A glass dome in the sky? Really?

Quote from: jroa on July 12, 2014, 10:26:29 AM

Quote from: ausGeoff on July 12, 2014, 08:21:41 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on July 12, 2014, 05:42:45 AM

...something that you and your cronies are incapable of providing.

Uh... you do understand that my "cronies" number 6 million scientists, and 7 billion people across the planet don't you?

Than again maybe not.   

And your cronies?  Hmmm... 400 maybe?   

Once again, ausGeoff tries to impress everyone with an argumentum ad numerum/ ad populum/ ab auctoritate plea.  How sad.  Keep working on your debate skill, mate.  You will get there some day.

Once again, jroa tries to deflect the significance of the numbers I quote with fancy Latin phrases LOL.  You really need to be addressing why exactly those numbers are so divergent as far as the acceptance of unevidenced flat earth hypotheses and accredited round earth science.

Are you seriously claiming that a mere 400 individuals spread across the entire planet are the only people who know the "real" shape of earth?  And at the same time you can't even name half a dozen academically-accredited scientists who believe the earth is flat?

Your argument about an appeal to numbers and/or authority simply don't apply to the evidence at hand jroa;  you're struggling with the classic straw man as your defence.  Apparently, in a court of law if you were being tried for a crime, you'd use the defence of argumentum ad numerum to claim the jury's decision of guilty was inappropriate, and call for a retrial?  See how silly your argument becomes—even with a dozen people versus one person.

If, at some hypothetical level, there were 2 billion flat earthers versus 5 billion round earthers, your claim of an appeal to the numbers may well have some validity.  Otherwise, forget it.  Sorry.

There are well over 500 FE'ers in the current membership register.  And yes, when you have to argue with numbers, you are really scraping the bottom of the barrel.  You used to be better than this.  What happened to you, ausGeoff?  Send me a PM if you are having personal issues that you want to discuss. 

There are well over 500 FE'ers in the current membership register. 

Oh wow!  I was sooo wrong in my interpretations of the numbers of adherents involved!  Sorry for being so deliberately deviant jroa!

The fact (?) that there's apparently over 500 flat earthers—and not the mere 400 I quoted—obviously changes everything.  That makes it all the more obvious that those 7 billion round earthers must be wrong in actuality.  That additional 100 flat earthers really changes the balance of opinion entirely doesn't it?

And thanks for pointing that out jroa.  It's almost enough to make me accept the flat earth belief now.  (Sorry, that was a mean little joke wasn't it hehe?)

     

99 people could be wrong and 1 person could be right.  Numbers, in this case, do not mean anything.  You sling numbers around like they are definite proof. 

Quote from: JimmyTheCrab on July 11, 2014, 01:26:53 PM

Quote from: sceptimatic on July 11, 2014, 10:49:16 AM

First of all, we are all indoctrinated in some form...blah....blah...blah...

You seem to have a lot of time for page after page of inane gibber jabber, but strangely can't spare the 5 minutes it would take to make a diagram of how sunsets would work with your ice dome thing.

Why is that?

I was told I can't do one and that it would be pointless me trying, so I decided not to do one, as it would be a waste of time.
I'll do them for those that are interested.

No you won't.  You are all mouth and no trousers.

You can't do the diagram, as your fantasy "model" is so broken it can't even explain a sunset.  And you know it.

99 people could be wrong and 1 person could be right.  Numbers, in this case, do not mean anything.  You sling numbers around like they are definite proof.

Of course they possibly could.  I agree.  But it's unlikely if you know anything about statistical analysis and bell curves.  You're simply talking about the outliers which are normally discarded from any statistical analysis.  In your example, you might discard the top 5 respondents (red zone) and the bottom 5 respondents (green zone).  This then gives us 100% round earth believers.  Sorry.





At any rate, you example of 1 in 100 is meaningless anyway.  That equates to one percent of the sample group.  Your 500 flat earthers amount to a mere 0.00000714 per cent of the sample group.

Can I assume you know nothing about statistics from this?

one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world.

http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/a6/a62adc62400529788d11c1bb9acb77e8e13b3a24d5fe7312f373df8a350c3963.jpg

It's obvious from this that—like most Americans—you know virtually nothing about Australia.  You've even got the population density wrong LOL.

Why don't they teach you guys anything about the world that lies outside of the US borders?  How is it possible in the 21st century that your citizens are so ignorant of any other country?  Do you all leave grade school at age 12 or something?

And you do know that without Australia's three radio-telescope tracking stations (covering the southern hemisphere) the US could never have landed men on the moon don't you?  Or that the US couldn't have locked the ISS into its orbit?  Probably not.

But then they say ignorance is bliss, so I'm guessing you're a pretty happy little smurf?   

