Flat Earth Movement Growing

[Frahlind]

Yes. Columbus was convinced that the Earth was small enough that India was roughly where America actually is.

Enough so that he named it the West Indies

He never admitted that the land he reached wasn't India, IIRC. He died insisting he had not discovered a new continent.

[Deads Heads]

"I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."
-Me to a flat-earther.

Try and alienate them and all you'll manage to do is make them more puritan in their beliefs and gain ammunition against anti-flat earthers as being part of a bubble or elite of snobby, moralizing intellectual Besserwisser. Self-martyrdom is helluva drug.

[Farnhamia]

I remember my school history book mentioning that Columbus thought the world was flat. In reality, though, Columbus and his crew wouldn't have tried to sail to India across the Atlantic if they thought it was impossible.

No, Columbus thought the world was a pear.

No, that was his mistress, Beatriz Enríquez de Arana. Nice girl. That she was nice was one of the few things that Isabella and I agreed on.

[Frahlind]

"I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."
-Me to a flat-earther.

Try and alienate them and all you'll manage to do is make them more puritan in their beliefs and gain ammunition against anti-flat earthers as being part of a bubble or elite of snobby, moralizing intellectual Besserwisser. Self-martyrdom is helluva drug.

At the same time, alienation may make them more zealous in their beliefs, but would it not be beneficial to "quarantine" their idiocy amongst themselves?

[Alvecia]

Try and alienate them and all you'll manage to do is make them more puritan in their beliefs and gain ammunition against anti-flat earthers as being part of a bubble or elite of snobby, moralizing intellectual Besserwisser. Self-martyrdom is helluva drug.

At the same time, alienation may make them more zealous in their beliefs, but would it not be beneficial to "quarantine" their idiocy amongst themselves?

To be fair as well, ridicule might well be enough to make some really look at the stuff they're supporting.
There's no realy one size fits all method for this kind of thing.

[Abraxim]

Try and alienate them and all you'll manage to do is make them more puritan in their beliefs and gain ammunition against anti-flat earthers as being part of a bubble or elite of snobby, moralizing intellectual Besserwisser. Self-martyrdom is helluva drug.

At the same time, alienation may make them more zealous in their beliefs, but would it not be beneficial to "quarantine" their idiocy amongst themselves?

That's liberal logic, attack someone and expect them to fall in line.

No, ignore it, or leave it alone. It's simply a meme that went too far. Sometimes the best response is nothing at all.

[Tierra Prime]

I remember my school history book mentioning that Columbus thought the world was flat. In reality, though, Columbus and his crew wouldn't have tried to sail to India across the Atlantic if they thought it was impossible.

Thats not true. Columbus didn't think the Earth was flat he underestimated its size and also didn't know that the Americas existed like everyone else in Europe.

You need to read my post again. I said my school history book said that Columbus thought the world was flat. I then said that he wouldn't have tried to sail across the Atlantic if he didn't think it was a globe.

[Frahlind]

At the same time, alienation may make them more zealous in their beliefs, but would it not be beneficial to "quarantine" their idiocy amongst themselves?

That's liberal logic, attack someone and expect them to fall in line.

No, ignore it, or leave it alone. It's simply a meme that went too far. Sometimes the best response is nothing at all.

Are you not applying "liberal logic" yourself by immediately denouncing an argument?

And I'm not expecting flat-earthers to "fall in line." Unless they're minors, there is literally zero hope of them ever thinking rationally. I'm arguing that we shouldn't let their thoughts become mainstream.

[Maineiacs]

I remember my school history book mentioning that Columbus thought the world was flat. In reality, though, Columbus and his crew wouldn't have tried to sail to India across the Atlantic if they thought it was impossible.

No, Columbus thought the world was a pear.

Technically it is, just very slightly so.

[Tierra Prime]

I remember my school history book mentioning that Columbus thought the world was flat. In reality, though, Columbus and his crew wouldn't have tried to sail to India across the Atlantic if they thought it was impossible.

IIRC the actual disagreement between Columbus and Queen Isabella wasn't over the shape of the Earth, but instead over its size.

You think they'd have realised that if the Atlantic did connect to India, Indian or Chinese sailors would have crossed it to establish trade routes. After all, it would be much easier to trade silk and other goods across the ocean than transverse Eurasia. The nations between China, India, and Europe had a habit of cutting off trade or taxing merchants cross through their land. There's a Chinese account from the Sassanid era that laments the Sassanids cutting off the trade.

[Frahlind]

IIRC the actual disagreement between Columbus and Queen Isabella wasn't over the shape of the Earth, but instead over its size.

You think they'd have realised that if the Atlantic did connect to India, Indian or Chinese sailors would have crossed it to establish trade routes. After all, it would be much easier to trade silk across the ocean than transverse Eurasia. The nations between China, India, and Europe had a habit of cutting off trade or taxing merchants cross through their land. There's a Chinese account from the Sassanid era that laments the Sassanids cutting off the trade routes.

To be fair, seafaring tactics prior to Columbus did not really allow for long-distance sailing, especially over open seas.

[Sovaal]

kill me

Let me introduce you to Tom Bishop.

73 fookin’ pages.

[Frahlind]

Let me introduce you to Tom Bishop.

73 fookin’ pages.

So almost as long as that speech in Atlas Shrugged.

[San Lumen]

Let me introduce you to Tom Bishop.

73 fookin’ pages.

That was painful to read. I couldn't get past a few pages. Shame they CTE'd it would be nice to have them in here.

[Farnhamia]

73 fookin’ pages.

That was painful to read. I couldn't get past a few pages. Shame they CTE'd it would be nice to have them in here.

