
20 Reasons We Know the Earth Is Spherical - hb20007
https://medium.com/@hb20007/20-reasons-we-know-the-earth-is-spherical-8dca3ecdeaf
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colanderman
I'm off the belief that (honest) flat earthers aren't of that belief due to
lack of evidence, but rather due to lack of the trust framework necessary to
have faith that those interpreting the evidence are interpreting it correctly.

E.g. a lot of the presented arguments presuppose an understanding of geometry,
and that it applies to our universe. But for most people, that amounts to
trusting mathematicians and physicists, which is in turn founded on trust in
the scientific system and ultimately logic itself.

~~~
krapp
>I'm off the belief that (honest) flat earthers aren't of that belief due to
lack of evidence, but rather due to lack of the trust framework necessary to
have faith that those interpreting the evidence are interpreting it correctly.

...and yet the same people place absolute faith in arguments supporting the
flat earth merely because it defies orthodoxy, and also believe the pseudo-
scientific rationales behind them.

~~~
jerf
I'm pretty sure that if you take the set of flat earthers, subtract the people
who don't really believe it and are just having fun being contrary, and then
subtract out the mentally ill people, you're left with very nearly an empty
set; I'm even more certain that if it's not empty, it's utterly negligible. So
analyzing what they place faith in and why without reference to "mental
illness" in most cases is probably a waste of time; the surface appearance of
putting faith in this or that rationale is not the real story. We're talking
about people who are legitimately broken in terms of their ability to
understand the world and are often unable to engage with it properly in many
other ways, too.

As tempting as it may be to then pivot from my statements here and snark about
people of a religious mindset different than yours, or ethical or political
mindset different than yours, bear in mind that many such people engage with
the world just fine. The sort of thing that we actually call _mental illness_
is a qualitative cut above that sort of thing.

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posterboy
You just called a bunch of people morons. Take that in for a second. There's
thinly veiled circular reasoning in there somewhere, that amounts to saying
that mental illness cannot be understood and these people must be mentally
ill, implying this were so because you cannot understand them, but not giving
any explicit opinion whatsoever. Ultimately you contradict yourself about
their ability to engage with the world, too. This is polemic and very bad.

Ultimately, the message was that thoughts and feelings of mentally impaired
people do have no bearing on their illness, or if it did, you wouldn't care.
Then why comment, if you don't care?

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jerf
"You just called a bunch of people morons"

No, you did. I said they were either deliberately playing or mentally ill, and
that you must take that into account if you want to understand. It's the
opposite of calling people morons. That was something you brought to this
discussion.

~~~
posterboy
Calling someone a moron is claiming they are mentally ill. Unless I have lost
touch with the world and you think moron translates simply to worthless piece
of shit or something of the like.

Edit: I mean, sure, you show some interest, hence my question was actually
honest. I didn't expect an honest answer given the attitude, but I had to ask.

~~~
nikdaheratik
1\. No, calling someone a moron does not always mean you're making the claim
that they either have a learning disability, or are mentally ill.

2\. Trying to make the claim that this word is completely innocuous, is very
unbelievable unless we are to assume you are typing this from a wormhole into
the past before this entered mainstream vocabulary.

3\. If you were attempting to use the term in a more clinical fashion, you've
completely failed to apply it correctly.

~~~
posterboy
>Trying to make the claim that this word is completely innocuous

This is where it becomes obvious that you think that mentally ill -- _the way
you used it_ \-- was completely innocuous, objectively true. Hence I might as
well, by your own standards, call you a moron, or at least mentally ill, until
the opposite is proven. That is, you might indeed be a Psychologist, and not
an impostor, but otherwise your use of the term in a more clinical fashion is
likewise incorrectly applied, very very likely. Sure this discussion is a
waste of your time, if you are an idiot who doesn't understand "these people".
PS: This is fun, blaming other people for their faults,not very helpful, but
certainly fun getting a sense of superiority. I'm sure you are trying to say
the right thing, but between lack of qualification and even contradicting
yourself, you didn't, I'm sorry.

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MiddleEndian
Just for fun: 200 Proofs Earth in NOT a Spinning Ball
[https://aplanetruth.info/2015/08/04/200-proofs-earth-in-
not-...](https://aplanetruth.info/2015/08/04/200-proofs-earth-in-not-a-
spinning-ball/)

~~~
Isamu
>If Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference as NASA and modern
astronomy claim, spherical trigonometry dictates the surface of all standing
water must curve downward an easily measurable 8 inches per mile multiplied by
the square of the distance. This means along a 6 mile channel of standing
water, the Earth would dip 6 feet on either end from the central peak. Every
time such experiments have been conducted, however, standing water has proven
to be perfectly level.

