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Tales Of A Flat Earth

I feel old! Because a) I also spotted that in the guardian today; and b) I have no idea who Tila Tequila is. Her tweets are... fascinating. Thanks Graylien I enjoyed that!

Flat Earth is tapping into a zeitgeist of sorts I think, so that it feels vaguely credible to someone with a particular axe to grind, or fear to stoke. Rynner2 and Coal both have it right, I think.

Lots of Fortean stuff waxes and wanes in popularity, I've noticed. The same experience might be understood in one culture as an alien abduction, in another as a visit to the fairies, and in still another as a psychotic episode. In each case the favoured understanding can tell us a lot about the culture that has produced that framework.

I'm actually really interested in these processes. The Flat Earth interest suggests a great deal about how people see their relationship to the authority of science. I personally think that it is also some kind of unconscious metaphor for how people perceive their relationship to the rest of the planet. I can't quite articulate it, but it's quite isolationist, isn't it? Any thoughts?
 
It seems to me a lot of people feel excluded from increasingly far fetched scientific theories. This probably makes them feel inadequate, because people do feel inadequate when they can't grasp the ideas of others. No doubt for some it makes them feel their own emotionally engendered ideas carry less weight, because they can't support them with scientific theories they don't understand, and can't even be sure that those theories don't contradict their beliefs. In such confusion, it's easier to say those scientific theories are the result of conspiracy than to try to understand the evidence, and it's often easier to find specious arguments aimed at convincing idiots and those who want to believe them than to accept evidences one doesn't understand. Conspiracy theories have built into them a rebuttal of any evidence that doesn't fit, which is not just that it comes from an unreliable source, but that the conspiracy theorist truly believes that that unreliable source is part of an active attempt to hide the truth, so there is never a fear of being proved wrong.

It's no surprise that creationists have embraced the Flat Earth idea, with all its accusations of conspiracy. Obviously, wanting to show Earth at the centre of the Universe makes it appealing to creationists. But creationists are not merely attempting to fight science on the basis of theories and evidence, but have invented a historical narrative in which scientists have developed theories and interpreted evidence specifically with the aim of removing religion and the Bible from our view of reality, a conspiracy that they see as stretching back at least as far as Buffon, James Hutton and Charles Lyell. This often isn't covered in discussions about the conflict of creationism and science. The partisanism isn't simply the result of two people with conflicting views, but is due to a belief on the part of some creationists that scientists are actively attacking religion, perhaps specifically Christianity, by inventing theories they know are false, making claims they know are unsupportable and fabricating evidence.

It's easier to question the motives of those telling you things you're not clever or mature enough to understand than to accept the truth.
 
...so conspiracy theories are in effect an 'ad hominem' attack, because you attack the messenger when your argument is weak.
 
Coal said:
...so conspiracy theories are in effect an 'ad hominem' attack, because you attack the messenger when your argument is weak.
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I think that happens, certainly. Whether that's always or mostly the case would probably require a lot of research. Of course, dismissing a conspiracy theory on the basis it amounts to an ad hominem attack could itself be dismissed as an ad hominem attack.:D
 
PeteByrdie said:
I think that happens, certainly. Whether that's always or mostly the case would probably require a lot of research. Of course, dismissing a conspiracy theory on the basis it amounts to an ad hominem attack could itself be dismissed as an ad hominem attack.:D
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It would be if you did it, how true. :)
 
I guess if you’re Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s nephew who is also a rapper, never has the world called on your presence more than after your uncle was dissed by a rapper who believes that the Earth is flat. So without further ado, here is TYSON’s “Flat to Fact,” the response track to B.o.B’s DeGrasse Tyson diss which itself doubles as a remix of Drake’s diss of Meek Mill.

https://soundcloud.com/drtyson/flat-to-fact

http://gawker.com/now-neil-degrasse-tysons-rapper-nephew-has-issued-a-res-1755280932
 
I think this rapper guy is just trying to get his name out there. Never heard of him two days ago now I have seen him about ten times in my internet travels in last two days. Great free publicity. Tia Tequila is just crazy though.
 
Tribble said:
I guess if you’re Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s nephew who is also a rapper, never has the world called on your presence more than after your uncle was dissed by a rapper who believes that the Earth is flat. So without further ado, here is TYSON’s “Flat to Fact,” the response track to B.o.B’s DeGrasse Tyson diss which itself doubles as a remix of Drake’s diss of Meek Mill.

https://soundcloud.com/drtyson/flat-to-fact

http://gawker.com/now-neil-degrasse-tysons-rapper-nephew-has-issued-a-res-1755280932
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All Fortean stuff should be argued out (sorry - 'discussed') this way! Can the MB get some rappers in residence?
 
I dimly recall an ancient sci fi comic along those lines. A scientist creates a potion to shrink himself and eventually shrinks down to the atomic level.

There he realises that sub atomic particles are actually suns and planets in a miniature universe contained within a single atom.

Since he's still shrinking, in time he becomes small enough to live on one of the planets.

He goes to see a leading scientist to beg for his help in finding an antidote to the shrinking potion.

But even as he speaks he's still shrinking and soon shrinks back down to the atomic level and falls into another micro universe. And so on ad infinitum.
 
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Tina Tequila appears to be channeling Nietzsche on Twitter today: Through my suffering in hell I became a comedian.

As you were...
 
Well, she is a fan of Hitler...not that far from Nietzsche.
 
I think she's apologised for that whole Hitler debacle.

As for Nietzsche, his sister cosied up to the Nazis long after his death, but I think the philosopher himself has been re-evaluated as not actually being a proto Nazi.

