Last week I stared into the flat earth abyss in the shape of the brilliantly made Behind The Curve, a film documenting the lives of protagonists, Mark Sargent and Patricia Steere, two prominent members in the flat earth community.
Behind The Curve provides a kind of through the looking glass view of a world that is as intriguing as it is baffling, and may well end up being one of the most important documentary films for years to come.
Through The Lens
The film highlights more than just an unbelievable world of people who just refuse to see the evidence in front of their eyes, it also shows something for which I have been lamenting, and indeed writing about for some time now, an absolute inability to think critically.
The problem arises because flat earthers think they're being sceptical by dismissing things they thought they knew about a globe earth.
However this isn't scepticism because they have already made up their minds that the world is flat, and nothing, and I mean nothing will convince them otherwise.
As the film went on, it became clear that you can show the average flat earther a thousand individual pieces of evidence, from a sunrise happening below them from a high vantage point, to the moon eclipsing the sun in broad daylight, and it won't make one single bit of difference to their beliefs. Indeed Mark Sargent reported the sun as self eclipsing after witnessing a solar eclipse in 2017.
This is evidence that the flat earth movement, is in actuality the fastest growing and scariest religion that has ever been unleashed on the citizens of planet earth.
Faith Trumps Evidence
If you believe the earth is 10,000 years old, and you are subsequently shown dinosaur remains that are hundreds of millions of years old, you will either let go of your previous beliefs, or create a fantastical story in order to fit the new evidence into your narrative. For instance you might say something along the lines of God put those bones there to test my faith.
I used to think that was a pretty amusing explanation for dinosaur bones, however in the face of the flat earthers' explanation, it sounds like the most rational thing ever said. They insist that dinosaurs are simply made up, in other words every archaeological dig, from Victorian times to present day has been faked.
All the dinosaur bones in Natural History museums around the world have been put there by a secret cabal to fool everyone about the true nature of the earth.
What was much more disturbing is the way that they could dismiss evidence that they themselves said wouldn't exist.
Halfway through the film we were introduced to Bob Knodel who explained to us that if the world really is a globe, completing one rotation every 24 hours, then a gyroscope, which always points up when spinning, should drift by around 15 degrees every hour.
This, Knodel said, would be evidence of a spinning globe, however if the gyroscope does not deviate from its upright spinning position, then this would prove the earth is flat.
Okay great, a flat earther willing to test his assertions and actually employ scientific thinking to his hypothesis.
We were shown a twenty thousand dollar laser gyroscope, used in the aviation industry for its unerring accuracy.
Knodel did the experiment and to no one's surprise but his own, the gyroscope drifted by fifteen degrees per hour.
Great! End of flat earth right?
Wrong.
Instead of accepting the evidence they were sure they wouldn't find, Knodel and his team went about trying to prove that the gyroscope was registering the movement of the sky.
Okay I thought, at least they're trying to be rigorous...
So they put the equipment into various chambers trying to shield it from the energies of the sky (yes really), and took the readings again.
Unless you are a flat earther yourself, you will not be surprised to read that no matter what they did to that gyroscope, it always registered the spinning of the earth at exactly 15 degrees per hour.
So now surely this would end the theory for at least the people who had done the experiment?
Nope.
They simply dismissed it with the words;
That's not good.
Bob Knodel was even shown speaking to another flat earther at a barbecue, telling him about the experiment and saying that they were going to keep the findings quiet because they didn't fit in with the theory.
He justified this by saying that they had proved other "elements" of the flat earth model so weren't going to throw out the whole theory because of one tiny bit of rock solid, irrefutable evidence. He declined to say what those elements were, and simply brushed away the fact that he had found evidence of a spinning globe earth.
The End Of Rationalism
What made Behind The Curve such a great film, is it wasn't just a 96 minute mock-fest, the viewer wasn't simply invited to laugh at these poor deluded people. Rather the film made more than a valiant attempt to explain why people believe in this absurd theory.
By looking at the reasons behind flat earth beliefs they shone a light on a growing amount of people who are brought up to not trust anything they are told by authority. Whether that authority is the government, an education board, or a bunch of scientists, they will not take anything they say as true, and disturbingly won't accept any proof to the contrary.
