Flat Earthers, a group of people who believe the moon and sun are the same size and orbit around the North Pole, are often seen as conspiracy theorists. However, they may be right about this belief. The Indonesian Flat Earthers are obsessed with using science to prove their point, often mentioning Aristotle.
The reasons behind the pervasive belief in astrology are multifaceted, encompassing elements of psychology, personality traits, societal influences, and more. In Brazil, over 11 million people, or seven percent of the population, believe the Earth is flat. This belief is not to be confused with Astronomy, the scientific study of celestial objects.
Flat Earth is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception of the Earth’s shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat-Earth view, and Buddhist cosmology is comprised of a disc-shaped earth composed of four separate continents surrounding an enormous Mt. Sumeru that extends upward beyond it. Astrology was invented when the common belief was that the Earth was flat.
A UNLV astronomer explains how the Flat Earth Theory fizzles, stating that if one is not willing to accept the evidence Earth is round, what do they do with Mars, Jupiter, and the rest? By understanding the concept of flat Earthers and other unconventional beliefs, we can better understand the complex and controversial nature of these beliefs.
📹 Flat Earth “Science” — Wrong, but not Stupid
In this video I explain what flat earthers believe, why they believe it, and why I think scientists should take flat earthers more …
📹 Flat Earthers vs Scientists: Can We Trust Science? | Middle Ground
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When I was 5 years old, my father looked enormous, When I was 18, he was 2 inches shorter than me. Therefore he gradually shrank over 13 years. Of course, it also meant that the shelf I could never reach gradually moved down the wall until I could reach it, my clothes grew smaller as time went on… and, well round about my mid-teens, my senses adjusted so that I seemed to get bulkier and stronger as I played rugby and cricket and ran cross-country, but obviously this was a myth. All the people around me just got frailer and weaker, the furniture shrank, as did streetlights, buildings and animals. It’s the only thing that makes sense, since I am the centre of the universe, and the essential founder of reality.
I think the treatment of “science” in the media hurts here, too. Too often, the view we have is of countless surprising outlier study results that are sensational enough to warrant speculative reporting. This food is bad for you. That one weird trick will make you live longer. This gives the distorted view that science is just smart people reporting new discoveries. When lots of those astounding reports are later contradicted, it looks like evidence that science doesn’t work, when really it’s just evidence that a single data point isn’t sufficient for full understanding.
Ex flat earther here. For some like myself It’s lack of knowledge, lack of understanding, thinking you know something you don’t for example how the physics would be when it isn’t. For example…we rotating 1000mph at the equator… no that’s tangential speed and we don’t feel speed (when you mention the higher speeds for eg going around the sun etc then they think we should feel the movement… Some are honestly lost especially the newcomers… those who have been in it for years and had things explained and demonstrated many times and many different ways are just liars, trolls and grifters, possibly some with biases and cognitive dissonance they can’t or won’t overcome or even realise they have. I realised my lack of knowledge and understanding and biases and cognitive dissonance and along with the help of others and chatgpt and fixed it. There’s also those who look up to some as idols and want to impress them and so will not disagree with them in the slightest and stay stuck in fe. Oh and one more thing attacking flat earthers name calling etc doesn’t help it only puts the walls/defences up more.
It is 100% wrong to dismiss the earth is a globe just because you can’t perceive it as such. To believe that only you are the arbiter of truth is 100% nonsense. If I had to rely on a random person on the street to understand calculus without me explaining it to them, NOTHING on this planet would ever get accomplished! Everyone would have to derive EVERY scientific discovery for themselves before they could work on anything new.
In my opinion, this “trust”-problem is not only true for scientific topics, but also many other things in our society. We get so specialised that there will be a point where you have to rely on another person. This doesn’t mean you should trust them blindly – but if you want to check everything yourself, right down to the basics, it would be a never ending story.
This is billowing my mind. I think a humble yet unanimously vital point is this: if one wants to communicate, which is arguably so much important in societies, he or she needs to take scientifically inconsistent but partially rational arguments seriously. Scientific education should strive to reveal a healthy attitude and how to take sciences “scientifically”. You are a true communicator.
Maybe I’m excessively mean and insulting toward flat Earthers but I was raised on astronomy as a kid, and telescopes these days are really stinkin’ cheap. It hardly takes any real effort to point a crappy 60mm alt-az scope at the sky to actually look at the planets, the sun and the moon, and do basic observations that prove that these objects are rotating spheres. Mercury and Venus can be seen to transit the sun. Jupiter’s moons can be seen to leave eclipse shadows on the surface. It’s Great Red Spot can be seen to move across the surface in a clear pattern of planetary rotation. The moons of Jupiter and Saturn can easily be seen to orbit the planet if you watch them night to night. There are so many things easily seen through even a bargain basement deep discount scope both in the sky and on land to prove that the Earth is round that it’s hard to know where to start. To me, it’s just plain as day and nobody had to grind it into my head by brainwashing through television. It’s just up there for all to see. To me, Flat Earth Theory is either lazy, ignorant, or purposeful spreading of anti-science propaganda, which there is already so much of these days it’s sickening and likewise hard to know where to start. But then too, I grew up in the latter part of the age of the junior scientist, so I am biased. It distresses me no end that nobody cares about such things these days.
