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Comment by erulabs | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. And then in their own way, some more… stupid than others, they try to recreate their own science from observation. That they’re stuck with phenomenology is no surprise - that’s more or less how all human beings have seen the world before the 1600s. Just meaning, if you look around, the world appears flat! It’s a natural default, rather than a conspiracy theory.

So if all that’s true, then who are we fooling: the real issue is the lack of ability to educate. You can blame stupidity and give up but that’s not a path forward.

To me the strangest bit is the idea that scientists are the authorities? What!? I wish!

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I hate being pedantic, but before the 1600 anybody with some education knew already that the earth was round (see: Columbus, Magellan).

Funnily enough, the "flat earthers" of that time were the ones spreading the idea that the Earth was moving :D (see: Galileo)

Not just 1600 - it was fairly common knowledge since antiquity. In 300 BCE, we knew not only that the Earth is round, but also roughly its radius. Moon's distance and radius was estimated about 100 years later. Sun-Earth distance was also (incorrectly) estimated about the same time, but with enough precision to know it's much further and bigger than the Moon.

Columbus was being dissuaded from his voyage because people correctly calculated his supplies will run out way before he reaches Indies west-wards

Well sure but that's exactly my point - anybody with some education. It wasn't until around the 1600s, being generous (really the 1800s), that it even started to become common knowledge or taught in schools (or that the western world even had wide-spread education at all). The default, uneducated assumption is that the earth is flat and there must be water above the dome that is the sky, because it rains - this is what I meant by "phenomenology" - they're just describing the phenomena of the earth - which is after all a natural place for human beings to start out if not educated.

So the "earth is flat" is almost not a conspiracy, it's just a lack of education. "Someone is fooling us into thinking the earth is round" is the conspiracy part.

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