• Due to ongoing issues caused by Search, it has been temporarily disabled
  • Please excuse the mess, we're moving the furniture and restructuring the forum categories

So which are craziest, flatearthers, sovcits, or ...?

Roboramma said:
Can you expand? I'm having a hard time seeing how the problems of a flat earth are exacerbated based on latitude.
Click to expand...

From a list of flat earth issues I composed some years ago:

Observers in the southern hemisphere see the stars appear to revolve around a point directly over the earth's southern pole. During the Southern Hemisphere's winter, a person in Rio Gallegos, Argentina, and a person in Sydney, Australia can both see the constellation Octans to their south at exactly the same time. That is not possible in the flat earth model.


The rest of the list, just for fun:

If the moon is revolving on a plane parallel to and about 3,000 miles above a flat earth, then people in Oslo, Norway and Cape Town, South Africa, 6,500 miles apart, would have to see the moon at the same moment from viewing angles differing by 94.6° when it is above a point exactly between them (over the Republic of Chad). In real life, they see it from viewing angles differing by just 1.4°, and people all over the world see the moon at the same time from no more than a 1.9° difference in viewing angle.

In the flat earth model, someone on the equator during an equinox would see the sun at a heading of 45° at 6:00 am. The sun would then curve around to pass through the zenith at 12:00 noon. Finally, it would curve around to be seen at a heading of 315° at 6:00 pm. In real life, people in that situation see the sun rise at 6:00 am at a heading of 90°, pass through the zenith at noon, then set at 6:00 pm at a heading of 270°.

The motorized equatorial mount of a telescope can track the sun across the sky by rotating only through a single axis parallel to the earth's rotational axis. If the sun was really revolving in a plane parallel to, but some 3000 miles above, a flat surface, then the telescope mount would need to rotate through two axes simultaneously to track the sun, or any other celestial object.

In the flat earth model, the angular sizes of the sun and moon would change considerably during the course of the day, and would vary according to one's position. If you're at the equator on an equinox and the sun is 3,000 miles directly above you, then to have its observed angular diameter of 0.5°, it needs to have a real diameter of 26.2 miles. But what about six hours later? Euclidean geometry let's us determine that the sun would then have moved to a point 9,285 miles away from you. At that distance, an object 26.2 miles in diameter would have an angular diameter of just 0.16° of arc. That's a 68% reduction in angular diameter. But in real life, the sun's angular diameter is always right around 0.5° of arc.

Flat earth proponents claim that perspective causes the illusion of the sun passing below the horizon. But that doesn't work. For perspective to cause the sun to appear to be just 0.5° of arc from the horizon (that's just one time its own diameter from the horizon) at 3,000 miles above a flat surface, it would need to be 343,770 miles from the observer. (If a right triangle has an opposite of 3,000 miles, and an alpha of 0.5°, then the length of the adjacent is 343,770 miles.) That's 43% farther than the actual moon, and 22 times the diameter of the Tropic of Capricorn in your flat model.

It gets even worse as the sun gets nearer the horizon. To be half its own diameter away from the horizon and still be 3,000 miles above the plane of your flat earth, it has to retreat to a distance of 687,550 miles, where its angular diameter would be just 0.002°. And to get to 1/4 of its angular diameter from the horizon at 3,000 miles up, it would need to retreat to a distance of 1,375,100 miles, at which point the angular size of this 26.2 miles diameter sun would be a miniscule 0.001°. To put that in perspective, the average angular diameter of Jupiter as seen from earth is 0.01°. That's 10X bigger than the flat earth sun would appear at 1,375,100 miles.

Moving on, for the flat earth sun to even appear to touch the horizon due to perspective, the angle between sun and horizon would need to be less than the minimum angle resolvable by the eye, which in the case of people with 20/20 visual acuity is about 1 minute (') of arc, or 1/60th of a degree. To appear to be 1' of arc from the horizon, an object 3,000 miles above the surface of the flat plane you're standing on would need to be 10,313,000 miles away from you. That's 43.33 times farther away than the actual moon in the heliocentric model.
 
