What globe? Flat Earth and Flat-Earthers

[lilies]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

Amateur rocket launches show definitely curved Earth with on-board camera. No government involvement and lot higher than videos made on airplanes.

skip to [03:40]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNtR5HIL3FM

You can watch this one from the beginning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNtR5HIL3FM

Less lens distortion: This one appears to have a more expensive camera.
skip to [03:05]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvDqoxMUroA

The cameras have the usual lens distortion, but still curvature is clearly visible.

 

[Laura]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

An eclisped Moon and the Sun can be seen at the same time. This is a documented phenomenon known as "selenelion".

And another in October 2014:

http://www.space.com/27338-total-lunar-eclipse-rare-sunrise-selenelion.html

It was only partial as viewed from where we are, but I made sure I was up to see it!

Added: Pierre referred to his previous post about atmospheric refraction, but just to keep the idea fresh in the mind, I thought I'd reprise the image which I'm sure everyone is familiar with in their own lives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_refraction

In simple terms it is the reason why light doesn't necessarrily travel along a straight line. It is deviated because of density differences between air masses. Light bends towards higher density.

That's why the pencil below doesn't look straight:

Air and water have very different density, thus refract (deviate) light differently:

 

[Laura]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

Some more fun images of refraction via water. Keep in mind that what the water does is ALSO done by the atmosphere to a greater or lesser extent depending on the conditions of the atmosphere and the relationship between the observer, the observed, and the medium through which the observation is made. Something viewed at the horizon is being seen through a much thicker layer of atmosphere which, at that thickness, becomes very much like water. Also, the atmosphere may be loaded with moisture or ice crystals which can add even more fun effects.

The above images are things from everyday life. Just use your imagination a little (keeping the laws of refraction in mind!) to imagine how weird things can get in the sky!

 

[Mal7]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

I think perhaps the idea that one can definitively prove as an absolutely logical certainty beyond all possible doubt that the world is a globe, does not actually fit with some models of what science is.

It may be better to regard science as something that gives us a "best working hypothesis". It does seem to me that the theory that the world is a globe, and not flat, is the current "best working hypothesis" for explaining multitudes of phenomena. But I think ultimately someone can choose to believe a different paradigm, such as that the world is flat, and the rest of us may not be able to present a logically water-tight argument that defeats their paradigm. For example, on the conventionally accepted theory that the earth is several billions of years old, there is plenty of evidence that one could produce, e.g. dating methods using radioactive isotopes, but a creationist could still counter-argue that God just made things 6,000 years ago so that they would look much older than they actually are. Within the creationist's paradigm, God is omnipotent and so creating old artifacts and hiding fossils in rocks to confuse future palaeontologists would be easily within God's capabilities.

The philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend's theory of "epistemological anarchism" includes the idea of the "incommensurability of paradigms":

Furthermore, Feyerabend held that deciding between competing scientific accounts was complicated by the incommensurability of scientific theories. Incommensurability means that scientific theories cannot be reconciled or synthesised because the interpretation and practice of science is always informed by theoretical assumptions, which leads to proponents of competing theories using different terms, engaged in different language-games and thus talking past each other.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_anarchism

Whether a flat earth is a possibility could also be looked at from a kind of reverse-engineering perspective. For example, if you were a super-clever, near-omnipotent kind of enitity (God, alien, 4D control system), would it be theoretically possible that you could create a world that was flat, but whose inhabitants thought it was a globe? I think perhaps it would be possible, e.g.:
. . .the apparent celestial sphere above this flat earth could be a high-resolution display monitor that mimics what events would look like if the earth were a globe,
. . . people who set out on a round-the-world voyage and actually discover the edge of a flat earth could be sprayed with an amnesia drug (like in the Men-in-Black movies) and hypnotized into thinking they had performed a successful circumnavigation.