A friend of mine blew my mind a few years ago when he announced that he was 20% open to the idea of Hollow Earth and about 5% open to the idea of Flat Earth. Now, this guy has always have a bit of a conspiracy theory bent to him, but he’s NOT dumb. He’s an electrical engineer and very smart. Like Sabine said, it’s not driven by stupidity. I think like any group there’s a diversity of motivations, but for him and those like him. I think there’s a dopamine hit that comes from feeling like you know something other people don’t. When presented with an argument that human wisdom is wrong, his mind WANTS to believe because of how cool it would be to be among those who ‘find the truth’. And as any con man or psychic will tell you, the easiest people to fool are the ones who WANT to be fooled. I tried debunking the hollow earth claims via an email…that I learned he never read. I rebutted some of his flat earth claims in person…but they didn’t really take. He seemed to have second thoughts when I told him that the classical greeks knew the earth was round and described the experiment they used to measure how big it was and that they came shockingly close for how imprecise their tools were. But that quickly faded and had no lasting impression. It was confirmation bias in action. He couldn’t let go of that belief that maybe, JUST MAYBE….everything we know is wrong. And how cool that would be to discover.
Wow, that is an incredibly poignant argument of why flat earth “science” is really a failure to accept others’ past observations. The can of soup analogy, trusting that your smart phone will work, trusting that society (generally) works is so important and hits home. I normally don’t take the effort to comment on articles but for this excellent, excellent article I’m making an exception. Well done!!!
Wow. I grew completely bored about the flat earther bashing articles and never got around to perusal your article on the subject – and you actually communicated an important both practical and philosophical point of view in it I haven’t seen anyone else make. So better late than never I guess, for me to watch this awesome article.
My own experience tells me, by perusal ships sail over the horizon, by driving towards the mountains and perusal how they also look small then taller and taller as we go over the curvature of the earth and get closer to them. And looking at the other planets and a simple understanding of gravity tells me that we are on a globe.
This is a most beautifully constructed and reasoned presentation of the topic in a way that I hadn’t considered – empathy. How powerful it is to consider that their trajectory of thought does coincide with science from hundreds of years ago, and if they had the time to themselves recreate all the experiments, learnings and improvement of centuries then, eventually, they’d catch up to our current level of capability. I love the example of evidence for being able to use something like a tin can of soup isn’t that we had to have direct control/witness of the steps ourselves, but that we have evidence of the controls that are in place (such as standards, legal systems, punitive responses) that are valid evidence when we aren’t able to be the direct witness ourselves. You’ve inspired me to think about Flat Earthers in a whole new way that offers respect for their “verify” thought process without buying into the incorrect conclusions they’ve come to. If the whole human race could learn from your immaculately considered empathy, so much hate, violence, and war could be avoided. Thankyou!
Ya know, when she said that flat earthers “rely on their senses”, something clicked with me. She’s right, flat earthers always say “I can’t feel the earth move, therefore it’s not spinning” or, “I don’t see a curve, therefore it’s flat”. Well, according to them, we must first rely on our senses, and that begs the question. To someone who is blind, is there such a thing as light? To someone who is deaf, is there such a thing called sound?
I found this especially interesting as someone interested in Jungian personality theory. In some of his theories, we all perceive by sensing and by intuition. And he describes sensing as all things real, physical, data, memories, actualities and even linear time. All things intuition include abstractions, ideas, concepts, intentions, expectations and possibilities. Some personalities are better at different types of perception and some personalities favor sensing much more strongly than intuition and vice versa. I bet the flat earther community contains more sensing dominant types and they may view a lot of the “evidence” and calculations related to the science as being too abstract to be real. Moreover, many people with low intuition find trust difficult and will swing between naivety and paranoia as their own personal intuition is very black and white (bad at guessing). Anyhoo, just some thoughts into the void! 😘✌️
An elderly Navajo man told me how he convinced himself that the Earth is round. He had been attending school in “Filladeltpthia”. Before returning home he noted the time the Sun rose. When he got back to the reservation in New Mexico he checked the time of the sunrise on his watch. The discrepancy convinced him that the Earth is indeed round!
While I think Dr. Hossenfelder has always been a gifted explainer of complex topics, I fell like she has really gotten extraordinarily good at it. I guess it’s from all the practice over the course of her previous articles. She seems to be one of the few people who can talk about contentious topics fairly without injecting emotion.
As someone who toyed with this idea back in 2016 I managed to prove the globe using star rotaions, the moon, sunsets and shadows on the equinox. No science or nasa etc required. But as someone trying to share this with the flat earth community I realised the majority of these people are very lonely and have found a community of friends in the flat earth and so it was very difficult to get them to listen. This is becuase anyone who goes against the flat earth is isnstanly shunned and shamed by that community.
One bit of evidence that is not often discussed but is quite simple and tangible comes from the military. When ships are launching shells, artillery, etc, the distances are far enough that they have to account for the earth’s curvature or they will miss the target. They even correct for it’s rotation, and differences in gravity based on latitude.
This is exactly the right reaction to flat earthers. It is a crisis of trust, and there’s simply no way everyone can re-trace all scientific discovery. It is an important question for all scientists to communicate properly to the public. It is also important to carefully respond to bad actors who intentionally disrupt this chain of understanding. Of course the problem is that, from time to time, people in official positions do, in fact, betray trust and make errors. But even here, we know this because of evidence we can see. We have to embrace the demonstration of error as a positive. What would really be a problem is if errors were never dealt with.
