Flat Earth Idea - Why so popular?

[eagle0027]

Elandial...thanx for that picture..funny i have never ran across it
Being a pilot have never believed that at least in this reality that the earth could be anything other than round.

[samildamach]

I blame Terry pratchett and that Damn turtle

[Craig]

without getting in too deep the very idea of a flat earth just confuses me, a flat earth would have edges so what happens there? and how does the water move around? mountains? if plates are forced together why don't they go in the path of least resistance and move out beyond the edges? Satellites? How would they work? Anyway I am getting carried away, just some prelim thoughts on the absurd matter.

Edit from Bill (forgive me!) — you forgot to mention time zones. You're in Australia... well, I'm writing these words 6 minutes after you posted. Here, In Ecuador, it's 9.35 pm, and it's dark outside. In fact, I'm about to go to bed. I'll get up at sunrise, 8 hours from now.

[aviators]

Posted by Elandiel BernElve (here)
Thanks for your answer, mysterious encounter indeed.

And yes I've noticed information is hard to find here.

My question is where this phenomenon comes from and why it has gained such momentum without actually discussing its validity.

Hopefully there will be room to discuss that specific part of the subject.

Like Trump, you can hate him, you can love him. But his movement and impact on itself are enough food for debate and can also be discussed without engaging in an anti or pro contest.

Matt Boylan worked for NASA allegedly as an freelance painter. Some say he had a big part in this movements traction.
He was informed at a NASA party that satellites don't work in Antarctica because i'ts flat.

Quote " I worked for NASA and here's the truth, here's my story and the greatest deception the world will ever face: the earth,
it's size, it's shape, all images they show you are not the truth... get ready , it's going to be hard to swallow. This is my story as an artist faking your universe. "

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YKbdH7a2IZw

Part 2. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n-QAUeRZumU

Part 3. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N_DcVETa_98

[thunder24]

i have not read this, but how bout this...

how does it change your every day life...? earth is flat now what... "oh they lied to us"... ok now what... oh it opened peoples minds to the fact that they lied to us....great...now what...

and on and on.... it doesn't freaking matter... at this point in the game....

[dim]

Posted by TargeT (here)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jX7dcl_ERNs

at about 1min he says:

so as the bullet leaves the barrel of the gun, the earth is still rotating
and the bullet is NOT rotating with the earth

say what ?!
i'm no in to FE or anything, almost accidentally clicked on the clip
but please correct me if i'm wrong but this is basic physics
of course it DOES rotating with the earth
or else we would just jump in say florida and land on chicago.

[amor]

Considering what the government has deliberately done to the education system and English language by distorting and dumbing down, it makes perfect sense that they would try to tell you the earth is flat to hide the space program and keep people as mind controlled slaves with their heads in the sand.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by aviators (here)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YKbdH7a2IZw

Please don't just copy and paste YouTube videos without your own intelligent critique! Do take the time and trouble to think for yourself.

Posted by dim (here)

say what ?!

You can look up the Coriolis Effect on the internet. There are many detailed articles and videos. The effect on the accuracy of long-distance snipers is very tiny, but it's there. Even though the Earth is an inertial frame of reference, in the very short time between firing a bullet and it hitting its long-distance target (say, a mile away), the Earth has moved just a little underneath it — and the target with it, too. It's extremely small, but it's a measurable effect.

[Eram]

Posted by Cidersomerset (here)
[snip]

The FLAT EARTH LIVE!! [Lancashire, England @ New Horizons]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7UuW9CqhBdE

Hi Cidersomerset,

I actually took the time to watch the entire presentation.
Fascinating character.


What made me sit up straight at minute 26:45, was when he stated that the flat earth map that is commonly used cannot be true, because then an airplane that flies from New Zealand to Argentina would surely take a route over the North pole instead of flying over the Pacific ocean that it does in reality.


Since this was the first thing that came to mind to disprove "flat earth" when I first heard about it over a year ago, I though to myself: " Wauw, this is gonna be good. He came to the conclusion that this map cannot be true and is still convinced that the earth is flat. I can't wait to see how he is going to make it work"

Imagine my disappointment when he finally, after 100 minutes into the presentation showed the map that he thinks is the real one.


