Author Topic: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus  (Read 93168 times)

Offline bknight

  • Neptune
  • ****
  • Posts: 3107
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #75 on: February 04, 2016, 11:54:09 AM »
I'm in no way trolling here, bknight, merely stating that if FEs want to believe in a flat earth, that has zero impact on me personally(well, other than me questioning their mental faculties), but they should have the courage to label it as such. I can believe that a vast, cosmic raccoon created the cosmos, but it doesn't make it true.
No sir, that was directed at tradosaurus, my appologies
Truth needs no defense.  Nobody can take those footsteps I made on the surface of the moon away from me.
Eugene Cernan

Offline DonQuixote

  • Venus
  • **
  • Posts: 33
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #76 on: February 04, 2016, 11:58:09 AM »
Quote from: bknight
No sir, that was directed at tradosaurus, my appologies

Ahh understood. No problem at all.
You can lead a fool to knowledge, but you can not make him think.

Offline Cat Not Included

  • Venus
  • **
  • Posts: 78
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #77 on: February 04, 2016, 12:32:54 PM »
If tradasaurus is genuine, I would have to feel deep sympathy for him. Can you imagine how terrifying it must be to not believe gravity exists? I picture him crawling around with velco to keep from crashing into the ceiling, afraid to go outside for fear that at any moment he might be unexpectedly catapulted into the sky to freeze somewhere far above (or perhaps, in his world, to burn up as he gets too close to the sun).

And then all the frustrations. Even assuming he can go outside, what an enormous pain it must to be to get anywhere. He can't trust a GPS - they are supposed to use satellites, so they are clearly all lying. Flight times are based on a round Earth, so they must be wrong. He can never know how long it will take to get anywhere. He dare not travel too far, or he might risk blundering into the edge of the Earth and being "censured" by the illuminati (or whatever organization controls the world).
The quote "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" very clearly predates personal computers.

Offline gillianren

  • Uranus
  • ****
  • Posts: 2211
    • My Letterboxd journal
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #78 on: February 04, 2016, 01:04:49 PM »
How do constellations work on a flat Earth?  Orion is high in my local sky these nights, but in a few months, he'll go away again.  Where does he go?
"This sounds like a job for Bipolar Bear . . . but I just can't seem to get out of bed!"

"Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labour-saving device in the face of complexity."  --Henry Louis Gates

Offline DonQuixote

  • Venus
  • **
  • Posts: 33
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #79 on: February 04, 2016, 01:11:26 PM »
I've been trying to come up with my own analogy for FEs and certain other CTs that ignore contradictory evidence. I'm calling it the Orange Housecat Fallacy.

In it, the first housecat the fallacy's perpetrator ever sees is orange, and he thus asserts that all cats of another color must be a separate species. Whenever people show him pictures of cats of various colors, he cites examples of convergent adaptation to disprove them. When shown litters of kittens of various colors with an orange mother, he asserts that, unique among all animals, housecats can produce litters of varying species. When shown DNA evidence supporting the fact that they're all the same species, he says DNA doesn't exist, because he's never found any.
You can lead a fool to knowledge, but you can not make him think.

Offline Sus_pilot

  • Mars
  • ***
  • Posts: 337
A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #80 on: February 04, 2016, 01:12:11 PM »
By the by, Trad, I'm still waiting for you to explain why I have to tell my flight students that the wind generally shifts 30 degrees to the right as they climb. 

Added bonus questions - why, when we use paper sectional charts (aeronautical maps), do we tell our students the most accurate true courses are found near the center?  Why, if I take the US set and piece them together, do they not match perfectly at the edges?

Just for fun, using a very popular software used by pilots ranging from Sport Pilots to Airline Transport Pilots, here are two shots of a flight from Honolulu International to John F. Kennedy in New York (the numbers are for Cessna 182, BTW).  The blue dot is where I'm sitting in Omaha, NE.  This is the shortest path for the flight, ignoring obstacles and airspace.  Note that the first image is a nice straight line.  The second is of the flight patch with the software centered roughly on the equator in the middle of the flight path, showing a pretty good arc - this is what happens when you plot a straight line on a sphere and try to show it in two dimensions - change the center of projection and it HAS to curve.  BTW, yes I know most of the world is grayed out on this, but I'm not paying for the international data just to prove a self-evident point.





