as mentioned in the topics title, I know it’s dumb and please forgive me for even asking that, but …
A good friend of mine turned into a flat earther recently and he’s now bombing me with “facts” to “proof” his point. Beside many links to nonsense videos and just dumb people he sent me this what kinda left me back with a question mark over my head: how is it possible that there are pilots out irl that say the earth is flat?
And how could he has convinced chatGPT to answer this what you can see in the screenshot?
He also bothers me with the fact that the autopilot does not include the earths curvature into the rate of decent so he thinks that is a proof that the earth is flat. I told him that this is not necessary because the curvature is not important when the airplane starts its decent form lets say 35,000ft round about 150nm away from the airport and the autopilot doesn’t need to consider it. But then he answers if the earth is a globe it needs to consider it because there’s supposed to be a curvature on 150nm.
He’s literally driving me nuts and I#m almost about to cancel our friendship. But he’s actually a smart dude and convinced that when pilots say the earth is flat, it must be flat.
Please help me out with this one so that I can end this nonsense once and for all.
If the Earth is flat, how can an aircraft fly around the world? Is there a “secret” portal in middle of the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean that magically teleports the plane to the other side of the Earth? lol
That’s the problem: there is no “around the world”
He’s a rich man. I told him “fly to Sydney and then buy a ticket to fly to Cape Town and look out the window if see mostly water or land beneath the airplane”
Because on the flat earthers “map” you would need to fly over Asia, the Himalaya and most parts of Africa.
There has been countless experiments and research proving the Earth is a globe, dating back to even the 5th century BC. ChatGPT means nothing because you can tell it to say anything, I can go on there and ask if it think the Earth is flat, it’ll say no, I can tell it’s wrong and it’ll agree with me. ChatGPT is a very unreliable source of information for many things (I’m in the engineering field so I’m very familiar with this). Funnily enough, there was a documentary made where flat earthers were trying to prove the Earth is flat through a series of experiment, and every time their experiment proves that the Earth is a globe, they tried to change the parameters so they can prove the flat Earth theory but every time they failed to do so, the documentary cut off with a “interesting” from a flat earther after their experiments concluded that the Earth was in fact a globe. Flat earther will only want to see and agree with their own beliefs, challenging scientifically proven concepts and will not accept anything else that doesn’t align and benefit their own beliefs. Flat earth theory goes hand in hand with conspiracy theorists that want to deviate from the norm and live in their own little status quo. I hope my little rant will help your friend.
This is exactly what I think. I could have written that.
We even made experiments together recently. I live in Germany and we were driving to the Baltic Sea. There are two spots round about 40km away from each other and he wanted to “proof” the flat earth. On one side there’s a huge Maritim Hotel and you can only see the upper half. I say to him “you can’t see the part below because of the earth’s curvature” but he thinks that the refraction ( I hope you know what it is) is working actually the other way around.
As you say: they only align what benefits their own beliefs and if it doesn’t benefit, they even turn facts around.
Yes. We saw those videos. But he thinks the people who made the documentary are mocking the flat earthers and made their experiment look silly.
It was an experiment with lasers and the result was exactly what you said: they debunked their own “theory”. But my friend thinks they were right, but ridiculed.
I don’t see why he can’t anyways lol
It’s 93,090,289,778 Australian dollars.
Technically even if he goes up there an still believes it’s round just let him be. Tell him and emphasize the fact that if you can’t change his opinion, he can’t change your’s and just live together in harmony
It’s best not to argue a already disproven concept with someone who just want to believe for the sake of believing. Also his argument for “19 pilots believe that so it must be so” means nothing considering there’s about 300,000 other pilots who would say otherwise, and many many millions other people who are more qualified to make the judgement. At the end of the day people can have their own opinions no matter how false or wrong it is, as long as no harm comes to others we can coexist in peace.
You can’t argue with stupid. You’ll never win; they won’t change their mind. Let it go, don’t let it take up your time, and hopefully, one day, they’ll come to their senses—or, in this case, reality.
Haha, considering the fact a Blue Origin Shepherd’s starting price for a trip is 200,000 USD, he can still well afford it as he basically has 25,138,102 usd with his 400 bitcoins! Add some of his non-bitcoin money and he will still have well more than enough