I taught University Earth Science every semester for 30 years. 60 times I went step-by-step through the evidence for Plate Tectonics. Each time it still gave me chills. It was beautiful in its conclusions and as an example of the scientific method. The students really liked it too rather than merely being taught that the plates move.
I thought this article was click bait even while perusal it until she reveals her real argument in the last minutes. And I’m mind blown and full of respect for her. That’s a scientist who doesn’t care about being in the spotlight but cares about the future of scientific progress and the importance of education (not pop science education).
The Flat Earth has yet to make a cohesive model that explains everything at once. I love the term ad-hoc explanation. That’s precisely what they do for everything they encounter. What I love about this is that if you ever try to make a model out of all these ad-hoc explanations at some point or another they will conflict with one another, or require yet another ad-hoc explanation to try and make the whole thing “sensible”.
If you take a time lapse photo of the sky in the northern and southern hemispheres you get a pretty good impression to prove the earth is a ball. You will see two rotational centers, and you will see that you see different stars in the different hemispheres. This is something you can just look at with your own eyes. No need to trust science to observe this.
I saw a flat earther in town. I pointed out that I like to see things for myself. This includes travelling across time zones, solar eclipse, live football from Brazil where the sun started to set in uk at the same time, but it went full dark in Brazil before it did where I was. Seeing the sun set over the sea, etc.
My personal evidence was seeing the ISS just after a Dragon launch and a previous capsule undocking, with both capsules visible as dimmer dots following the same path, one ahead and one behind. I knew before, of course, but this was a joy to see. Anyway, I’ve given up with flat earthers. I just say, “If the earth was flat, cats would have pushed everything off by now” which makes as much sense as anything they come up with 😉
I think it was Richard Dawkins that once told this story on some show, about how one man said to the other “I can see why people thought the sun goes around the earth, because that’s how it looks.” The second man answered “And what would it look like if it didn’t?” The moon and the sun both appear on one horizon, travel across the sky and set on the other horizon. If you only saw them do that, you’d be half right about them both orbiting the earth, because one of them does. You need more information than only glancing at them with your senses.
Very good article. We need more scientific communicators like you. Although I think I’ll say I doubt if poll results about people genuinely believing in a flat Earth are accurate. Relatively recently, sociologists have strongly considered the possibility that, at least when it comes to “controversial” issues, people tend to troll and give absurd answers.
The conclusion fits very well with what’s happening in the math community right now. While many proofs can be thought in school, some are getting so complex that it takes an entire lifetime of commitment to understand them. While science is currently dealing with the limits of human perception, math is already dealing with the limits of human comprehension. How do you deal with problems that requires more than one lifetime to solve? How can you share a lifetime worth of knowledge for someone else to take over? We’re not even talking about simple bits of info that can be useful on their own, here. This is a mind-bending philosophical issue that we will eventually have to address as a society.
In the UK we have an island called the Isle-of-Wight, it is just off the South coast and has steep white cliffs, viewed from inland and from a hill it looks massive with big steep cliffs, viewed from a beach it looks tiny because the bulge in the English website blocks the view of the lower parts of the Cliff.
A great article and a great message to the scientific community and all of us. I remember my very first lecture when I started university — it was in the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics in Sofia University, Bulgaria, where most of our best software engineers got their degrees, and it was dedicated to all first-graders. The lecture said that we humans have been able to arise and produce a civilization because we were the only beings, who could leave traces of our knowledge after death, and our descendants could decode and use that information without having to learn it trough first-person experience. You know — it began with cave drawing, then stone runes, we developed alphabets and improved our written expressions. This obviously saved a lot of time, allowed knowledge to be built on top of previous knowledge, and of course, required that this knowledge was trusted. Slowly and steadily we became who we are now and know so much more than our early ancestors. It is more than obvious that we have a lot more to learn, and we will only do so if we keep this progressive trend of accumulating, verifying and sharing knowledge. Keep up with your great work, I wish you all the best!
Today, September 22, is the Autumnal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, the Vernal Equinox in the Southern. The Sun rises due East, travels right along the ecliptic (the plane of our orbit around the Sun) and sets due West everywhere on the planet. I’d love to see a flat Earth model that shows how this could work without magic bendy light. But I won’t. Today is also World Rhino Day. Let’s hope these wonderful beasts survive what we’re inflicting upon them. cheers from sunny Vienna, Scott
A flat earther tried to convince me that the Moon landings never happened because of Van Allen belts. Wait, what ?? Believes science that discovered those belts, yet does not believe that same science which says that the Earth is a globe – and as such the very reason for the existence of Van Allen belts ? Are you coming or going mate ??
I’ve never been on an airplane, so how do you expect me to believe hundreds of tons metal can magically fly through the sky? I could either: A) trust the science that has developed them over the past century & the fact tens of thousands of people use them every day B) starting from scratch, spend my life trying to understand aerodynamics, engineering & mechanics surrounding flight and hope to one day be an expert C) comb through all the research done since the beginning of time on this topic trying to verify every piece decades worth of data D) develop a crazy, world-spanning conspiracy that suggests the airplanes I see in the sky are holograms, pictures & articles of them are CGI, and that all people who’ve ever claimed to have flown in one are liars/paid agents of the government… or perhaps that airplanes fly because due to black magic rituals done in the cockpit before every flight! Eh… Let’s go with option D!
What an interesting presentation, Sabine. I worked as a NP in Health Care and had to come up with many ways to explain complex topics to some of my patients. It can be frustrating, but when you get the job done, it is quite rewarding. I am a lifelong learner who also enjoyed physics and cosmology, reading books by Carl Sagan, Timothy Ferris, and others. It is refreshing to hear how you approach this subject, and it is actually as amusing as it is intellectual. You have a very unique way of presenting your ideas, and I can see that you are concerned about scientific matters and decided to do something about it. Great job – will keep an eye on your website for more interesting content. Best Regards. Gary
I come across so many that bash flat-earthers but then say they believe we live in a simulation or they believe reality only exists in your mind. In the end, people believe what they want to believe. Listen to everyone, show respect, stay humble. You don’t need to get upset because someone disagrees with you. BTW, clouds are made of marshmallows.
The funny thing about the”zetetic method” is that most flat earthers don’t really adhere to it; after all, their model doesn’t even allow for sunrises or sunsets, which are clearly visible to anyone with a working pair of eyes. When confronted, some say that the entire sky is some sort of “Truman show” style illusion created by unknown entities. Some talk about a hypothetical force that bends light downwards. some just say it’s “perspective” even though perspective clearly doesn’t work this way. Clearly this idea of “trusting your senses” is ditched the moment it interferes with the theory.
I once saw a article about flat earthers trying to prove that Earth was flat. All the experiments conducted proved them wrong. Instead of accepting the findings, they blamed the experiment, and that “something may have gone wrong.” And they I ask, why a circle? If Earth is flat, why isn’t it square? A triangle? An image of Earth as a circle in itself opens the possibility for it to be a sphere.
I just found this website a week ago, and I love your style of explaination. It is clear cut and easy to follow. While I love perusal, how flat earthers are disproved, for example by Flo+, the point you make, about taking them as a warning sign, is super important and wasn’t clear to me before. Your communication skills are on point 🙂
i really appreciate the spirit of this article, as when approaching radical ideas its always important to give understanding before judging. unfortunately though, flat earthers are a particularly ignorant bunch. i’m sure there are a handful of them who are genuinely interested in the shape of the earth, and are simply misinformed about science and history, but if you’ve ever had the displeasure of interacting with these people, you know most of them are just not equipped to understand what they’re talking about, so they lash out at the people and organizations that do. the vast majority are fuelled entirely by youtube conspiracy theories and a chronic distrust of scientific authority, a strange mindset that probably shouldn’t be given any leeway in the modern age of science and reason.
When a flat earther claims that they do not just believe what the authorities tell them about the earth, and that they must see it for themselves to believe it, then ask them why the believe that the flat earth map is correct. Or are we to believe that each flat earther has traveled around the world to map it themselves? And no, we do not need to take flat earthers seriously.
I understand and agree with the idea of observing things in person. That’s why I have made a real effort to see total and partial solar eclipses, lunar eclipses, the transits of Venus and Mercury, the phases of Venus and most of the planets and their moons. All this backs up the science and heliocentric model rather than just having faith and believe.
Great explanation. As an aerospace engineering major, someone who has flown on a plane and having a brother working at NASA my understanding of the science and my one empirical evidence has proven to me that the earth is quasi-spherical. Unfortunately these days we have bigger issues with people ignoring/inventing scientific evidence for political reasons so flat earthers have fallen to the back of the line of people that need to be corrected. lol
“they bielive that observation of falling objects are constant accelaration of the Earth” – woh woh, no, most of them don’t. Although this specific bielief is actually quite good representation of what gravity really is according to modern physic. But instead this lunatics say “gravity does not exist, it is BYUONCYY AND DENSITYY
There are three types of Flat Earthers: 1. The confused. These people can’t figure out simple three dimensional concepts. This type of person believes that the “globe Earth model” claims that the Earth has a “top” (the North Pole), a “bottom” (South Pole/Antarctica) and “sides” (the equator). This type of person finds the “top, bottom and sides” concept of the Earth is ridiculous – which it is, of course. This type of Flat Earther has a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings of the world and universe around us. 2. The paranoid/delusional. These people have a distrust of the government, science or even reality in general. These people will reject anything taught to them under the simple conviction that someone is trying to lie and harm them. 3. The con men. These people believe in the philosophy that “if someone is stupid enough to believe a lie, they deserve to be lied to.” These people take satisfaction in their ability to fool people and the popularity from those same people and those that would debate with them. They find themselves protected from scrutiny by their own dishonesty. They believe they can win any argument from their detractors simply by continuing to be dishonest. Of course, Flat Earthers can fall under any three of these groups. Any confused Flat Earther would have to be distrusting of anyone telling them something that confuses them. The paranoid/delusional have difficulty understanding simple concepts. The confused and paranoid/delusional will lie to themselves when reality is explained to them in order to defend their beliefs.
I have observed that the Earth is round with my own senses! I grew up in Slovakia, 48°N. I observed that it took forever, 30-40 minutes, for the night to turn into a day in the morning, and the same in the evening, 30-40 minutes from daylight to a complete dark. When I grew up I spent one summer working in Aruba, 12°N. I observed that the daybreak and the sunset was like someone flipped the switch; it took five minutes to go from a complete dark to a bright daylight, and the opposite in the evening. I concluded, correctly, that I was spinning on the Earth surface at a different speed in different locations, and that could be explained only by standing on a rotating sphere.