Foster Zygote said:
I'm especially baffled by flat earthers who live south of the equator.
Click to expand...

That's the result of an even bigger, grander hoax! AUSTRALIA does not exist. A tall tale invented by Willem Janszoon and reinforced by James Cook. It's laughable with all those silly animals and besides which, if anything was there, if it existed, would fall off because of lack of gravity.

Please note; all negative responses to this post will be summarily ignored
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
That's the result of an even bigger, grander hoax! AUSTRALIA does not exist. A tall tale invented by Willem Janszoon and reinforced by James Cook. It's laughable with all those silly animals and besides which, if anything was there, if it existed, would fall off because of lack of gravity.

Please note; all negative responses to this post will be summarily ignored
Click to expand...

I've been there, and I'm still not sure it really exists... or did the plane just do a 180 over the pacific and take me to the west coast.... and everyone talked funny and the deer "bounced", just to keep the round earth myth alive.

"Where women glow and men plunder"... as if.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
That's the result of an even bigger, grander hoax! AUSTRALIA does not exist. A tall tale invented by Willem Janszoon and reinforced by James Cook. It's laughable with all those silly animals and besides which, if anything was there, if it existed, would fall off because of lack of gravity.

Please note; all negative responses to this post will be summarily ignored
Click to expand...

Adelaide certainly doesn't exist: just ask any follower of the England Test cricket team.
 
theprestige said:
Wow, you're just dragging those goalposts all over the place! STS claimed a proof that wasn't, and I demonstrated that it wasn't. The proper response to that is, "nice demonstration, I agree that STS was wrong." Not, "forget about that, now debunk some other claim entirely that you never objected to."
Click to expand...

Sorry, I hadn’t looked at this thread for a while.

The diagram you drew shows the clouds being illuminated from underneath (with the Sun below the clouds). In the flat Earth scenario, this never happens; the Sun “orbits” in a circle above the clouds.

I don’t get why you think your diagram - mad MSPaint skillz acknowledged - disproves my observation.
 
theprestige said:
… STS says clouds can't be illuminated from below on a flat earth. I easily came up with - and demonstrated! - a geometrical context in which he's wrong. If you think this doesn't prove a flat earth, I agree with you. Still, it's more than Round Earth Trivialists have done so far.

But if you really want to debate flat-eartherism, go find a flat-earther.
Click to expand...

I missed this post in my catch-up.

Sure, if you let the Sun go below the plane of the flat Earth (which you allowed in another post), you can get that. But then you get the problem of the entire Earth being dark at once, which we know doesn’t happen.

You could modify it by only letting the sun go below the plane of the clouds, not the Earth disk itself. But then you have clouds lit from above in the middle of the day somewhere while you have clouds lit from below in the evening somewhere else, simultaneously. So that doesn’t work either.

I get that you’re picking at people’s arguments, not actually advocating for a real flat Earth. But allowing the Sun to go below the clouds in a flat Earth scenario is immediately contradicted by simultaneous observations elsewhere. So your diagram doesn’t overturn my point. Which does nothing to diminish my admiration for your graphic art skills.
 
Last edited:
I think the point theprestige was trying to make is that those sorts of observations (like clouds illuminated from below) aren't immediately obvious observations of a round earth. It's not the same sort of thing as looking at something and seeing that it's round. It's something the requires a model and noticing that any model of a flat earth is inconsistent with at least one thing we know.

It's sort of like how if you look at the moon you always see the same side of it. It looks static from our perspective. But the moon is rotating on its axis. It only looks static because its tidally locked and one rotation about its axis happens in the same amount of time as one revolution of its orbit around the earth. The very fact that it doesn't look like it's rotating means that it must be: if it weren't rotating it would look like it did one rotation on its axis each month. But I don't think it's right to say that you can just look at the moon and see it rotating. If someone explains (or you find yourself curious and think about it for a while) the geometry to you, you should have an "aha" moment and go, "oh, yeah, it must be rotating". The sort of observation that shows the roundness of the earth are another level of complexity beyond that: the thing with the moon requires not just seeing it, but forming a model of it's motion to realize that it's rotating. With the earth you see the observation, you form a model of the system, but the problem with flatness only comes up if you compare multiple observations to your model.