As mentioned, this is not scepticism, because when asked; is there a single piece of evidence that would change your worldview? the answer is a resounding no.
Indeed we saw another flat earther, Jeran Campanella founder of the Globe Busters youtube channel, performing an experiment with a torch, some bits of cardboard with holes, and a camera. Beforehand he predicted what would happen in a round earth model, and what should happen on a flat earth.
He did the experiment and, as you've already guessed, got the round earth results. He then performed the experiment again in many different ways, getting the same results every time, yet simply dismissed it as something going wrong and inconclusive.
Flat Earth Thinking
Behind The Curve showed that this type of non critical thinking is not just reserved for flat earthers. We are beginning to see this everywhere, to the point whereby we have the President of the United States believing that climate change is a hoax, and parents denying their children life saving medicines because of conspiratorial beliefs.
The film showed that believing that the earth is flat, or that vaccines give you autism or that global warming is a Rothschild-inspired conspiracy in themselves are not necessarily the problem.
It is absolutely refusing to challenge your own views as rigorously as you challenge the evidence in front of your eyes.
More and more people are prepared to ignore mountains of evidence and are set in their ways so much, that they call that very same evidence, dogma. In other words, they are impossible to debate with.
So why should the rest of us care? So what if someone wants to believe the Queen of England is a lizard and that NASA are an ancient secret society tasked with fooling the world?
We should care because the more this kind of thinking pervades our society, the more chance they have of changing reality and halting all scientific progress.
The two saddest things I saw in Behind The Curve, was a twelve year old boy at the Flat Earth International Conference (FEIC), he was there with his parents who had indoctrinated him with flat earth ideas and had taught him to accept those ideas without question.
The next thing was when I watched Mark Sargent, who was talking at the conference, read out a letter from a parent saying that when the teacher in her child's school told the class that the earth is a spinning globe, around one third of the class shouted out; "no it isn't!"
The people at the conference clapped as I sat there with my head in my hands.
If enough people believe a ridiculous claim, then that claim becomes the truth, a completely unworkable truth that serves no practical purpose but to confuse, but still a truth by proxy. No progress can be made using this truth, you can't draw accurate maps, you can't create medicines that work, you can't create policies to help the environment.
In that sense we should be afraid, very afraid.
Redemption
As full of despair I was by seeing a 12 year old boy asking questions about how high the dome is, I was somewhat encouraged by a small gathering of NASA scientists and science graduates, talking about how they could engage people more.
They accepted that flat earth thinking is the fault of people who know better, looking down on those that believe these and other strange ideas. Behind The Curve showed that the more you push people away with ridicule, the more isolated they become, the more surrounded by people who only think the same way as them.
In that sense the path to redemption is clear, engage, welcome, educate, do not shun, do not spurn, do not ridicule.
For those already entrenched in the flat earth movement, who are surrounded daily by nothing other than that claim, perhaps redemption is not an option. However for those on the edges, the ones who still have a grip on the real world, and are just wondering, it is they who need to be nurtured, and kept away from ridicule.
For they are the future, and without them, the war is lost.
IN THE SPIRIT OF THIS ARTICLE, I AM HAPPY TO DEBATE WITH ANYONE ABOUT FLAT EARTH OR ANY OTHER CONSPIRACY THEORIES. I PROMISE TO LISTEN AND NOT RIDICULE, TO PRESENT EVIDENCE IN A WAY THAT IS EASY TO DIGEST AND UNDERSTAND.
WHAT ARE YOUR EXPERIENCES WITH FLAT EARTH THINKING? HAVE YOU ENCOUNTERED ANYONE WHO BELIEVES THIS, OR OTHER OUT THERE THEORIES? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
Title image: NASA on Unsplash
Well what gives me hope is the story (whether true or embellished the thought is the same) of Galileo when he was forced to recant that the Earth moves around the sun...he was said to whisper, "And yet it moves"...
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...and yet it moves... I think that's going to become a saying of mine :-)
Cg
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Carbon dating has a limitation in how many years back it can date something like a bone for example. There are many examples of how people bring in something to be dated, something that is only a few decades or centuries old in many cases, in most cases. The people end up dating these things and will generally say they are thousands or even millions of years old. When dating things, it's important to understand the rate of decay that certain elements may have in the present. Now, in the past, however, things may have been different. We assume that the past was the same as the present. That delves more into historical science as opposed to observational science.
