A good friend of mine is convinced the Earth is flat! Dead serious!

He gets the better of me when I deny it. I answer "Ofcourse its not flat"

His Answer "Do you have proof?"

What is the best way to respond ?  This is no joke! haha

Jay

One word, or rather acronym: GPS :-)

Basically any Satellite. Weather satellites fly by with a certain regularity (where do they go in the mean time?).

Someone sent a weather balloon up that high and took pictures...

Lunar eclipses. The shape of the earth's shadow on the moon...

The first argument goes back to ship-faring: It was noticed that the mast becomes visible before the rest of the ship.

The ancient Greeks (about one generation after Pythagoras, or around 500BC) noticed things about constellations you can see when you move away from the equator, and they even calculated the size of the earth.

I'm sure all these can be explained away if you really want to. To that I usually quote Chesterton, that often the true sign of a conspiracy theory is not that it doesn't explain the facts, but that it explains the ones it focuses on just a little bit too well. It's not that the man is irrational, it is that he is overly rational and misses half the picture.

The trouble with flat-earth explanations is not that it cannot explain a great many things, but that it only explains them narrowly. It includes many things, but it leaves out even more.

8 hours ago, Energy said:

A good friend of mine

Time to get a new friend I guess

Haven't had any experience talking to a "Flat Earther" and i could be wrong but i thought it has to be some advanced almost "cultist" form of trolling. Imagine winning an argument when you know you are wrong, or challenging someones pre-conceptions or beliefs, they might point out you believe the earth is round because that's what you where told but you have no way of knowing yourself. Basically i think its not about the point, the argument is the point, and there are many reasons to argue that appeals to different individuals. narcissism jumps to mind  but i guess RATM, challange the scientific methods, belief that belief creates reality, layman's quantum theory 

Sorry if this offends anyone but i imagine a hipster slash millennial emerging from a vape cloud with a doctors letter for the fidget spinner collection in his or her moon-bag which is preferably worn over the shoulder. 

1 hour ago, Weasel said:

Imagine winning an argument when you know you are wrong

I recall having to do that in a high school debate exercise. You are given a point to argue, one you might disagree with even, and you have to make it work.

It's a good exercise, because it requires that you know your opponent's arguments as well as he does, or even better. So there is something to be said for the ability to win an argument you know is wrong... :-)

For example, arguments on bodily autonomy and their relation to the choice/life debate. The really good guys in that debate (David Boonin, Trent Horn and so on) know both sides so well that they could very well win a debate for the opposition :-)

5 hours ago, Weasel said:

Sorry if this offends anyone but i imagine a hipster slash millennial emerging from a vape cloud with a doctors letter for the fidget spinner collection in his or her moon-bag which is preferably worn over the shoulder. 

haha!

But the earth is flat........ well ok then . Having said that I laughed it off but then jump on YouTube , my soul I have no idea how many hours of debates and  opinions ''proving'' the earth is flat. After having watched a few my brain felt numb and now I don't know what to think anymore.

I told a flat earther once, and he is into flying, to take a flight straight along say the equator. Fly straight, no deviation.

If he does not return in day or two, from the opposite direction, and no crashing or stopping bar for fuel, or deviate from said route, I will concede the earth is flat.

Off course he could not afford that.

So, I said: Then you are wrong. Next round is on you. :-) 

Take a theodolite down to the beach where you have a broad view of the ocean. Line up with the ocean in front of you and then look left and right and you will see the ocean dips away from you. Inland one can easily see 100km or more I can see a mountain in the Willowmore district on a clear day because I am elevated. At the coast you cannot see ships more than 5km out and if you are on a hill about 20 km out and then the curvature hides the object (ship). The curvature of the earth is the reason for crows nests on ships. If the earth was flat the lookout would not have any advantage over the captain standing on the deck.  

The best argument I have heard so far against flat earth is that if the earth was flat cats would have already pushed everything off

On 2018/05/31 at 10:04 AM, plonkster said:

bodily autonomy

some might even give you arguments re 'bodily anatomy'

7 hours ago, gabriel said:

some might even give you arguments re 'bodily anatomy'

Dude, I can talk for a day and a half. Seriously, apologies for derailing again (but it ties into that whole thing of understanding your opponent well enough that you know all his arguments), in that debate the only sound argument that remains is the bodily autonomy argument, or in other words, that you have a right to your own body. Every other argument people use, such as it isn't human, or it isn't really alive, or just a clump of cells, and so forth, those have been thoroughly proven incorrect by modern science. The only argument that remains is literally that sometimes there are rights held so highly that they trump the right of another person to live. The precarious tightrope we walk is that in all other cases, when we made arguments like that... lots of people died. So if you like that sort of thing, you should watch/listen to the Trent Horn/David Boonin debate, and also the Clinton Wilcox/Matt Dillahunty debate (4 years ago now).

1 hour ago, plonkster said:

So if you like that sort of thing

i'd rather stay on this planet ;-)

1 hour ago, gabriel said:

i'd rather stay on this planet ;-)

You should have seen the blowout when the burning IVF clinic thought experiment made a come-back recently and lots of people thought it was awesome and new... :-)

If you've ever seen the Monty Python "argument clinic" sketch you'll understand. You don't come to the internet to have a good argument. You come here to have an argument :-)

Edited June 4, 20186 yr by plonkster

 

I love JP Sears. He has more videos about how to be gluten intolerant, or how to be an atheist... :-)

 

3 hours ago, plonkster said:

I love JP Sears. He has more videos about how to be gluten intolerant, or how to be an atheist... :-)

I enjoyed the gluten one since my mother and sister turned to the dark side. #fullvegan

2 hours ago, Weasel said:

 

I enjoyed the gluten one since my mother and sister turned to the dark side. #fullvegan

There's one about how to be spiritual as well. Equal-opportunity insulter.

17 hours ago, Weasel said:

 

I enjoyed the gluten one since my mother and sister turned to the dark side. #fullvegan

So they go to bed hungry? 

Going Vegan or Vegetarian is a huge missed steak.

2 minutes ago, plonkster said:

Going Vegan or Vegetarian is a huge missed steak.

There is probably no point in grilling them about it

If the earth was flat the edge would be the biggest tourist destination 

22 minutes ago, solarman said:

If the earth was flat the edge would be the biggest tourist destination 

Ice wall... :-)

3 hours ago, solarman said:

If the earth was flat the edge would be the biggest tourist destination 

it would give a totally new spin to bungee jumping