And I think the point theprestige is getting at is that it's not surprising that most people aren't doing that in their daily lives. Demonstrating the roundness of the earth requires something more sophisticated than just going outside and looking.
 
But what he gets wrong is that most people will understand why we have simple things like timezones is the result of a round earth.
Unless you happen upon a FE expert, no one you ask will try to explain them with a spotlight sun.
 
Roboramma said:
I think the point theprestige was trying to make is that those sorts of observations (like clouds illuminated from below) aren't immediately obvious observations of a round earth. It's not the same sort of thing as looking at something and seeing that it's round. It's something the requires a model and noticing that any model of a flat earth is inconsistent with at least one thing we know.

It's sort of like how if you look at the moon you always see the same side of it. It looks static from our perspective. But the moon is rotating on its axis. It only looks static because its tidally locked and one rotation about its axis happens in the same amount of time as one revolution of its orbit around the earth. The very fact that it doesn't look like it's rotating means that it must be: if it weren't rotating it would look like it did one rotation on its axis each month. But I don't think it's right to say that you can just look at the moon and see it rotating. If someone explains (or you find yourself curious and think about it for a while) the geometry to you, you should have an "aha" moment and go, "oh, yeah, it must be rotating". The sort of observation that shows the roundness of the earth are another level of complexity beyond that: the thing with the moon requires not just seeing it, but forming a model of it's motion to realize that it's rotating. With the earth you see the observation, you form a model of the system, but the problem with flatness only comes up if you compare multiple observations to your model.

And I think the point theprestige is getting at is that it's not surprising that most people aren't doing that in their daily lives. Demonstrating the roundness of the earth requires something more sophisticated than just going outside and looking.
Click to expand...

Well, sure. But there are tons of things that are not obvious to the casual viewer. Many kinds of weather systems, electricity, radio waves, heck even what gravity is. The point is that we either don't care, or if we do care, we either find out what authorities say about it and accept that, or we check out stuff for ourselves.

And if we check out evidence for the shape of Earth, we quickly find out that all evidence points to it being a sphere.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
Well, sure. But there are tons of things that are not obvious to the casual viewer. Many kinds of weather systems, electricity, radio waves, heck even what gravity is. The point is that we either don't care, or if we do care, we either find out what authorities say about it and accept that, or we check out stuff for ourselves.
And if we check out evidence for the shape of Earth, we quickly find out that all evidence points to it being a sphere.
Click to expand...

Except that wasn't my point at all. My point was that if you don't care, you can easily go about your life without noticing at all, and it won't matter at all to you.

Compared with sovereign citizenship, which causes its practitioners grief whenever they try to apply it. Yet they persist anyway. Thus my answer to the question in the thread title. A conspiracy theory that harms the people who practice it is crazier than a conspiracy theory that has zero practical effect on the people who practice it.

I admit that I have somewhat overstated my case. But I am still not convinced that you'd have to be crazy not to notice the round earth in your daily life.
 
Last edited:
That's probably a fair way to look at it. You could go through your whole life thinking the moon landings were faked and it wouldn't make a jot of difference to you unless you made a deal of it and tried to prove you were right. You could say the same about flat earth and sov cit stuff but it's probably the latter which will butt up against hard reality first.
 
MRC_Hans said:
So been in a FE forum, for a while, but you can't argue with people who haven't got an argument. Then followed sovcits, moorish, and the like for a while.

In a way those people seem to be kind of rational, but what they believe just don't add up at all. Are there some even sillier, and what drives this?

Hans
Click to expand...

Nope.
 