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May I ask you two questions?
First, there is no such thing as historical science. All science is based on observation. Based on the observations, models are made to make predictions and theories are structured to explain what we see and suggest how the world works. Again, based on observed facts. Theories then grow in strength over time as 1. It survives continuous efforts to falsify key assumptions that must be true for the theory to hold. And 2. Further facts are discovered that aligns with the assumptions of the theory. Both contributing to decreasing the likelihood that we’ve arrived at the theory by mere accidence. So, if I say that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor, or that the world is close to 4.5 billion years old, those statements are based on observational science. I didn’t have to be there to make the observations. I can make them today and still know that it happened.
As for carbon dating, I’ve heard what you said many times before from people who deny the evidence for an old earth or for evolution. But it makes no sense to even bring it up since we don’t rely on carbon dating to estimate either the age of rocks nor of fossils (it is useful when you dig up remnants from older human civilizations like from the Viking era, Roman era, etc that are more recent). Instead, when an archaeologist discovers fossils that are very old, they will instead examine the rocks above and below the fossil-containing elements such as potassium with a half-life time of 1,250,000,000 years.
Today, millions of fossils have been documented, and the location of their discovery with regards to geological layers has always fitted the model of evolution and it with the estimated age of the earth. In other words, we’ve never found rabbit bones in the Pre-Cambrian.
Now, you may say – and indeed did say – that perhaps these laws may have changed. After all, we were not there to see and observe, right? Well, there’s two issues with that. First, we have now relied on these methods for decades and they have not changed one percent of one percent (such a change would have actually added many meters added inaccuracy over time to our satellites which rely on atomic clocks due to the fact that they never change). Second, this is not intellectually honest, and you are doing exactly what the people in the documentary are doing, which is to respond to evidence contradicting your beliefs by coming up with some alternative explanation – for which there is no evidence – in order to not have to change your mind according to new observations.
If you are going to always ask “but what if”, then you are never going to change your mind and never going to learn anything. Because you can always resort to saying that. I don’t think I can put it better than Bertrand Russell when he gave his thoughts on it here.
So finally, how come I am so confident to say that I know that evolutions are true and the age of the Earth? Because we have completely independent branches of research that support the same theory and because the resulting model allows us, continuously, to make accurate predictions of future events. In genetics, we can now look at the DNA of different species and literally count our way back to the common ancestor. Computers have done this now for millions of species to make cross-examinations and judge how old a species is and how long ago it is since it shared a common ancestor with any other of the millions of species. The result can be plotted as a family tree. Guess what? It matches, perfectly, with the tree you get based on the dated age of all the discovered fossils.
So what is the likelihood, not only that each of these would produce consistent results on their own, but jointly by accident? It’s about as likely as you are winning the lottery every single week for the rest of your life, and then realizing that everyone in the states chose the exact same numbers when choosing theirs at random. Except, I haven’t even mentioned the also confirming evidence from RNA, geological distribution of species and how they match continental changes etc.
So yes we can know these things, no we don't need carbon dating to know them (which you're right about) and no there is no such thing as historical science, models that accurately predict the future should be used to assume the past until otherwise is proven.
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Thousands of scientists disagree with you and you did not observe earth form, step by step, day by day, like you would in a scientific experiment where you take something and you test it, take notes, come back the next day, observe it, take more notes, and continue to observe it, step by step and day by day. That is observational science and thousands of scientists would tell you that. If you do not know that, then you are in fact ignoring those scientists.
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No, thousands of scientists do not disagree with that. Or at least you'll have to provide a source for that claim, instead of just asserting it and expecting me or others to take it seriously.
Being "there" doesn't make a difference. The evidence is just as overwhelming as I laid out in great detail. I have not been to the future either, but I can tell you for sure - 100% - that on the 26. of May 2021 we will see a total lunar eclipse (or often called "blood moon") that I invite anyone of you to note in your callenders and then go out and witness. I don't need anything but knowing that the laws of gravity stays fixed, like the radiometric dating, to be sure this will happen.
