2018, almost 19’ and I’m sitting down to write an article about flat earthers. Does this sound strange to you?
But what if it really was flat? We’ll you’d certainly want to know so you didn’t go off the edge during your next ski tour wouldn’t you? Or maybe there’d be some pretty sweet lines on the edge.
It may be easy to simply write flat earthers off as just another conspiracy group, however instead of laughing and moving on have you instead ever spent time listening and constructively building an opinion about their thoughts and motives? Essentially, given them your time and attempted to understand their theories? You might say it’s been clearly proven we live on a sphere, but have you done the mathematical proof yourself and attempted to fully understand the science yourself?
And this is essentially where all flat earthers come from. They realize they’ve always believed at face value what they’ve been told and attempt to figure it out themselves. Turns out they’re all just really bad at physics. Outside of that it’s a simultaneously noble endeavour and also a highly egotistical one.
In the words of self proclaimed Flat Earth Man – “I was into conspiracies anyway so I had an open mind so I was more receptive to it.”
Being wary of what society tells us is true feels like a great adage these days while we’re surrounded by fake news. However, the narcissistic inclination to only trust your own observations and definitely never at any time under any circumstances those of others, especially if they start using complex math or physics which you don’t understand feels suspiciously like a recipe for inbred theories.
Flat earthers are very into home experiments. The complexity of which you might have done in 5th grade science class. Take a level onto an airplane to see if the nose drops to continue around the curvature of the earth. (Turns out the nose does need to point down, however it is around the tune of a few thousandths of a degree. Good luck measuring that with an Ace hardware level.)
Another popular experiment is demonstrating that water cannot stick to the surface of things, therefore the oceans wouldn’t exist as they do. Still skeptical? Simply take an inflatable globe and splash water on it, see how it rolls off? You then might mention to the flat earther that if that globe in their hands was 7,917.5 miles in diameter and made of solid mass it would excurt a gravity of 9.807m/s2 on its surface. They will likely tell you gravity doesn’t actually work like that.
At the end of the day it’s endless, you can’t debate someone who doesn’t want to be proven wrong. Especially if their only tools of observation are handheld levels, blow up globes and other dollar store items.
It can be summed up in this great Youtube exchange found in one of the videos below: Chris (flat earther) – “Over the last 2-3 years people have gotten onto this and looked into it themselves and have worked out what we’ve been told is a load of bullock.” Dan – “No what people have done is not understood a physical concept and then replaced their confusion with something that they can grasp despite a complete lack of coherent thinking.”
Still don’t fully believe this is a real thing? Enjoy a few more videos and get educated on flat earthers. And remember, when ski touring this winter if you see something that looks like the edge of the world… shred it! -ML