Oh nooo, he has a square map!!
Now all the people who sailed and rowed around the world have to be fantasists and or lairs.

To his credit: He still has some problems with the square map too, but he's sure that he will figure it out in the end.
I don't share his optimism

[Nick Matkin]

Just a note about maps.

If the earth were flat there would never have been any reason to come up with many types of world maps, all trying to find the least-worst ways of projecting a sphere (or part thereof) onto a flat surface.

The Great Circle Map (showing the actual bearings and distances between two points on a sphere) is used by pilots and long-distant (non-satellite) radio communication so you know where to point the antennas.

Thus a flat earth would have been confirmed in the very early days of radio communication. It wasn't. Case closed!

[TargeT]

Posted by thunder24 (here)
i have not read this, but how bout this...

how does it change your every day life...? earth is flat now what... "oh they lied to us"... ok now what... oh it opened peoples minds to the fact that they lied to us....great...now what...

and on and on.... it doesn't freaking matter... at this point in the game....

It does matter, it wastes peoples time... one of the few things we have in limited quantity... & it burns people out, another dead end rabbit hole: why look further if they are all like this?

A. Huxley wrote a book along this lines "A brave new world" in the book part of the way society is controlled is through over saturation.

Over saturation, or "numbing" or desensitizing people is actually quite easy; once a new threshold is reached and held for a certain amount of time it becomes the new normal...

your response is exactly why we are being over saturated, to get more of "that".

Posted by dim (here)
say what ?!
i'm no in to FE or anything, almost accidentally clicked on the clip
but please correct me if i'm wrong but this is basic physics
of course it DOES rotating with the earth
or else we would just jump in say florida and land on chicago.

once an object leaves contact with the ground the earth "moves" under it because the two bodies are no longer connected, the earth continues to rotate and the object that left it is no longer rotating with it. A person COULD jump in florida and land in chicago if they stayed up long enough (obviously not possible).. this is a VERY small effect, but it's present. you could test this by driving in a car and tossing a ball up into the air (yes wind resistance plays a role, but in a vacuum once the ball leaves the vehicle while it's moving the car will move out from under the ball, of course on a planet as big as the earth and us as small as we are it's hard to directly observe with out setting up some experiments).

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Nick Matkin (here)

Just a note about maps

Maps, quite so. My favorite map clip is this one, in case any readers haven't yet seen it: 'Cartographers for Social Equality' — really quite wonderful. It's inspired and hilarious, but does make a serious point about how arbitrary (or weighted) map projections really are.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OH1bZ0F3zVU

Nick, I know you've thought about this quite a lot. What's your personal best answer to the question in the thread? One of the factors I'm always aware of is how these kinds of discussions, even if they're measured, informed and intelligent, can easily make everyone on Avalon seem like an idiot, simply by inference and association. I'm certain this is the purpose.

It's hard to get one's mainstream-influenced friends, neighbors or family pay attention to issues about 9/11, GMOs, chemtrails, or government surveillance — let along the Secret Space Program! — when the alternative media is tainted (and I use that word advisedly) by injected material like this. One can imagine the CIA spooks laughing their socks off at how easily influenced we all are.

(An interesting note: I was e-mailed a few years ago by someone who told me they'd been approached by the CIA to 'write fiction' for them. He declined the offer... but it made him think pretty deeply. Me too. I wonder what 'fiction' really IS being strongly peddled in our direction by CIA-hired creative writers, all packaged as 'new truths'.)

[Eram]

I can't say that I have a solid answer as to why this idea of flat earth is becoming popular so fast all of a sudden, but I have some impressions and ideas about the subject:

There are certain ideas running around in the "truth seekers" information stream that (at least to me) have some unexplainable pull or tug to get drawn in.
In a weird way, by which there is some sort of force to place subjective emotional thinking above: logic, facts and common sense.

To me, it seems as if these idea's get a certain magnetic charge by unknown means to pull people in.

[norman]

Posted by Elandiel BernElve (here)

......Now somehow my youtube account is spamming me with "maybe you find this interesting" about Flat Earth theories.