I'm also curious if you don't think we could ever gain knowledge about something like a murder without having eye-witnesses. If a detective arrives at the scene of a crime, and make all sorts of discoveries that all point in the direction of a certain answer as to who commited teh crime, then that is evidence. Likewise, I don't need to observe day-by-day evolution taking place, or the formating of the earth to know a lot about how it happened.
Last point. The burden of proof is on you, or any other "scientist" who would argue that the many natural laws demonstrated to make accurate predictions going forward can somehow not do the same looking backwards. As they continue to be robust and independent branches of science from biology, chemistry, geology, etc, confirms the same models, the default position is that they can. If we are to form our believes based on what is most likely to be true, and not on what we wish to be true, then this should be our frame of mind.
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Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said the world is going to end in twelve years. Is she right about that?
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No, the world won't end by 2030. But we may have caused irreversible damage to the climate that, although not necessarily an existential threat, may be very costly in terms of parts of the globe becoming less habitable due to droughts, resulting in mass migration, etc. But no, the world will still be here :)
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Did you see the geoengineering chemicals they spray from airplanes, jets, which is what caused, in part, the 2018 Californian Fires?
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EDIT: Because the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years, it is only reliable for dating objects up to about 60,000 years old. However, the principle of carbon-14 dating applies to other isotopes as well. Potassium-40 is another radioactive element naturally found in your body and has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Other useful radioisotopes for radioactive dating include Uranium -235 (half-life = 704 million years), Uranium -238 (half-life = 4.5 billion years), Thorium-232 (half-life = 14 billion years) and Rubidium-87 (half-life = 49 billion years).
Maybe the simple explanation for those cases is that the samples where contaminated?
Are you saying that the laws of physics were different in the past? If this is the case are there any studies that make this case for isotope dating (not just carbon dating but also dating with other elements).
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How often do people date things inaccurately? How often are the dates proven wrong and in how many cases? I'm asking these questions because some people haven't taken the time to look at the statistics. If you don't already know how often, then that might be your blind spot.
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So what is the argument? That the majority of scientists are inept at dating ancient fossils and/or rocks?
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The argument is about the rate of decay. DO you know how the Grand Canyon was formed? But before you answer, please compare and contrast that with what happened to Mount St. Helens in 1980 in Washington State, USA. That is only one example. There are so many examples of these things. Did you see the leaves that were frozen inside the mummified mastodons? Did you see the seashells on top of mountains? How did they get there?
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You'll have to point me to the leaves, but the shells on mountain tops are easy: The rocks they fossilized on were once under water.
We've dated many of these shells to be hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years old. And we can also measure the rate that tectonic plates move and the resulting creation of mountains. So once you know that the fossils are older than the mountains, it's easy to see that they died there and that the mountains later formed. This is only a mystery if you believe that both the mountains and the sea both always existed in their present forms, which we know they did not do.
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Thousands of scientists disagree with you. Thousands of them. It is too bad that you pretend that those scientists do not exist.
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You keep repeating that, but it doesn't matter. It's not about the numbers of people who believe X, Y or Z, but about what the evidence tells us.
I have provided evidence for my statements, you have not replied to either of my comments addressing the points that I've made, or suggested why they are not sufficient to prove the theories. Instead, you resort to telling me that someone disagrees, which is not an argument.
In case you're not aware, I've spent the better part of my working career in the space sector working at the European Space Agency (Europe's equivalent of NASA). Working with astrophysicists who can calculate the age of the Universe and the distance to stars and galaxies with measurements relying on the consistency of the speed of light traveling at known speeds which allow them to know the distances between them, again adding evidence to an old universe. I've been working with geologists and geophysicists making research instruments for experiments that are to be sent to Mars or different asteroids, as well as research results from previous probes. These too, have provided insight into the age of the age of the solar system and the different planets as well as the building blocks that make up our own. I work with biologists and chemists creating experiments, or again analyzing results from old ones, to study how life can have originated, been possible on other planets, or perhaps existing there today.
Literally 100%, not as in "most" but as in every single one, of the people I've worked with here. -which are in the thousands for the space agency alone - not just "believes" that the Earth is approximate ~4.5 billion years old, the Universe ~13.8bn, that life has evolved etc, but continues to make progress with models holding those assumptions, which would be impossible if it wasn't true.
