As I've mentioned before on here, I enjoy a hobby of trying to debate with Flat Earthers on YouTube and other social media. It is a fruitless, but utterly fascinating endeavour.
Anyway, turns out that YouGov conducted a poll recently.
They surveyed 8215 US adults on Feb 6, 2018 and asked them: "Do you believe that the world is round or flat?"
And the results showed that only 66% of 18-24 year olds surveyed went for "I have always believed the world is round"
Are we somehow sliding into a new dark age of stupidity?
Or are the younger generation just so used to the fake-news/photoshop/question-everything world that they no longer even believe in the shape of that world?
Flatty Mcflatface.
its not round - thats 2 dimensional. Its spherical - or actually an oblate spheroid
US adults though so not a great baseline of intelligence!
When did propaganda start being called fake news? That was obviously the beginning of the end.
To be fair, "fake news" was actually an accurate description for websites and social media posts that were designed to look like genuine trusted news sources, but were actually fake.
The Trumpton got his grubby hands on the term and redefined it to mean "Anything I don't like"
The World is just a great big onion.
Theres a song about it n evryfink..
its not round – thats 2 dimensional.
I have this debate often. Ask a child what shape a ball is. They will tell you it is round.
When talking to flat earthers I find it is best to stick to terms a child would easily comprehend.
I’m going for a third option.
They fancied a bit of a laugh and put flat as it’s such a stupid survey.
Yeah, it's pretty common for people to dismiss the flat earthers as just trolls and having a laugh.
But they're not.
Well... some are but they are usually easy to spot... however there is a growing number that take it very very seriously who are producing YouTube content, making donations to FE sites, going to international FE conferences, appearing on telly, preaching in the street etc.
(And it's not just a US thing - there are quite a few in the UK too!)
They fancied a bit of a laugh and put flat as it’s such a stupid survey.
I would be tempted by that option. Its not like answers to some other questions which would allow a special interest group to claim greater support than actually exists.
would allow a special interest group to claim greater support
Some of them are now pushing for Flat Earth to be taught in schools in the same way that Creationism did!
They just can't comprehend the potato radius.
They fancied a bit of a laugh and put flat as it’s such a stupid survey
Good call - they were 18-24 year olds, not [i]exactly[/i] adults 🙂
Hmm Stats/Polling geek time
8215 US adults were questioned on Feb 6, 2018.
Results are weighted to be representative of the US population.
Tiny sample and then adjusted based on what? Is there a correlation with other beliefs that lead them to correct their sample?
Next up 16-24 had the highest and 25-34 next for Other/Not Sure which could have included WTF - People ask that?Hold on I'll get my MOM! No I ordered Pepperoni,
I'm calling bad stats there 😉
Why can't we all just agree it is round and flat. Like a disc.
Of course it's flat, have you never been across the A9? 😛
Depends how pedantic you want to be
“I have always believed the world is round”
As a child I expect many of us didn't.
I read somewhere that there is a new school of thought, which is the Earth is concave like a bowl. They even had maths for it and everything!
how many of those surveyed now agree that the Earth is an oblate spheroid/ geoid? Does this move the % up from 66?
The Flat Earth Society recently announced that, "We have supporters all over the globe"!
It's not flat or spherical because the chances are it's not even real
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/simulated-world-elon-musk-the-matrix
Yeah, it’s pretty common for people to dismiss the flat earthers as just trolls and having a laugh.
But they’re not.
They're not flat earthers they people having a laugh in this case.
How do the flat earth buffoons explain the fact that it can be night in one part of the world whilst broad daylight in another? Surely we’d all have part of the night at the same time as we turn and the sun goes underneath. I’m going to start the dodecahedron earth group just because it’s a great word. Dodecahedron,
If the world is flat, why are rockets used to launch into space. Wouldn’t NASA et al just glide the shuttle off the end. Have the flat Earth society answered that?
Are all the planets flat or just Earth.
As a child I never doubted the earth was a sphere, and still don’t!
Mind you, as many of our colonial cousins believe in an impending zombie apocalypse and creationism I don’t give them a lot of my time...
How do the flat earth buffoons explain the fact that it can be night in one part of the world whilst broad daylight in another? Surely we’d all have part of the night at the same time as we turn and the sun goes underneath.
Is the sun really small and like a torch shining down?!
@superfli - true, but a pedant would check the other options too:
- I always thought the world is round, but more recently I am skeptical/have doubts
- I always thought the world is flat, but more recently I am skeptical/have doubts
- I have always believed the world is flat.
@funkmasterp: they think the sun is small, very close (like 3000 miles away) and acts like a spotlight.
@bsims: they typically don’t believe in space at all. The planets are just “wandering stars” on the firmament. All rocket launches are faked. Satellites don’t exist. Gravity is also fake.
