geography, which shows that the Earth isn't flat (or only composed of mountains), and Physics to prove that a spherical Earth is not inconsistent with what we observe.

    So at some point I think we all were "flat Earthers", and I wonder if his 82% statistic is being warped by sheer honesty. This would also explain thekids who answered that same question where only 66% "always" believed the Earth was round. My experience with "kids" shows they are far more willing to admit they were wrong (or formerly held a different viewpoint) than "adults". So the 66% of "kids" he chastises as being gullible or intentionally defiant of science may have simply been these kids being more honest.

    His main point however is well taken. In this day and age there isn't an excuse for being intentionally obtuse. We ALL may have started from a "flat Earth" model, but then that first bell called us into kindergarten class and thus the myth was shattered. At least for most of us.
  • Dave HeinDave Hein Posts: 6,347
    edited 2020-08-18 19:28
    I grew up in Kansas, and I can definitely tell you the earth is flat there! The roads are laid out in a square grid, where each road runs either north-and-south, or east-and-west. You can travel east or west from one county to another without ever encountering a bend in the road. However, if your travel north or south eventually you will encounter an intersection where the road shifts slightly to the east or west. That was true except for a road named Meridian Avenue. You could drive north or south on Meridian without encountering a curve.

    The roads west of Meridian Avenue would shift to the west as you travel north, and the roads east of Meridian would shift to the east. It wasn't until I started going to college that I realized that this was done to compensate for the curvature of the earth. Where I lived in Kansas, these adjustments were made every 30 miles.

    Yes, I knew the earth was round since I was a kid, but I had never thought about how it would affect laying out a square road grid over a large area.
  • The statistic doesn't make sense.
    If you believe in the Holy Bile, aren't you automatically supposed to believe that the earth is flat?
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    The Volvo round the world sailing races go to the Southern ocean way south to minimise the distance they sail, so much so it was dangerous because of ice bergs that they had to limit how far south they can sail.

    If you look at the flat maps, you quickly see that the distance around the Antarctic ice cliffs would be huge. You would only need to fly around the earth on say the 80th south latitude to calculate the distance compared to flying around the equator.

    Then again, you can never convince the “nuts” of the world anything. Some don’t believe COVID is real while others believe it’s caused by 5G even tho there’s in fact little 5G in use yet.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    ctwardell wrote: »
    It can't be flat, all the cats would have knocked everything over the edge by now.

    640 x 421 - 84K
  • WBA ConsultingWBA Consulting Posts: 2,933
    edited 2020-08-18 22:00
    Uh-oh, not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but looks like Youtube is suggesting the same videos to Erco as it does me...... LOL I was also intrigued at the Parallax name....

    The best comment on that Youtube video:
    "For about 4 years, I believed the Earth was flat. But, then I turned 5."

    What's worse is that these people are allowed to drive, vote, etc.
  • @Cluso99
    Sitting in a crowded pub...almost back to normal here. Media tells us that we have a surge of the bug. Big hospital has 2 patients who have not even been on ventilators. Small hospital has zero patients. Just sayin :lol:
  • UK, BTW.
  • Cluso99 wrote: »
    If you look at the flat maps, you quickly see that the distance around the Antarctic ice cliffs would be huge.

    That is exactly what they want you to think, @Cluso99.

    In truth, there is actually a discontinuity in the space-time fabric caused by alien plasma barrier generators strategically placed on bouys just south of Lat 80. The farther south you go, the more acute the discontinuity becomes. These generators were placed there by NASA/NOAA and are powered by the solar wind. These things are the reason you see the aurora the closer you get to the Edge. (You also see them at the North Pole because it's located at the intersection of the waves... basically a "standing wave" effect).

    Hey: I saw it on the interwebz so it must be true! :smiley:

  • Wuerfel_21Wuerfel_21 Posts: 4,374
    edited 2020-08-19 00:00
    Don't believe the lies.

    Flat earth theory is a distraction perpetuated by the US government to obscure the truth that the earth is a horoshpere! They don't want us to know this because that would mean that climate change is a hoax made up by the chinese government to sell more dangerous metal straws on Wish.com (and also because an infinite surface earth would crash the real estate market).

    Obviously, you're wondering, why are the US and China cooperating on this? Obviously, they've all been replaced with reptiloid mutants origingally created by Bill Gates to help him dodge taxes.
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    edited 2020-08-19 01:04
    Mickster wrote: »
    @Cluso99
    Sitting in a crowded pub...almost back to normal here. Media tells us that we have a surge of the bug. Big hospital has 2 patients who have not even been on ventilators. Small hospital has zero patients. Just sayin :lol:
    From what my daughter tells me, UK is hardly back to normal. They have worse figures than our Victorian outbreak!

    The latest info seems to think that this outbreak in Victoria was started by 4 people in one family who returned from overseas with the virus, and who passed it on while in quarantine. We've had > 300 deaths from this outbreak, and they have been in stage 4 lockdown with night curfew and compulsory masks, no travel beyond 5km, only essential workers, all to get this under control. There have been 17,000+ cases there, and nearly all from this outbreak.
    And in NSW, our outbreak has been traced to Victorians, a number of which broke the isolation rules getting into NSW.