In fact I remember an old story of someone doing exactly that, taking up the
challenge of a flat-earther. They set up surveying equipment with a scope at
one end of a long placid lake, a pole at the other and one midway. When they
looked through the scope at the far pole, the middle pole was clearly higher.
"That doesn't prove anything," said the flat-earther, "level the transit." So
they leveled the transit, and the middle pole appeared some distance below
level, and the far pole some distance below that. The flat-earther declared
this conclusively proved the earth was flat. You really cannot win in this
situation.

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marcodave
The very fact that someone spent its time and effort to write an article like
this, means that the trolls have won.

~~~
gmiller123456
I think it's disingenuous to think every Flat Earther is just trolling. People
are donating money to the cause, probably by someone scamming them rather than
people genuinely interested in science. I think it's important to at least
give those people a starting point to find the truth rather than blowing them
off completely.

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billpg
Articles like this could be summarized down to "Because duuuh!"

If you're an adult and the type of person who doubts the shape of the earth, I
don't think anything a website says would convince you.

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_rpd
No, you haven't seen it with your own eyes. There's no need for argument from
authority. There are several well reasoned arguments that the Earth is
spherical (e.g., the shadow of the Earth is curved). It's proper to recite
them.

~~~
Nadya
_> There are several well reasoned arguments that the Earth is spherical
(e.g., the shadow of the Earth is curved). _

That argument would prove the Earth is round - but not necessarily that it is
spherical. A flat, round disc would also produce a curved shadow.

To play devil's advocate - you would also need to prove that it is Earth's
shadow on the moon and not the Sun's shadow. For an example, I made an HD
image in paint [0].

[0] [https://vgy.me/8xRkJv.png](https://vgy.me/8xRkJv.png)

~~~
_rpd
> To play devil's advocate - you would also need to prove that it is Earth's
> shadow on the moon and not the Sun's shadow. For an example, I made an HD
> image in paint [0].

Very nice! A great demonstration of how difficult it is to be explicit about
all our assumptions.

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woodandsteel
I have thought a lot about why there are so many flat-Earthers, and I think I
have figured out the main cause. For flat-Earthers who are sincere and not
mentally disturbed, I think the problem is a general mistrust of experts and
society in general.

This is because we live today in societies that are so unnaturally large.
Human psychology is designed for small foraging tribes where you know everyone
personally, and so can determine how trustworthy they are. And furthermore,
everyone is strongly motivated to be trustworthy because otherwise they would
become social outcasts and could not survive.

In large, complex societies like ours, you are continually being presented
with claims by people you don't know personally and so it is quite possible to
lose all trust in their truthfulness. This is especially the case in the US
today where you have entities like much of conservative media that are
actively working to cultivate mistrust.

Unfortunately trust in experts is absolutely essential for a large society
like ours to function, and so the problem is how to restore such trust. I
think that is a very difficult problem.

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chopin
Some of the reasons are not very compelling. Some thoughts:

4\. Other planets are spherical: This rests on the premise that earth is also
a planet. This is also the problem with no. 5.

8\. Shadows of sticks: The earth could be flat and the sun could be small and
close.

11\. Gravity: This requires that the law of gravity can be derived
independently from the fact that the earth is spherical. That's not easy.

~~~
psalminen
> 11\. Gravity: This requires that the law of gravity can be derived
> independently from the fact that the earth is spherical. That's not easy.

This can be done by observing the motions of other
planets/moons/stars/galaxies.

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Assossa
It's 2018, why do people still need convincing that the Earth is a sphere?

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_rpd
All people are born ignorant, even in 2018.

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grumpwagon
It feel very silly that this article has to exist, but here we are!

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chasing
The Earth is clearly a torus.

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zygotic12
Nah mate. Flat innit.

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JakeTyo
It's not a sphere. It's an oblate spheroid.

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dragonwriter
There Earth isn't spherical, it's spheroidal.

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growlist
Not sure why you've been downvoted, unless it's for pedantry. The Earth is
indeed spheroidal, in fact an oblate spheroid - flatter at the poles and
bulging at the equator due to the rotation of the earth. Modelling the true
shape of the Earth is central to geodesy.

~~~
yaks_hairbrush
There's a danger in pedantry -- outsiders can mistake it for "see: there's no
consensus that the earth is a sphere!". Having said that, the earth is not an
oblate spheroid -- it's very slightly pear-shaped, and has all sorts of
mountains and valleys.

To paraphrase Isaac Asimov in his essay The Relativity of Wrong: "The earth is
flat" is a pretty good model. "The earth is a sphere" is much better. And "The
earth is an oblate spheroid" is just a bit better than that.

So, let us consider the aim of the essay: to debunk the flat earth claim as
many ways as possible. I think they did a pretty good job finding data for
which the flat earth model is insufficient, but a spherical earth fits quite
nicely.

