Why Do Flat Earth Believers Still Exist? | Ars Technica

back in about 200 BC a Greek named Eratosthenes realized the Sun was directly overhead in southern Egypt during the summer solstice he knew this because the Sun could be seen reflected off the water at the bottom of deep wells but in Alexandria in northern Egypt this wasn't the case Eratosthenes realized he could calculate the angle of the Sun by measuring the length of a stick and the shadow it cast with that angle knowing the distance between the two locations in Egypt he could calculate the circumference of the earth and he did this with a surprising degree of accuracy considering that a lot of the measurements he used to do so were pretty crude there's something notable about all of this the earth can only have a circumference if it's actually round we knew that the earth was round over 2,000 years ago how can it be possible people are still arguing about this to some extent in our everyday experience the earth sure does look flat but this belief can only exist if people ignore the centuries of evidence that have accumulated since the time of Eratosthenes for example people sailed around the globe in 1522 and have been filling in the details ever since we even developed the ideas of latitude and longitude in order to track our progress across the sphere of the earth we've been looking at other planets and stars since Galileo developed the telescope in 1609 and all of those are spheres we now know how planets form and how gravity will shape anything with as much mass as the earth into a sphere over time we've now gone high enough into the atmosphere that we could see the curvature of the earth ourselves we've even done so from the vicinity of the moon multiple countries now have space programs based on the idea that you could put stuff into orbit around the earth but you don't need to be NASA to see this all you really need is a big balloon and a good enough camera that's put it within the reach of high schools and universities but despite the ever growing evidence Flat Earth believers have been with us the whole time back in the 1800s one Flat Earth proponent even took a bet with Alfred Russel Wallace he's the guy who independently came with the theory of evolution Wallis used to be a surveyor and knew how to test whether the earth was round to do so he used a six mile stretch of straight canal he put two poles one at either end of that stretch and a third one in the middle the third one clearly stood out above the other two indicating that it was raised to a higher level by the Bulge of the earth the person who made the bet refused to accept the results years of lawsuits and even death threats for Wallis followed this may have proven a lesson for modern bookies when a UK citizen called the round two betting shops to find somebody who would give him the odds on the earth being flat he didn't find any takers in the intervening years Flat Earth advocates have come up with elaborate geometries that supposedly make the whole thing work to do so they have to shrink the entire solar system the Sun has to be very small very close and follow a meandering path in order to supposedly set across a flat earth the polar regions are supposedly much larger and create an ice wall that sets the boundaries on the Flat Earth and they reject the entire idea of gravity to them satellites are all fake none of this makes any sense but it's what you have to believe if you think the earth is flat their refusal to accept evidence hasn't changed since Wallace's time a few years back the Discovery Channel had a program where they used lasers and telescopes to show that the surface of a large lake was curved due to the curvature of the earth alright Brian how many feet are we above the lake 2014 the Flat Earth proponents responded to this program with a series of videos on YouTube I'm gonna go with CGI on that whole helicopter thing because people would say oh look well what do you mean it's CGI that you saw the helicopter yeah I also seen giant giant robots fighting in downtown Chicago that doesn't make it real all of which supposedly show errors made by the people behind the Discovery Channel program what drives this sort of stubborn refusal to deal with reality part of the problem is that even the simplest demonstrations like Wallis's or the Discovery Channel's require careful preparation and specialized equipment not everybody has access to a helicopter and a telescope to do these sorts of tests that's often a complaint that the Flat Earth people make they need to personally experience the evidence rather than trusting the measurements of other people that's in part because the people who do these measurements are often experts and societies trusts and experts in general has gone down things maybe worse in this case because people who believe in conspiracy theories tend to have lower trust and others overall the people who feel that way have to believe that NASA universities the people who run the GPS system and more are all hiding something from them the explanation can't just be that these people are wrong NASA had to have actually faked all those pictures of around Earth or Flat Earth to be true studies have shown that people who believe in conspiracy theories tend to like to feel unique and what could be more unique than believing in something that seems so outlandish conspiracy theorists also have a tendency to believe in nonsense that sounds profound the technical term for this and I'm not making this up is called receptivity this may explain why they enjoy believing all the Baroque reasons people have come up with for why a flat earth can still have seasons these factors may not explain why any one individual doesn't believe that the earth is round but they go a long way towards explaining why 2200 years later Flat Earth believers are still with us [Music]

Channel: Ars Technica

Views: 832,517

Rating: 4.3367443 out of 5

Keywords: earth, gravity, round, science, the earth, sphere, flat, flat earth, ars, earth flat, why the earth isnt falt, round earth, earth not flat, earth round, flat earther, earth flat evidence, why earth is round, round earth evidence, flat earth evidence, why is earth round, flat earth believer, believer flat earth, flat earthers, ars technica flat earth, ars technica earth, conspiracy, conspiracy theory, theorists, fla, ars technica, technology

Id: mYB1JP-gfLE

Length: 6min 5sec (365 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 07 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/shinbreaker]

A 6 minute video that only needs the last minute to actually explain that flat earther believe what they do in order to feel special, or rather, in order to make their dumbasses feel smart.

[u/Nuaua]

That's a much better explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecfqbWCiZSA