Why is there a Globe Earth conspiracy?

[halfeye]

Now, I didn't learn formal logic, but we don't need that to build this device!

You think you could build a chip, without logic?

True, but my point was that we're long past humans designing machines at the low level now. Oh sure, we can get up to a decent point before we have to let computers design our chips, but the point is we don't design them fully anymore.

Are you sure about that? I think machines design chips the way wordprocessors write novels, I'm sure there are machines that are indispensible in the design of chips, but I very much doubt that they do it all without human input.

You said build, not program. Programming is a whole different discipline, my brother can deal with that as he did actual computer science.

The one who said build was Fri, not me. Then again, the guts of the thing have to be coded, if it's going to run say Android then there has to be an on board logic set up to boot and run that and that has to be programmed.

Of course, the first is having to explain all the new terms to him and make sure he understands them.

That's more years. Luckily he was a genius, but even so it would take several years to get to the point of his understanding why it couldn't be done.

[Fri]

Yeah, by build I did mean include programming, though the specific doesn't really matter anyway. My point was more on how hard it will be to explain something that we use daily, to the utmost genius of the time, so he could understand it (and build it).

[Bohandas]

It's called a persecutory delusion, and there's no more coherent reason behind it than there is behind some people's beliefs that people are inserting thoughts into their brains with some kind of ray. It's what happens when eother the brain's serotonin system stops functioning properly (psychosis) or else when a healthy brain is subjected to large amounts of incorrect information (folie a plusieurs)

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, by build I did mean include programming, though the specific doesn't really matter anyway. My point was more on how hard it will be to explain something that we use daily, to the utmost genius of the time, so he could understand it (and build it).

Eh, I mean I was really making the point that it doesn't matter how well you explain it, there's other factors that'll stop him from building the darn thing. I can, in five minutes, give a decent explanation of the basics, give me a few years, a place to stand, and a gigantic lever and I can knock whatever planet you like out of orbit.

[SirKazum]

Eh, I mean I was really making the point that it doesn't matter how well you explain it, there's other factors that'll stop him from building the darn thing. I can, in five minutes, give a decent explanation of the basics, give me a few years, a place to stand, and a gigantic lever and I can knock whatever planet you like out of orbit.

Thing is, to me, Archimedes's quote is a perfect example of how ridiculous you can get if you discount inconvenient things as "details". "Give me a long enough (and rigid enough, and light enough) lever and a place to stand," feh. If you're going to magically discount away unsurpassable obstacles, might as well say "give me a planet-destroying gun and I'll vaporize the Earth". Which is at the core here - a smartphone doesn't just require knowledge of integrated circuits to build. It requires knowledge of several other hardware technologies, from electronic components to whatever they use as a display to the casing's material and I don't even know what else (and I wouldn't so easily discount any of them as "eh, just build it bigger" because I'm aware that I don't know which challenges that each technology is designed to overcome and which other problems would pop up if it wasn't there); you need to know several levels of programming, from raw machine code to UI design, as well as the software of each application and whatnot involved, inside and out and probably better than any living developer, in order to program it all by your lonesome (or teach someone else to do same); hardest of all, you need to know how to implement the whole chain of production for each component (including knowing where and how to mine the natural resources involved) starting from Renaissance-level tech, or else you can't even test out whether your theoretical blueprints will actually generate a working device. (That's not even including setting up a power grid, cellular network, internet etc. to make your device actually have any use.) If you say "eh, as long as we know the desired end result, we can research and develop the rest," then sincerely, screw you. That'd still be centuries of research and infrastructure building, involving a helluva lot of trial and error, because you don't actually know the technology involved and how to get there exactly. I mean, by the same principle, we should have space elevators, Mars colonies, designer babies, and a bunch of other crazy sci-fi tech right now, because we do know the principles of how they work, it's just a matter of getting the technical challenges out of the way... which, it turns out, isn't something you just handwave away.

[137beth]

But then would this acceleration then be uniform over the whole pancake planet? But it's quite demonstrable that gravity is not uniform over the whole surface. Not much, but enough to measure pretty easily.