ETA:  Looking at the images, no I'm not 2,600 feet above sea level - more like 1,000.  Note the GPS accuracy - I'm sitting in my company's HQ building at lunch, and it's essentially a giant Faraday cage (cell phone reception drove us nuts the first couple of years in here), so I'm amazed an iPad without an external antenna is getting any GPS information at all.

ETA - ETA:  Whoops - the altitude is fairly accurate, after all.  I saw the 2,600 and wanted to pre-empt Tad - that's actually the minimum safe altitude (VFR) above the tallest object in the area.  Those are the broadcast towers at 72nd Street in Omaha, which are roughly 1,500 feet tall to send FM TV and radio signals as far as possible - tall because the Earth is a sphere.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2016, 01:20:14 PM by Sus_pilot »

Offline bknight

  • Neptune
  • ****
  • Posts: 3107
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #81 on: February 04, 2016, 01:25:35 PM »
The great circle routes are also contradictory to a FE proposal.  My classmates and I plotted a course from NE US to Europe both on a flat projection and on a globe.  Looking at the routes taken by commercial aircraft followed the course plotted on the globe.
But you all, except for our guest, knew this.
Truth needs no defense.  Nobody can take those footsteps I made on the surface of the moon away from me.
Eugene Cernan

Offline Cat Not Included

  • Venus
  • **
  • Posts: 78
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #82 on: February 04, 2016, 02:16:44 PM »
By the by, Trad, I'm still waiting for you to explain why I have to tell my flight students that the wind generally shifts 30 degrees to the right as they climb.
Well, obviously, as a pilot, you are in on the conspiracy.

All the pilots have to be in on it. Every pilot in the world, in all the different countries.
Every space agency of every country.
Every shipping company.
Every freighter captain (or boat captain who is going to sail farther than directly along the coast)
Every GPS and map company.
Every professional astronomer, and a good chunk of the amateur ones.
Probably a decent chunk of geologists and oceanologists.
Of course, we'll need a big infrastructure of technicians and engineers to handle all the secret wiring and relay towers that covers up the imaginary satellites that we don't really have. They all have to be in on it.
Most people who have taken international flights.
Most of the google maps staff (this is no surprise; we all know they are out to control the world)
Many people who live near the ocean. Or spend much time near the ocean. Or visit the ocean a little and are reasonably observant.

I'm kind of curious, actually, which exactly is the small fraction of the populace that is supposed to be deceived by this conspiracy.
The quote "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" very clearly predates personal computers.

Offline Sus_pilot

  • Mars
  • ***
  • Posts: 337
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #83 on: February 04, 2016, 02:21:22 PM »

By the by, Trad, I'm still waiting for you to explain why I have to tell my flight students that the wind generally shifts 30 degrees to the right as they climb.
Well, obviously, as a pilot, you are in on the conspiracy.

All the pilots have to be in on it. Every pilot in the world, in all the different countries.
Every space agency of every country.
Every shipping company.
Every freighter captain (or boat captain who is going to sail farther than directly along the coast)
Every GPS and map company.
Every professional astronomer, and a good chunk of the amateur ones.
Probably a decent chunk of geologists and oceanologists.
Of course, we'll need a big infrastructure of technicians and engineers to handle all the secret wiring and relay towers that covers up the imaginary satellites that we don't really have. They all have to be in on it.
Most people who have taken international flights.
Most of the google maps staff (this is no surprise; we all know they are out to control the world)
Many people who live near the ocean. Or spend much time near the ocean. Or visit the ocean a little and are reasonably observant.

I'm kind of curious, actually, which exactly is the small fraction of the populace that is supposed to be deceived by this conspiracy.

Shhhh... I'm not just a pilot, but a flight instructor.  Don't tell Trad, but I get some pretty good residuals out of this...