In my college philosophy of mind class the professor asked a question: “you remember that lincoln was born in 1809 but you can’t remember how you know that, is that knowlege?” Most of the class thought it was NOT “knowlege” which I angrily disagreed with. It occurs to me that the same thing is happening here, most of us “know” the earth is round, but can’t remember exactly why we “know” that.
Sorry for finding this so long after it was created! I’ve been following the debates with Flat Earthers for several years on YouTube. Sabine’s brief and concise explanation of the issue, is the best I’ve heard in many hours of listening. As she so wisely says, this recent anti-science trend in social media is both very serious and in need of addressing by science educators. Aside from those who fold it into their spiritual beliefs, placing it in the realm of religious freedoms, this is a serious attack on our facts based modern world. This “science-dubious” trend has advanced in parallel with the Conspiracy Theory craze which has made such an assault upon society in the past 6 years.
It is simple narcissism. THEY are smarter than every scientist and engineer. THEY are the crusading hero who sees the truth. THEIR opinions and incredulity should be enough proof. Experts need to debate with each of THEM personally. Their inability to admit that THEY could ever be wrong is what preserves their position.
2300 years ago Eratosthenes demonstrated the curvature and approximate size of the earth with 2 sticks. The measurement still works today. If solar movement was a flat ring above the earth, the sun would never dip below the horizon… at best it would shrink to a star sized prick of light (if it was much smaller than it is).
I love how you present this evidence! 😁 I’d like to kindly share my rejection of flat earth theory, through their own means, through personal observation: i began a path in inner self discovery about 10 years ago. Part of this was to sungaze (only during the half hour during “golden hour” when the sun’s rays are much filtered) and watch the fading light as is turned from day to night, totally. Until there was no light from the sun left in the sky (yes, it was the most beautiful experience other than having a child). My senses told me the earth is round, every time. The high cloud activity in my area was proof enough. The sun’s direct rays move from on the tops of the clouds to hitting the clouds on the underside (with direct not radiated sunlight). Direct sunlight can not be mistaken and would be impossible for this to happen in the flat earth model 😁💖
Sabine, i truly admire you! I have always been a jerk to flat earthers all over the internet. But after perusal you explain, in such a respectable way, that the problem should be taken seriously, i have realized that i was just being part of the problem. Thanks for educating me and keep up your vids, they’re the best!
As you clearly state at the end of the article. This isn’t so much a scientific issue, but a philosophical, and to a certain extent a religious issue. For scientists it may be a public relations issue in the sense that they reject science, even if they claim to have scientific arguments. There are sociological reasons why authority is being challenged everywhere, and scientists convey a sense of authority. This may have serious consequences for other kinds of denyalists, such as those who deny climate change and the effectiveness of vaccines. I’m not as optimistic as you are that you can change their minds by reasoning with them, since they are fanatical groups. However, I must agree many of those people have been drawn by their ideas because they don’t have the necessary information, and those few can be rescued.
My father’s education ended in the 8th grade, but he was a pretty smart fellow, nonetheless, and purchased a globe for me and showed me where Lake Chaplain is on the globe. I asked the question, “but on the globe Lake Champlain is slightly curved but when we looked at it from the top of Pokomoonshine Mountain you can see that the lake it is perfectly flat.” “Well”, my Dad said, “you need to look at from a different point of view to see that it isn’t flat.” So a few days later he took me out to the End of Cumberland Head where you can get a view in the direction of the long dimension of Lake Champlain. The Road is up about 12 feet above the shoreline. We waited for a while until the Ferry taking cars and trucks from Port Kent, New York, to Burlington Vermiont. came into view. Port Kent is about 12 miles south of Cumberland Head. We looked at it though binoculars and you could see the tops of cars and trailer trucks when standing up by the car parked side of the road. The lake was calm with almost no waves. So we climbed down the edge of the road and he had me sit down on a rock by the shore and look again at the Port Kent Ferry boat through the binoculars. You could no longer see the cars. All you could see of the Ferry Boat was the super structure and the flag. The cars and the hull of the boat was hidden beneath the horizon. He drew a picture that explained the reason the why most of the boat was hidden by the horizon. Lake Champlain is NOT flat its surface follow the curvature of the Earth.
I’ve thought about this point for years. It started when I ran into a 9/11 truther, and I realized that the only arguments I could counter him with were a whole lot more social and philosophical than scientific. It’s not about whether steel beams could melt (although that certainly needs to be addressed), because I was sure long before I knew about structural weakening that there would be “some plausible scientific explanation” that would explain how the towers came down. And the only reason I knew that was because I trusted the official explanation, not because of scientific reasons, but because it fit with what I knew about history, society, human decency (it’s not nice to deny that people’s loved ones died), and raw plausibility (seems legit). I think you need to go further. What scientists need to do goes further than better explanations. They need to prove that they are on the side of the people who mistrust them. The way you reach people who mistrust society to such a degree has more in common with training a wild horse than releasing more explanation articles. Clever explanations look and sound the same whether they are right or wrong.
I seen these articles when they came out. I was totally baffled that I couldn’t argue with their arguments. I watched a few more and was taken by the idea. Part of me WANTED to find some wild conspiracy. Then I watched articles about why the earth is round and there is no argument. Nothing profound here, just a sample. I’m a 38 year old Canadian. Great content. Empathy for an opposing viewpoint seems to be a difficult characteristic these days. Thank you for this.
