Is the sun really small and like a torch shining down?!

Have you not not seen that AO.com advert ?

dont tell me it’s not real 🙄

Are you able to share a link to the forum, Graham? I have adequate beer and time to pass. 🙂 (No worries if you’d rather not 🙂 )

Are we somehow sliding into a new dark age of stupidity?

It depends on what other things people who answer the question (one way or the other) believe and know. Its a question to which, for a lot of people, the answer doesn’t really matter. Theres no consequence to getting the answer right or wrong. People have to answer much more pressing questions everyday where the right and wrong answers do matter – ‘will this pate still be ok to eat?’ ‘should I cut the red wire of the blue wire?’ ‘is it safe to poke my dick through the bars of the baboon enclosure?’

Theres nothing I’ve tried to do with my life today where my answer to a question about the shape of the earth  would have changed the outcome. If I change my mind about whether the earth is round or flat nothing about the earth changes. Who cares what I think about things I can’t change?

If everyone decides that the earth is flat it won’t suddenly become flat. Its not a democracy.*

*(the only exception to this is if is 51.9% of people decide the earth is flat then ‘flat’ would of course mean ‘flat’. Because the people will have spoken.)

@funkmasterp: they think the sun is small, very close (like 3000 miles away) and acts like a spotlight.

Toying with them sounds like fun. Any forums worth joining? We should all have a trip out to flat earthville, it’ll be a great laugh.

@pondo

I don’t like to share links to Flat Earth videos as it just gives them more views, increases their ad revenue and moves them up the ranks on YouTube.

So instead here are some channels that fight the good fight and try to explain why they are wrong and how they are being conned. If you read the comments on any of the debunking videos they have you’ll find plenty of flerfers prattling on:

Wolfie (a commercial airline pilot): https://www.youtube.com/user/Wolfie6020

VoysovReason (calm logic): https://www.youtube.com/user/JonasGrumby71

CoolHardLogic (takes the piss but makes excellent points too): https://www.youtube.com/user/CoolHardLogic

SciManDan (exasperated scientist): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRtsZ5Iak9wSLsQLQ3XOAeA

If you want to experience some hilarious highlights of flat earth videos without sitting through endless hours of dross (for some reason they like to make two hour long videos) then I highly recommend the “Flat Earthers: Full Retard Mode” series of videos by this Tau Ceti Alpha:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCazPghzAJjtAfjkUnAKx3kA

If you really must hear the arguments first hand, despite my warnings about giving them views, then search YouTube for Eric Dubay, Mark Sargent, Jeranism, Phuket Word, Globebusters, Beyond The Imaginary Curve, Rob Skiba, aplanetruth, Celebrate Truth, p-brane and watch till your brains dribble out your ears.

I’m pretty sure most flat earthers are actually just trolls, but it’s gained popularity so now they are just running with the idea and laughing, whilst collecting the ad revenue from website hits.

Sad sign of the times really .

See also anti vaxers.

If raindrops are round, why wouldn’t the Earth be?

If everyone decides that the earth is flat it won’t suddenly become flat. Its not a democracy.*

This is true but we live in a democracy so these people have votes and can influence things like education, science funding, space exploration etc

I see this as a small extreme part of the much larger anti-intellectualism anti-elite anti-science “had enough of experts” populist movement.

Are we somehow sliding into a new dark age of stupidity?

That’s a rhetorical question, right?

Rain drops are not round at all..they are just roundish.*

*unless they are in a vacume with zero gravity **

**in which case they wouldn’t really qualify as rain drops.

But what if they’re right?

Is the sun really small and like a torch shining down?!

Have you not not seen that AO.com advert ?

dont tell me it’s not real

I thought that was a documentary!

@mattyfez there are definitely people making money off it that may or may not believe what they say.

Jeranism is pretty prominent and his Patreon account shows he is pulling in around $1600 a month in donations alone.

https://www.patreon.com/jeranism

And that’s before you consider his ad revenue and merchandise income.

Do they also think the moon is a plate or do they think it’s spherical? Is Button Moon actually a hard hitting dramatisation of life on the edge of the plate?

