Will they finally accept that the Earth is round, or will they say that it’s fake and the windows on the space stations are monitors?

  • CaptObvious
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    1 year ago

    A few years ago, a documentary on flat-earthers featured a trained geologist who has become convinced that the earth is flat. To test it, being a trained scientist, he designed a good experiment to measure the altitude of a laser beam at a distance from its emitter. He calculated the predicted measurement if Earth is flat and the measurement if Earth is spherical. When he ran the experiment, he got exactly the value he had predicted for a spherical Earth.

    The rest of the documentary was him trying to find the error in his instruments and measurements since he knew for a fact that Earth is flat.

    It was sad.

  • Deestan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There is enough proof without going to space, so it’s safe to assume proof has no effect.

    You can always find some superficially credible alternative explanation to any proof. With those, you can use the language of reason and logic to construct a belief consistent with what you had in the first place.

    As long as the person has their identity tied to a certain belief, and is of a mindset to find ways in which the belief is correct, they are immune to change. Those are the areas you will need to work on to change their mind.

    The spacecraft windows were curved, causing an optical illusion

  • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    People that deep into a conspiracy theory aren’t going to have their opinions changed by any amount of evidence.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      See the Behind The Curve documentary for conclusive proof of that.

      At least two experiments, involving lights and gyroscopes, and then merely go “hmm, interesting” before going right back to believing nonsense.

  • Tarkcanis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Likely that, or something about the windows distorting the image. What you have to understand about flat earth is that it’s a religous conspiracy theory. If they accept a spheroid earth, their faith comes into question, and that’s not something most prople are willing to let happen.

  • kia@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Well first they’d have to “trust” the people taking them up. They’d claim they weren’t actually taken to space.

    Basically, its impossible to convince them otherwise.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    I know a flat earther and he claims that you’re looking at a fake view when you’re on an aircraft and that it’s a hologram. He likes to throw sci-fi words around even though he has no idea what they mean.

    Conspiracy theorists don’t actually know what they’re talking about so they will always come up with some excuse as to justify why they are still right and you are still wrong. Trying to prove otherwise is a waste of your time talking to them is a waste of your time.

    If the earth really was flat someone would have worked out a way to commercialize the edge. It has to be useful for something right, waste disposal springs to mind, in any case it would be far more profitable to just publicly announced that the world is flat than to construct this elaborate conspiracy for no obvious reason.

    • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Have you seen the documentary “beyond the curve”? There’s a lot of “reasoning” going on, but they dismiss all their own findings that prove them wrong.

    • cynar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It started out as a debating group, working with an obviously idiotic concept. Unfortunately it ended up attracting enough idiots who actually believed them that it drove/scared off the original debaters.

      It’s a fascinating phenomenon, quite akin to religious indoctrination.

    • davidgro@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is my plan if I ever meet one - Just absolutely deny that they believe it themselves.

      Since the whole game is “I’m better than the masses because I claim to have secret knowledge” I’ll just deny that claim.

      Probably along the lines of “Flat earth was maybe worth a small chuckle in 2006 but the joke is really old and played out now.”

    • Spacehooks@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      My uncle legit thinks it is flat. Granted he has little education. I once had to explain how a mirror worked…

  • Pratai@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    They’re too dumb to pass any exam that would be required to send them there- so we’d never know.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      In like 100 years we’ll have a colony on the moon and there’ll be people claiming the moon is flat too.

      The earth is not real man, it’s just a sticker.

  • jacktherippah@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    They’ll say that its fake. The only way for them to believe is probably letting them orbit the Earth for a while in a spacesuit.

      • Kerb@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        with cameras on weather balloons or iss footage (if they dont outright claim its fake cgi)
        they usally blame the camera lens or curved windows, and claim its just the fisheye effect

      • Xero@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        just give them a one way trip to space so they’ll know how stupid they are right before they die