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Those are fair questions. Reality is complex and I don't think that we can have definitive answers for everything but we can make assertions based on our current body of knowledge. Then we find new facts that may need a new explanation that expands our understanding. I still don't see were you are going with your line of reasoning.
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You are correct, carbon dating has its limitations, which is why scientists use other more accurate forms to compliment it as shown here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
I'm not totally sure if you are trying to engage me in debate on the subject of flat earth/dinosaurs etc, or you're just making a general statement?
Cg
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I'm not really sure how old the earth is because I was not there. I didn't observe the earth form. I believe the earth is round. I wonder, are Flat Earthers leftists?
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I agree that we can't know exactly how old the earth is. However according to the current radiological dating it's 4.5 billion years old (give or take a few million due to unavoidable margins of error) and it's fairly well documented.
Out of curiosity, how old do you think the earth is?
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What about the scientists that strongly disagree with what you said? Are those scientists very retarded and stupid?
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The thing about science is that is not based on dogma. So everyone can disagree but at some point old theories that are less adequate to explain reality need to be discarded or understood in the context of more accurate representations of nature.
Take Newton's theory of gravity for example...it's very good at predicting the movement of planets but it can't explain some oddities in Mercury's rotation around the Sun, however General Relativity can be used to do this with extreme precision.
On the other hand General Relativity brakes down when trying to represent what happens at the singularity of a black hole so a new theory needs to be devised and tested (spolier, we are still not there yet).
Does the fact that Newton's theory of gravity fail to hold up under certain conditions made him stupid? No, it just proves he didn't have the whole picture as I am sure that we do not have the whole picture about alot of things.
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Is there a difference between a theory and observational science of actually observing a chemistry experiment in live-time, in real-life, in-person, as it happens, in the flesh, not hypothetically, not theoretically, but simple observations LIVE, you know what I mean? How often do people contrast historical science with observational science?
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Modern science has become so specialized and it requires so much time invested into it that ordinary people do not do it (and it would not be practical for the average Joe which is a unfortunate). Science and Engineering students on the other hand have to do it at least during their formation years (although not all institutions are at the same level).
The answer is yes, it is done, all the time, every year, around the world. In a more practical way every time that a plane takes off and lands is a testament that what we know about thermodinamics, friction, fluid dinamics, electricity, etc is accurate to an acceptable degree; every time that a transistor in your smart phone works proves that quantum tunneling is an accurate description of what happens at the subatomic level (to name a couple of examples). But the body of knowledge is so vast that no human being can test every theory out there and we have to defer to specialist even within the same fields.
A healthy dose of sckepticism about what we know is always good. Otherwise we would stagnate.
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I would say the two are constantly feeding into each other, so for instance, if I might come up with a theory that 10,000 years ago, when an ancient tribe performed a particular dance, it rained.
Then you come along and make lots of current observations about rainfall, after a while you report that you cannot find any modern incidences of a dance-rain connection.
What's more you report that you have discovered that precipitation has a lot to do with rain, and so therefore my theory breaks down. There might still be some people that agree with me, however your theory gains much more traction because it is backed up by observational evidence.
In the real world this happens all the time, so for instance Albert Einstein gave us the mathematics for discovering gravitational waves, however it took decades of observation and advances in technology before we could prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
So we are constantly comparing historical science with current observational science.
Cg
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I would like to see why those scientists disagree with the current consensus.
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Your argument is that because it is popular, it is then automatically right and perfect?
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No, scientific consensus is built based on the ability of the scientific community to replicate the conclusions of an experiment or observation. Sometimes the consensus is wrong and it has to be discarded in favor of a more accurate representation of reality. That is why I would like to see how are they drawing their conclusions. There are no sacred ideas or authority figures in science.
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First of all let me say, really great debating @joeyarnoldvn and @onthewayout, thank you for enriching this post with your discourse!
You were not around before you were born, yet you can still accept things happening without you being there.
The dating methods scientists use are very accurate because they measure the incidents of particular chemicals which are extremely steady. If you'll indulge me a second I'll give an analogy.
Imagine a room that has a giant ball pit and in that pit is a solitary baby. This particular baby is very OCD and throws one ball out of the pit every 10 seconds without fail.
