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My brother-in-law has gone full-carnivore. I'll leave it to the reader to guess which YouTubers he most admires.

When I last saw him, early in December, he'd been at it for a few weeks and he already looked like he's been shrinkwrapped in his own skin.

I'm not talking muscle definition and low body-fat, I'm talking skin like a roast chicken.

Anyway, that same day he revealed to me that his eldest son had become a flat-earther and would I please talk to him. I said something vague about people who believe anything they see on YouTube and offered a stargazing Look Through The Telescope evening.

But the cause was obvious: Son grows up watching his dad uncritically stuffing his brain full of whatever bullshit the algorithm feeds him, and elevating his newfound "knowledge" to the level of unassailable faith, and learns. It's a real shame because that 18yo is a really nice kid, and he's been led astray.

in reply to Allen Very Serious Versfeld

Allen Very Serious Versfeld
Allen Very Serious Versfeld
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I spoke to the son, incidentally, who was all ready for a big debate, a head full of the absolute latest state-of-the-art of flat-earth science and ready to debunk my globalist nonsense.

He asked why I believed the Earth was round, and I just said "I'm not here to argue with you. I know why it's round, I've seen the evidence for myself, but I'm here to enjoy the afternoon with family."

And then I repeated the offer to bring the telescope around and show them some things.

So far, that seems to be the end of it. But if there's one thing I've learned, is that there's nothing to be gained by debating these things. Flat Earth is a matter of faith. It's a sincere belief, you can't debate that stuff away. If they take me up on the telescope offer, I can show them things. Plant those seeds of actual seen-with-your-own-eyes factual data and then let him try and reconcile that with what his fundamentalist youtubers are telling him.

in reply to Allen Very Serious Versfeld

Frank Küsel
Frank Küsel
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The internet "knowledge" silos are terrifying. And then Meta just has to stop fact checking too... Good luck with the teenager.
in reply to Allen Very Serious Versfeld

Cassana 🍻
Cassana 🍻
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I don't get Flat Earthers at all. I don't discuss that with them, because I, being eternally curious, would end up asking questions about how that supposedly works and laughing at the often silly disjointed answers. The Earth is an oblate spheroid, full stop.
in reply to Cassana 🍻

Allen Very Serious Versfeld
Allen Very Serious Versfeld
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@cassana It's an absolutely mad idea. It's the grandfather of all conspiracy theories because the number of people who are apparently involved in maintaining the "fiction" is staggering.

The moon landing required something like half a million people, all of whom would've had to keep a very exciting secret if it had been faked. But the shape of the planet? Everybody in the airline industry (except possibly the attendants). Navigators on every ship. All the world's quantity surveyors, cartographers and city planners. Militaries. And that's without even touching on the astronomers, the people who work at space agencies, the astronauts.

That's just the jobs I can think of off the top of my head who have to take the curvature of the Earth into account every single day when they do their jobs.

Hundreds of millions of people, all in on it, and none of them breaking ranks? Come on :)

@Cassana 🍻
in reply to Allen Very Serious Versfeld

Cassana 🍻
Cassana 🍻
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Yep. And even in history, where most think that people thought of the Earth as flat and part of a geocentric system, we have Aristarchus of Samos with his heliocentric model (OK, generally disregarded as it was unprovable at the time), and Pliny the Elder writing stuff like: "There is an intermediate theory that is acceptable even to the unlearned crowd — that the earth is of the shape of an irregular globe" (Natural History, 2.65.1).
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Cassana 🍻

Allen Very Serious Versfeld
Allen Very Serious Versfeld
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@cassana I mean... Eratosthenes even measured the diameter, to a pretty good accuracy, something like 2600 years ago!
@Cassana 🍻
in reply to Allen Very Serious Versfeld

Cassana 🍻
Cassana 🍻
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You're slightly off on the timeline there, He lived between 276-194 BC. His 40,250 to 45,900km versus the current 40,075km is indeed pretty remarkable, and his higher number is also easily explained by him not basing it on a more uniform sea level measurement.
in reply to Cassana 🍻

Allen Very Serious Versfeld
Allen Very Serious Versfeld
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@cassana Oh wow... you're right. I wonder when that mistake crept in?

I've been telling people 2600 years for a long time now, but I've just confirmed that all my published articles and podcasts have the correct dates.

I must have mixed him up with some earlier philosopher at some point.

@Cassana 🍻
in reply to Cassana 🍻

Allen Very Serious Versfeld
Allen Very Serious Versfeld
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@cassana There's also the uncertainty as to what exactly one stadia means. I gather that there's quite a wide range of possible values, something in the range of 155 to 170 meters?
@Cassana 🍻
in reply to Allen Very Serious Versfeld

Cassana 🍻
Cassana 🍻
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True. With those specific conversion values I get a range of 39,060 and 42,840km for 252,000 stadia, which is actually even closer than those other values I quoted. 🙂
in reply to Cassana 🍻

Leon Cowle
Leon Cowle
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@cassana Interesting back & forth. TIL. Thanks!

FWIW, I firmly believe that a large part (maybe even a majority?) of the so-called Flat Earth movement is merely akin to a long running joke. A meme. Where contrarians take it up, then come up with the most ludicrous “scientific explanations”, and finally try to see how far their particular theory can spread, and to see how many well-meaning “round earthers” they can rile up to reply. All while sitting back and enjoying the ensuing circus.

(of course, this then causes those less critical thinkers amongst us to get caught up in the ruse, like the teenager mentioned in this thread)

@Cassana 🍻
in reply to Leon Cowle

Allen Very Serious Versfeld
Allen Very Serious Versfeld
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@leoncowle @cassana I used to believe that it was all an elaborate joke - that's why I presented it to my class when I was 11. My dad helped me by calling up the president of the Flat Earth Society (he lived in Howick) and letting me interview him.

But in later years, as I spoke to more of them, I stopped believing that it was a joke.

And then I heard stories like this one:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_…

I'm sure some are in it for the lols, some are deluded fools, and some are dangerous cranks.


series of observations carried out along a six-mile length of the Old Bedford River in an attempt to determine the shape of the Earth

Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)
@Leon Cowle @Cassana 🍻
in reply to Allen Very Serious Versfeld

Cassana 🍻
Cassana 🍻
• •
@leoncowle I talked to some people who told me they believed the Earth was flat. I played along: talking about falling off the map after climbing the icebergs of Antarctica, that anything is round when viewed through a lens (obviously curved itself), checking for elephants standing on a turtle, etc. They got offended by those jokes, so sadly, I have to acknowledge that Flat Earthers don't have enough of a sense of humour to consider it a joke.
@Leon Cowle
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