Indeed, he seems to have fallen out with Wagner in part due to Wagner's rabid anti-semitism, and in one of Nietzsche's final letters in 1889 he writes, "I am having all anti-semites shot". (Admittedly by that stage he was dancing around his rooms naked and playing the piano with his fists.)
 
graylien said:
Tina Tequila appears to be channeling Nietzsche on Twitter today: Through my suffering in hell I became a comedian.

As you were...
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“Beware that, when fighting conspiracy theorists, you yourself do not become a conspiracy theorist... for when you gaze long into the Internet, the Internet gazes also into you.”

graylien said:
(Admittedly by that stage he was dancing around his rooms naked and playing the piano with his fists.)
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You say that like it's a bad thing.
 
Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, by Christine Garwood. It has many gems but one of the sparklers is Charles Johnson. If the Earth was flat then naturally the space programme was a fraud.

Johnson believed that the film of the Moon landing had been scripted and directed by Arthur C. Clarke and filmed at Meteor Crater, Flagstaff, Arizona. The lucrative rights to the production had been allotted to America at a Kennedy - Khrushchev meeting in return for Cuba.

Also involved were "English humorists", "Nazi German Scientists" and the Mormons who had captured Howard Hughes and assumed control of his companies in order to fund the NASA "Space Hoax Racket".

A great book but the chapter about Johnson alone is worth the entrance price.
 
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It is possible to imagine a curved metric in spacetime where the Earth is flat and infinite but appears round. If you travel in any direction along this flat surface you will eventually come back to your own location. Such an infinite, flat, repeating surface would exist in the throat of a wormhole for instance (if wormholes really existed).

It would be impossible in theory to be able to tell the difference between such an infinite surface and a spherical earth; it's just a case of transforming your coordinates.
 
eburacum said:
It is possible to imagine a curved metric in spacetime where the Earth is flat and infinite but appears round. If you travel in any direction along this flat surface you will eventually come back to your own location. Such an infinite, flat, repeating surface would exist in the throat of a wormhole for instance (if wormholes really existed).

It would be impossible in theory to be able to tell the difference between such an infinite surface and a spherical earth; it's just a case of transforming your coordinates.
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So would it be impossible to tell that it was flat? In which case, if nobody could tell it was flat, and it didn't in any way act flat, in what way would it in any way be flat? Would a spirit level help? :)
 
eburacum said:
It is possible to imagine a curved metric in spacetime where the Earth is flat and infinite but appears round. If you travel in any direction along this flat surface you will eventually come back to your own location. Such an infinite, flat, repeating surface would exist in the throat of a wormhole for instance (if wormholes really existed).

It would be impossible in theory to be able to tell the difference between such an infinite surface and a spherical earth; it's just a case of transforming your coordinates.
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Wouldn't that scenario also introduces anomalies if we attempted to send spacecraft to other planets?
Or...is the entire solar system inside a wormhole?
 
So in the realm of pure physics it may not be possible to tell if the Earth is round or infinitely flat.

But since the maths for an infinite surface is presumably far more complicated than the maths for a finite solid, would it not be more practical to live as if we inhabited a finite sphere rather than an infinite plain?

And another thing. I often visit Morrisons. If the Earth is finite, then the distance from my house to Morrisons is a finite fraction of the circumference of the Earth.

But suppose the Earth is an infinite plain. Any fraction of an infinite distance is still infinity. An eighth of infinty is still equal to infinity.

That being the case, no matter how small the fraction of the Earth between me and Morrisons, I would still have to travel an infinite distance to stock up on Cheerios.

That clearly isn't so since I successfully purchased Cheerios earlier today. So how do you explain that?
 
Well I'll tell you what I know about Cheerios. They consist of corn, oats, rice and wheat. That's four grain nutrition and not too sweet.

As for Monism, if the universe consists of a single undifferentiated substance, then that substance must include Cheerios, given that Cheerios exist.

I therefore would have no need to leave my house to obtain Cheerios. They would be all around me. Indeed, I would be Cheerios myself.

So riddle me that, Batman!
 
Sparkling water was, though! My arms nearly fell out of my sockets carrying that bugger home. £2.50 for eight 2l bottles!

On a completely different subject, as I was leaving the corner shop this evening armed with cheap white wine I saw one of the assistants struggle in with a Morrisons carrier bag full of large Coke bottles.

Do the products in corner shops all originate from Morrisons, Swifty? Do they?
 
Actually, the 'flat earth' theory does have a problem; it would be possible to imagine another flat earth directly under our feet, pointing downwards but essentially identical to our own. But this would prove David Icke right, and there is an immutable law of the universe that David Icke is never right. So the flat earth theory must be wrong.
 
eburacum said:
Actually, the 'flat earth' theory does have a problem; it would be possible to imagine another flat earth directly under our feet, pointing downwards but essentially identical to our own. But this would prove David Icke right, and there is an immutable law of the universe that David Icke is never right. So the flat earth theory must be wrong.
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If so, would it be possible to climb over the edge and stand on the other side?
 
graylien said:
Sparkling water was, though! My arms nearly fell out of my sockets carrying that bugger home. £2.50 for eight 2l bottles!

On a completely different subject, as I was leaving the corner shop this evening armed with cheap white wine I saw one of the assistants struggle in with a Morrisons carrier bag full of large Coke bottles.

Do the products in corner shops all originate from Morrisons, Swifty? Do they?
Click to expand...

Don't know about corner shops, but I have seen people, almost certainly chippy owners, empty a supermarket's freezer section of own-brand basic chips and struggle with an overflowing trolley to the checkout.

And Cheerios (600g) are on offer at Tescos at the moment. Half price (£1.59) : http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelf/the_nestle_mini_store_cheerios

Also : If the Earth was proven to be flat, countless science fiction stories in which the planet gets used as a pool ball would have to be revised. Ultimate Frisbee, anyone?
 
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