Obviously, you can measure differing gravity at different points in the world, through any number of methods. You can drop an object with relatively low air resistance and measure the time it takes to hit the ground. You can drop it from the same height at the north pole, and then at the equator, and record the differing times it takes to fall. But, the clock you used to take measurements was probably constructed by a Round Earth Conspirator, it any flat earther could just dismiss your measurements as being part of the conspiracy. Same goes for any other method you could use to measure the nonuniform effects of gravity over the Earth's surface.

If something being "demonstrably true" was enough to convince a flat earther, they wouldn't be flat earthers

[Keltest]

Thing is, to me, Archimedes's quote is a perfect example of how ridiculous you can get if you discount inconvenient things as "details". "Give me a long enough (and rigid enough, and light enough) lever and a place to stand," feh. If you're going to magically discount away unsurpassable obstacles, might as well say "give me a planet-destroying gun and I'll vaporize the Earth". Which is at the core here - a smartphone doesn't just require knowledge of integrated circuits to build. It requires knowledge of several other hardware technologies, from electronic components to whatever they use as a display to the casing's material and I don't even know what else (and I wouldn't so easily discount any of them as "eh, just build it bigger" because I'm aware that I don't know which challenges that each technology is designed to overcome and which other problems would pop up if it wasn't there); you need to know several levels of programming, from raw machine code to UI design, as well as the software of each application and whatnot involved, inside and out and probably better than any living developer, in order to program it all by your lonesome (or teach someone else to do same); hardest of all, you need to know how to implement the whole chain of production for each component (including knowing where and how to mine the natural resources involved) starting from Renaissance-level tech, or else you can't even test out whether your theoretical blueprints will actually generate a working device. (That's not even including setting up a power grid, cellular network, internet etc. to make your device actually have any use.) If you say "eh, as long as we know the desired end result, we can research and develop the rest," then sincerely, screw you. That'd still be centuries of research and infrastructure building, involving a helluva lot of trial and error, because you don't actually know the technology involved and how to get there exactly. I mean, by the same principle, we should have space elevators, Mars colonies, designer babies, and a bunch of other crazy sci-fi tech right now, because we do know the principles of how they work, it's just a matter of getting the technical challenges out of the way... which, it turns out, isn't something you just handwave away.

I think getting stuck on the details is kind of missing the point of the original question: Do we understand our own modern technologies and know why they work? Whether or not circumstances allow him to physically build the silly thing is irrelevant to whether or not we can impart enough of an understanding for him to be able to do it in theory.

[halfeye]

I think getting stuck on the details is kind of missing the point of the original question: Do we understand our own modern technologies and know why they work? Whether or not circumstances allow him to physically build the silly thing is irrelevant to whether or not we can impart enough of an understanding for him to be able to do it in theory.

Well in that case, I'm definitely in the "we can't teach him that" camp. For one there isn't the time, and for a second I don't believe that there exists any one person who fully understands all the details of the internals of a modern multicore smartphone.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well in that case, I'm definitely in the "we can't teach him that camp". For one there isn't the time, and for a second I don't believe that there exists any one person who fully understands all the details of the internals of a modern multicore smartphone.

Look, I'm already scrounging up a hypothetical team for this thought experiment, suffice to say I suspect to truly recreate a modern smartphone by explaining it to Da Vinci you'd need a small army of engineers covering everything from the original computers to the present day in both hardware and software, as well as the fountain of youth.

[halfeye]

Look, I'm already scrounging up a hypothetical team for this thought experiment, suffice to say I suspect to truly recreate a modern smartphone by explaining it to Da Vinci you'd need a small army of engineers covering everything from the original computers to the present day in both hardware and software, as well as the fountain of youth.

As I understand it, the point of the thought experiment was that everybody specialises, because there's too much information for any one person to know it all, now (there always was, we just didn't know about it).

[SirKazum]

As I understand it, the point of the thought experiment was that everybody specialises, because there's too much information for any one person to know it all, now (there always was, we just didn't know about it).

That's the most important point as far as I'm concerned. Leonardo da Vinci is often brought up because he was the quintessential "renaissance man", who studied all the arts and sciences and knew pretty much everything there was to know at the time. Today, that's utterly impossible; no single person can know everything there is to know within a specific, specialized field of science and technology, much less everything there is at all. Don't even remember why that whole discussion popped up though

[Anymage]

Well in that case, I'm definitely in the "we can't teach him that" camp. For one there isn't the time, and for a second I don't believe that there exists any one person who fully understands all the details of the internals of a modern multicore smartphone.