No, it wouldn't.

[Pilarcraft]

I remember my school history book mentioning that Columbus thought the world was flat. In reality, though, Columbus and his crew wouldn't have tried to sail to India across the Atlantic if they thought it was impossible.

Thats not true. Columbus didn't think the Earth was flat he underestimated its size and also didn't know that the Americas existed like everyone else in Europe.

hold on, didn't Vikings use to colonize the America (well, north america) during the middle ages?

[Sovaal]

Thats not true. Columbus didn't think the Earth was flat he underestimated its size and also didn't know that the Americas existed like everyone else in Europe.

hold on, didn't Vikings use to colonize the America (well, north america) during the middle ages?

Eh, any settlements didn’t last, even their Greenland colonies collapsed.
Although I will say Scraelings is a cooler name then simply “Native American”.

[Frahlind]

Thats not true. Columbus didn't think the Earth was flat he underestimated its size and also didn't know that the Americas existed like everyone else in Europe.

hold on, didn't Vikings use to colonize the America (well, north america) during the middle ages?

Leif Eriksson arrived in "Vinland" (believed to be Newfoundland) around the year 1000, but the "colony" he established wasn't really meant to last and nothing ever really came of it. Most of Europe was still too isolationist and focused with internal struggles to care about a new land.

[Kramanica]

Ok, here I am.

First of all, Eratosthenes knew that the Earth was more or less a sphere, and assumed that the rays of light coming from the Sun on Earth were all parallel.
He knew that at the summer solstice, Syene received the rays from the Sun directly from above, at a right angle from the surface, because a pole in Syene would project no shadow (actually, because the bottom of a pit in Syene was completely illuminated by the Sun at noon on the summer solstice).
He also knew the distance on a north-south route from Alexandria to Syene on the Earth surface, that is the length of a part of a maximal circumference (let's call this L).

Now, he planted a stick of length x in Alexandria, and measured the length of the shadow it projected at noon on the summer solstice over the ground (call this s ). From trigonometry, he knew that

eq.1) s = x tan (a)

where a was the angle between the rays of the Sun and the stick, hence

eq.2) a = arctan ( s / x )

But a also had to be the angle between Alexandria and Syene as seen from the centre of Earth, because of the parallelism between the rays of the Sun! So, since the angle is the ratio between the arc and the radius, the distance L on Earth's surface between Alexandria and Syene had to be

eq.3) L = R_earth a

where R_earth is the (average) radius of Earth. So he could substitute a from eq.2 in eq.3

eq.4) L = R_earth arctan ( s / x )

and solve it by R_earth

eq.5) R_earth = L / arctan ( s / x )

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Edit: of course Eratosthenes didn't use to write equations like I did, but this is the concept behind his construction rewritten in modern terms.

Stop, don't hurt me with math. I believe you.

[Pilarcraft]

hold on, didn't Vikings use to colonize the America (well, north america) during the middle ages?

Leif Eriksson arrived in "Vinland" (believed to be Newfoundland) around the year 1000, but the "colony" he established wasn't really meant to last and nothing ever really came of it. Most of Europe was still too isolationist and focused with internal struggles to care about a new land.

Not the point, though. The point is that if they got all the way there, and built settlements (that failed and ceased to exist), they'd still have to know that there was something there.

[Farnhamia]

hold on, didn't Vikings use to colonize the America (well, north america) during the middle ages?

Eh, any settlements didn’t last, even their Greenland colonies collapsed.
Although I will say Scraelings is a cooler name then simply “Native American”.

"Skraeling" means either "barbarian" or "guys who shout and yell" or "guys who wear skins." It's not a compliment.

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Leif Eriksson arrived in "Vinland" (believed to be Newfoundland) around the year 1000, but the "colony" he established wasn't really meant to last and nothing ever really came of it. Most of Europe was still too isolationist and focused with internal struggles to care about a new land.

Not the point, though. The point is that if they got all the way there, and built settlements (that failed and ceased to exist), they'd still have to know that there was something there.

Not really. Vinland was first discovered by Bjarni Herjólfsson, He was blown off course on his way from Iceland to Greenland and came upon another place no one had seen before. No one from Europe, anyway.

[Pilarcraft]

Eh, any settlements didn’t last, even their Greenland colonies collapsed.
Although I will say Scraelings is a cooler name then simply “Native American”.

"Skraeling" means either "barbarian" or "guys who shout and yell" or "guys who wear skins." It's not a compliment.

I mean it still sounds cooler.

[Frahlind]

Leif Eriksson arrived in "Vinland" (believed to be Newfoundland) around the year 1000, but the "colony" he established wasn't really meant to last and nothing ever really came of it. Most of Europe was still too isolationist and focused with internal struggles to care about a new land.

Not the point, though. The point is that if they got all the way there, and built settlements (that failed and ceased to exist), they'd still have to know that there was something there.

Europe knew Greenland existed, yet no one was in a hurry to go there. Why? Because it was a frozen, hellish wasteland, like Vinland. Why go when there's no profit to be made?

Also, the tale of Leif Eriksson wasn't really well known, especially outside of the Nordic realms. Many considered it something of a legend, like most of the Sagas.

[Frahlind]

Eh, any settlements didn’t last, even their Greenland colonies collapsed.
Although I will say Scraelings is a cooler name then simply “Native American”.

"Skraeling" means either "barbarian" or "guys who shout and yell" or "guys who wear skins." It's not a compliment.

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So, a fraternity?

[Ifreann]

"Skraeling" means either "barbarian" or "guys who shout and yell" or "guys who wear skins." It's not a compliment.

---

So, a fraternity?

Football fans.