Then you come along, count all the balls outside of the pit and you can calculate with absolute accuracy how long the baby has been in there. This is rather like counting the amount of radioactive isotopes in a piece of rock.
At a guess, I would say that they range across the political spectrum.
Cg
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Some scientists disagree with you. That is the thing that should be talked about. Don't ignore those scientists who disagree with you.
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Of course, it's not science if some don't disagree, and nobody who disagrees is ignored.
Instead what we do is look at how they disagree, so for instance one scientist might say that a piece of rock is 4.5 billion years old, and he then presents reasons why, namely that he has measured radioactive isotopes in the rock that indicate its age.
Then we look at the method of dating, and conclude that indeed the decay of whatever isotope he is monitoring is stable, and we do that through observation.
Then another scientist comes and says I disagree, at that point we ask why?
If the scientist casts doubt on the original method, demonstrating via experiment that the method is flawed, yet can't come up with their own method, then we say, hmm, he appears to be onto something.
If however the new scientist comes along and says I disagree, yet doesn't provide any concrete reasons as to why he disagrees, then we say well, until you can articulate why, then we'll just carry on doing it our way.
That might seem like we're ignoring you, but we aren't, we are merely waiting for you to come up with some kind of evidence, because after all, we're scientists, and evidence is King.
Cg
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They do disagree and they provide not only concrete reasons but also concrete evidence for the actual age for certain things through a variety of means. The fact you are not talking about it may mean that you do not know what I'm talking about which means you do not know the full story, the whole story, because you're not talking about it.
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Radiometric dating
Radiometric dating, radioactive dating or radioisotope dating is a technique used to date materials such as rocks or carbon, in which trace radioactive impurities were selectively incorporated when they were formed. The method compares the abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope within the material to the abundance of its decay products, which form at a known constant rate of decay. The use of radiometric dating was first published in 1907 by Bertram Boltwood and is now the principal source of information about the absolute age of rocks and other geological features, including the age of fossilized life forms or the age of the Earth itself, and can also be used to date a wide range of natural and man-made materials.
Together with stratigraphic principles, radiometric dating methods are used in geochronology to establish the geologic time scale.
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That's great @wikitextbot, but can you please start using paragraphs!
:-)
Cg
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I cannot see the horizon because of terrible air pollution. For all I know the edge could be out there somewhere or it could be concealing the curve. Seems like an interesting movie though.
I guess if 360/24 is 15 degrees an hour the earth could be flat like a coin but spinning about an axis.
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I'm sure air pollution doesn't always conceal the sunrise/set? Because this is the most conclusive proof that the earth is a globe.
I did think about this, however there would be no drift, because on a flat rotating disc, because a gyroscope always points straight up. At least I believe that's the explanation.
I might be wrong, although it would explain why the flat earthers didn't come up with this explanation themselves.
Cg
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I can't even see shadows at noon nevermind the sun, especially near the horizon which I also cannot see. For all I know it could be closer. Night could very well be an increase in air pollution.
I think the orthodox flat earthers cannot accept that the disc spins. However you can test the theory by sticking a gyroscope on a plate and tilting it.
There is still an issue with gravity. But I am not a flat earth expert.
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If that were the case nobody would ever see stars; right?
Could you elaborate on exactly what you mean here please?
Again, can you elaborate as to what this issue is?
Thank you.
Cg
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Wow! Where do you live?
I can guarantee you that there are indeed stars at night, I and billions of others see them.
Yes it will, however there will be no 'drift'
It's a not a case of belief, it is something we have proved, the following text is lifted from astronomy.com, however I'm happy to show you other proofs if this isn't satisfactory to you.
Cg
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I live in Seoul, we have a saying here, "grey by day neon by night".
Argumentum ad populum
Astronauts guarantee me the Earth is round, politicians guarantee me the country will be better if I vote for them, priests guarantee me heaven if I have faith, etc. I can take your word for it, but that doesn't prove anything.
For hundreds of years, sailors have sailed across the seas coming back with tall tales. Today there are Photoshop and green screens.
Unfortunately, I cannot see the stars or the sky so I cannot use star or sun proofs. I'll have to stick to my gyroscope or wait a few months to observe.