Re: binners photos, it’s perfectly possible to see the curvature of the earth with a wide enough, uninterrupted horizon, only the curvature is a lot more subtle than that.

@funkmasterp: some would say that the moon doesn’t exist. It is a light in the sky. A projection. Or a hologram. Others say it exists and is round but is just 3000 miles away like the sun, inside The Dome. Some claim the moon produces its own light and refer to it as a “luminary”. Apparently moon light is colder than shade and this “proves” it.

@CountZero: a classic trap. You actually cannot see left-to-right curvature from ground level, no matter how wide your view is.

Think about it: if you could see to the horizon in every direction on a perfect sphere then that horizon would be the same height in every direction. No curve.

A good way to imagine it is to think about laying a metal ring on top of a larger ball. That ring represents the visible horizon for someone stood at its centre. But it lies perfectly flat on the ball.

https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.trunkrecords.com%2Fturntable%2Fclanger%2Fclanger2_o.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.trunkrecords.com%2Fturntable%2Fclangers.shtml&docid=Lvs-7AcE_ZfrhM&tbnid=Rq91OEH4zz68UM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwjIqObr99vcAhUI4YUKHYYKCFkQMwjKAigoMCg..i&w=328&h=233&hl=en-gb&client=safari&bih=922&biw=768&q=clangers&ved=0ahUKEwjIqObr99vcAhUI4YUKHYYKCFkQMwjKAigoMCg&iact=mrc&uact=8

Thing is it’s arguing against the scientific method, which is pure logic and repeatable experiments.

Imagine a squash ball, it’s very easy to observe its shape. But if you zoom in with a powerful camera . It’s edge can appear flat.

As Graham said, if you narrow your angle of visibility enough things can look quite different.

Yup. This is the video I like to show to demonstrate that matty

how do they explain all the other 3 dimensional objects in daily life? you know like why we’re not cardboard cutouts? why should the earth be any different? sure we have sheets of paper which are near 2 dimensional, but they’re not actually two dimensional. like what is underneath this flat earth? what shape is it? is it a like one of those icecreams sandwiched between two wafers floating in space? I don’t get it.

Generally they favour something like the Gleason Map (which is just an Azimuthal Equidistant projection):

https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:7h149v85z

North Pole is in the centre. Antarctica forms the ice wall around the edge.

Some would say that beyond the ice wall is more land, maybe more worlds, an infinite plane. Others would say that’s all there is and the dome meets the ground somewhere beyond the ice wall.

Though recently there has been a new trend where some flat earthers have realised that is complete bollocks and they now happily say “We don’t have a map. Or a model. We don’t know what shape it is, but we know it’s not round” 🤦🏻‍♂️

The earth definitely isn’t round, its a spheroid, Shirley?

Are we somehow sliding into a new dark age of stupidity?

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/we-are-all-getting-dumber-new-science-proves-no-one-is-sure-why.html

what is underneath this flat earth?

I don’t have s great deal of time for people who think the earth is flat, however as I’m inquisitive I’m going watch those vids and read the sites..

Thanks for posting them.

I’m pretty sure most flat earthers are actually just trolls, but it’s gained popularity so now they are just running with the idea and laughing, whilst collecting the ad revenue from website hits.

Probably mostly this.  And looks like they have hooked a few people in. Why is anyone interested ?

In fact if I was asked on a poll now I would probably say it is flat just for the hell of it and because it is a stupid question.

@piemonster: this short documentary explains why;

It’s no coincidence that many flat-eathers are not 1). professors of astrophysics, geography, or astrononmy. and 2) do in fact live in a double wide on a half price lot in the Panhandle. Even the most strident are not entering places of learning to develop theories or righting years of scientific wrongs, they are wasting their time of Facebook and You Tube. and as MacCruiskeen points out, you can’t change centuries of maths and reality by using huge volume of bollocks regards how hard you believe.

The earth definitely isn’t round, its a spheroid, Shirley?

round (adj.)

1) Shaped like a circle or cylinder.

2) Shaped like a sphere.

— https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/round

Tell us the one about the Shadow Object.