Foster Zygote said:
From a list of flat earth issues I composed some years ago:

Moving on, for the flat earth sun to even appear to touch the horizon due to perspective, the angle between sun and horizon would need to be less than the minimum angle resolvable by the eye, which in the case of people with 20/20 visual acuity is about 1 minute (') of arc, or 1/60th of a degree. To appear to be 1' of arc from the horizon, an object 3,000 miles above the surface of the flat plane you're standing on would need to be 10,313,000 miles away from you. That's 43.33 times farther away than the actual moon in the heliocentric model.
Click to expand...
Indeed, but since we see the entire face of both Moon and Sun, that entire scenario gets considerably worse (if that is even possible!). The top edge of the Sun with bottom edge 0.1 degrees above the horizon is 286,000 miles away, with the bottom edge being 1,720,000 miles away :jaw-dropp

https://penguinsfalloff.blogspot.com/2021/02/some-more-juicy-proof.html

The scenarios that follow are used to demonstrate speed variances. The height of the Sun for this purpose is not relevant.....

Point one on the globe is where the Sun is directly above:

Just as an example using 3000 miles and the Sun changing from 15 degrees/30 degrees/45 degrees from zenith(directly overhead) - that is 3 one hour movements everywhere on Earth - proven and irrefutable.

http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/scol/calrtri.htm

Little a is 3000 Big A is 75 degrees - It has travelled 804 miles from zenith. So average 804 mph.

Little a is 3000 Big A is 60 degrees - It has travelled 1730 miles from zenith. 1730-804 = 926. So average 926 mph now!

Little a is 3000 Big A is 45 degrees - It has travelled 3000 miles from zenith. 3000-1730 = 1270. So average 1270 mph now!



Point two simultaneoulsy on the globe is where the Sun is at 75 degrees to observer at its highest elevation:

Little a is 3000 Big A is 60 degrees - It has travelled 1730 miles from zenith. It began 804 miles away from zenith. So average 926 mph.

Little a is 3000 Big A is 45 degrees - It has travelled 3000 miles from zenith. 3000-1730 = 1270. So average 1270 mph now!

Little a is 3000 Big A is 15 degrees - It has travelled 11,200 miles from zenith. 11200-3000 = 8200. So average 8200 mph average now!



In hour 1 at two different points the Sun is travelling 804 mph and 926 mph at the same time!!

In hour 2 at two different points the Sun is travelling 926 mph and 1270 mph at the same time!!

In hour 3 at two different points the Sun is travelling 1270 mph and 8200 mph at the same time!!


Now BASIC mathematics tells us the Sun MUST be covering that distance, so it is not apparent distance. These are actual figures.
 
theprestige said:
*snip*

I admit that I have somewhat overstated my case. But I am still not convinced that you'd have to be crazy not to notice the round earth in your daily life.
Click to expand...

Neither am I, but that would not make you a flat earther. And, you would be hard put to go through modern day life without noticing the existence of timezones and, I would say, witness the odd moon eclipse. Each of which all by themselves debunk FE for any sane person.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
Neither am I, but that would not make you a flat earther. And, you would be hard put to go through modern day life without noticing the existence of timezones and, I would say, witness the odd moon eclipse. Each of which all by themselves debunk FE for any sane person.

Hans
Click to expand...

In my experience, people generally believe what makes them feel good, as opposed to what fits the best available evidence.
 
commandlinegamer said:
A worrying case recently about a group who attempted to abduct a coroner:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0xj25y20nqo

Sounds pretty similar to sovcit stuff.
Click to expand...

English version of Freemen on the Land. They have a penchant for setting up "people's courts" and trying to "arrest" actual court officials. Look Mark Christopher up on the Quatloos forum.

PS Mojo has it in one. Christopher was also heavily involved in the Genesis II scam, set up to get around FDA rules on not selling bleach as a medical cure for, well, anything.
 
Last edited:
Mojo said:
There are definite echoes of David Wynn Miller's ideas, for example the "Federal Postal Court".
Click to expand...

And the "magic" words approach - when the judge asks "Do you understand?" You can't say yes because that means you are saying yes to "standing under" the court's authority so giving them jurisdiction over your living human.
 
MRC_Hans said:
So been in a FE forum, for a while, but you can't argue with people who haven't got an argument. Then followed sovcits, moorish, and the like for a while.