So in this science-fictional thought experiment the explanations do start becoming very ad hoc (or at least they may seem to be very ad hoc or contrived from the paradigm of the "globalists", the explanations might seem perfectly reasonable within the flat-earther's paradigm), but I think it shows that perfoming an absolutely definitive logical denunciation of flat earth theories may not be practicable, or perhaps even desirable. . . Perhaps the Flat Earther's should be allowed to persist in their minority paradigm, on the off-chance that at some point in time their paradigm that the earth is flat may actually become the dominant paradigm and the conventional wisdom of the future, and they may then be able to say "See, I told you so, we were right all along!" :)

 

[Laura]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

I think perhaps the idea that one can definitively prove as an absolutely logical certainty beyond all possible doubt that the world is a globe, does not actually fit with some models of what science is.

Except for the fact, in the case of our planet, there is photographic and witness evidence.

 

[Mal7]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

I think perhaps the idea that one can definitively prove as an absolutely logical certainty beyond all possible doubt that the world is a globe, does not actually fit with some models of what science is.

Except for the fact, in the case of our planet, there is photographic and witness evidence.

I agree there is an abundance of evidence, which is why I personally think the earth is a globe. If a flat-earther cannot give an adequate explanation of how their theory is compatible with all of this evidence, then they should really either abandon their flat-earth paradigm, or if they stick with it, then it could be said to be no longer a scientific explanation, but a matter of irrational belief.

Nevertheless even the matter of evidence can be problematic, e.g. there is the idea of the "theory-ladenness of observation", that what one sees depends on what believes one is likely to see. So one astronomer with a belief in a watery past on Mars looks through a telescope and clearly sees canals, while another astronomer looks through the same telescope and just sees some random lines.

I think in the case of the earth being a globe, the photographic evidence is incredibly strong, so I can't really hypothesize about how a rational flat earth theory might account for it. Nevertheless I'm not sure I would want to rule out the possibility of their being a rational flat earther's explanation of this photographic evidence. I would be content with a globular earth being "merely" the best working hypothesis, by a long shot, rather than a logical certainty.

In the videos of earth viewed from amateur rocket launches posted by lilies a few posts above, I think there is perhaps an example of this "theory-ladenness of observation". Lilies writes "The cameras have the usual lens distortion, but still curvature is clearly visible." Many would agree that curvature is clearly visible, but how do we really know we are seeing curvature of the earth, and not lens distortion? Are we seeing "curvature of the earth" rather than "lens distortion" because we already have the theoretical belief that the camera is sufficient high above a curved earth to see such "curvature of the earth"? I think they would be mistaken, but a flat-earther might look at those same videos and see only lens distortion, with no curvature of the earth.

 

[Richs]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

I agree there is an abundance of evidence, which is why I personally think the earth is a globe. If a flat-earther cannot give an adequate explanation of how their theory is compatible with all of this evidence, then they should really either abandon their flat-earth paradigm, or if they stick with it, then it could be said to be no longer a scientific explanation, but a matter of irrational belief.

There seems to be a lot of people who don't really understand the Scientific Method. Thje way it works is that a hypothesis is created which attempts to explain some phenomenon and then experiments and/or observations are made in the attempt to verify or invalidate that hypothesis.

If even one experiment or observation contradicts this hypothesis, it invalidates it, and something else must be formulated as a replacement. So far, there is no actual evidence that contradicts the conclusion that the Earth is spherical.

Nevertheless even the matter of evidence can be problematic, e.g. there is the idea of the "theory-ladenness of observation", that what one sees depends on what believes one is likely to see. So one astronomer with a belief in a watery past on Mars looks through a telescope and clearly sees canals, while another astronomer looks through the same telescope and just sees some random lines.

Perhaps there is some of that sort of thing which has happened and probably still happens, but most likely the main thing distorting our view of the reality around us is political correctness and the agendas of various governments and agencies. Does any rational person think NASA is telling us the truth?

I think in the case of the earth being a globe, the photographic evidence is incredibly strong, so I can't really hypothesize about how a rational flat earth theory might account for it. Nevertheless I'm not sure I would want to rule out the possibility of their being a rational flat earther's explanation of this photographic evidence. I would be content with a globular earth being "merely" the best working hypothesis, by a long shot, rather than a logical certainty.