Offline twik

  • Jupiter
  • ***
  • Posts: 595
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #84 on: February 04, 2016, 04:13:57 PM »
I've been trying to come up with my own analogy for FEs and certain other CTs that ignore contradictory evidence. I'm calling it the Orange Housecat Fallacy.

In it, the first housecat the fallacy's perpetrator ever sees is orange, and he thus asserts that all cats of another color must be a separate species. Whenever people show him pictures of cats of various colors, he cites examples of convergent adaptation to disprove them. When shown litters of kittens of various colors with an orange mother, he asserts that, unique among all animals, housecats can produce litters of varying species. When shown DNA evidence supporting the fact that they're all the same species, he says DNA doesn't exist, because he's never found any.

It reminds me of a medical story I heard once, about a doctor dealing with a patient suffering from the delusion he was dead (this is a real condition). The patient appeared generally lucid, except that he was convinced he was no longer living.

Upon learning that the patient had some education in biology, the doctor decided to give him incontrovertible proof the patient was, indeed, living.

"Do dead people bleed?" he asked the patient.

"No," the patient answered, and explained that when the circulation stops, so does bleeding.

"Well, see here," the doctor said, as he took the patient's hand and made a small nick on his finger with a scalpel. Blood immediately welled out. "Doesn't this prove you are alive?"

"No," the patient replied sadly. "But it does prove that dead people do bleed."

Offline Jason Thompson

  • Uranus
  • ****
  • Posts: 1601
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #85 on: February 04, 2016, 04:35:56 PM »
1. Flight patterns disagree with you.

When did a few lines badly drawn on a google map count as a fight pattern? ALso, the question about the apparent massive difference in the size of Australia (among other southern countries) was raised. Do you have an answer? Or is everyone in Australia in on it too somehow?

Quote
2. Foucault’s pendulums do not uniformly swing in any one direction.

No, they uniformly swing and rotate in a manner determined by their position on the rotating Earth.

Quote
Sometimes they rotate clockwise and sometimes counter-clockwise

Yes, and the direction is connected to their location for a good reason.

Quote
sometimes they fail to rotate

Any set up along the equator will not rotate. This is as expected.

Quote
The behavior of the pendulum actually depends on 1) the initial force beginning its swing

The pendulum is set swinging by deflecting it and then releasing it. The initial force is the acceleration of gravity. Or are you suggesting that every pendulum is actually started from rest by hitting it to knock it off vertical?

Quote
2) the ball-and-socket joint used which most-readily facilitates circular motion over any other.

Who says it has to be a ball and socket joint? A piece of thread secured at one end will also allow rotation, no ball and socket joint needed. But since the attachment only facilitates the rotation, what actually causes it in the first place in your view?

Quote
3. Tycho Brahe famously argued against the heliocentric theory in his time, positing that if the Earth revolved around the Sun, the change in relative position of the stars after 6 months orbital motion could not fail to be seen. He argued that the stars should seem to separate as we approach and come together as we recede. In actual fact, however, after 190,000,000 miles of supposed orbit around the Sun, not a single inch of parallax can be detected in the stars, proving we have not moved at all.

Or that the stars are much further away than he believed. If you believe a failure to detect something means it does not exist then you have no understanding of either science or logical reasoning, which makes you claim to be a 'degreed engineer' even more dubious than it already is. Since when did absence of evidence equate to evidence of absence?

Oh, and parallax is not measured in inches.

Quote
4. Time-lapse photography shows the Moon itself turns clockwise like a wheel as it circles over and around the Earth. You can find pictures of the Moon at 360 degrees of various inclination from all over the Earth simply depending on where and when the picture was taken.

And you really can't see that a global Earth would produce this same observation?

Quote
Did you also know that the moon and the sun are the same size in the sky but we are TOLD that the sun is really far enough away that it just so happens it appears to be the same size as the moon?

And you find this laughable why, exactly?

Quote
5.  The natural physics of water is to find and maintain its level. If Earth were a giant sphere tilted, wobbling and hurdling through infinite space then truly flat, consistently level surfaces would not exist here.