In a way those people seem to be kind of rational, but what they believe just don't add up at all. Are there some even sillier, and what drives this?

Hans
Click to expand...


What about flat-earthers who are also sovcits?
 
Mojo said:
What about flat-earthers who are also sovcits?
Click to expand...

In practical terms, they're equivalent to sovcits.

Nobody inconveniences themselves in their daily lives by persisting in flat-eartherism. Sovcits cause themselves all kinds of trouble by persisting in their erroneous beliefs.

In mental health terms, sovereign citizenry (citizenship?) would clearly be the worse condition, that causes the most distress and harm to its sufferers. Sovcits are almost literally crazier than flat-earthers.
 
Still not buying it. It assumes that all sovcits are actually acting out in their delusions. There're are likely tons of them that don't actually do anything as a result of their belief on account of laziness or not wanting to go to jail. Just as there are tons of flat earthers who just say the earth is flat and move one and there are those that spend their money on experiments or rockets trying to prove the earth is flat.

And the as I've said, sovcit delusions rest on weird interpretations of various treaties and what not, minutiae of law is pretty easy to misunderstand, flat earth requires denying also sorts of physical reality and science. Sure, the sovcit that gets held in contempt of court multiple times and goes to jail for tax evasion is crazier than the flat earther that only vents his ideas on the internet but neither of those represents the entirety of their club.
 
It may be that part of the problem here is in deciding what "crazy" means to begin with. Were interpreting "crazy" here in terms of material harm. But a person can be a little bit crazy and shoot a kid who knocks on his door, while another can be fantastically crazy to the point of being unable to function in life, and never harm a fly. Momentary observation and history will differ on what is crazy, I think. A person who believes you are a shape shifting alien reptilian is just plain crazy right now, but a mere crackpot in the big scheme of things, while a person who believes pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo about ethnicity isn't crazy by most standards, yet may contribute to the death of millions.

I think in general a sovcit who actually acts out his delusion is going to be crazier than a flat-earther, in terms of self-harm and inconvenience, but it depends on a belief in wrong ideas about abstractions, while a flat earther's craziness involves an obstinate refusal to accept facts and experiences of the real world.
 
bruto said:
It may be that part of the problem here is in deciding what "crazy" means to begin with. Were interpreting "crazy" here in terms of material harm. But a person can be a little bit crazy and shoot a kid who knocks on his door, while another can be fantastically crazy to the point of being unable to function in life, and never harm a fly. Momentary observation and history will differ on what is crazy, I think. A person who believes you are a shape shifting alien reptilian is just plain crazy right now, but a mere crackpot in the big scheme of things, while a person who believes pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo about ethnicity isn't crazy by most standards, yet may contribute to the death of millions.

I think in general a sovcit who actually acts out his delusion is going to be crazier than a flat-earther, in terms of self-harm and inconvenience, but it depends on a belief in wrong ideas about abstractions, while a flat earther's craziness involves an obstinate refusal to accept facts and experiences of the real world.
Click to expand...

I agree, sovcits literally talk themselves into jail sentences.
 
Again, some sovcits do. Some flatearthers talk themselves into spending their resources to prove modern science wrong. That's not all of them in either case.

Its not fundamentally delusional to misread some 200 year old treaty in the same way it is to claim there is a world wide conspiracy that includes every national government, NASA, ESA, the UN, every pilot, and every airline to convince us all that the world is a spheroid and gravity is real.

One hinges on misreading and a conspiracy in a few countries, the other relies on the fundamental denial of multiple disciplines of science and a conspiracy spanning the entire world.

Who's crazier a sovcit that acts out on his belief or a flat earther? I say a flat earther. Who's crazier a sovcit that doesn't act out or a flat earther that does? Who's crazier a sovcit that doesn't or a flat earther that doesn't. The only argument that sovcits are crazier that works assumes that sovcits act out on it and flatearthers don't. I don't think that's a fair comparison.
 
Last edited:
Sovcits create an alternative reality where the driving rights are not revocable for any reason and taxes as well as any law they don't like doesn't apply to them.