    I wouldn't be sitting in any pub anywhere in the world! Just sayin'. Everyone has to do their part!
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    edited 2020-08-19 01:24
    You should read this article about how our Victorian (Australia) outbreak of COVID19 spread to NSW where it almost got out of control.
    Most countries have way too many cases to be able to do the sort of testing and tracing that we're doing in Oz.
    It just shows how even a couple of unsuspecting people can spread this virus.

    And then we have some who are deliberately not taking this seriously!



    Full disclosure: I am 68 and in a very high risk category. If I get it, I'll probably die as I have underlying lung problems, but otherwise healthy.
  • There are so many things wrong with the flat earth model, it's really hard to believe there are more than ten people gullible enough to fall for it.

    If the Earth were really flat, it would be really easy to demonstrate. A few measurements of the position of the sun in the sky through the course of a day would allow a person to figure out high above the ground it travelled (the height would be some fraction of their distance from the north pole). The sun would be well above the horizon at midnight. Everyone on Earth would see a midnight sun and it would always be due north at midnight.
    The only location on a flat earth where one would observe circular star trails would be at the north pole. All other locations would observe elliptical star trails.

    The sky would look very very different if the Earth were flat.

    Geometry and trigonometry is the cure to thinking the Earth is flat.
  • ElectrodudeElectrodude Posts: 1,614
    edited 2020-08-19 06:28
    No amount of geometry, trigonometry, demonstrations, facts, logic, or truth will cure people of flat-earthism. I'm convinced nearly all flat-earthers just want the attention, and that there's been practically nobody ever who's heard the arguments for why the Earth must be round, and who therefore isn't just acting out of simple ignorance (which always has been and always will be), and who has nevertheless honestly and in good faith persisted in believing it's flat.

    In fact, I strongly suspect stubborn flat-earthism is a relatively modern phenomenon that only started when people found it got themselves attention.

    Pythagoras figured the Earth must be round in the 500s B.C., and Eratosthenes computed its circumference pretty accurately in the 200s B.C., and despite the modern idea that everyone in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages was anti-science and thought the Earth was flat (an idea, by the way, that is a modern conclusion fabricated to make us moderns looks smart), I'm aware of several quotations by important Christian authors (including St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas) from the 4th-13th centuries A.D. in which they pretty much take for granted the fact that the Earth is round.

    If you want to help flat-earthers, stop giving them your attention and maybe they'll get a real hobby once they find out they lost their source of attention.
  • @Cluso99

    UK government words: Social distancing, face masks in shops, yada, yada.

    UK government actions: Eat at the pub, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and the government picks up 50% of the tab.

    The regional health care official that I was speaking with the other day, who was disgusted at the difference between reality and what the media is reporting; I asked him if there was any truth to the reports of nurses opening test kits and sending them off - unused - and receiving positive results. He confirmed that this was true because they wanted to know for themselves.

    In the past few weeks I have enabled two manufacturing plants to keep making/shipping product and paying wages. I'm on my third, right now.

    Don't have TV and pay no attention to the media. I still remember the BBC reporting the collapse of WT-7, 20+ minutes before it fell.

    https://youtu.be/LEsjv9vKCGc
  • ErNaErNa Posts: 1,738
    Flat earthers are all around. Still today. Even in rock solid science. Dirac postulated a positive electron in 1928 that was found in 1932 as he realized that equations decribing the electron have a complement solution that would result in inversing charge. Since that time people postulate new particles whenever the find such equations with "unused" solutions, even when basic principles are hurted, like conservation of energy and momentum. To become famous. That also happens in politics.
  • Mickster wrote: »
    The statistic doesn't make sense.
    If you believe in the Holy Bile, aren't you automatically supposed to believe that the earth is flat?

    @Mickster
    No, not necessarily. There was no need to mention the other planets or the fact that we are hurtling through space and several km/h. I believe God let us learn that on our own.
  • Eratosthanese pretty correctly estimated the Earth's spherical size about 240 BC. While most people of the day were not literate or educated, anyone who was of that class (including a lot of slaves who were owned by less literate and educated masters) would have been aware of it. It seems pretty unlikely that Yeshua ben Miriam of Nazareth, who was pretty well educated by the standards of his people and their occupying empire, would have not been taught this.
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  • I swear I could see the curve of the horizon when I was on the top of a cell tower, when I was doing a repair.
    Perhaps that was just my eyeball curve, but wait, aren't eyes flat too?


    Just tell any flat-er that they can climb any old tv tower, even if its broadcasting, to see the flatness.

    Remind them to take a lunch, so they can eat half way up.

    (i can't believe anyone actually tries to make this claim)
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    Wuerfel_21 wrote: »
    unknown.png
    Oh. That’s what happened to the dinosaurs when the meteorite hit - they got thrown off the earth as it tipped :sunglasses:
  • Then was the sun different for them? Maybe the sun never moved for the dinosaurs, but the asteroid knocked our disc-shaped earth into a spin and now the sun appears to move 🧐🤣

  • I think you figured it all out, cronk!

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  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Amazingly, there are flat earthers all around the globe. :)
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    I'm surprised that meteor didn't break the world into pieces like a dropped dinner plate ;-)
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Journey to the Center of the Earth would be a very short book/movie if Earth was a flat disk. How thick is the alleged disk? What's on the other side?

    flat-earth-society-says-tesla-roadster-not-crashing-into-iss-proves-their-point-123365_1.jpg
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