Quote from: jroa on July 14, 2014, 11:53:19 AM

99 people could be wrong and 1 person could be right.  Numbers, in this case, do not mean anything.  You sling numbers around like they are definite proof.

Of course they possibly could.  I agree.  But it's unlikely if you know anything about statistical analysis and bell curves.  You're simply talking about the outliers which are normally discarded from any statistical analysis.  In your example, you might discard the top 5 respondents (red zone) and the bottom 5 respondents (green zone).  This then gives us 100% round earth believers.  Sorry.

On the Gaussian bell curve the outliers are irrelevant since the bulk of data is in the middle (the average).
Outliers are unlikely and can be safely ignored (since the odds of finding one decrease exponentially as you move away from the average).

At any rate, you example of 1 in 100 is meaningless anyway.  That equates to one percent of the sample group.  Your 500 flat earthers amount to a mere 0.00000714 per cent of the sample group.

Can I assume you know nothing about statistics from this?

The truth is not the truth because of statistics.  In fact, statistics have nothing at all to do with truth. 

Virtually everyone used to think that blood letting and leaching would "balance the humors" and cure diseases.  Today, most people understand that this is not true.  According to you, it was the truth hundreds of years ago and time caused it to not be true today.  This is a retarded way of thinking.

Do you really not understand that the majority of people can be wrong?  Statistics is not about finding the truth; it is about finding the likelihood.  You should really learn the difference. 

The truth is not the truth because of statistics.  In fact, statistics have nothing at all to do with truth. 

Virtually everyone used to think that blood letting and leaching would "balance the humors" and cure diseases.  Today, most people understand that this is not true.  According to you, it was the truth hundreds of years ago and time caused it to not be true today.  This is a retarded way of thinking.

Do you really not understand that the majority of people can be wrong?  Statistics is not about finding the truth; it is about finding the likelihood.  You should really learn the difference.

I have to agree with jroa on this one, the statistics you're citing don't prove anything. Furthermore, there isn't any evidence to back them up. You're assuming that the 500 members all believe the Earth to be flat, and none of the rest out of 7 billion believe the Earth is flat. So to begin with this is a poor way to advance your argument, based on obviously faulty numbers.

Even if you say, and I think we can probably all agree on this, that the numbers are heavily in favour of the non-flat believers, it's still a poor argument. What you need to address is why the majority might believe it. In the case of blood letting, it was a practice that actually did work in some cases, and this theory of the humours seemed to make sense to people at the time since there wasn't a better explanation available. Today, "Round Earth Theory", i.e. modern physics basically, is the best available explanation based on the current data.

What happens as I see it, the best, most sensible theory tends to get accepted by the majority of people. Of course that doesn't make the theory "right" - no theory is ever "right", it's just that now we have more and better ways of measuring things, which should make our theories better at explaining and predicting phenomena.

So now since we have better data, we have better theories. These get adopted by the scientific community as, if not "right", then at least the best avenue in which to direct their time and money researching. Then these get communicated to the public at large. Since most people aren't scientists, they tend to accept these theories as "right" or "true", or at least they "believe".  In this sense then it's the correctness of the theories that inform the statistics.

If I'm right about the relationship between how good a theory is and how many people believe it, then ausGeoff probably does have a point in citing the statistics (if he can actually back up the numbers with real data), but of course what he can't do is say "because 89% of people believe it, then it's true". Which I don't think is what he's saying, although that's what jroa says he's saying. So jroa is probably making a bit of a straw man to knock down here.

EDIT: I GUESS THIS WILL NEED IT'S OWN THREAD ALSO SO HERE YOU GO
http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=61835.0

So jroa is probably making a bit of a straw man to knock down here.

Which he does on numerous occasions.  He often quotes science, mathematics, geophysics and astronomical theories that are hundreds of years old—as some sort of repudiation of 21st century scientific theories.

His fallacious logic says that because men of medicine first used leeches as a principal means of "curing" illness from around 2,000 years ago—and everybody accepted that it worked—that the 7 billion people today who accept the spherical earth could also be wrong.  Which is a ludicrous argument.

Many scientists were still proposing a flat earth as recently as 400 years ago, like the blood-letting of that era, but we now understand that both those theories were incorrect.

—Well, most of us do, that is.   

The dude on about Australia being 95% un populated, does know Aus is 95% dessert. You can drive for days and not see fuck all living things in the GFA or great fuck all. Imagine driving from Texas to the west coast and seeing a few trees and a shit load of flies.

The dude on about Australia being 95% un populated, does know Aus is 95% dessert. You can drive for days and not see fuck all living things in the GFA or great fuck all. Imagine driving from Texas to the west coast and seeing a few trees and a shit load of flies.

Texas to the west coast is nothing but desert.  I don't have to imagine it, I have driven it.