Flat Earthers

ChapelHillSooner

ChapelHillSooner

Honored Member
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Anyone here get flat earthers posts on your Facebook news feeds?

I just can’t resist arguing with these people. I know the saying about arguing with a fool. I should know better.

Do you guys feel compelled to counter their nonsense? How many of them do you think are sincere?

My go to on the second question is to check their profile. If they post a lot of flat earth stuff there, I assume they are sincere because they are spending effort writing posts that are essentially ignored. If they only post comments on other threads, I assume there is a high chance they are just trolling.

I don’t condescend. I just give formulas (when appropriate) and make it clear that I can derive the formulas from basic Newtonian laws all without looking anything up.

Just curious because every month or so I get sucked into a thread about it. It is a waste of time but I suppose I get something psychological out of it.
 
ChapelHillSooner said:
Anyone here get flat earthers posts on your Facebook news feeds?

I just can’t resist arguing with these people. I know the saying about arguing with a fool. I should know better.

Do you guys feel compelled to counter their nonsense? How many of them do you think are sincere?

My go to on the second question is to check their profile. If they post a lot of flat earth stuff there, I assume they are sincere because they are spending effort writing posts that are essentially ignored. If they only post comments on other threads, I assume there is a high chance they are just trolling.

I don’t condescend. I just give formulas (when appropriate) and make it clear that I can derive the formulas from basic Newtonian laws all without looking anything up.

Just curious because every month or so I get sucked into a thread about it. It is a waste of time but I suppose I get something psychological out of it.
Click to expand...
YECs are my trigger but there's not many of them left.
 
I believe that some actually believe the earth is flat.

I also believe a great percentage are people who have figured out that they can sell shit to these people for a profit.

I don't believe there is any concept stupider than that of a flat earth. Though young earth Christians are a close second.
 
The thing about flat earthers vs chem trails or YEC is that the flat earthers arguments are so easy to refute. I mean we know the others are wrong and can point to science about it but it isn’t the type of science you can refute in your back yard.

One common argument is how can water stick to a spinning ball. They say that doesn’t happen in real life.

You can literally refute this will a string, spring type scale, and a weighted ball. You can measure weighted objects to confirm the acceleration of gravity on earth to be 9.8 m/s^2. You can then spin a ball of known mass on a string with the spring and verify the v^2/r acceleration that is needed to keep the ball in circular motion. With that you can confirm that at the equator the spin of the earth is not nearly enough to make objects fly into space.

The crazy thing is how they all think they are so enlightened, and think the rest of us are just taking information we were given at face value which is the exact opposite of what a good student of physics does. A good student follows formula derivations, analyses results to determine if they match their real world experience, etc.

I liken it to the following analogy.

Let say you have speaking apes who aren’t as smart as humans but can count.

These apes are told 1+1=2. Ape A takes it at face value. It is so because the teacher said it is. On the test this ape answers the questions correctly when the formula is one that is identical to what the teacher provided but when asked to solve 2+3 it fails. It gets a C in the addition course.

Ape B takes two pencils. It says there is one and another one. It then counts them “one, two” and reasons that 1+1 is in fact 2. This ape has understood the core principle and can now extend the logic to answer any question.

Ape A always felt inferior. But then someone comes along and tells it that 1+1 can’t be two. How can a 1 and a 1 make something completely different, a 2. Ape A, who never really understood addition is convinced. It made bad grades because the information it was provided was wrong.

Now ape A thinks it is enlightened and it is far too late for it to actually understand addition. This ape just assumed that all other apes simply took 1+1=2 at face value just as it did so it now ridicules the other apes for blindly believing what the authority apes told it.

Replace addition with something slightly more complex, physics, and you have flat earthers.
 
UNCatTech said:
I believe that some actually believe the earth is flat.

I also believe a great percentage are people who have figured out that they can sell shit to these people for a profit.