That’s my favourite. 😉

It’s ok, google will save us from the flat earthers…

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-maps-flat-3d-latest-update-change-globe-planet-earth-a8481426.html

See also anti vaxers.

Sadly, yes. Italy’s upper house has recently voted to overturn mandatory childhood vaccinations, due in part to political support given to populist parties by the anti-vaxxers.

Sadly, this sort of anti-intellectualism is gaining more and more traction thanks to the rise in alt-right populism who flog conspiracy theories.

Are we OT now?

Vaxxers/anti vaxxers have at least some reasoned arguments for/against..

There was an web ‘article’ I saw recently – can’t remember if it was you tube, FB or what, but basically a guy took a basketball & used a macro lens to take a picture really close up of the ‘horizon’. Cropping in on that picture to a distance that would be representative of looking out at the horizon at the coast, showed the basketball to appear flat.

Ergo, basketballs are flat.

Found it:

Basket Balls Are Flat

@perchypanther: the Shadow Moon or Anti-Moon that causes eclipses and/or the phases of the moon? Yep there were plenty of flerfers witnessing the solar eclipse who said they could not see the moon before or after the eclipse therefore it must be something else. Obviously!

@bikebouy: no, I agree with Jakester, it is sides of the same populist anti-intellectualism anti-science coin. (It’s no surprise that Trump likes a good conspiracy). Clearly Flat Earth is quite an extreme example. And so is Creationism. And chemtrails. And air engines. And slow small planes. More “moderate” ideas are that Big Pharma is deliberately poisoning people (AIDS is fake) and are suppressing the knowledge that all disease can easily be cured by herbs, crystals, magic water and prayer. And there is nothing wrong with getting measles, mumps or rubella: everyone’s body will easily cope provided they don’t use a microwave, drink chlorinated water or eat non-organic kale.

I think that, as well as the “special knowledge” thing I mentioned earlier, it also provides people with a handy thing to blame. They would be successful, rich, clever, healthy etc if it wasn’t for the pesky elite poisoning them and hiding reality. How were they ever supposed to gain any true knowledge in school when schools still teach that the Earth is round and orbits the sun? The odds are stacked against them by the man. And that’s why they live in a one bedroom trailer with 12 kids.

Vaxxers/anti vaxxers have at least some reasoned arguments for/against..

See? This is exactly what I was saying.

There are no good reasons as a general rule not to vaccinate unless a particular individual has an allergy or medical reason which would preclude it.

Their “reasoned arguments” are based on a discredited paper by a doctor who was struck off for malpractice, but in spite of this people still think there are good reasons not to vaccinate their children.

There is now money to be made from being a high profile flat earther. As well as all the YouTube pish a flat earth shop has opened (or was announced, I’ve not been past it yet) in Inverness.

A bit of googling turns up this: http://flatearthhighlands.org Which is batshit crazy.

Don’t know if he’s behind the shop but he certainly denies the graffiti on the signs. Oh and he also seems to be a holocaust denier although with enough sense not to state it directly.

They (Flat Earthers) are active in the UK. They had a stand up in commercial road in Portsmouth in the middle of June. I wasn’t allowed to talk to them, my OH forbade it.

Some of their nonsense was water doesn’t conform to the surface of a ball, so why should it conform to the surface of the earth.

Another blinder is they accept that the planets in our solar system (certainly the nearer ones) are spheres, but the earth cannot be assumed to be spherical because it has not been observed and therefore it is flat.

he also seems to be a holocaust denier

Yeah that is quite common among Flat Earthers. Many of them believe that Round Earth is a Jewish plot (a confusing argument given that the same people cite flat earth “evidence” in passages of the Bible that are based on the Torah).

Some of their nonsense was water doesn’t conform to the surface of a ball,

That is literally one of their “best” arguments. They usually say “Water always finds its level” or “Water is always flat”.

I like to counter by bringing up tides: if water is always flat and level then how come that water is at high tide here and low tide over there and it will be the other way round in 6 hours?

They generally ask for an impossible demonstration of water sticking to a ball due to gravity – but do not comprehend/accept that the water only falls off the ball because it is being pulled down by the gravity of the much much larger ball (Earth).