They surveyed 8215 US adults
I'd wager that 75-80% of those don't even know what the capital city of the US is.
Some people think the Sun is only 3000 miles away.
Some people think the earth is only 6000 years old. . . .
The planets are just “wandering stars” on the firmament.
How convenient, do they think the stars are just little lights to look nice.
They fancied a bit of a laugh and put flat as it’s such a stupid survey.
This. I see it all the time with pupils. It's just to get a reaction or look different.
The fact that they've misspelled earth on one of the signs on the A9 tells you all you need to know about these idiots.
I , However am not at all surprised because .-
I have been to America
I had a friend who believed that the moon and sun were interconnected and as the sun set the moon rose
If you go parts of the world its so open it appears flat , whilst out of my flat I can see masts of boats where the hull is over the horizon and invisible whilst the superstructure is clearly visable
You have to question the motive behind the survey, there is always a motive.. Whats the back story, what is the survey trying to capture and what information can be gained from it.. and how do the users of the data intend to target that audience..
All reasoned arguments, no doubt.
However I question the motive being just a statement “do you believe the world is round or flat?”
For reporting a segment of society whose beliefs are not the norm isn’t enough motivation to go to the trouble of setting the survey up.
Its not a Survey Monkey survey, it’s a YouGov (Government) run survey..
I was educated in the US, not all US citizens think the earth is flat.
It’s not just a US thing. Distressingly several of the most vocal cult leaders are from the UK.
just to get a reaction or look different
Yeah that is certainly a part of it. All conspiracy theorists thrive on the notion that they posses “special knowledge” that sets them apart from the ordinary sheeple. 🐑
But religion is also a big motivation for this particular one too. Many of them are Bible Literalists who cite Genesis as evidence and think the globe Earth is a plot by the Satanists/Atheists/Jesuits/Catholics/Protestants/Muslims/Jews to hide the truth of God’s Creation. 🙄
I was educated in the US,
Didn't know that was thing. 😉
Only funning Bikebouy!
I'm glad you posted this Graham, as there was a Flat Earth question I've been wanting to ask you about for weeks (on the back of the previous thread).
However, I'm now also vexed as I'm ****ed if I can remember what it was.
Always happy to help Cougar. I think I know most of their basic arguments by now, though they often surprise me with their “creativity” and ability to deny basic observable fact.
Is the sun really small and like a torch shining down?!
Have you not not seen that AO.com advert ?
dont tell me it's not real 🙄
Are you able to share a link to the forum, Graham? I have adequate beer and time to pass. 🙂 (No worries if you'd rather not 🙂 )
Are we somehow sliding into a new dark age of stupidity?
It depends on what other things people who answer the question (one way or the other) believe and know. Its a question to which, for a lot of people, the answer doesn't really matter. Theres no consequence to getting the answer right or wrong. People have to answer much more pressing questions everyday where the right and wrong answers do matter - 'will this pate still be ok to eat?' 'should I cut the red wire of the blue wire?' 'is it safe to poke my dick through the bars of the baboon enclosure?'
Theres nothing I've tried to do with my life today where my answer to a question about the shape of the earth would have changed the outcome. If I change my mind about whether the earth is round or flat nothing about the earth changes. Who cares what I think about things I can't change?
If everyone decides that the earth is flat it won't suddenly become flat. Its not a democracy.*
*(the only exception to this is if is 51.9% of people decide the earth is flat then 'flat' would of course mean 'flat'. Because the people will have spoken.)
@funkmasterp: they think the sun is small, very close (like 3000 miles away) and acts like a spotlight.
Toying with them sounds like fun. Any forums worth joining? We should all have a trip out to flat earthville, it'll be a great laugh.
I don’t like to share links to Flat Earth videos as it just gives them more views, increases their ad revenue and moves them up the ranks on YouTube.
So instead here are some channels that fight the good fight and try to explain why they are wrong and how they are being conned. If you read the comments on any of the debunking videos they have you’ll find plenty of flerfers prattling on:
Wolfie (a commercial airline pilot): https://www.youtube.com/user/Wolfie6020
VoysovReason (calm logic): https://www.youtube.com/user/JonasGrumby71
CoolHardLogic (takes the piss but makes excellent points too): https://www.youtube.com/user/CoolHardLogic
SciManDan (exasperated scientist): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRtsZ5Iak9wSLsQLQ3XOAeA
If you want to experience some hilarious highlights of flat earth videos without sitting through endless hours of dross (for some reason they like to make two hour long videos) then I highly recommend the “Flat Earthers: Full Retard Mode” series of videos by this Tau Ceti Alpha:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCazPghzAJjtAfjkUnAKx3kA
If you really must hear the arguments first hand, despite my warnings about giving them views, then search YouTube for Eric Dubay, Mark Sargent, Jeranism, Phuket Word, Globebusters, Beyond The Imaginary Curve, Rob Skiba, aplanetruth, Celebrate Truth, p-brane and watch till your brains dribble out your ears.
