Flat earthers: “We only believe what we can see for ourselves!”
Also flat earthers: “And then there is a great ice wall around it and then there are other earths just like ours in other pockets like that”
THE EARTH IS SPHERICAL, DIPSHITS
Submitted 5 days ago by PugJesus@lemmy.world to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0f0ddf7a-e853-49bb-a37a-e5784a0bf20a.webp
Comments
DaddleDew@lemmy.world 5 days ago
truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 5 days ago
It gets funnier. A millionaire flew two flat earthers to the south pole where they proceeded to live stream the 24 h sun. Its called “the final experiment”. Yet one of the flat earthers still said the earth was flat.
state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de 4 days ago
Emblematic of our times.
krashmo@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I always picture some flat earth guy stumped about what is at the edge of the world and then he stumbles on the first episode of Game of Thrones.
Insert Dicaprio pointing at TV meme
CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Have you run across big earth theory? it is quite possibly more insane than every other conspiracy theory ive heard because its like all of them together.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 4 days ago
The Flat Earth “Theory” is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard because of the simple fact that if it turned out to be true, if NASA came out and said “Eyup, we were bullshitting everyone the whole time.”
Not a damn thing about my life would change.
There’s no “The Secret” level nonsense where because this one thing is true I am suddenly empowered to free myself from the chains of society or reality. There’s no “Ah, but your honor I’m a Sovereign Citizen, that means actually the murder I comitteded isn’t illegal and you owe me a check for 69 Billion Dollars as punishment for wasting my time”
There’s not a damn thing to be gained from it.
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
I talked to a guy that worked in one of the deepest underground mines in Kirkland Lake, Ontario. He said one of his bosses, a highly educated libertarian nut job was a flat earther and would debate his workers on a regular basis about it. I told him they should ask for more danger pay because at one point they might drill through the flat earth plain and fall into space … or land on a turtle.
PunnyName@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Then they start talking about “as above, so below” in that water is both above and below us (with no distractive collectively agreed upon measurements).
There’s are so many weird-ass suppositions.
madjo@feddit.nl 5 days ago
For a certain group of people, science and life have gotten too complicated, and they want to feel special with special knowledge (often coupled with a distorted god belief), so they fall in the conspiracy theory rabbit hole.
And flat earth is actually one of the more dangerous conspiracy theories too, according to this chart, as it is usually not the only conspiracy these people believe in.
SeaUrchinHorizon@reddthat.com 5 days ago
As with many things, the underlying problem creating conspiracy theorists is mediocre high school dropouts need to feel superior to others in a world that values you for your skills and education. American Psychological Association: “The researchers found that overall, people were motivated to believe in conspiracy theories by a need to understand and feel safe in their environment and a need to feel like the community they identify with is superior to others.”
If you can’t develop a sense of pride by working hard to create actual merit, why not just fake it by grouping together with a bunch of other flunkies to be like “actually, we’re all better than you, because you’re all just sheep who believe what the government tells you!”
Bonus points if you combine this line of thinking with some other forms of discrimination, but even traditionally marginalized groups can fall prey to this trap. I’m not sure how to solve it, perhaps a stronger social safety net would prevent people from losing their grip on reality just to feel safe from perceived threats. Then again to quite a few people “black people” and “women” and “people from other countries” and “trans people” are threats so perhaps nothing we do can make them feel safe enough to stop being annoying online
psud@aussie.zone 5 days ago
It killed that guy with the home built rocket
madjo@feddit.nl 5 days ago
I’ve heard quite a few flat earthers who claim that “they” are hiding god by hiding the true shape of the earth (according to the flat earthers obviously)
According to them the Bible tells them the world is flat and there’s a dome separating the waters above from the waters below.
TheTurner@lemm.ee 4 days ago
I love how UFOs are more grounded in reality than flat Earth. Lol
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 4 days ago
That’s because they come from inside the Hollow Earth. Which you’d know already if you’d done your own research.
madjo@feddit.nl 4 days ago
That’s because they exist. Probably not aliens and such, but any object seen flying that’s not identified is a UFO.
rekabis@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Technically the Earth is not spherical… it’s an oblate spheroid.
PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Spheroids are definitively spherical, otherwise they wouldn’t call them that.
