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Interesting bit to be found at The Conversation:
Speakers recently flew in from around (or perhaps, across?) the earth for a three-day event held in Birmingham: the UK's first ever public Flat Earth Convention. It was well attended, and wasn't just three days of speeches and YouTube clips (though, granted, there was a lot of this). There was also a lot of team-building, networking, debating, workshops – and scientific experiments.
Yes, flat earthers do seem to place a lot of emphasis and priority on scientific methods and, in particular, on observable facts. The weekend in no small part revolved around discussing and debating science, with lots of time spent running, planning, and reporting on the latest set of flat earth experiments and models. Indeed, as one presenter noted early on, flat earthers try to "look for multiple, verifiable evidence" and advised attendees to "always do your own research and accept you might be wrong".
While flat earthers seem to trust and support scientific methods, what they don't trust is scientists, and the established relationships between "power" and "knowledge". This relationship between power and knowledge has long been theorised by sociologists. By exploring this relationship, we can begin to understand why there is a swelling resurgence of flat earthers.
Interestingly enough, the author delves into philosophy, particularly the work of Michel Foucault, who, for those not familiar with him, traced the relations between knowledge and power, especially in The Archaeology of Knowledge.
In the 21st century, we are witnessing another important shift in both power and knowledge due to factors that include the increased public platforms afforded by social media. Knowledge is no longer centrally controlled and – as has been pointed out in the wake of Brexit – the age of the expert may be passing. Now, everybody has the power to create and share content. When Michael Gove, a leading proponent of Brexit, proclaimed: "I think the people of this country have had enough of experts", it would seem that he, in many ways, meant it.
Ah, that explains so much beyond Brexit! Alternative Knowledge!
And for those who will never read the entire article, bit of the take-away:
In many ways, a public meeting of flat earthers is a product and sign of our time; a reflection of our increasing distrust in scientific institutions, and the moves by power-holding institutions towards populism and emotions. In much the same way that Foucault reflected on what social outcasts could reveal about our social systems, there is a lot flat earthers can reveal to us about the current changing relationship between power and knowledge. And judging by the success of this UK event – and the large conventions planned in Canada and America this year – it seems the flat earth is going to be around for a while yet.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:04PM (6 children)
The curvature of the Earth is easy to see.
Go to a coastline, preferably one with shipping traffic nearby. Look at a distant object out at sea - an oil rig, a wind turbine, even a skyscraper on a distant coast.
Notice how the BOTTOM of the object is being obscured by the sea, way past any tide, wave or other movement.
You're either suggesting that the water somehow curves UP as you look out to cover that object, or that the water curves AWAY.
Try it from any direction, it works. The only object where distant objects ALWAYS fall away from you, no matter which direction you're looking? A sphere.
However, before we even start justifying this line of preposterous bullshit, there's a much easier way. Go around the world. Thousands upon thousands of people have done it, from zero cost hiking to expensive world cruises. Having to justify this utter tripe as if it has any scientific value whatsoever is just demeaning, as it would be to the Ancient Greeks who knew perfectly well what shape the world is, without fancy maths, tools, gadgets, flight, etc.
There are myriad ways to prove it's bollocks, simply by looking at the world. Everything from the tropics, the equator, seasons, the motion of the moons and planets, simple geometry, but the easiest are quite literally playground-level science. Get in a boat or plane. Go East. Keep going. Like people do every single week.
The Ancient Greeks / Egyptians / Babylonians and just about every ancient civilisation back to the Stone Age are turning in their graves at this crap.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:43PM
Or light curves slightly upward when traveling across the sea. There are other phenomena involving light curvature -- such as mirages on a desert.
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Funny) by HiThere on Saturday May 05 2018, @11:43PM (2 children)
And the weird thing is that many of the people coming to this conference did so in international flights. Try and figure out just *how* they are processing the data.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 06 2018, @06:49AM (1 child)
Well, if they saw a curved horizon, they probably concluded that the round Earth conspiracy made sure that the windows include some optical aberration so the horizon looks round while in reality it is just a straight line. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Sunday May 06 2018, @04:56PM
But a round horizon would be true of a disk as well as a sphere. A round horizon doesn't prove anything WRT the spheric nature of Earth. For that you need some means of demonstrating that lines up and down converge near the center, or some analogous argument. Thus progressive images of a ship coming over the horizon are a good argument, but not proof, as it could be some sort of mirage kind of effect.
That's why it was important to the Greeks to measure the angles of shadows at noon at locations far apart. It really *isn't* something that you can directly observe. You can't observer roundness directly on anything much more than 20 feet away from your nose, because your eye's don't give you enough parallax. You have to reason it out from other evidence.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Sunday May 06 2018, @04:50AM (1 child)
They've got an answer for that, though. Some horseshit about gravity affecting light differently, so the light actually 'falls' faster than anything else. Therefore the light carrying the bottom of the object hits the ground before it can get to your eye, and only the light reflecting from the top of the object reaches you.
I had a discussion with a flat earther and used that very example, a ship at sea, to make my point. He was a semi-truck driver, and you see exactly the same phenomenon on the highway when you're meeting another vehicle on a hill. The top of the oncoming truck is always visible before the bottom of it. He'd seen it himself, literally hundreds of times, but he had his crazy answer ready to use.
It really is mind-boggling. Someone doesn't understand something and makes up some reasonable-sounding bullshit to explain it. Something else comes along and they make up some more bullshit to describe that. If bullshit x directly contradicts or disproves bullshit y, or vice versa? More proof they're correct! It's complicated stuff after all, and they'll admit they don't understand it so of course it'll be confusing.
- D
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 06 2018, @06:54AM
Of course according to that theory, you should no longer see the ground as soon as you are up, as all the light has already fallen on the ground … strange that I still see the landscape from a mountain …
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.