I'm pretty sure most flat earthers are actually just trolls, but it's gained popularity so now they are just running with the idea and laughing, whilst collecting the ad revenue from website hits.
Sad sign of the times really .
See also anti vaxers.
If raindrops are round, why wouldn't the Earth be?
If everyone decides that the earth is flat it won’t suddenly become flat. Its not a democracy.*
This is true but we live in a democracy so these people have votes and can influence things like education, science funding, space exploration etc
I see this as a small extreme part of the much larger anti-intellectualism anti-elite anti-science “had enough of experts” populist movement.
Are we somehow sliding into a new dark age of stupidity?
That’s a rhetorical question, right?
Rain drops are not round at all..they are just roundish.*
*unless they are in a vacume with zero gravity **
**in which case they wouldn't really qualify as rain drops.
But what if they're right?
Is the sun really small and like a torch shining down?!
Have you not not seen that AO.com advert ?
dont tell me it’s not real
I thought that was a documentary!
@mattyfez there are definitely people making money off it that may or may not believe what they say.
Jeranism is pretty prominent and his Patreon account shows he is pulling in around $1600 a month in donations alone.
https://www.patreon.com/jeranism
And that’s before you consider his ad revenue and merchandise income.
Do they also think the moon is a plate or do they think it's spherical? Is Button Moon actually a hard hitting dramatisation of life on the edge of the plate?
Re: binners photos, it’s perfectly possible to see the curvature of the earth with a wide enough, uninterrupted horizon, only the curvature is a lot more subtle than that.
@funkmasterp: some would say that the moon doesn’t exist. It is a light in the sky. A projection. Or a hologram. Others say it exists and is round but is just 3000 miles away like the sun, inside The Dome. Some claim the moon produces its own light and refer to it as a “luminary”. Apparently moon light is colder than shade and this “proves” it.
@CountZero: a classic trap. You actually cannot see left-to-right curvature from ground level, no matter how wide your view is.
Think about it: if you could see to the horizon in every direction on a perfect sphere then that horizon would be the same height in every direction. No curve.
A good way to imagine it is to think about laying a metal ring on top of a larger ball. That ring represents the visible horizon for someone stood at its centre. But it lies perfectly flat on the ball.
&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.trunkrecords.com%2Fturntable%2Fclangers.shtml&docid=Lvs-7AcE_ZfrhM&tbnid=Rq91OEH4zz68UM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwjIqObr99vcAhUI4YUKHYYKCFkQMwjKAigoMCg..i&w=328&h=233&hl=en-gb&client=safari&bih=922&biw=768&q=clangers&ved=0ahUKEwjIqObr99vcAhUI4YUKHYYKCFkQMwjKAigoMCg&iact=mrc&uact=8
Thing is it's arguing against the scientific method, which is pure logic and repeatable experiments.
Imagine a squash ball, it's very easy to observe its shape. But if you zoom in with a powerful camera . It's edge can appear flat.
As Graham said, if you narrow your angle of visibility enough things can look quite different.
Yup. This is the video I like to show to demonstrate that matty
how do they explain all the other 3 dimensional objects in daily life? you know like why we're not cardboard cutouts? why should the earth be any different? sure we have sheets of paper which are near 2 dimensional, but they're not actually two dimensional. like what is underneath this flat earth? what shape is it? is it a like one of those icecreams sandwiched between two wafers floating in space? I don't get it.
Generally they favour something like the Gleason Map (which is just an Azimuthal Equidistant projection):
https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:7h149v85z
North Pole is in the centre. Antarctica forms the ice wall around the edge.
Some would say that beyond the ice wall is more land, maybe more worlds, an infinite plane. Others would say that’s all there is and the dome meets the ground somewhere beyond the ice wall.
Though recently there has been a new trend where some flat earthers have realised that is complete bollocks and they now happily say “We don’t have a map. Or a model. We don’t know what shape it is, but we know it’s not round” 🤦🏻♂️
The earth definitely isn't round, its a spheroid, Shirley?
Are we somehow sliding into a new dark age of stupidity?
what is underneath this flat earth?
I don’t have s great deal of time for people who think the earth is flat, however as I’m inquisitive I’m going watch those vids and read the sites..
Thanks for posting them.
I’m pretty sure most flat earthers are actually just trolls, but it’s gained popularity so now they are just running with the idea and laughing, whilst collecting the ad revenue from website hits.
Probably mostly this. And looks like they have hooked a few people in. Why is anyone interested ?
In fact if I was asked on a poll now I would probably say it is flat just for the hell of it and because it is a stupid question.
@piemonster: this short documentary explains why;
It's no coincidence that many flat-eathers are not 1). professors of astrophysics, geography, or astrononmy. and 2) do in fact live in a double wide on a half price lot in the Panhandle. Even the most strident are not entering places of learning to develop theories or righting years of scientific wrongs, they are wasting their time of Facebook and You Tube. and as MacCruiskeen points out, you can't change centuries of maths and reality by using huge volume of bollocks regards how hard you believe.
The earth definitely isn’t round, its a spheroid, Shirley?
round (adj.)
1) Shaped like a circle or cylinder.
2) Shaped like a sphere.
Tell us the one about the Shadow Object.
That's my favourite. 😉
It's ok, google will save us from the flat earthers...
See also anti vaxers.
Sadly, yes. Italy's upper house has recently voted to overturn mandatory childhood vaccinations, due in part to political support given to populist parties by the anti-vaxxers.
Sadly, this sort of anti-intellectualism is gaining more and more traction thanks to the rise in alt-right populism who flog conspiracy theories.
Are we OT now?
Vaxxers/anti vaxxers have at least some reasoned arguments for/against..
There was an web 'article' I saw recently - can't remember if it was you tube, FB or what, but basically a guy took a basketball & used a macro lens to take a picture really close up of the 'horizon'. Cropping in on that picture to a distance that would be representative of looking out at the horizon at the coast, showed the basketball to appear flat.
Ergo, basketballs are flat.
Found it:
@perchypanther: the Shadow Moon or Anti-Moon that causes eclipses and/or the phases of the moon? Yep there were plenty of flerfers witnessing the solar eclipse who said they could not see the moon before or after the eclipse therefore it must be something else. Obviously!
@bikebouy: no, I agree with Jakester, it is sides of the same populist anti-intellectualism anti-science coin. (It's no surprise that Trump likes a good conspiracy). Clearly Flat Earth is quite an extreme example. And so is Creationism. And chemtrails. And air engines. And slow small planes. More "moderate" ideas are that Big Pharma is deliberately poisoning people (AIDS is fake) and are suppressing the knowledge that all disease can easily be cured by herbs, crystals, magic water and prayer. And there is nothing wrong with getting measles, mumps or rubella: everyone's body will easily cope provided they don't use a microwave, drink chlorinated water or eat non-organic kale.
I think that, as well as the "special knowledge" thing I mentioned earlier, it also provides people with a handy thing to blame. They would be successful, rich, clever, healthy etc if it wasn't for the pesky elite poisoning them and hiding reality. How were they ever supposed to gain any true knowledge in school when schools still teach that the Earth is round and orbits the sun? The odds are stacked against them by the man. And that's why they live in a one bedroom trailer with 12 kids.
Vaxxers/anti vaxxers have at least some reasoned arguments for/against..
See? This is exactly what I was saying.
There are no good reasons as a general rule not to vaccinate unless a particular individual has an allergy or medical reason which would preclude it.
Their "reasoned arguments" are based on a discredited paper by a doctor who was struck off for malpractice, but in spite of this people still think there are good reasons not to vaccinate their children.
There is now money to be made from being a high profile flat earther. As well as all the YouTube pish a flat earth shop has opened (or was announced, I've not been past it yet) in Inverness.
A bit of googling turns up this: http://flatearthhighlands.org Which is batshit crazy.
Don't know if he's behind the shop but he certainly denies the graffiti on the signs. Oh and he also seems to be a holocaust denier although with enough sense not to state it directly.
They (Flat Earthers) are active in the UK. They had a stand up in commercial road in Portsmouth in the middle of June. I wasn't allowed to talk to them, my OH forbade it.
Some of their nonsense was water doesn't conform to the surface of a ball, so why should it conform to the surface of the earth.
Another blinder is they accept that the planets in our solar system (certainly the nearer ones) are spheres, but the earth cannot be assumed to be spherical because it has not been observed and therefore it is flat.
he also seems to be a holocaust denier
Yeah that is quite common among Flat Earthers. Many of them believe that Round Earth is a Jewish plot (a confusing argument given that the same people cite flat earth "evidence" in passages of the Bible that are based on the Torah).
Some of their nonsense was water doesn’t conform to the surface of a ball,
That is literally one of their "best" arguments. They usually say "Water always finds its level" or "Water is always flat".
I like to counter by bringing up tides: if water is always flat and level then how come that water is at high tide here and low tide over there and it will be the other way round in 6 hours?
They generally ask for an impossible demonstration of water sticking to a ball due to gravity - but do not comprehend/accept that the water only falls off the ball because it is being pulled down by the gravity of the much much larger ball (Earth).
