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

by shyn3on 11/26/2023, 10:28 PMwith 18 comments

Ran into a few religious people who suggest the earth is a firmament. How do I prove it's not round/sphere.

by cratermoonon 11/26/2023, 10:31 PM

"the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/01/28/bullshit-a...

by jfengelon 11/27/2023, 5:54 PM

The trivial way is a phone call to a friend in a different time zone. It's dark there; it's not dark here. It's just past dawn here; the sun is at the highest a few time zones east. More phone calls to more places and it's pretty quickly apparent that the angle to the sun is exactly what you'd expect from a sphere and not from a disk.

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

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

by h2odragonon 11/26/2023, 10:44 PM

Why do you need to prove them wrong? Have they given you doubt the world is round?

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

by mtmailon 11/26/2023, 10:45 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." Let them bring evidence of Earth's flatness.

by yaspon 11/26/2023, 10:31 PM

Don't waste your time?

by alex_lavon 11/26/2023, 10:36 PM

Just go find different people to talk to

by jjgreenon 11/26/2023, 10:37 PM

Meet them at night, point to the moon, walk away without saying a word.

by gwnywgon 11/26/2023, 10:49 PM

Out of curiosity, what religion was that?

by clouddroveron 11/26/2023, 11:12 PM

> Ran into a few religious people who suggest the earth is a firmament

The firmament is the sky, not the ground.

by zgson 11/26/2023, 11:04 PM

Ignore their idiocy. Such folks cannot be convinced by mere facts.

by iefbr14on 11/26/2023, 11:50 PM

Did they, by any chance, mention elephants and a big turtle too?

by lphillips0825on 11/27/2023, 7:13 AM

Ask them to take you to the edge of the Earth and show you where you can jump off. /s

by hardkorebobon 11/26/2023, 11:06 PM

You don't. You respect their mind. Simple. Make love not war of any kind.