Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Razblo]

How do you know the world is not flat?
I don't mean that as rhetorical question, I would like to know your methodology.

It's a lot less complex than climate. It can be purely visible via satellite camera technology. One can actually see the Earth.
The data is very direct.

Where's the money in round Earth propaganda as opposed to flat Earth propaganda?

We should surely realise by now that a majority does not therefore automatically make something true. Now throw trillions at it then it can only get more absurdly lopsided.

[Eduk]

Well there are no satellites in space and all the images which you see have been doctored.

Also you think it's cheap to go into space? Organisations like NASA spend a tiny fraction of their budget on the fakes and pocket the rest. That is a lot of money.

[-1-]

Ha! You think organizations like NASA exist? It's a fake organization. It's run by two six-year-olds, who get paid in Monopoly money.

I wonder where the REAL money goes.

[Razblo]

Well there are no satellites in space and all the images which you see have been doctored.

Also you think it's cheap to go into space? Organisations like NASA spend a tiny fraction of their budget on the fakes and pocket the rest. That is a lot of money.

Where did I say cheap?

But speaking of budget, there are those high altitude balloon things for mounting cameras on which can show Earth's curvature.

You're grasping.

-- Updated August 6th, 2017, 12:13 am to add the following --

Ha! You think organizations like NASA exist? It's a fake organization. It's run by two six-year-olds, who get paid in Monopoly money.

I wonder where the REAL money goes.

Why not just also tag me in with Holocaust denial?

You guys are grasping. It's a sign of desperation.

[Eduk]

No the point is simple to grasp.
How do you know the world isn't flat. All your objections are answered on flat earth sites.
How do you know one conspiracy theory is false and another is true. I am simply asking for your methodology and for you to apply the methodology evenly.
For example I would point to the scientific consensus that the world is a sphere as being very highly supportive of the claim.
I would also talk about conspiracy size and how likely a conspiracy can be maintained past a certain number of people. For example I know of zero world wide conspiracy involving many thousands of people independent from each other.
I could also look at the credentials of the scientist making the claims. How many published papers do they have. How many citations do those papers have.
Finally it's not unreasonable to look at motive. Of course greed is a big motive. But there is a lot more money in fossil fuels and nuclear than renewables.
Finally politics comes into play. Of course a politician will say anything to get voted for. Which is why republicans deny science and democrats don't. Again though what conclusion can you draw from that other than don't trust politicians.

[Razblo]

No the point is simple to grasp.
How do you know the world isn't flat. All your objections are answered on flat earth sites.
How do you know one conspiracy theory is false and another is true. I am simply asking for your methodology and for you to apply the methodology evenly.
For example I would point to the scientific consensus that the world is a sphere as being very highly supportive of the claim.
I would also talk about conspiracy size and how likely a conspiracy can be maintained past a certain number of people. For example I know of zero world wide conspiracy involving many thousands of people independent from each other.
I could also look at the credentials of the scientist making the claims. How many published papers do they have. How many citations do those papers have.
Finally it's not unreasonable to look at motive. Of course greed is a big motive. But there is a lot more money in fossil fuels and nuclear than renewables.
Finally politics comes into play. Of course a politician will say anything to get voted for. Which is why republicans deny science and democrats don't. Again though what conclusion can you draw from that other than don't trust politicians.

Republicans deny science. How ridiculous. These are political point-scoring statements. Washington is corrupt on both sides to the point there isn't really sides.

How can I evaluate that a flat Earth site's claim is BS? Well, I see how their assumptions are constructed. For example, they calculate the perceived angles of sunlight rays (perspective) shows that the sun is quite small and located close to Earth. They do not, in this calculation, seem to even consider that Earth has quite a dense moist atmosphere and so that the sun's rays are really emanating from the outer surface of the atmosphere where the sunlight actually strikes, and from there rays branch out.

A lot more fossil fuels, business wise? Sure. But they are not left out of the loop ever. Renewables cannot match. It's really just a facade and a battle between the two is also really only a facade. The actual battle is really one about sovereignty - about who become controllers of nations. Shutting pipelines, say, from Canada to the US suits the fossil business interests of the UAE and Saudi Arabia. So the so called renewable business heads can both please a Saudi King's interest, receiving appropriate kickbacks, while stripping the working and middle classes of the US bare and destroying local industry, with carbon tax demands, which then better suits a non-local internationally located business.

As for this 'climate science consensus', the construction of this consensus itself is fraudulent. There are dominant voices, dominant because they are allowed the large publicly funded platforms. It's just the usual stuff.

[-1-]

Sorry, Razblo. I was just chiming in exaggeration-like, because I like my own sense of humour. This post of mine which I left about the Monopoly money was actually meant to be mocking your debating partner, in a jovial way, and not taking issues with your point.

[JamesOfSeattle]

No the point is simple to grasp.
How do you know the world isn't flat. All your objections are answered on flat earth sites.

As always, we never have perfect knowledge, so the question becomes how much credence do you put in the proposition? (I don't know the Bayesian terms.). At some point you simply trust the consensus.

