I'm unable to find it, but I'm pretty certain this was already submitted shortly after the original post in 2016 - may be some other interesting HN discussion already if anyone can find it.
The explanations as to why this does not prove the Earth is flat is great. I am not a flat Earther (I very much believe it to be roughly spherical) but I didn't know something like this could be explained by "atmospheric refraction"
It gives me even more respect for astronomers and physicists that they are able to account for factors like this when doing their calculations.
But the answers with calculations are interesting. Is there a simulator online to calculate the distance you should be able to see from a given point (and altitude), with and without refraction?
I like to believe most of them are trolls, but you can never be too sure. Some of those comments actually do ask decent questions regarding refraction and line-of-sight calculations.
The conversations I've had with them have lead me to the opposite conclusion -- they are so good at their presentation, I figure they may be working on their acting or debate skills. A true test of how good someone is at debate, is if they can win arguing for the opposite of what they believe.
The comments are gold. I always thought flat earthers were thought up by the government to discredit believers in real conspiracies (like the 9-11 inside job). Seems like flat earthers are either real or the government is doubling down on sock puppets feeling that this discrediting is very necessary.
Oh they are very real. I've met a few. I had expected that they would be elderly nutters like the Apollo deniers. But was I got was self-centred young people. They place their own perceptions above all others, not accepting the word of any "scientist" or "doctor". It really is amazing to witness an intelligent and thoughtful person build their own fantasy world of conspiracies and shadow enemies. It's like going to a book reading by Tolkien only to realize he is carrying a real sword and expects orcs to pop out of the audience.
> It really is amazing to witness an intelligent and thoughtful person build their own fantasy...
When it comes to the vocal conspiracy theorists you see online, I think they really get a kick out of believing that they're just smarter than everyone else. "Everyone else" being the 99% of the population who they label as "sheep" because they agree with science or facts that are "too obvious."
The other spectrum of conspiracy theorists however, may just really want to believe in their fantasy world.
It goes two ways. Some of them call us sheep for following the obvious and themselves follow the ridiculously complex. Those are the traditional conspiracy theorists. Others deny the complex and instead believe only simple explanations based on their own perceptions. That's where I draw the line between oldschool theorists and modern theorists. The oldschool theorist believes in a complex government conspiracy hiding behind a veil of secrecy (the black helicopter crowd of the 90s). The modern theorist dismisses a complex theory based such as climate change in favour of their own perceptions ("I'm cold"). The former believes the world to be run be evil geniuses. The later by idiots.
I think the flat earthers are just trolls who find it amusing. You've got entire subreddits dedicated to the "Finland does not exist" conspiracy too, which was conceived as a joke.
I think the majority of 9/11 conspiracy theorists do a perfectly good job of discrediting themselves without needing to be associated with even dafter ideas. (Certainly people distracting from legitimate questions about use of intelligence and response times with obviously batshit theories about missiles and demolition charges in WTC7 are doing the government a service, but I don't think they're being paid for it)
I have a vague recollection of something like this in central Asia, within the last year or so, but I can't find a reference to it (maybe from a peak in the Pamirs to a mountain of the Karakorum?)
Let the Flat Earth commenters begin. They are already some on the blog itself, but I think the HN commenter has a higher class of eruditon, scientific exposition and rigor.
I tend to go with Flat Earthers because I find the counter-arguments against their claims rather inadequate, but that could be because I lack the scientific understanding to comprehend them.
The difference between flat earthers and round earthers is that round earthers can correctly predict the outcome of observations using their mathematical models, and flat earthers cannot.
Take the recent total eclipse as an example. It was predicted years (centuries) in advance using round earth mathematics. Is there even a single flat earther who was able to predict the eclipse using their model? If there is, I haven't heard.
The difference between flat earthers and round earthers is that round earthers can correctly predict the outcome of observations using their mathematical models, and flat earthers cannot.
That is probably the most profound rebuttal to flat-earthers I've heard. Granted, it's a grand extrapolation of "where do you think ships go when they sail over the horizon?", but it's an excellent summary.
I'm more wondering about when would one need any rebuttal to start with. Most online comments are probably trolls, and if not, it's not worth your time anyway. Is it common to have friends or relatives with such a feeble grasp of reality?
I know somebody who believes in chemtrails, flat earth and a lot of other stuff. There is really no way to argue with her because at the bottom of everything there is a big, powerful conspiracy.
I told her once that Alex Jones certainly has enough money to rent a jet to fly into a chemtrail and take some samples or take a ship and go straight and see what happens. But of course there tons of government conspiracies to prevent these things. In the end these people don't really want to know. They just have a deep discomfort with the current state of things.
No one I know believes flat-earth (fortunately), but for a while I was fascinated by the existence of flat earthers and wanted to understand why they believed they way they do.
The outcome was mostly disappointment for me. They don't have anything like a reflectively consistent worldview. They don't in general have positive statements (other than that the earth is flat). Their beliefs are almost entirely negative, and phrased as arrogant dismissal of mainstream belief and evidence.
More hypothetical than anything, and possibly a template for more likely scenarios. I mean, it would seem that there are some that seriously think the world is flat. Should I ever meet such a person and the topic comes up (and you know it will), I'd be curious as to the outcome of whipping out this rebuttal. I don't care about "winning" the argument, as there's nothing to win, but the response is what I'm after. I'm sure I'll be disappointed.
My favorite rebuttal is simply Foucault's pendulum[1]. It rotates one way in the northern hemisphere, not at all on the equator, and the other way in the southern hemisphere. You can't explain this behavior on a flat earth without introducing a force that "just happens" to act exactly like the Coriolis force. A spinning flat earth can't explain why the effect gets less at the equator, and reverses as you cross it.
My problem with round earthers is that their rebuttals to "specific" arguments made by flat earthers are not adequate.
It is one thing to say that satellites and Foucault's pendulum prove that the earth is round, but if someone makes an argument (as in the linked article) that the visible peak of a mountain should be 900 meters below the horizon, and the round earthers response to that is some poorly exposited fact about refraction, it doesn't help the round Earth case in the eyes of the flat earther who raised that point.
A better response would be to include some references to some facts about atmospheric refraction in addition. Hopefully the flat earther might understand it.
So in effect I am not actually a flat Earther, but round earthers should be able to explain observations which are not consistent with round earth expectations better.
Is the problem the poor exposition? Because the answer actually is refraction.
In my experience it doesn't make any difference how many references you include. They either don't read them at all, or they read them but don't address the content. So far I have been unable to get a flat earther to respond to basic information that I provide that contradicts their assertions.
Satellites only need sufficient motion and gravity. They've orbited things that aren't quite round/spherical (asteroids and comets), and theoretically flat things too, if we can find/build one big enough.
Their explanation for Earth's gravity is that the Earth is constantly accelerating "upward" at 8.9m/s/s. How would satellites orbit that without constant acceleration of their own?
Orbits of nonspherical objects tend to be unstable (this is a significant effect for lunar orbits already) and the motion of the satellites would be completely different.
If a flat earth existed, our notions of gravity are definitely wrong, because a flat earth would probably quickly collapse into a lump- and the direction of gravity would point in a different direction as you walked towards the edge...
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/a-new...