I have two big reasons to trust the people who make smartphones. The first is that the things that smartphone developers say jibes with things that I already know, and that I can comfortably empirically test. (To apply the Da Vinci test, I'm pretty sure I could absolutely teach him electrical engineering 101.) The second is that smartphones clearly work. A few bugs aside, they do exactly what the developers tell me that they'd do.

Flat eartherism is more like antivaxxers. I'm a round earther because little things like sunrise/sunsets, the horizion, and time zones are hard to reconcile with flat earthism. But being pro-vaccine requires trusting medical authorities. Those authorities do have historical evidence that they're happy to make available (although not having participated in its collection, I can't say for certain how accurate it is), and disease rates in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated areas strongly agree with the claim that vaccines are a good thing. But ultimately it does depend on which authorities you think you can trust. And in today's world, the appeal of anti-authorities who are followed largely due to distrust/dislike of conventional authorities is notable.

[georgie_leech]

Flat eartherism is more like antivaxxers. I'm a round earther because little things like sunrise/sunsets, the horizion, and time zones are hard to reconcile with flat earthism. But being pro-vaccine requires trusting medical authorities. Those authorities do have historical evidence that they're happy to make available (although not having participated in its collection, I can't say for certain how accurate it is), and disease rates in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated areas strongly agree with the claim that vaccines are a good thing. But ultimately it does depend on which authorities you think you can trust. And in today's world, the appeal of anti-authorities who are followed largely due to distrust/dislike of conventional authorities is notable.

Side note, it's remarkable how often people decrying medicine for being profit driven have something to sell. Follow the money indeed.

[Fri]

Also, don't forget that sometimes people don't get how "science" and "science authority" work and decries how "science" keep changing (aka making things up). "Yesterday you said atom is the most basic thing that can't be broken apart anymore, now there's electron and proton! Science just keep making things up! Last year you said eating fat is bad for you, now you say it's part of healthy diet!"

[Wardog]

As for "admiring flat-earthers for seeking knowledge"... count me out of that too. Sorry, but the more entrenched you are in your thinking, the less you actually care about seeking the truth, IMV. To me, that's what skepticism (a value I hold very highly) is all about - questioning everything, sure, but questioning yourself first. Despite their claims, conspiracy theorists are among the least skeptic people in the world. Blind acceptance of an idea that goes against the mainstream is even worse than blind acceptance of mainstream thinking - in the latter, at least you've got better odds of being correct, due to mainstream ideas usually having more testing under their belt.

"Stupid sheeple! You shouldn't believe things just because "experts" says it's true! You should believe things anonymous people on the internet say instead!"

[Strigon]

"Stupid sheeple! You shouldn't believe things just because "experts" says it's true! You should believe things anonymous people on the internet say instead!"

One of the things I read while researching the Moon Shrimp seems particularly relevant here.

Spoiler: Quotes, spoilered for length

Show

There are many Moons which do not possess luminous life; the largest of these is known in the scientific community as the Antimoon.

Are you sure you understand the term scientific community correctly?

I am on first-name terms with most of the scientific community; I would think that if anyone understood the term scientific community, it would be me.

Well then you are just a liar. Because most of the scientific community does not in fact believe in the anti-moon.

This is incorrect, as most of the scientific community believes, rightly, in the Antimoon, as they can observe it in the sky. I know of only a few members of the scientific community who do not believe this thing.

What definition of "the scientific community" are you using here?

The only legitimate scientific community which exists on the Earth.

So, my ol' astronomer professors would agree with you that there is an anti-moon?

If they are members of the only legitimate scientific community which exists on the Earth, then yes. What are their usernames?

They are well-known. One of them took one of the first pictures of a planet around another star.

He sounds like a pseudoscientist; there is no such thing as a planet around a star.

James, I hate to criticize a fellow mod, but this deliberate evasion and vagueness could be interpreted by some to be low content and trolling.

I am referring to the International Flat Earth Society, in case that wasn't clear.

And it just goes downhill from there. Somehow. As mentioned before, the line between troll and flat-earther is strangely blurred.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

And it just goes downhill from there. Somehow. As mentioned before, the line between troll and flat-earther is strangely blurred.

