In Zetetic astronomy, the perception that Earth is flat leads to the deduction that it must actually be flat; the antimoon, NASA conspiracy and all the rest are just rationalizations for how that might work in practice.

In the end that is the core malfunction of the flat-earthers, and the modern populist rejection of expertise in general. It is a horrifically simplistic view of the world that ignores (partly out of ignorance, and partly out of motivated reasoning) to[ sic] real complexities of our civilisation. It is ultimately lazy, childish, and self-indulgent, resulting in a profound level of ignorance drowning in motivated reasoning. [85]

System Requirements

Why does the Flat Earth Society believe in direct observations of Mars' roundness but not Earth's? Who knows. But flat-Earthers tend to have complicated, often contradictory, explanations of how astronomy works in the absence of a round Earth. The Flat Earth Society pushes a view in which the sun rotates over the top of the disk of the Earth like a baby's mobile at a much closer distance than the 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away that it actually is. The other planets — which, in this theory, are also much smaller and closer than they are in reality — orbit the sun, the Flat Earth Society believes. 8. Another athlete asks questions

Shenton died in 1971. Charles K. Johnson, a correspondent from California, inherited part of Shenton's library from Shenton's wife; he incorporated and became president of the International Flat Earth Research Society of America and Covenant People's Church in California. Over the next three decades, under his leadership, the Flat Earth Society grew to a reported 3,500 members. [37] The flat-earther’s argument is framed in a context where you can’t set aside the possibility that there’s a pervading global conspiracy — albeit one which somehow intermittently leaves glaring errors which give them away. In that context, you don’t know the Earth is round. But in that context, nobody knows much at all and so this conclusion is simply unsurprising. Those details make the flat-earthers' theory so elaborately absurd it sounds like a joke, but many of its supporters genuinely consider it a more plausible model of astronomy than the one found in textbooks. In short, they aren't kidding.a b Ambrose, Graham (7 July 2017). "These Coloradans say Earth is flat. And gravity's a hoax. Now, they're being persecuted". The Denver Post . Retrieved 19 August 2017. Research by Carlos Diaz Ruiz and Tomas Nilsson on the arguments that flat Earthers wield, shows three factions, each one subscribing to its own set of beliefs. [89]

Martin, Sean (15 August 2017). " 'The sun hologram needs updating' This is how flat earthers explain the solar eclipse". Daily Express . Retrieved 19 August 2017. Philosophers are well acquainted with these skeptical contexts. For instance, you could be plugged into the Matrix and, if you were, then every belief you had would be false. By bringing your attention to that, I put us in a skeptical context within which we don’t know much of anything. Most people, though, ignore this possibility — most people assume themselves not to be in a skeptical context. Organisations sceptical of fringe beliefs have occasionally performed tests to demonstrate the local curvature of the Earth. One of these, conducted by members of the Independent Investigations Group, at the Salton Sea on 10 June 2018 was attended also by supporters of a flat Earth, and the encounter between the two groups was recorded by the National Geographic Explorer. This experiment successfully demonstrated the curvature of the Earth via the disappearance over distance of boat-based and shore-based targets. [91] [92] According to some flat Earthers, the Flat Earth Society is a government-controlled organization whose true purpose is to make ridiculous claims about flat Earth and therefore discredit the flat Earth movement. [43] Decline and relaunch Alexander, Julia (22 March 2019). "Logan Paul's satirical flat Earth doc gets to the heart of YouTube's recommendation issue". The Verge . Retrieved 1 July 2019.

Former leader of the Five Star Movement political party Beppe Grillo showed interest in the group, admitting to admiring their free speech spirit and to wanting to participate at the May 2019 conference. [67] However, Grillo did not appear. [65] Internet-era resurgence You mentioned YouTube a little bit earlier and you wrote a lot about how the YouTube algorithm is taking people down a Flat Earth rabbit hole. But what role do apps like TikTok have in providing a platform to this conspiracy theory?

BEPPE GRILLO: "VADO AL CONGRESSO DEI TERRAPIATTISTI" "[BEPPE GRILLO: "I'LL PARTICIPATE FLAT EARTH CONFERENCE"]. digitale.it (in Italian). 29 April 2019 . Retrieved 22 July 2019. Nguyen, Hoang (2 April 2018). "Most flat earthers consider themselves very religious". today.yougov.com. YouGov PLC . Retrieved 22 February 2020. more than half of Flat earthers (52%) consider themselves "very religious," So do you know whether the Earth is round? It turns out it depends on context. But in most regular contexts then, yes, you do. And that’s how to treat flat-earth arguments like this.Flat Earth conspiracists believe that the Earth is a flat plane rather than a spherical shape, but one conspiracy theorist accidentally debunked himself. In 1877, Hampden produced a book A New Manual of Biblical Cosmography. [16] Rowbotham also produced studies that purported to show that the effects of ships disappearing below the horizon could be explained by the laws of perspective in relation to the human eye. [17] In 1883, he founded Zetetic Societies in England and New York, to which he shipped a thousand copies of Zetetic Astronomy.