I don't believe there is any concept stupider than that of a flat earth. Though young earth Christians are a close second.
Click to expand...
The thing is that the only way you can make money on it is if there are a lot more people willing to believe it.
 
ChapelHillSooner said:
The thing about flat earthers vs chem trails or YEC is that the flat earthers arguments are so easy to refute. I mean we know the others are wrong and can point to science about it but it isn’t the type of science you can refute in your back yard.

One common argument is how can water stick to a spinning ball. They say that doesn’t happen in real life.

You can literally refute this will a string, spring type scale, and a weighted ball. You can measure weighted objects to confirm the acceleration of gravity on earth to be 9.8 m/s^2. You can then spin a ball of known mass on a string with the spring and verify the v^2/r acceleration that is needed to keep the ball in circular motion. With that you can confirm that at the equator the spin of the earth is not nearly enough to make objects fly into space.

The crazy thing is how they all think they are so enlightened, and think the rest of us are just taking information we were given at face value which is the exact opposite of what a good student of physics does. A good student follows formula derivations, analyses results to determine if they match their real world experience, etc.

I liken it to the following analogy.

Let say you have speaking apes who aren’t as smart as humans but can count.

These apes are told 1+1=2. Ape A takes it at face value. It is so because the teacher said it is. On the test this ape answers the questions correctly when the formula is one that is identical to what the teacher provided but when asked to solve 2+3 it fails. It gets a C in the addition course.

Ape B takes two pencils. It says there is one and another one. It then counts them “one, two” and reasons that 1+1 is in fact 2. This ape has understood the core principle and can now extend the logic to answer any question.

Ape A always felt inferior. But then someone comes along and tells it that 1+1 can’t be two. How can a 1 and a 1 make something completely different, a 2. Ape A, who never really understood addition is convinced. It made bad grades because the information it was provided was wrong.

Now ape A thinks it is enlightened and it is far too late for it to actually understand addition. This ape just assumed that all other apes simply took 1+1=2 at face value just as it did so it now ridicules the other apes for blindly believing what the authority apes told it.

Replace addition with something slightly more complex, physics, and you have flat earthers.
Click to expand...
I’d like for them to explain how water stays on top of a flat surface without falling off the edges.
 
UNCatTech said:
I believe that some actually believe the earth is flat.

I also believe a great percentage are people who have figured out that they can sell shit to these people for a profit.

I don't believe there is any concept stupider than that of a flat earth. Though young earth Christians are a close second.
Click to expand...
I’d also argue that a lot of social media flat earthers are perfectly aware that it is bullshit, but enjoy trolling.
 
I generally draw my cutoff line for engagement before people who believe that the Earth is flat, chemtrails, Trump was secretly President during Biden's presidency, vaccines contain mind control chemicals, etc.

It's one thing, in a day when there is so much opinion presented as news, confirmation bias and people tend to get news from random people on social media, to believe some amount of bad or incorrect information.

People who truly believe the earth is flat, the government is spraying our atmosphere with chemicals, etc aren't people who are just getting some bad information. They're elevator has just stopped going to the top floor and you are most likely wasting a bunch of your time trying to reason with them.
 
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ChapelHillSooner said:
Anyone here get flat earthers posts on your Facebook news feeds?

I just can’t resist arguing with these people. I know the saying about arguing with a fool. I should know better.

Do you guys feel compelled to counter their nonsense? How many of them do you think are sincere?

My go to on the second question is to check their profile. If they post a lot of flat earth stuff there, I assume they are sincere because they are spending effort writing posts that are essentially ignored. If they only post comments on other threads, I assume there is a high chance they are just trolling.

I don’t condescend. I just give formulas (when appropriate) and make it clear that I can derive the formulas from basic Newtonian laws all without looking anything up.

Just curious because every month or so I get sucked into a thread about it. It is a waste of time but I suppose I get something psychological out of it.
Click to expand...
Am I safe in assuming that the inspiration for this post was specifically the Cape Canaveral Space X launch photos?
 
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