There is nothing strange about it. The line between troll and ardent extremist has always been blurred.

Any of you guys daring to wade into the cesspool of flat-earth forums know if they have any answer to the shadow of the Earth on the Moon during moon eclipses? Given the above, I'm expecting "they aren't eclipses, the moon shrimp are just doing the Wave".

Grey Wolf

[Lord Torath]

Any of you guys daring to wade into the cesspool of flat-earth forums know if they have any answer to the shadow of the Earth on the Moon during moon eclipses? Given the above, I'm expecting "they aren't eclipses, the moon shrimp are just doing the Wave".

They put forth the assertion that it's not the shadow of the Earth on the Moon at all. "Something Else" is casting the shadow. I confess I have not delved deeply enough to discover what they suppose that "Something Else" is.

[SirKazum]

One of the things I read while researching the Moon Shrimp seems particularly relevant here.

That seems like a refreshingly honest admission that "the only voices I'll listen to are those of fellow Flat-Earthers". Although that flat-out admission took some prodding to come out.

[Leewei]

Side note, it's remarkable how often people decrying medicine for being profit driven have something to sell. Follow the money indeed.

Dr. Sears, an originator of this movement, made millions off of his promotional books and speaking fees. Alternative medicine is a huge industry with estimated worth between $34 and $200 billion. Anyone pointing to profit motive of big pharma as a reason to pursue alternatives is ignoring the profit motive of their health care provider. While there is a profit motive pretty much everywhere, at least pharma comes with reasonable evidence in their treatments.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Dr. Sears, an originator of this movement, made millions off of his promotional books and speaking fees. Alternative medicine is a huge industry with estimated worth between $34 and $200 billion. Anyone pointing to profit motive of big pharma as a reason to pursue alternatives is ignoring the profit motive of their health care provider. While there is a profit motive pretty much everywhere, at least pharma comes with reasonable evidence in their treatments.

And just to give an idea of what reasonable evidence means in this case: It usually takes around 12-15 years to develop a single new drug from patent to authorization to market. The whole process costs on average around 1.25 billion dollars, more than it costs to develop a new airplane. For every single drug that ultimately gets approved, thousands to tens of thousands of compounds were initially investigated. Before computer networks could handle this sort of stuff the amount of reports handed in to authorities to get final approval was roughly a pallet full. So about 5 by 5 by 5 foot worth of paper. If we were playing D&D the paperwork would take up a single space and give a medium creature full cover. Today, with the physical impracticalities of large amounts of paper and thus the ensuing incentive to be brief gone it's no exception to see applications with three or four times that amount of data. And after all that, there are still drugs that have their authorization revoked or are retracted by the producing company, often with good reason, like say causing deformities in unborn children despite there being no evidence of this in long term studies for that specific purpose in at least two types of animal one of which one a non-rodent.

So my point here is: medicine, even on the level of a single treatment for a single disease, is really freaking difficult, and anyone who claims that you can cure all cancers by eating more carrots because they know someone who did that and it totally worked is lying, either deliberately or while also fooling themselves. The best any alternative cures can offer as far as I know is "there are some studies who find mild proof of concept that this may help against anxiety". It's my strangely controversial opinion that this is not quite the bar for pervasiveness set by a pallet full of evidence.

If you are looking for something to help you relax though, or say a cough syrup, dabble in anything you want. Even home remedies can be great. A mild tea with a lot of honey might help you in both those cases. But the next time you are struggling with something serious, maybe pull up the mental image of that pallet getting unloaded at the FDA.

This also ties nicely back into the main topic, because the dilemma is similar. There is absolutely way more than a pallet full of experimental results (the Greek one with the sun in the well, the I think French one with the pendulum that hits a domino every hour), ships logs, satellite trajectories and loads and loads of pictures that prove the earth is round. The other guys have some cleverly worded subtheories that may not be instantly disprovable. This doesn't mean the round earth people are right, just as it doesn't mean that new drug will cure and won't kill you, but it does create a certain difference in the likelyhood of both sides being right.

[Strigon]

Any of you guys daring to wade into the cesspool of flat-earth forums know if they have any answer to the shadow of the Earth on the Moon during moon eclipses? Given the above, I'm expecting "they aren't eclipses, the moon shrimp are just doing the Wave".