I take the scientists word for it in the meantime as I always have, but I'm still unsure how to prove it is not a spinning coin without seeing the stars or sun.
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I shall give you an experiment to do without seeing the sun or shadows.
Go to a tall tree, or building where there is a fair amount of visibility, perhaps in a park.
Then note how far you can see, then climb up the tree and note how far you can see again. Even with the smog, you should be able to see further when you're higher up the tree than on the ground.
This proves that the earth is curved....
Cg
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If you can measure the curvature of the earth with a stick and a shadow (haven't tried it but I'm pretty sure it must work, from when the Greek dude tried it few thousand years ago),
....and when the geometry of the pyramids is based on the earth being a sphere (obloid, whatever), and accurately measure it to the inch in doing so - I think the evidence - way before nasa appeared (which i think is not what it says), tells you pretty much the facts of things..
I can't even be bothered going into it, to be honest.
My point of the comment was - conflating the earths geometry with climate change hoax (yes, I said it - I have scientist -as friends- involved in this on my side, not government paid mouthpieces)
It's a hoax for one world taxes and one world government.
Or conflating vaccines - yes I have scientist friends also involved in this research - this is big pharma corporatism working for profits.
That is misleading in itself.
Just pointing that out, as this is one of the weapons used to confuse.
Throw in (as I see it), an obvious falsehood - flatearth - with real issues that are to be questioned - and count them as all the same thing.
They are far from the same things.
(do you still think building 7 and 9/11 event was as the authorities said, btw, and free fall speeds of building can be made to happen without explosive charges being used? - if we are talking science here...lol )
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I'll cover your points in reverse order...
I have shown you footage of bdg 7 before whereby it is quite clear that the building has been hit by flying masonry and bits of aeroplane, however you never responded to that. Quite happy to show you again, however I feel like you've made your mind up on that one.
None of the buildings fell at free fall speed, this is very easy to verify. Pick one of the videos (your choice), and then look at debris ejected from the buildings at the moment they fell, they are falling at free fall, and guess what? They hit the ground before the buildings.
Yet another study has come out today to refute that claim, when you say you have scientist friends, can you elaborate as to what their fields are and to what level they studied?
Again I'm interested to learn what evidence you have of this.
You can only do so if you massage the figures a bit :-)
Cg
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I won't give you names of people in the fields for obvious reasons - nor the company one of them works for, if that's what you mean...
...leaving aside the 9/11-( you seem to have made your mind up on that one).
The pyramids do measure accurately as a model to the globes dimensions - including the calculations for it not being a perfect sphere
Read 'the incomplete pyramids' - stephen brabin - also a friend of mine, (I can give you his name).
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A much more accurate statement would be; *'... you seem to have had your mind changed when presented with new evidence.'
I used to believe Bdg 7 was rigged, however then I saw the NYFB footage of the building from a new angle, and the building is, to give it its technical term; fucked, and is clearly about to fall down.
That's the thing about being a true sceptic, you have to be able to challenge your own beliefs in the face of new evidence.
I thought one thing, I was shown it not to be true, I adjusted my thoughts. This is the path to logic and scientific thinking.
Cg
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When you see NASA obviously hoaxing space.
And you see way too many things that should be over the edge of the curve of the earth.
Then, what are you supposed to believe?
And it is not one, here and there, it is ...
There was a BOOK, published back before the internet of NASA's strange and reused photos. Here is the space walk in the 60s, here is the same picture as a space walk in the 80s.
So, we know we are being lied to.
But, what is the truth?
If the solution doesn't include things like hollow earth, expanding earth and the electric universe model explanations, it isn't complete enough of a theory.
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In order for this to be a reasonable debate, we have to start from points we can both work from.
So tell me how exactly does NASA hoax space?
Secondly what do you think about the fact that the flat earthers, using a super accurate laser gyroscope in the Behind The Curve documentary proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the world is a spinning globe?
Cg
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Things like bubbles seen in "space walks".
Wire-harnesses being apparent but "invisible".
And the entire 1970s moon walks.
They all have errors in them that would not be there if they were actual videos of what was really happening.
I think that the earth is neither flat, nor a ball.
And all things are in motion. If they stand still, they cease to exist.
