Earlier quoted context omitted.
They mean it is actually accelerating constantly. My math might be wrong, but if we were accelerating at 9.8m/s/s for at least 4000 years (roughly as long as we have continuously recorded history and the minimum time “gravity” has been observed) then we ought to currently be traveling through space at over 1,000,000,000,000m/s. Now I’m no physicist, but I reckon that might end up violating causality.
Some of them think that. The problem with trying to "explain" this is that fundamentally, flat-earthers, to the extent that they could be said to have a coherent world view at all, are usually a kind of occasionalist[1]. They don't _believe_ in natural laws or cause and effect. For the most part, they believe that god is in complete control of all events, and things go down because god wants them to go down. There's…
Very Wrong Math
81–90 of 109 posts
Re: Very Wrong Math
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends what causes things to stick to the flat Earth. IIRC flat earthers have various explanations for gravity, including the disc continuously accelerating upward; in that case you'd experience the same force everywhere on it.
The theological argument I recently heard is, the creator just made up and down. And things move down. But it is not gravity.
> And things move down.
It's not a bad way to look at it for a start. Things move down because it is their nature to move downwards. And this kind of empirical law is what we rely upon for most thought.
It takes a lot of work to get to a theory that makes more general predictions.
And even after having that, 98% of the time my thought is effectively just "things move down." Another 1.5% it's "things move down at 9.8 m/s/s". It's an extreme edge/special case when I'm thinking "massive things are attracted to each other, with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distances".
And even with "massive things are attracted to each other, with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distances" ... if you ask me why, it's because "uh, they just do that?"
Re: Very Wrong Math
#83Charles Petzold.. His c++ book stood on the shelf behind me. 30y ago. heh :)
Re: Very Wrong Math
#84I have seen a very similar (incorrect) argument used to justify the idea of a flat earth. A builder on youtube made the argument (with a similar out of scale drawing of the earth) that if he drops a plumb bob and makes a right angle so he has a straight horizontal line and then goes across that line for a bit and drops another plumb bob, the two lines he has dropped are parallel, "proving" that the surface of the ear…
The earth is just much much much bigger than in the diagram so the effect is within the margin of error for the measurement he was taking. It's actually measurable on a human scale: https://www.mathscinotes.com/2017/01/effect-of-earths-curvat... 1 5/8" difference over 693', or slightly less than 1 part in 5 thousand --- definitely measurable on a smaller scale with accurate machinists' tools.
One can also watch a boat leaving shore descend "under" the horizon with a telescope
Re: Very Wrong Math
#85All models are wrong, but some are useful. ⇒ Some models are wrong and useless.
Re: Very Wrong Math
#86i've seen that exact image posted semi-regularly on various reddit and facebook groups. (it's one of 500 things i hate about those sites. but for some communities that's where the information lives, that's where marketplace lives, etc., so i'm stuck with it)
these kind of things are intentionally wrong "puzzles" that are designed to get hundreds of people mad and post rebuttals to "drive engagement" or whatever. the pictures of a wheel with sledgehammers and chains and jacks with lugnuts plainly still in place and a post "how can i get this off it's stuck and i've tried everything". sigh... it's just another form of trolling.
sure enough, notice the sibling comments here. how many nice people took the time to patiently explain the fallacy(ies) for the 1000th time. then the pedants who correct the grammar/math/etc. in the 98% correct explanations. then the "true believers"/trolls who don't get it and argue back. and so on.
Re: Very Wrong Math
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
The earth is just much much much bigger than in the diagram so the effect is within the margin of error for the measurement he was taking. It's actually measurable on a human scale: https://www.mathscinotes.com/2017/01/effect-of-earths-curvat... 1 5/8" difference over 693', or slightly less than 1 part in 5 thousand --- definitely measurable on a smaller scale with accurate machinists' tools.
One can also watch a boat leaving shore descend "under" the horizon with a telescope
You don't even need a boat or a telescope. Just watch the sun set on the ocean while lying down at the beach just in front of the water. The moment it disappears completely, stand up. You'll see part of it again. If you measure the time it takes disappear completely again and know your own height, you can even get a rough estimate of earth's radius.
Re: Very Wrong Math
#88Related Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_girdling_Earth#Implicat... . The takeaway is that the extra length of the arc is likely much smaller than one would intuitively expect. The problem is usually framed like so: If you wrapped a rope around the earth, how much more rope would you need to add so that it would be 1 meter above the ground at all points? The answer is only 2π meters!
> The takeaway is that the extra length of the arc is likely much smaller than one would intuitively expect.
Maybe it’s because I’m a pilot and we never account for altitude when measuring distance, my intuition puts the difference at “effectively zero”. I also have it internalized that the earth’s atmosphere is very thin.
Re: Very Wrong Math
#89haha crazy
Re: Very Wrong Math
#90Reminds me of this classic:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/06/msnbc/bad-...
“Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over.”