Grey Wolf

From what I've gathered, there isn't a consensus. The moon shrimp seems to be a joke, but some do apparently put stock in some bioluminescent organism that migrates. That's quite a migration to go through every month, but what can you do?

Another theory is the antimoon you find mention to within the quotes. I didn't bother to look into it very far, but one assumes it's a body that doesn't "shine", and periodically blocks the moon. Perhaps they think the moon produces its own light somehow, and the antimoon eclipses it, because I don't see how it would remain entirely black to us while also casting a shadow on the regular moon.

Then there were some who claimed both of these options are patently absurd, which suggests that either they're trolls or there's a third hypothesis.

[Knaight]

Dr. Sears, an originator of this movement, made millions off of his promotional books and speaking fees. Alternative medicine is a huge industry with estimated worth between $34 and $200 billion. Anyone pointing to profit motive of big pharma as a reason to pursue alternatives is ignoring the profit motive of their health care provider. While there is a profit motive pretty much everywhere, at least pharma comes with reasonable evidence in their treatments.

Pointing to profit makes sense in the context of understanding why research money goes where it goes, and in terms of thinking how to reallocate that research money to stuff that generally isn't highly profitable but is pretty important (e.g. new antibiotics). Pointing to it and claiming that everything is made up makes no sense - you can make stuff up without spending billions of dollars on scientific research, and that would help profits.

[SirKazum]

Pointing to profit makes sense in the context of understanding why research money goes where it goes, and in terms of thinking how to reallocate that research money to stuff that generally isn't highly profitable but is pretty important (e.g. new antibiotics). Pointing to it and claiming that everything is made up makes no sense - you can make stuff up without spending billions of dollars on scientific research, and that would help profits.

Very true. While there definitely are serious problems of the sort that are usually summed up by grumbling something involving "big pharma" and "bottom line" (e.g. why does malaria still kill so many people?), those problems (AFAIK) tend to involve misplaced priorities, not conspiracies to deceive the public with bogus science. There are too many people doing research in too many places for any such lies to stand for long, and too great a reputation cost (at least when it comes to major laboratories and career academics) if they get caught.

[Leewei]

If Medicaid is involved, cures become extremely profitable, by the way. Consider the cure for Hepatitis C. The makers set the cost astronomically high, then justified it due to the cost of treatment, liver transplant, and so on.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

If Medicaid is involved, cures become extremely profitable,

Cures are pretty profitable allround. But that doesn't mean they're not expensive, or hard to develop. In fact, the whole development process probably acts as a bit of an unintentional barrier that keeps the incrowd in and the outcrowd out, there's little room for cowboys having a go at creating a drug empire out of nowhere because of how dependent these large companies are on a good portfolio, a strong pipeline and lots of connections. There are loads of smaller biotech companies, as they are called, working on a cure or technology of some kind, often starting out from research performed at universities. But the end goal of a company like that is not to put a drug on the market, they can't afford that. Their goal is to be bought by a large pharmaceutical company that thinks they can score with this technology, and it's the large company that foots the bill on the massive phase 3 clinical trials essential to proving both that the drug works (better than existing drugs) and that it's safe(r than either the disease itself or the competition). The prospect of getting sold is how they keep attracting investors despite expecting to as a company turn a loss for every year of their existence.

[Nourjan]

One of the things I read while researching the Moon Shrimp seems particularly relevant here.

Spoiler: Quotes, spoilered for length

Show

And it just goes downhill from there. Somehow. As mentioned before, the line between troll and flat-earther is strangely blurred.

This sounds extremely intellectually stimulating . Kind I have the link to the conversation, please?

[Strigon]

This sounds extremely intellectually stimulating . Kind I have the link to the conversation, please?

Ask and ye shall receive.

[Nourjan]

Ask and ye shall receive.

Thank you.

[SirKazum]

Ask and ye shall receive.

That... is a thing of beauty. I'd glanced over that thread when googling "moon shrimp", but didn't bother reading it until your recommendation. It's really fascinating. I think there's a significant possibility that most (maybe even all) people in there are trolls, acting all indignant about the round-earth trolls that have come to disturb their legitimate discussion. Yes, even the guy who's "on a first name basis with everyone in the scientific community", and who looks like the most rabid flat-earther.