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OK, fair enough, let me quiz you on your statement please.
Assuming there are bubbles and apparent wire harnesses, do you not think it's a bit strange that NASA themselves didn't notice these glitches before making the footage publicly available?
Do you not think that after spending hundreds of millions of dollars faking these moon and space walks, they could have made it look more convincing?
Also what I'd like to ask you, is there any evidence that you would accept, which would convince you that you have been mistaken about these space and moon walks?
May I ask what you base these assumptions on?
Thank you for your indulgence :-)
Cg
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https://steemit.com/grandsolarminimum/@adapt2030/extinction-level-event-begins-early-2019-as-harvard-public-geoengineering-project-goes-live
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OK, so you send me a link with absolutely no explanation behind it, I then click on said link and see this immediately
How is somebody's own true feeling and opinion be scientific? Just because someone agrees with you does not make them right.
Cg
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....you never read the article? seriously?
So you cherry pick and focus on the title of the content creator - a title - and disregard the science and research in the piece_...
the mind boggles.
Is there anything of any authority you don't believe - support?
ALL government have been proven to lie over the decades. All of them.
But you always choose to believe that perspective.Whatever a known liar - the institute of government - tells you...
Invisible bars, possibly? Gullible possibly?
Why would you choose to believe a proven liar over people that say things that have never lied to you?
Just askin' your logic..
I never believe proven liars personally, it sets you up for being lied to again...
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You are right, one should not believe in anything because one is told it is true by a government. The only reason to believe something to be true is when presented with evidence that supports an idea, and provides models that continue to make accurate predictions of future events. Which is why we can know that the Earth is a sphere for example. Because I can tell you today that on the 26 May 2021 we will see a new total lunar eclipse (or often called "blood moon") that anyone can go out and witness. And because that prediction, which is accurate down to the exact day, relies fully on assuming that the Earth is round as well as the heliocentric model, I can know both of those to be true when my prediction turns out right.
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From the people I know who display such a naive gullibility (believing known liars - what else can you call it?), it goes much deeper, psychologically speaking. (nothing proven just an observation over the years).
The need to feel secure with 'the authority'. It's a deeper fear based mechanism - that blinds to facts to maintain that feeling of 'being secure'.
Better the devil you know, an' all that.
To question the authority is to bring into question their own feelings of security...(and most people are pretty scared - even if they don't realize it)
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I think everyone should always question any individual who claims to be an authority. It is true that we find a lot of comfort in feeling assured that we understand things, as not knowing, being uncertain, or doubting is often felt as unpleasant.
However, I think most of the time acknowledging that one does not know the answer(s), and managing to be fine with that, is very empowering and that level of intellectual honesty will help one make better decisions when not under the false illusion of having knowledge.
I'll add one of my own observations to yours, and would be curious to hear your thoughts on it, but I find most people who believe in common conspiracies to carry some of the same "feelings". Namely, that it seems to me that they are excited to feel that they have uncovered something that the vast majority have not. That they really want to believe that they are then somehow smarter than everyone else. More skeptical, more critical, etc. That seems to me to provide the same false positives, where people stick with something that they are not truly justified in believing nonetheless.
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I think you are correct - to some degree - about the conspiracy crowd.
But (and it's a big 'but')....the tinfoil hat wearers, from JFK, to gulf of Ton kin incident, to Pearl Harbor, to Hiroshima, to USS Lusitania, to....you see my point?
History is littered with lies by 'authority'.
As time goes on, the more the 'conspiracy crowd' are vindicated....
Evidence would suggest the Con crowd are on the right path, and not the wrong one..
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I wouldn't want to assign myself to any "crowd", but instead judge each question on its own merits and make up my own opinion. Most of the famous conspiracy theory communicators I see people link to on YouTube etc seem to me to rush any new story with the same confirmation bias, eager to be "the first" so that they can get their audience and keep a status among them as the ones "busting".
In any case, self-awareness of one's own biases combined with good critical thinking is what I think we all need, regardless of what different things we may currently believe.
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I'm sorry, however it was a many thousand word article, and covered a vast topic, I'm just asking you to help me out seeing as you've read it already, and pick out a particular bit that we can debate on.
My apologies for being so glib.
Cg
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