There is a tendency of normal people, which often can be observed in jury trials, to think that 'the truth lies in the middle'. So, a psychopathic individual who can lie with a straight face and total conviction who is opposing a normal person with a conscience and feels they should always tell the truth has an advantage because people will usually try to find this 'middle ground' in their determinations.

It looks to me that this type of thing is allowing you to think that there may be 'some possibility' that the Flat Earth theory has any merit at all.

 

[paralleloscope]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

Thanks Pierre, WK and Laura for the explanations.

Here's some more debunk of self proclaimed 'Flat Earth Vegan Anarchist Holohoax denier', Eric Dubay:

From: E. Dubay, Flat Earth Conspiracy

Ptolemy in the 1st century A.D. accurately predicted eclipses for six hundred years on the basis of a flat, stationary Earth with equal precision as anyone living today. All the way back in 600 B.C. Thales accurately predicted an eclipse which ended the war between the Medes and Lydians. Eclipses happen regularly with precision in 18 year cycles, so regardless of geocentric or heliocentric, flat or globe Earth cosmologies, eclipses can be accurately calculated independent of such factors

Actually Ptolemy did not predict on the basis of a flat earth, but a round earth, which he projected on to flat pieces of paper, also called maps;

From: B. Sprague, Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy): Representation, Understanding, and Mathematical Labeling of the Spherical Earth

Ptolemy collected, analyzed, and presented geographical knowledge so that it could be preserved and perfected by future generations. These ideas include expressing locations by longitude and latitude, representing a spherical earth on a flat surface, and developing the first equal area map projection. Ptolemy's accomplishments reflect his understanding of spatial relationships among places on earth and of the Earth's spatial relationships to other celestial bodies.

Also, Dubay claims:

If the Earth were actually a spinning globe revolving around the Sun, the only place such a phenomenon as the Midnight Sun could be observed would be at the poles.Any other vantage point from 89 degrees latitude downwards could never, regardless of any tilt or inclination, see the Sun for 24 hours straight.

While in reality it is certainly possible for midnight sun, around solstice, to occur all the way down to the arctic circle (66°30'). This image should make it clear:

Above two examples were pretty easy to search and disprove, and it seems Dubay and ilk are relying on the cultures mental disintegration (and hysterization) with its research laziness, where todays 'filter bubbled' netizens would regard checking out other youtube videos as research. Some may go check some scientific/ debunker forums or wiki's on the bigger claims (neglecting smaller pieces as above), but perhaps brush them off, as mainstream science in general has shown itself to be bunk in many ways, and all together throwing bathwater and baby out. Another trump of Dubay and his CoIntelPro operation, are his visual flashy 3d presentations, which for the visually externalized generation is more convincing than lesser illustrated presentations.

 

[David]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

The question that won't go away is... why dose the earth have to be flat, where’s the advantage. Why would a super advanced intelligent something/s, construct such a monstrosity, think of the overhead, maintenance costs would be astronomical.... wouldn’t it be just simpler find a suitable rock that could support a ranch, then get some life going, have a harvest every so often. no big deal, low overhead, easy maintenance... it’s a no brainier, or what ever they think with, but wouldn’t have to, if they were so inclined...

I’ll stop there...

 

[MusicMan]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

Just adding to the mix..
The light passing through the atmosphere, and the water, will only travel in a straight line as long as the density of the medium remains the same.
Now we know that the density of water increases as the depth increases, and this is also true of the atmosphere.

So I posit that the light is not travelling in a straight line as it passes through the air and water, but in a curved path, due to the density gradient.

So you may be on a flat surface, and everything you observe may be curved.

The other thing is that we only have 3D instruments to measure everything, so there's another variable to add to your thinking processes.

 

[Mal7]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

There seems to be a lot of people who don't really understand the Scientific Method. Thje way it works is that a hypothesis is created which attempts to explain some phenomenon and then experiments and/or observations are made in the attempt to verify or invalidate that hypothesis.

