Ask HN: How do I Convince someone the Earth isn't flat

4 points by shyn3 1 year ago | 18 comments
Ran into a few religious people who suggest the earth is a firmament. How do I prove it's not round/sphere.
  • cratermoon 1 year ago
    "the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/01/28/bullshit-a...
    • jfengel 1 year ago
      The trivial way is a phone call to a friend in a different time zone. It's dark there; it's not dark here. It's just past dawn here; the sun is at the highest a few time zones east. More phone calls to more places and it's pretty quickly apparent that the angle to the sun is exactly what you'd expect from a sphere and not from a disk.

      Not that it matters. Flerfers have had decades coming up with increasingly elaborate and absurd cosmologies. They don't understand them, but that's what science looks like to them as well, so they figure it's your word against theirs. And since their word is the Bible, they win.

      If they were genuinely curious, there are a million ways to show the roundness of the earth. But there are zero ways to demonstrate it to a person who is fundamentally incurious and doesn't want to know.

      • h2odragon 1 year ago
        Why do you need to prove them wrong? Have they given you doubt the world is round?

        https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/26427/what-is-th...

        • shyn3 1 year ago
          Yes because it's in the Bible. And Quran. And Torah.

          Have to convert the radicals.

          One argument is when the plane lands why doesn't it curve. Another is why can we see over 1500km with a telescope.

        • mtmail 1 year ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." Let them bring evidence of Earth's flatness.
          • yasp 1 year ago
            Don't waste your time?
            • alex_lav 1 year ago
              Just go find different people to talk to
              • jjgreen 1 year ago
                Meet them at night, point to the moon, walk away without saying a word.
                • gwnywg 1 year ago
                  Out of curiosity, what religion was that?
                  • clouddrover 1 year ago
                    > Ran into a few religious people who suggest the earth is a firmament

                    The firmament is the sky, not the ground.

                    • shyn3 1 year ago
                      This suggests that we can't make it to space so that's a new worm of crazy.
                      • clouddrover 1 year ago
                        No, what it suggests is that you must first address your own lack of understanding before criticizing others for theirs.
                        • shyn3 1 year ago
                          They don't believe we can leave the firmament so never been to mars, no satellites, and never been the moon. Feel free to answer that other comment in this thread mr smart.
                    • zgs 1 year ago
                      Ignore their idiocy. Such folks cannot be convinced by mere facts.
                      • iefbr14 1 year ago
                        Did they, by any chance, mention elephants and a big turtle too?
                        • 1 year ago
                          • lphillips0825 1 year ago
                            Ask them to take you to the edge of the Earth and show you where you can jump off. /s
                            • hardkorebob 1 year ago
                              You don't. You respect their mind. Simple. Make love not war of any kind.