Yt sovcits are nearly always driving on a revoked license and in a car they never bothered to register.
They're choosing a philosophy of this new "government" and laws as they like it.
It becomes crazy when they force that off belief on real life law enforcement and courts.
Watch them in court, it's full on disregard for procedure and law or taking a plea and forgetting all about the make believe. One method always loses and after twice in court for disregarded sentences is jail time. The second is usually a fine for an infraction.

Flat earthers don't get in trouble any more than those who believe in the Easter bunny. But it can make them money on YT.

The planets don't care what Bob believes, and what he believes can't change what planets do.
 
SovCits are dumb Or desperate.
Flat Earthers aren't really flat earths, they're just really boring contrarians.
Religion is what makes your neighbor decide that despite your help with their car, you deserve to die and suffer and go to hell for all eternity
 
I believe they are the victims of the Self-Help Book culture: they have tried all the quick-rich schemes they have been sold, and somehow, they didn't work.
So the only logical explanation must be that there are vast conspiracies against them, specifically, to prevent them from being wildly successful.
After all, if it worked for the guy in the TikTok video, why doesn't it work for me?
 
This sounds a lot like Sovcit nonsense to me:

Group puts up fence, claims ownership over 1,400 acres of Colorado forest, sparking outrage

The Free Land Holder group this week began hanging signs around the Four Corners region that stakes their claim to the land under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war between Mexico and the United States with Mexico ceding about half of its territory, including present day California, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico and most of Arizona and Colorado, to the United States of America.

“We are claiming we have the rights to that land through being the habitants and the free land holder that we can show through paperwork and treaty law,” said Patrick Leroy Pipkin, who described himself as a Native American and ambassador to the Free Land Holder Committee. Pipkin also claimed a connection to William Hyde, a Mormon pioneer in the Mancos Valley in the late 1800s.

Pipkin also said their claims are supported by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, deeds issued to the U.S. in 1927 in Montezuma County, the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and the Articles of Confederation.
Click to expand...
 
Puppycow said:
This sounds a lot like Sovcit nonsense to me...
Click to expand...

Quite likely, although perhaps a special brand. Land ownership, possession, and use are nuclear-fusion-hot topics out here in the American West, especially where Mormon settlement in the 1840s is concerned. You may have heard of some guy named Ammon Bundy.

The U.S. government claims ownership of vast swathes of western states. Approximately 60% of Utah is controlled by the federal government and administered out of an office in Colorado, with little if any attention paid to inhabitants or local elected officials. Naturally there is a lot of activity in objecting to and resisting this situation. Not all of it is strictly the "free man on the land" philosophy that SovCits advocate. Most of them have at least some foot in a claim made according to ordinary government, not some fanciful alternative to it.
 
I thought the grazing fees the Bundy clan/group were protesting were generally nominal, not really a boon to the budget. Could be wrong... never had a herd. [emoji14]
But snatching up the Four Corners... I can only hope this ends the same way. [emoji35]
 
Jim_MDP said:
I thought the grazing fees the Bundy clan/group were protesting were generally nominal, not really a boon to the budget. Could be wrong... never had a herd. [emoji14]
Click to expand...

It wasn't about money. It was about freedom and sovereignty, so that's why we can consider themselves sovereign citizens of a sort.
 
Jim_MDP said:
But snatching up the Four Corners... I can only hope this ends the same way. [emoji35]
Click to expand...

I think the appellation "Four Corners region" is misleading. The disputed land isn't anywhere near the Four Corners monument operated by the Navajo Nation on the actual state border intersection. Mancos is in the Durango (railroading) and Cortez (weed and cliff dwellings) area of Colorado. It doesn't appear to be inhabited or developed in any way.

Amusingly, when you drive from Four Corners to Shiprock, you go through Colorado twice. You get a series of "Welcome to <State>" signs along the highway.
 
Ah, thanks. Didn't follow the link and figured they just claimed a square mile surrounding the notable site.
And still... their days are about to get decidedly worse!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom