
Do People Really Think Earth Might Be Flat? - digital55
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/do-people-really-think-earth-might-be-flat/
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codingdave
The survey question asked was not whether people currently believe the earth
is flat. They asked, "Have you always believed it is round?" Those are not the
same question, and people could be answering based on childhood/pre-school
beliefs. Unless they dig deeper, it is hard to say why people gave a negative
answer.

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_rpd
I agree, the question was just badly worded. I would answer "other" to "I have
always believed the world is round." Like everyone I began in ignorance and
only later was educated enough to "believe the world is round." The world
looks flat at first glance. It is a surprise that the world is a sphere. It's
a great lesson for all of us to review first impressions in light of other
evidence.

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aeternus
Also, pedantically, the true shape is more accurately an oblate spheroid.

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perl4ever
I would call an oblate spheroid "round".

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Doxin
I'd also call a pancake round. Terminology is important.

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0898
YouGov said that lots of millennials think the world is flat. But when
Scientific American asked for the poll data, it didn't make sense – and YouGov
didn't want to talk about it.

~~~
dstroot
Bravo. Full summary in two sentences!

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simulate
The New Yorker had a good piece about people who attend the annual flat earth
convention: [https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/looking-for-
life-...](https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/looking-for-life-on-a-
flat-earth)

>> He described the modern flat-Earth community as a confluence of three
strains of thought. “There’s the conspiratorial,” he said. “It’s like, ‘That’s
kind of weird with the moon landing. Maybe I’ll look into it. What else could
they be lying about?’ ” The second is “the scientific-minded,” people who
“just want to go out and do the experiments.” The third, Davidson said, “is
the spiritual—people that want to say, ‘Wait a minute, what would happen if I
took the Bible literally?’ ” In style and substance, the flat-Earth movement
is a close cousin of creationism.

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pella
"The earth is flat (p > 0.05): significance thresholds and the crisis of
unreplicable research"

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502092/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502092/)

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cheez
Great link. In finance, people make trading decisions even when p is .15

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contravariant
So if they roll a six they go for it?

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cheez
The point is that nothing is certain, and you take educated risks with
appropriate management.

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woodandsteel
Seems to me they should interview a bunch of the people who gave each answer
and ask they why they believe as they do. Without that we are just
speculating. In fact, we might find out that for many the answer they gave to
the survey didn't even mean what it seems to.

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lylecubed
Here are a couple of images I was given by an Aerospace Engineer recently. I
don't know if he was trolling me or not, so I provide them without further
comment.

[https://imgur.com/a/GoEzEdl](https://imgur.com/a/GoEzEdl)

[https://imgur.com/a/zZS3nti](https://imgur.com/a/zZS3nti)

~~~
trendia
The first one:

If you zoom in close enough, the horizon looks flat. (Alternatively, the plane
is not high enough for the earth to look round with that focal length)

The second one:

All that matters is that Mercury isn't in the line between the Sun and the
Earth. Take a look here [0] to see that there are times when Mercury's orbit
would be visible from Earth.

Even then, I'm not sure why the Earth being flat would have anything to do
with Mercury's visibility, since it would still be visible even if the Earth
were flat.

[0]
[http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMAT6680Fa09/Yoon/EMAT%206690/Fir...](http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMAT6680Fa09/Yoon/EMAT%206690/First%20Task/3rd%20page%20-%20find%20orbit%20mercury/plotorbitmercury.html)

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travisr
> Even then, I'm not sure why the Earth being flat would have anything to do
> with Mercury's visibility, since it would still be visible even if the Earth
> were flat.

They're trying to imply that a spherical Earth would prevent a visible Mercury
at night. It's still nonsense.

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thrill
At least The Man Will Never Fly Society knows the Earth is round - otherwise
the Greyhound buses would fall off the edge.

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contravariant
That's not true at all, the Earth could be toroidal, which allows for a flat
embedding.

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credit_guy
Maybe it’s worth mentioning that this flat embedding is a consequence of the
Nash embedding theorem. The same Nash as in the Nash equilibrium, or in A
Beautiful Mind.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_embedding_theorem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_embedding_theorem)

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DmenshunlAnlsis
My guess is definitely _Why, then, are younger people more likely to be
uncertain or ambivalent? Perhaps they are more likely to offer frivolous or
ironic responses, as Earther’s Brian Kahn suggests..._

I think the concept of honestly answering pollsters was in decline before the
Millenials came around. The idea that a statistically singifcant fraction
reacted along the lines of, “why are you asking me such a stupid question,
yeah sure, I have doubts, hehehehe...” seems plausible.

~~~
alexgmcm
Yeah - I remember in the 90s loads of people put their religion as Jedi in the
UK census.

People just like to take the piss.