Lately I was at a party and someone started talking to me about it.

What is up with this whole thing? Is there an operation running globally to get people to believe the Earth is flat?

So the question is not whether it's flat because you know... hah. It ain't.

But the question is WHY ? What is the purpose of this disinfo?

All our internet chatter is captured. A lot of people tend to think there is far too much data for them to do much with it. I don't see it like that. The google search engine can make quite good sense of ALL the data available on the "light" web ( as distinct from the "dark" web ). If google search can do it, so can they.

Time is moving on, They have been experimenting and developing A.I. intelligence to sit atop the data and work with it. There was one called Promethius, a while ago. Presumably, they experimented with one called Jade, because they are now using one called Jade2.

Jade2 is very probably capable of learning from our chatter. Further more, human operators/computer scientists will likely be thinking up ideas to maximize the ability of Jade2 to learn stuff from our chatter.

They have quite a unique scenario going. They can borrow methods from other fields of technical research. One such field is 'acoustic sampling'. This is where definite and short bursts or pings of sound are projected into an acoustic space, and the returning echoes and reverberations are recorded. These recordings are analyzed and modelled into algorythms that can be used to process ANY sound to make it sound like it is being heard in that exact acoustic space.

I believe they are experimenting with something similar on the internet and coming up with algorythms that Jade2 can use. In this case, one of the "pings" they are using is a rediculous meme called flat earth theory. There are very probably others.

So, as I see it, it goes a little further than just trying to make us look stupid.

[thunder24]

Posted by TargeT (here)

Posted by thunder24 (here)
i have not read this, but how bout this...

how does it change your every day life...? earth is flat now what... "oh they lied to us"... ok now what... oh it opened peoples minds to the fact that they lied to us....great...now what...

and on and on.... it doesn't freaking matter... at this point in the game....

It does matter, it wastes peoples time... one of the few things we have in limited quantity... & it burns people out, another dead end rabbit hole: why look further if they are all like this?

A. Huxley wrote a book along this lines "A brave new world" in the book part of the way society is controlled is through over saturation.

Over saturation, or "numbing" or desensitizing people is actually quite easy; once a new threshold is reached and held for a certain amount of time it becomes the new normal...

your response is exactly why we are being over saturated, to get more of "that".

I think it is 100% a waste of time.... sorry I wasnt clear with what I was saying... When I say it doesn't matter I meant quite wasting time... i see how that could of been confuseing

[Nick Matkin]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by Nick Matkin (here)

Just a note about maps

Nick, I know you've thought about this quite a lot. What's your personal best answer to the question in the thread? One of the factors I'm always aware of is how these kinds of discussions, even if they're measured, informed and intelligent, can easily make everyone on Avalon seem like an idiot, simply by inference and association. I'm certain this is the purpose.

My best answer?

That's a tough one, however, as I've written before I think it boils down to:

The mostly harmless but irritating mischiefs who just throw these silly ideas into receptive pools of the willingly gullible and sit back to watch the ripples. They get nefarious pleasure watching the threads morph into areas such as the philosophical debates discussing the meaning of reality. Worthy or ulimately just time wasting?

Then there are those who just don't have a 'mind model' of what many of us take for granted, and they question stuff. That's fine, but in this specific subject it has never occurred to them about maps. They have never heard of or seen a Great Circle map or why it had to be invented. They don't understand orbits or satellites, neither do they appreciate the tens of thousands of engineers, designers and users (both amateur and professional) of satellites that prove the earth is not flat at so many levels.

There may be some orchestrated effort to discredit the alternative media. But forgive me if I think we're flattering ourselves if we think any agency considers us important enough to do that. But you Bill, are much better placed to know.

Neither would I be surprised if this and similar forums are used as test beds for the spread of memes. Probably by nothing more sinister that psychology or sociology students, but you never know...

And maybe once or twice this forum has been specifically targeted with silly threads that have to be closed because they *do* bring the forum into disrepute. But of course this leaves the mods open to accusations of 'censorship' and 'controlling content'!