Phenomenal! It’s honestly sad that it takes this level of patient explanation to re-teach our society what can be readily observed. That said, Science is not wholly without blame for creating doubt in society. When scientists cave in, or willingly participate in, the political discourse and bend their results to align with a political agenda or a company/industry’s profitability, it creates a level of mistrust usually reserved for politicians & corporations. My unsolicited advice: Keep science objective and out of politics. Work hard at it. Teach future generations of scientists to do so. It should be a foundational creed at every credible university.
When I told my flat-earther father that we could do an easy experiment to prove the earth is spherical, he simply refused. And trying to talk about it calmly and rationally, was completely out of the question. My brother said he thrived off of the reaction he gets and remaining calm only infuriated him.
I have been to the South Pole in January and with my own eyes seen the 24 hours of daylight, and seen the sun travel around the horizon. I have also been north of the arctic circle in June and have seen the 24 hours of daylight there. I can understand how that works with a round earth. I have yet to see a flat earth model where this could happen.
I met a flat earther at a party, someone who I thought was well educated. I entertained their logic and debated each of their arguments. At the end of it all, I realized I was wasting my time and just emboldened them because I actually engaged in their debate. I don’t think you can make a person change their mind unless they want to, regardless which approach you use.
I feel talking about “flat earthers” divorced from the reactionary current they tend to swim in will almost always be only talking about part of the picture. For instance, when Andrew Callaghan of the YouTube website website 5 and All Gas No Brakes went to a Flat Earth conference, antisemitism was shown to be pretty rampant within it (though, part of the appeal of All Gas No Brakes and now website 5 is that they show the weirdest parts of America’s underbelly so they could have easily found some of the most extreme examples). I think Dan Olsen of Folding Ideas did the best job breaking down flat earth ideology and the wider political agenda they have. Because, as a community, they are not neutral actors and do have a political agenda. Olsen argues that part of the appeal of flat earth (and later Qanon which tends to attract quite a few flat earthers), is that it simplifies things in a world that is way too complex for them and their ideology. For flat earth, it boils things down to everything they can see with their eyes. For Olsen, the earth’s shape is the least important aspect about the ideology, and he emphasizes the “biblical” aspect of flat earth ideology, while not explicitly Christian. He claims that it is a syncretist ideology, meaning that it tends to amalgamate multiple different texts by taking talk of something, like for instance a dragon, in multiple texts, stripping each mention of them of their contexts in an attempt to find the “true” story of this dragon. I recommend Olsen’s article as it is a fascinating breakdown of the whole concept as well as the politics of flat earthers.
You have such a deep grasp of the flat earth issue from how it started, to why it still exists. I really thought your summary about how flat earthers are a real warning in society about a lack of understanding in the scientific method. That we need to do more to help educate others about the scientific method… almost like a personal responsibility to be kind to flat earthers and help them try to “re-discover” the lost science of our ancestors again
Nicely done! I have navigated a small boat at sea using a sextant, clock and astronomical tables. I looked into the math of it–and it is really fairly simple. What would be really challenging–is to devize an explanation as to how that math would work on a flat earth. People say that the airliner makes the earth seem smaller. But I differ on that. The speeds are so great that the distances are not really comprehended. Travelling at the very human speeds of a sailboat, particularly in a North-South direction–you really feel the climate change as you move around the curve of the earth. If you are also navigating with a sextant–you really feel the actual size and shape of the earth on a vary intimate and personal level.
I think the title of this article is misleading. The methodology & conclusions that most flat-earthers use are objectively flawed and therefore their methods of thinking are inherently dubious. You do bring out some very good points however on the philosophy of science and empiricism… something that I think should be covered in schools to increase critical thinking abilities.
We live in an age where “science” is being used as a narrative weapon by laypersons, and even many scientists, to shape public opinion. If Science wants to continue to be taken seriously, it must solve this problem. I really enjoy these articles and the way Sabine presents her arguments. But, somehow, these bits of clarity and many others must be elevated so they are heard above the general scientific dissonance.
Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, “why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went around the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?” His friend replied, “Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going around the Earth.” Wittgenstein responded, “Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?”..
Great article. Thanks for your work on your website. I would like to comment that the flat earth people also do not apply their idea of direct observed evidence as the only valid evidence. I talked to one guy a while ago and after he stated that he had never seen the world as round, I asked him how an internal combustion engine works. He, knowing correctly, gave me a description. I then asked, have you every directly viewed an engine working. This question seemed to stump him and he worked hard to say he saw all the parts and so could imagine it. This is a problem that flat earth believers do. It is like an observation bias, but instead it is believing in a specific discovery process, but only when it serves your purpose.
In the late 80s I was ship spotting on the San Francisco peninsula. I remember seeing a squarish shape appear on the horizon and slowly more of the shape became visible until it resolved itself in a ship’s bridge. Then the hull came over the horizon until the entire ship could be seen. What I was seeing was the USS Enterprise, CVN-65 coming back to San Francisco after a WestPac deployment. If I had had a Flat Earther with me at that time I wonder what they would have made of that? Direct sensory evidence of a spherical earth which they probably would have dismissed.
This is a great article! But it’s not just an issue of people’s distrust of the science community. It is an issue of people’s overall level of distrust of everything. From government to corporations to neighbors. I feel like this may partly be due to an over emphasis on reporting when things go wrong or when people go wrong and try and abuse or mislead others. Not to say that learning of those instances is bad. It is a natural instinct to learn of bad things in order to avoid them, I think. That is why we gravitate toward them. But there needs to be personal effort to learn good things and feel trust for those reporting it. Maybe that should be a new article, “why are people so distrustful of everything?”
I loved her imput, but as a philosopjy student i struggle with the notion that flat earthers have a philosophical question about epistemology. When you watch articles where they scream at the camera about the government and nasa, well you need a lot of imagination to see Descartes. Though, they often are just as fallacy prone as him
Very insightful! And this isn’t a problem only with science. We have a similar — and probably greater — problem with people who reject information provided by the media or their government. The common refrain is “do your own research”, but of course most people don’t know how to do research, and definitely wouldn’t have time to research everything they’re rejecting even if they did know how. We must depend on a sort of meta analysis of the society that produces these institutions, it’s the only way.
Eratosthenes, a Greek man that lived like 22 centuries ago, calculated Earth’s circumference with amazing precision (1.4% error), by using simple methods & the everyday tools available at that time. Today, we have vehicles allowing us to travel hundreds of km in a few hours (to take measurements if needed), lasers, mobile phones/internet (to coordinate with other people), satellites, fancy tools of amazing precision, etc… & yet there are thousands of people that not only dismiss all the evidence, but they don’t even bother researching themselves. So no, they’ll get no respect from me, they deserve nothing more than mockery. Not because we disagree, but because they don’t even bother to look for evidence to support their ridiculous claims. Neuter them to protect the Gene Pool I say…
What I find ridiculous isn’t the idea that you should trust what you see yourself. That’s an ok way of thinking, just rather inefficient. It means you can get a deeper (although typically unnecessary) understanding of everything. What’s ridiculous is that doing so doesn’t support the belief that Earth is flat. It just means you wouldn’t be sure that it’s a sphere. The area around you being flat makes sense when looking at a huge sphere just as much as it does looking at a flat plane. So it would make sense to be neutral on the argument.
I was surprised when i heard you correctly pronouncing “Einstein”, then I saw your name 😀 This is the first of your articles I ever saw. I suscribed immediatly after perusal it! Very easy to follow even for a non native speaker, nor sientist as myself. Also love your understanding aproach of the flat earth problem and your comciliating way of talking about it. I think we, as a society, can only but constantly struggle with our agressive tendencies and we need see more of this kind of articles to change or mindset
if the earth is flat, what is with the horizon on the ocean? i should be able to see the land on the other side if the earth is flat…. if flat earthers were correct then arround the world flights would not have the timings they do in the real world, they would be different in the southern hemispear vs the north
I absolutely commend your approach to making scientific topics more easily understood to laymen as they greatly benefit me in better understanding the universe we live in. The issue that will continue to crop up though is that many people become so wedded to the ‘ideology’ that they treat it as their identity to be skeptics. There are numerous occasions that ‘flat earthers’ have ‘debunked’ themselves with their own experiments, use mathematical formula incorrectly to derive ludicrous results, and treat explanations of natural laws as base attacks on their belief system to be ruthlessly ridiculed and mocked. The simple denial of gravity, one of the most constant forces we live with and experience every day, makes much of the rest of the natural world from the formation of a round world to the orbits of the planets a blatant impossibility to the ideology.
Well done. And you are right. However, as a retired teacher I must say that this type of education will have to occur outside the classroom. Inside the classroom, the teacher has to teach the state’s curriculum. And the state’s curriculum does not give the teacher enough time to teach the kind of knowledge that the students need to properly understand science. When I finally realized this, I retired.
That science works is valid in general, and we know it by the evidence of our own senses. We sometimes also know from this evidence of instances where it doesn’t work, especially in social and behavioral sciences where powerful interests can bring about ideological capture. Examples include the scientific racism and onanism theory of the 19th century and the more recent pathologization of homosexuality up to fifty years ago. For a present day example, just enter “methodological flaws and syndrome construction” in your search box.
Yeah the flat earth model always forgets about the places far north and far south, the places on earth the receive 3-6months of continuous sunlight during the summer and 3-6 months of continuous darkness in winter. .. not a single flat earth model compensates for this. Yes flat earth is for dummies. If it were the sun moving, then those 3-6 months of continuous sunlight, would mean the sun never left that area, in a flat earth, so why is that area not the hottest place on earth?? It should be, the sun doesnt move from that position for 3 months!!
so they only rely on the information aquired by there own senses? and that is why they go on forums and on youtube to hear someone else talking about a model of the world, which someone else created? now maybe im dumb but i dont understand the logic behind this. to me it seems contradictory… anyone care to enlighten me ? 🙂
9:00 I strongly disagree. There are several well-known places on earth where one can see the curvature of the earth for oneself and without any sort of apparatus whatsoever. The easiest one is looking across the Bonneville Salt Flats along I-80 from Wendover Utah. Lake Ponchartain is also an example. In short, never concede an argument to a flat earther. They are extremely consistent liars.
I challenge the notion that Flat earthers are intelligent. It is one thing to challenge things that are assumed from what we learn from school or consensus “reality” it is quite another to invent realities and pretend that they are true/facual/ correct or more correct than an established theory because “I want to”. And all Flat earthers fall into that category. They make claims that are simply not true, even when they do experiments that show in front of their own eyes that their claims are wrong they ignore that in order to continue with their belief (watch Behind the Curve to reveal just that in 2 experiments that the flat earthers set up). They claim that there is an ice wall at the circumference of the flat earth that we are not allowed to go near because it is guarded by military personnel. Yet the average person can visit the antarctic freely (look on line and book a trip, its easy). They claim that a boat or ship going over the horizon at the sea side will reappear again if you zoom in with a telescope, yet that is simply not true as you can watch it disappear behind the curve using the naked eye and a telescope. It simply does not reappear. They simply are not telling the truth. Their model of the sun and moon is absurd as there would be a form of permanent day light or at least twilight depending on where we were on the planet at the time the sun was at its furthest according to their model. There is so much more. Theirs is not an honest questioning of the nature of the shape of the earth (which has been known about for over 2000 years and Eratosthenes’ experiment has never been disproved), for some reason they want to believe and in the main it is due to their insistence that a flat earth is referenced in the Bible, so they claim, and that somehow both these things prove each other and thus confirm their religious beliefs at the same time.
Since flat earth people only accept information they can gather from their senses, do they then not participate in diagnostic medicine when they get sick? Are they willing to forego cancer diagnosis and treatment because they refuse to believe in PT and cat scans? Do they not believe in the efficacy of blood-work?
The, “observation” argument doesn’t hold up. The horizon, from any location on a globe, is a constant distance, thus it will always appear as a flat circle wrapping around the observer. There would not be an observable curve or, “hump” like the flat earth argument believes should exist. The observation of a, “flat” horizon is true on both a globe and a flat plane. The motion of the sun or moon on flat earth has a lot of problems. First, the motion across the sky would not be linear. If we assume the sun is 3000 miles above the flat earth moving at a constant 1000 miles per hour, the angular change cannot be constant. Starting with the sun directly overhead, after one hour it will have moved about 18.4 degrees. Over the 2nd hour, 15.3 degrees, over the 6th hour, 4.4 degrees. The angular change will decrease each hour, approaching but never reaching zero degrees per hour. The sun will never set. I do not believe flat earther’s are incapable of understanding their own observations, I believe they choose not to understand the observations. Conflict with religious or other beliefs prevent them from accepting obvious realities. For this reason, no amount of evidence can convince them. For them, the globe simply cannot be true regardless of evidence. The acceleration theory can be quickly disproven, one it would quickly exceed the speed of light, and two, gravity would be the same regardless of position relative to the surface. Einstein said there is no difference between acceleration and gravity but that’s not quite completely true.
Not sure why the disbelief in a huge body of knowledge for no reason other than ego (“I only trust MY senses”) is not stupid. By this standard, since a person with that belief system cannot be inside a bank 24/7, they would have to be on a strict cash only system, or not be able to ever prove that their money in the bank is real. If I’m a banker, and know that Jill is a holder of this philosophical view, I could simply take their money and just say its gone, and they would not be able to say I’m wrong, as they cannot tell with their own senses where the money is. Stupid, right? Not much in society will work if all of it has to be ‘proven with my own senses’. Have to disagree on this article title, if that is the reasoning behind why flat earth believers are not stupid…
Not only is our planet the only one we currently are aware of containing life forms, we’re supposed to believe that earth is the only known planet to be flat….I.e a body with mass and atmosphere circulating it’s star. Wonder how many other planets that were aware of fit the bill? The more an untruth is told, the more it’s believed, until it’s accepted as fact, with no evidence whatsoever….
There’s another theory that I think might be relevant here. The more you can get people to believe in and get worked up about conspiracy theories, the more they lose sight of what’s actually happening in the world. And more they lose sight of what’s happening around them the more they are prone to extremist politics. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that there are extremists who like promoting these theories (even though they might not believe them themselves), in order to confuse a populace, and make them more susceptible to extreme political standpoints.
I think it’s very important to consider every theory, even if it lines up with what you think or not. After all, being a scientist is all about questioning what you know and asking the questions of “what if…?”. so in this scenario, rather than dismiss the whole thing for being so radically different, try to embrace it as a possibility and would it actually be possible that we live on a flat dish? How would that have worked with the forces we know? Of course I know that the world is in fact spherical, but imagining possibilities is important and to be honest, also quite fun.
Don’t these people ever fly in a plane? You can easily see the curvature. Or go to a port somewhere and watch leaving boats with binoculars in a good weather. The boat body will disappear before their sails/funnels disappear, visually proving the curvature. If sunset is caused by sun going under the ground disk, then ground disk must float in space. And then night must be in all places at the same time. Because sun can’t go under horizon at different times in different places. There’s just one horizon in a flat disk. Alternative if the sun has limited light radius or is a spot light, then we would not have sunset and long shadows at all. Sun would remain high above ground. It would simply fade away instead of go under horizon. The armospheric glow when sun is under horizon only works with round earth.
They can go to the ocean and watch a ship disappearing on the horizon. If the earth was flat the ship would just get smaller and smaller until it wss too small to see. Because the earth is round, the bottom of the ship disappears first as the ship moves down the curve of the globe. It’s a long time since I was in school, so sorry but I don’t remember which ancient philosopher came up with this proof.