Over what scale are you determining 'level-ness'? If you go down to the molecular level there truly are no flat surfaces.

Quote
6.   If “gravity” is credited with being a force strong enough to curve the massive expanse of oceans around a globular Earth, it would be impossible for fish and other creatures to swim through such forcefully held water.

Why? Explain that in terms of the behaviour of water molecules under pressure, or do you not believe in water molecules either?

Quote
How does gravity affect an objects ability to sink or float in water?

You never learned that in school? Really? Density, bouyancy, etc. are all alien concepts to you and you can't see how gravity would have any influence?

Quote
7. A spinning object will create a force called centrifugal force.

No it won't. There is no such thing as centrifugal force. What is perceived as an outward force is inertia against the constant acceleration of being pulled in a circular motion against an object's natural tendency to keep going in a straight line.

Quote
How does this magical gravity hold everything on a sphere (globe earth) where the speed is not constant depending upon your location?

If one force is much greater than the other this will not be a problem. Guess what? Gravity on a mass the size of Earth is easily enough to overcome the inertia of an object on the surface being 'spun' at one revolution every 24 hours.

Quote
In fact I should weigh the least at the equator as that is the max velocity I would experience on a rotating globe earth.

You do, but since the difference is less than the average variation of your bodyweight over the course of time, you won't notice it. Other, less variable, masses have been weighed at different locations on the Earth and do indeed weigh less at the equator than near the poles.
 
Quote
The above explanations are why I keep stating that the globe earth is a religion based on faith and not observational facts.  We see one thing but are TOLD to believe another.

Wrong. I have seen plenty of things that lead me to conclude a spherical Earth. I do not accept it on blind faith.
"There's this idea that everyone's opinion is equally valid. My arse! Bloke who was a professor of dentistry for forty years does NOT have a debate with some eejit who removes his teeth with string and a door!"  - Dara O'Briain

Offline Jason Thompson

  • Uranus
  • ****
  • Posts: 1601
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #86 on: February 04, 2016, 04:53:37 PM »
1. Other planets being round could easily mean you are looking at a dinner plate instead of a sphere.

You've never looked through a telescope at the plents, have you? Venus and Mercury show distinct pahses that run all the way from thin crescent to full circle, just as the Moon does, and Mars shows a gibbous phase at certain points. So no, we could not be looking at a 'dinner plate' instead of a sphere.

Quote
2.  So you see stars rotate around a center point (which actually proves an earth centered universe) and you conclude the earth is spinning?  That takes a lot of faith.

Why does that take any more faith than concluding that the whole universe is spinning? What makes your 'conclusion' any more valid?

But actually we see the stars rotating around two centre points: the north and south celestial poles. How could that happen in a flat Earth?
 
Quote
3. Venus transiting in front of the sun?  I hope you weren't blinded.   ;)  Again you are witnessing movement and concluding that the earth is orbiting the sun when it is just as viable to conclude that everything else is orbiting the earth.

The ancient greeks thought that as well, and the mathematical hoops they had to jump through to get a model that fit the observations were staggering. Look up epicyles, equants, deferents, etc. And yet, even with all that over centuries, they still couldn't actually figure out how the planets moved in the sky. Once the Earth was taken out of the centre and the orbits were rendered elliptical instead of arrangements of circles suddenly it all made sense.
 
Quote
4. The flat earth map shows how the moon and sun would appear to "set" beyond the horizon because what is called the vanishing point.

No, the vainshing point argument, as shown in your illustration, requires them to get smaller as they set. Things 'vanish' because the further they are the smaller they appear until they pass below your ability to resolve them. This is clearly not the case with the Sun or the Moon. They set slowly below the horizon, they do not shrink until they can no longer be seen. The vanishing point argument does not allow for sunset observations with half the sun above the horizon.

Please also explain how it is that the light from the Sun stops illuminating the sky if your vanishing point argument is correct. Even if I can't see a light source, I can see its light.
 