Back to maps. It's really disappointing when people need to be shown the true relative sizes of countries, because all they've ever seen and never questioned is a Mercator map. After the West Wing video you posted, here is one of may sites emphasizing the point...

http://www.citymetric.com/horizons/t...eally-are-1380

[Cidersomerset]

I actually took the time to watch the entire presentation.
Fascinating character.

That's what I thought ,like Andrew Basiago and many others if they are
sincere whether right or wrong I like to at least respect their views.

Maps, quite so. My favorite map clip is this one, in case any readers
haven't yet seen it: 'Cartographers for Social Equality' — really quite wonderful. It's
inspired and hilarious, but does make a serious point about how arbitrary (or
weighted) map projections really are.

I was just about to post that vid as the part about the map was interesting
even though I had heard it before....I presume it is genuine ??



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E...ers_projection

[ozmirage]

"Flat Earth" and "We didn't land on the Moon" and other popular anti-establishment stands are popular because they're contrary.

Once an individual is awakened to the fact that he is a victim of propaganda and disinformation, he rebels against "authority" and its pronouncements - even the ones that are factual.

This reactionary skepticism fits in with the goal of the world's greatest propaganda ministry - dissolve the unity of the prey so they cannot oppose the predators.

If the harmless productive people stay united in their defense against their enemies, foreign or domestic, predators are doomed. But if they can be misled and confused and tricked into endless arguments over non-issues, hoaxes, and ideological nonsense, the predators can escape notice.

Unfortunately, tolerance of predators is unmerciful to their next victim.

[TargeT]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
Nick, I know you've thought about this quite a lot. What's your personal best answer to the question in the thread?

I'm guessing the question pertains to the OP and the title why is FE so popular

I sort of answered my take below:

Posted by Eram (here)
I can't say that I have a solid answer as to why this idea of flat earth is becoming popular so fast all of a sudden, but I have some impressions and ideas about the subject:

There are certain ideas running around in the "truth seekers" information stream that (at least to me) have some unexplainable pull or tug to get drawn in.
In a weird way, by which there is some sort of force to place subjective emotional thinking above: logic, facts and common sense.

To me, it seems as if these idea's get a certain magnetic charge by unknown means to pull people in.

Ever wonder why magicians used "spells" on people?


now you know why it's called "spell", what you are noticing is the "spelling" of masters, magicians that understand the psyche so well that they can manipulate you even though they've never met you ( but then, they don't have to meet you do they? you, like me, like almost everyone you know are all societal carbon copies of each other, sure you might drink coke and I drink pepsi, but those differences are so small that it's negligible.)

another great example is "click bait" -- they know us SO WELL that there is a FORMULA to get people to click on links... think about that, a formula to get people to do what you want... MAGIC!

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DXJDBp0yW1A

When psychological profiling becomes ridiculously easy via the internet (mostly facebook and sites like that (Flicker, Twitter, etc)

So yeah, hope that helps you understand.

Oh, and no one knows how to critically think anymore (there's a formula for that too & they stopped teaching it to the common public in the Roman times), so logic and facts are trumped by emotion and logical fallacy.

Posted by thunder24 (here)
I think it is 100% a waste of time.... sorry I wasnt clear with what I was saying... When I say it doesn't matter I meant quite wasting time... i see how that could of been confuseing

yes, and maybe a couple of other agendas as well (discrediting "truthers" being one)

[dim]

Posted by TargeT (here)
once an object leaves contact with the ground the earth "moves" under it because the two bodies are no longer connected, the earth continues to rotate and the object that left it is no longer rotating with it. A person COULD jump in florida and land in chicago if they stayed up long enough (obviously not possible).. this is a VERY small effect, but it's present. you could test this by driving in a car and tossing a ball up into the air (yes wind resistance plays a role, but in a vacuum once the ball leaves the vehicle while it's moving the car will move out from under the ball, of course on a planet as big as the earth and us as small as we are it's hard to directly observe with out setting up some experiments).

maybe i'm indeed missing something here, is just sounds very strange
like say a fly hovering in a room will eventually hit the wall
or an astronaut walking out of the orbiting craft will at some point drift away,
i may have to look it up more thoroughly.
(sorry for the off topic)