If even one experiment or observation contradicts this hypothesis, it invalidates it, and something else must be formulated as a replacement. So far, there is no actual evidence that contradicts the conclusion that the Earth is spherical.

Karl Popper's principal of falsifiability is that a scientific theory should be testable, and that science progresses through forming hypotheses, testing them, and then abandoning theories that fail the test (see e.g. his book The Logic of Scientific Discovery [published 1934]). I should perhaps have been clearer that I am looking at the problem from the point-of-view of other philosophers of science like Paul Feyerabend, who think Popper's view doesn't give a good account of what scientists actually do or how science progresses. There is a good summary of these critics of Popper here:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/oct/01/karl-popper-lakatos-kuhn-feyerabend

"Karl Popper, the enemy of certainty, part 4: Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend" by Liz Williams

The history of the philosophy of science throughout the 20th century is marked by sporadic reactions to Karl Popper, breaking out into florid and controversial display and effectively governing the course of the discipline as the century winds to its close. Popper's most significant critics during this period were the trio of Imre Lakatos, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend – very different thinkers who, nonetheless, in their response to the theory of falsification, served to drive the philosophy of science forwards in leaps and bounds.

A central difficulty of falsification is behavioural rather than theoretical – falsificationism is an ideal. Scientists do not, in practice, jettison theories in response to a single falsificatory instance.

But what do they do instead? Generally they attempt to rescue their theory by dint of shoring it up with auxiliary hypotheses. Popper recognises this, referring to it as the "conventionalist stratagem".

[. . .]

The precise manner in which scientists shore up their theories forms the basis of our trio's work. There are a number of reasons for the conventionalist stratagem, most of them obvious. If you've invested a great deal of time and money in the investigation of a particular scientific theory, you will, naturally, be loth to throw the theoretical baby out with the bathwater – especially if your work is funded by a much wider organisation, such as the government or the military.

These practical considerations aside, scientists get attached to theories – and this, too, is where the sociology of science comes in. Commentators vary on how far they believe that scientists' attachment to particular paradigms governs their thinking. In the pure realms of science, they're probably not supposed to get attached at all (theories aren't cats), but scientists are human, too, no matter how sniffy stringent rationalists might get about the issue.

Of the philosophers, as opposed to the sociologists, of science, it is probably Kuhn who has taken this view furthest: scientific paradigms, he claims , only really change when the old guard who promoted them either retire or expire. This is essentially a non-rational view of theory change, and has been open to some criticism as a result.

So how does Kuhn characterise the scientific method? Science, Kuhn claims, is formed of competing paradigms, one of which will usually be dominant in any given period. A scientific paradigm consists of a core theory surrounded by a number of auxiliary hypotheses. The core theory generally remains constant, whereas the auxiliary hypotheses are modified in the light of new or conflicting evidence.

Eventually, it may prove impossible to support the core theory by hypothesis modification any further, and at this point the core theory itself is abandoned or radically altered and a paradigm shift occurs. But this is an unusual event, going beyond what Kuhn refers to as "normal science": those often lengthy periods in which scientists try to hang on to their theories in the face of competing evidence. Popper's view is, Kuhn maintains, too idealistic.

Lakatos endeavours to reconcile the Popperian viewpoint with that of Kuhn: dispensing with the concept of the paradigm, he suggests that science moves forwards by means of the progressive research programme. Rather than invoking truth or falsity, we should consider whether a research programme – the hard core of hypotheses that constitute a theory – is progressing or degenerating. Does a theory predict new facts? Does it grow? If so, we may say that it is progressing. Lakatos's views form a halfway house between Kuhn and Popper (he was a student of the latter), and his approach is often considered to be a more nuanced form of falsificationism.

A more anarchic approach – literally – is offered by Feyerabend. Auxiliary hypotheses are critical, he argues, but may be irrational. In fact, it's impossible to develop any set of methodological rules by which scientists work: ad hoc, rule-breaking postulates are the order of the day. We seem to be heading at full speed towards epistemological relativism here, and indeed, according to Feyerabend, this is the case: not only does science fail to proceed according to fixed principles, but it doesn't deserve its epistemic privileges, either. Far out! So if your preference is for Feyerabend over Popper, astrologers might be on to something, after all.

I think one advantage of these alternative approaches to Popper's account of how science progresses, is that these alternatives are more able to explain how science sometimes and in some fields "gets things wrong."

 

[Mal7]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

If even one experiment or observation contradicts this hypothesis, it invalidates it, and something else must be formulated as a replacement.

Here are just a couple of examples of the difficulty in practice of this kind of ideal of verification.

1. An observation could be made that there has been no statistically significant increase in average global air temperatures over the last 15 years. Does this invalidate the hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming? Some scientists would agree that it does. Others might come up with additional explanations to account for this observation while remaining within the AGW camp, e.g. that most of the warming is taking place within the oceans. There are two or more different paradigms operating, and which becomes the "mainstream" scientific view may depend not so much on any particular observation, but on sociological factors such as which paradigm receives the most research funding.

2. In the 20th century living specimens of the coelacanth fish were discovered off Madagascar. These seemed to be indistinguishable from fossil fish that were thought to have gone extinct tens of millions of years ago. A scientific creationist might think that this one example contradicts the hypothesis of evolution, since over such a long period of time one would expect the fish to have undergone some kind of change, even if just through random genetic drift. An evolutionist would most likely stay within their paradigm of neo-Darwinian evolution, and come up with alternative explanations.

 

[cubbex]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

Another thing that amazes me is that these guys deny einstein work, as far as I understand Einstein was able to prove his theory with the rotation of planet earth and a solar eclipse. You can't do that with a flat earth.

 

[Mal7]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

My main point is that rather than structuring this conversation as being about "Why Flat Earthers are Wrong", it would be better just to say "Here's how we account for the phenomena. And here's what we think is wrong about how you account for the phenomena", and then leave people to take their pick among these alternatives. If a few people want to remain dyed-in-the-wool flat earthers, that's up to them.

This might seem like a hair-splitting distinction, but I think it is worth making because it avoids falling into the idea that science is some kind of infallible enterprise that progresses from one proven conclusion to the next. There may be other times when we wish to question what is presented as scientific orthodoxy.

 

[Buddy]

Re: Is the Earth an enclosed technologically created world, and NOT a globe?

Mal7, I really hope this reply is aligned to your message because at the moment your argument appears to be supporting relativistic thinking as a way of leveling the field of discussion, giving an impression that more weight can't be given to any side. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

To try and handle the scientific method/Karl Popper issue injected into this thread, I'm offering this:

1) Many previous thinkers have held that mathematical induction, consistency and completeness could be applied to our physical world in general.
2) Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing were two, among others, who showed the inadequacy of assuming that either abstractions or components of empirical reality can be both consistent and complete simultaneously.
3) Henri Poincaré, Karl Popper were two among many who showed the futility of applying induction generally to physical reality. Popper, accordingly, adopted 'falsifiability' as evident truth.
4) It was at the advent of quantum studies that Popper's 'falsifiability' was shown to be inadequate.
We have learned from all of this, that induction has some value in the logical realm, but it is nearly useless in the physical realm.

So...can any implication from the above info really threaten to derail attempts to establish whether or not the world is a globe, or "not flat"? Absolutely not!

Today, a lot of advanced scientific thinkers, whether this thinking is of the loose but lucid or the rigorous and righteous type, agree that "provisional truth" is one of our most important and valuable tools in science. Thing is, we must, if we have integrity, always associate the two words 'provisional' and 'truth'. The word 'provisional' acknowledges that the fullness and actuality of any evolutionary progression is indeterminate. It also acknowledges our finite intellect.

An understanding of 'provisional truth' has always seemed to be a theme running through investigations of statements from the C's up to present. And since Laura has taken the lead in the claims examination phase of this thread's topic, may we not continue to assume it will apply here as well?

Readers interested in researching the Popper deal could read David Deutsch's view in his Fabric of Reality. Please, let us bring focus back to the very interesting topic at hand.