Quote
5. So how does your gravity know to apply just the right amount of force to keep amounts of water spinning at varying speeds

It doesn't. It overcomes that variation by simply being much greater than it. How does your dining table know how to support a cup of tea or a Sunday roast, what with the huge differences between those items?

Quote
Also no where in nature do you observe water adhering to a spinning curved surface.  Water is always flung off the surface.

This is utter garbage. I have seen water not flung off a rotating object many times. Your failure to grasp the difference between linear and angular speed is the issue. The important point is how many revolutions per time period are being made, not the linear speed at the surface.

Quote
6.  The affects of objects falling to earth can be explained by the affect of buoyancy.  What causes an object to float in water?  Gravity?  Can air be considered a medium like water?

You claim a degree but you ask questions like this? Says a lot, really.

Quote
7.  Well you are postulating on this with no evidence.  I'm saying the globe earth universe is ludicrous because of the crazy velocities and distances between stars (that can't be measured).

Argument from incredulity, and also wrong. Distances between stars can be meaured and have been.

[/quote]
"There's this idea that everyone's opinion is equally valid. My arse! Bloke who was a professor of dentistry for forty years does NOT have a debate with some eejit who removes his teeth with string and a door!"  - Dara O'Briain

Offline bknight

  • Neptune
  • ****
  • Posts: 3107
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #87 on: February 04, 2016, 05:24:55 PM »
I'm curious if anyone has been to one of the FE sites/forums to see if the same arguments, that tradosaurus uses are used by others and he is copying them?  I haven't visited nor do I plan to visit to   test this question, just asking if anyone has seen any of them.  The closest I came was watching about 2 min. of a YT video that I linked in the thread I started a coupled of months ago.  Total BS, and I stopped watching,



Truth needs no defense.  Nobody can take those footsteps I made on the surface of the moon away from me.
Eugene Cernan

Offline Zakalwe

  • Uranus
  • ****
  • Posts: 1590
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #88 on: February 04, 2016, 05:42:55 PM »
I'm curious if anyone has been to one of the FE sites/forums to see if the same arguments, that tradosaurus uses are used by others and he is copying them?  I haven't visited nor do I plan to visit to   test this question, just asking if anyone has seen any of them.  The closest I came was watching about 2 min. of a YT video that I linked in the thread I started a coupled of months ago.  Total BS, and I stopped watching,


Its the same old bunkum, repeated ad naseum.

One thing I can't work out is why they seem to adore Tesla, but think that any other smart person is a liar and a fake?
"The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' " - Isaac Asimov

Offline DonQuixote

  • Venus
  • **
  • Posts: 33
Re: A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus
« Reply #89 on: February 04, 2016, 06:02:47 PM »
I'm curious if anyone has been to one of the FE sites/forums to see if the same arguments, that tradosaurus uses are used by others and he is copying them?

I have. They are basically regurgitating from a list compiled in a book by Eric Dubay.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Flat-Earth-Conspiracy-Eric-Dubay/dp/1312627166

I read through about 150 pages of a thread on the subject on one of their websites, and watched a video posted there by one of their users standing by the bayside somewhere along the Gulf of Mexico, I believe, recording a freighter sailing over the horizon. There was a bit of reflective mirage that started to kick in as the boat sailed over the horizon, and they claimed this was due to a combination of vanishing point and some claptrap about "lines of convergence," which were, according to her, "lines where elements meet," As it sank farther and farther beyond the horizon, she continued to repeat that phrase, "just a line of convergence," from time to time like some sort of incantation.

It was, frankly, a little creepy.

You can't argue with them. You flat-out can't. They alternately just ignore you or respond with frothing, nigh-incoherent anger.

Quote from: Zakalwe
One thing I can't work out is why they seem to adore Tesla, but think that any other smart person is a liar and a fake?

I think that's because they attempt to shoehorn electricity, charge, and electromagnetism in general in as their answer to gravitational attraction.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2016, 06:05:13 PM by DonQuixote »
You can lead a fool to knowledge, but you can not make him think.