Yesterday I bookmarked a news aggregating site called Censored News that consolidates stories from a variety of other sites, most I already read, but one of them is named The Daily Sheeple that has this video of a Flat Earther explaining himself. It's just something weird that I found interesting, and that's all. The way the guy is so sure of himself and so entirely wrong that there will be no correcting him. I thought it was satire at first until I read comments to it at Sheeple and on YouTube where other people put forward the most insanely demented arguments.
I know a few people who do this just to be argumentative. One in particular. I think he likes to see people exhaust themselves trying to put him straight. And when he's sincerely trying to internalize new good information, he's even worse, because each statement is contradictory line for line as he tries to force fit it with his existing beliefs. "So that's like this, (no it is not) and that's like this, (no it's not) and that's just like this, (no, it is not. I said what I said, not what you just said that I said. It has nothing to do with what you already have muddling my discussion.) So just keep trucking without acknowledging his nonsense.
Where would you even start?
You don't.
But if you did, where would you start?
I'd say don't even contradict. Don't argue. Just speak another language altogether. Start at the beginning with the ancients, the ones with good eyesight who noticed ships disappearing on the horizon hull first then sail, and conversely reappearing on their seaways sail first, as mountains do as you approach them had you ever traveled. They marveled as they observed stars moving overhead in concert meaning we rotated around them for stars are fixed from our perspective in time, and traveling again, they saw different stars in northern and southern hemispheres.
This guy talks funny.
If you can hang in there and listen he clears up something that had me confused for a very long time. How did Eratosthenes measure the shadow of two vertical sticks between two places separated by great distance without instant communication? From Greece he couldn't call a guy by telephone in Egypt and ask how long is the shadow. Instead, he already knew that in Egypt there was no shadow on the stick, or on the obelisk or whatever is sticking straight up, when the sun is at zenith on the day of equinox. So he didn't need that measurement, he didn't need two clocks to tell both observers it's noon, he had only to measure the shadow of his own stick calculated with the height of the stick on that same day, this year, next year, any year. And he had to know the distance between locations. But he didn't need to measure that either, he could simply ask professional travelers, caravan drivers, the truckers of his day. That solved a mystery that bugged me for decades. Just by listening to a guy who talks a bit funny.
6 comments:
The Flat Earthers have been around a long time.
Make more sense than the Lefties.
I have heard that there are flat earthers all around the globe.
Do the people in Patagonia know they're upside down?
I got into a conversation online with some flat earthers a few weeks back. Perhaps like you, Chip, I was first flummoxed by the reality of this...thing. this really is happening, it isnt a joke. That was before I even responded. Then, I lost some sleep one night, trying to think of how I would even attempt rational conversation with such a person. What would a flat earther accept as a fact -- i.e., when you deem all photographic evidence as a product of an international conspiracy!? (Repeat on !)
So, here's what I hit on, and I am pretty proud of this. (Notwithstanding that, if there is a flaw, I would be grateful to have it pointed out. The flat earthers didnt help.) It occurred to me that if the earth were flat, all east-west distances would be off -- from a globe -- as you move from the north pole to the south pole. Take an orange, that is your sphere. Now imagine the skin of the orange flattened out like a disk. On the globe, the distance between, say, Jacksonville and San Diego is X on a globe, but on a disk, its 2X. When you get to the southern hemisphere, the disparity is 4 to 5 times. This would affect all travel, meaning it affects all goods shipped, meaning it affects virtually everyone. If the world is flat, how is it that all travel times work as if it is a globe?
When we moved to Japan I told my older brother, "Look how far we going to have to fly. Over the Atlantic, across Europe, over Turkey, over Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, all across China, over Korea, the Sea of Japan." My brother goes, "We're going the opposite way, Stupid. It's a lot shorter. Duh. Gawl."
"Oh." Man, these pilots sure are smart.
Heyoka is what the Sioux called people who liked to challenge established notions. The following is one example of that type of person.
He was always running around with a hammer trying to flatten round and curvy things (soup bowls, eggs, wagon wheels, etc.), thus making them straight.
John Fire Lame Deer
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