As for personal confirmation, I would point out that I have been to Japan several times. Each time, I flew West, even though the vast majority of Western history suggests Japan is in the Far East. I'm curious, how do the flat earth sites answer that?

*

[-1-]

I'm curious, how do the flat earth sites answer that?

*

They may deny the entire experience. When you are in an airplane, are you aware of directions? I personlly can tell the directions from the time of day, and from the position of the Sun, but at night? so they may claim there is a conspiracy of trucking people aroudn in airplanes in the night, in ciricles or in closed loops, and making them believe they are travelling in a straight line.

Or else the Flat Earth Society thinkers may assume a Dark Matteresque stance, and say that the science may support all the counter-evidence to their tenet, but their tenet still trumps everything else including reasonable thought and logical necessities.

You asked how the Flat Earth theory may be defended against the data you supplied as an argument that the Earth is not flat. I answered.

[SimpleGuy]

Climate change doesn't mean necessary a warming , it can be a raising of the oceans due to molten ice-shelves. This would alter the amount of floods as well as the length of rainy seasons and is thus a climate change. Even if the absorbed energy from diminished reflectivity then is compensated by a warming of the sea this could have a huge effect on algae growth, fish population and the level of dissolved CO_2 in sea water.

[Atreyu]

What's fraudulent about climate change ideology is not that the climate seems to be more in a state of flux than it has ever has been as far as we know. It is. There is no doubt that the climate is less predictable today than it has been for most of the last several thousand years. That's a fact. And it's also a fact that there seems to be a relationship between human activity and the climate, which I would suspect anyways.

What's fraudulent about it is the idea that we should spend vast sums of money and greatly alter our behavior in order to try and control the global weather. Why?

1) Humans don't have the power to control the weather.

2) Meteorology isn't exact enough a science (at all) for us to be making big decisions today based on computer simulated models which predict what the global weather will be like in 50-100 years. The truth is that science cannot predict local weather, with any accuracy in the least, beyond 2-3 days.

Trying to prevent the seas from rising over the next 100 years is like planning to buy an umbrella in about 10 days because the 10-day forecast calls for 80% chance of rain 10 days out. Who would do this?

[Eduk]

I own an umbrella. They are very useful.

[Steve3007]

Atreyu: You're confusing weather with climate.

Weather is short-term fluctuations. Climate is long-term trends. The fact that we can't predict whether it will rain two weeks from now is absolutely irrelevant to the question of whether there is a long-term warming trend in the climate.

[Sy Borg]

Yes Steve. Humans certainly have shown as much capacity to control climate as the blue green algae did during the Permian extinction event. Biology, chemistry and geology are an interconnected entity - with each variably creating and destroying the other. So yes, biology can readily alter the atmosphere and climate. The precedents are there in prehistory.

Fortunately, the actions needed to reduce impacts on ecosystems, and to reduce waste and pollution, are the same as are needed to slow the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. So, no matter what, work in this area is not a waste of money. Rather, more resources will ultimately be preserved, which is useful when you have seven billion people seeking ever greater slice from a rapidly diminishing resource "pie".

Having worked in risk management, the mindlessly cunning amateur hour cronyism of many politicians on show is, well, strange. The highest levels of government are running at a significantly less sophisticated level than responsible small businesses or autonomous government bodies. This is obviously sub optimal :)

In the end, a responsible risk management approach to climate change can slow down the advent of the inevitable cataclysms that will face those in developing countries and the poor generally this century. Increasingly, unfortunates are being dropped off, pushed out from under the protective infrastructure "umbrella" that we routinely enjoy. While slavishly following Zeitgeists is unwise, it's more unwise to ignore a reality-based Zeitgeist because there are practical consequences, eg. laggard nations with climate change will in time find themselves paying top dollar prices for renewable technology that they could have developed themselves if they weren't effectively asleep on the job.

[Steve3007]

Greta:

Yes Steve. Humans certainly have shown as much capacity to control climate as the blue green algae did during the Permian extinction event.

Yes, good analogy. Almost all of the atmosphere of the Earth was made by living things. Biological life, whether human, plant or microbe, can become a victim of its own success. The difference with humans is that we know this and can, if we want, stop it. Sadly, we don't want to stop it.

Fortunately, the actions needed to reduce impacts on ecosystems, and to reduce waste and pollution, are the same as are needed to slow the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. So, no matter what, work in this area is not a waste of money. Rather, more resources will ultimately be preserved, which is useful when you have seven billion people seeking ever greater slice from a rapidly diminishing resource "pie".

Yes. The snag is that they tend to be large scale collective, cooperative actions with relatively long-term goals. These are actions that need governments to succeed, because free markets are, by their nature, concerned with short-term local goals. So the required actions become victims of blind political ideology and populism. In this case, the ideology is that all government is bad. Factual information then gets portrayed as political agenda. Work to combat climate change gets portrayed as an excuse for socialism. etc.