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 4 days ago
Not true. For instance, a humanoid is specifically something that is not human, but human-like. An oval is not a circle, but maybe it’s a “circloid”.
pancakes@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
My favorite type of sphere.
Jolteon@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Technically it’s a shape defined by the EGM96 coefficients.
amon@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Close enough
Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 5 days ago
small voice Oblate spheroid.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
The "science"tists keep changing their story. First it’s flat, then it’s a sphere, then it’s an obligatory spherical, then it’s a pear
You know who hasn’t changed their story? The ancient peoples who didn’t have accurate maps. They’ve maintained the flatness of the earth for thousands of years, so it must be the right answer
Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 5 days ago
It’s turtles all the way down, young man.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
There is literally so much evidence that anyone can perceive with their own eyes if they want to. You can easily observe the curvature of the earth anywhere with objects visible across an open plain or water.
Allero@lemmy.today 5 days ago
Interestingly, most of people just believe in spherical Earth without ever checking anything, because society says so.
This is not an argument in favor of flat earth, but an argument that people around you can make you firmly believe absolutely anything without you ever bothering to check it by yourself.
Kitathalla@lemy.lol 4 days ago
We stand on the shoulders of giants. I don’t know how many of us repeated the experiments in our chemistry textbooks to prove that what was claimed was correct. A few piddling things here and there, but when did I get to build a nuclear bomb?
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 4 days ago
Yeah I like to question everything, which is the reason I know this. I investigated and saw the evidence myself.
It’s a little disappointing to me that most people aren’t this way.
Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml 5 days ago
The whole thing about flat earthers is that they come up with more and more elaborate explanations to fit each individual observation, when Occam’s razor says that the theory that explains them all should probably be the correct one.
Like, they’ll argue about refraction of light due to hot air being the cause for the disappearance of ships past the horizon, and then their explanation for how time zones work is something else entirely, and why we have seasons, and why planes take the routes they do, and all this other nonsense. They all need separate, complicated explanations, and they willingly accept them and vehemently deny the simplest theory that ties everything together.
The actual explanation for this behaviour is flat earthers are a friend group, doubly so for the people who pushed “globeheads” out of their life. So to change their view is to socially isolate themselves
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Sometimes I wonder why this flat earth stuff refuses to go away and I don’t even think it lingers because the flat earthers keep bringing it up. I think really it’s just rage bait trying to get you mad about a people who, virtually, admit they have no critical thinking skills.
nerv@lemmynsfw.com 3 days ago
I remember reading this article on how this group of flat earthers had pooled together to buy this incredibly expensive device, that had been laser calibrated. I think I recall being some sort of gyroscope that, if the planet was truly a sphere, would record on its inclination the degrees it would shift in order to maintain perfectly balance . The group had also did the math and they had reached a value that would be expected to be measured if the Earth was truly a sphere but it was immediatly rendered impossible because the device would never record such deviation as the Earth was flat.
Can you guess where this is going?
The device measured the exact figure the group had calculated. With no margin of error. And repeating the experiment only returned the exact same result. They had, by their own standard, reached proof the Earth was not flat.
Their conclusion?
The device had been sabotaged.
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Sometimes I wonder why this flat earth stuff refuses to go away
Because for these people it is more about inflating their own ego. They know what they believe is wrong, but they like to think they are better by going against the grain. It is about having the notion of “I know something that you don’t” which they imply to others by pushing the flat earth nonsense.
ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Alright so hear me out you guys, what if the whole thing was just a long-running prank? Nobody actually believes the earth is flat, but the Flat Earth Society is like the mafia - once you’re in, you’re in for life. And they have a Fight Club sign right at the entrance to the clubhouse so everybody knows they have to play it cool when outsiders are around.
Robust_Mirror@aussie.zone 4 days ago
I think it’s genuinely just people trying to make money at the top. They don’t believe a word they say, but they keep making money from idiots so they keep doing it.
ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Yours is more likely, mine is more fun
Irelephant@lemm.ee 5 days ago
We can’t prove in a way that they would believe.
TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 5 days ago
Why do we need to convince them in the first place? I see them as the equivalent of internet trolls, they know they’re wrong and half the fun is moving the goalposts.
psud@aussie.zone 5 days ago
Irelephant@lemm.ee 5 days ago
I remember when some of them tried to prove it was flat, and ended up proving it was round.
thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz 5 days ago
100%. I watched a video on TFE where there was a minister guy saying the Earth is flat because the bible says so and that any evidence to the contrary is manufactured by (literally) Satan and the US government and that they may not be able to prove it one way or the other, but they have to have faith in the word of God.
There’s literally nothing you can say to that.
bilb@lem.monster 5 days ago
Well, this is a simulation. All observations and measurements can and will be falsified by the designers of the simulator. What can ya do?
Corno@lemm.ee 4 days ago
I remember figuring out on my own that the Earth is spherical when I was 6 years old and I witnessed big ships disappearing from the bottom up over the horizon.
marcos@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Oh, let’s be fair here…
He had to hire a guy to count lots and lots of steps too.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Eretosthenes’ experiment could just as easily prove a smaller, closer sun
The best proof is that you can look at the Sun and the moon with your eyes (maybe use a filter for the sun) and see them not change size throughout their path along the sky, which proves that they aren’t getting appreciably closer or farther
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
TFE was a breaking point for the cult of the insane, it did some good, but they’re all clearly insane.
I hold fast with my position in extremist satire that anyone who thinks this way should simply be terminated for the good of our species, call it eugenics if you want, i call it culling the catastrophe. (again, this is satire)
SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Of course it’s not spherical, it’s wider at the equator and lumpy
marcos@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Unless you go in an advanced metrology laboratory, or look at Jupiter with a telescope, it’s the most spherical object you will ever see.
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 5 days ago
Jupiter is quite more flattened than Earth due to how fast it spins and it being made mostly of gas.
If you want spherical, look at Venus… or, even better, the Sun (not directly, though, of course; use some kind of filter or reflector).
Zagorath@aussie.zone 5 days ago
I’m not sure how true that is. It’s smoother than anything else, but the degree to which it is oblate makes it less spherical than, say, a pool ball, doesn’t it?
Zagorath@aussie.zone 5 days ago
and lumpy
Barely. Shrink it down to the size of a pool/billiards ball and Earth is actually smoother.
DragonsInARoom@lemmy.world 5 days ago
They also can’t prove for sure that the earth is flat
yesman@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Eratosthenes is a word I can only hear in Carl Sagan’s voice.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 5 days ago
What do Eratosthenes’ proclivities have to do with astronomy
lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
But the earth is round, like a pizza
blakenong@lemmings.world 5 days ago
Mmm pizza balls
TheImpressiveX@lemm.ee 5 days ago
There was this one video where flat-Earthers tried to prove the Earth was flat, so they recreated the experiment by Eratosthenes and accidentally proved the Earth was round. I can’t find it right now but it’s hilarious.
frezik@midwest.social 5 days ago
This past December, The Final Experiment went down to Antarctica to take a video of the 24 hour sun. It’s causing much consternation among flat earthers.
Doom@ttrpg.network 5 days ago
I believe firmly once the Flat earthers start to lose traction so will the Qanon and all the other dumb “conspiracy theories” then we can get back to the good stuff, bigfoot, aliens, loch Ness monster
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
There was one guy who designed what is actually an elegant experiment, placing several vertical surfaces, signs basically, with holes in them in a straight line a distance apart at the same elevation above sea level. If the Earth is flat, one should be able to see straight through all of the holes in the signs; if the earth is round, the holes will curve down and away. He observed that they curved down and away. Then of course proceeded to make up bullshit about how his own test was invalid.
TheImpressiveX@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Yes, that’s it! I must have gotten confused about what video it was.
ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Wasn’t that the Netflix movie behind the curve
atrielienz@lemmy.world 5 days ago
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl-uYf622J4
EtherWhack@lemmy.world 5 days ago
To be perfectly fair, when the guy said the test was inconclusive, he was right… To a point.
His failure was that he only did the test once and in one location, which just proves a hill/valley could be playing a factor in the results. To have true empirical results, the test would need to be done at multiple locations, each a random but sizable distance apart.
The scientific method relies on repeatability and reliability in data to provide proof to anything and he wasn’t really using either.