Is the earth flat and not a globe? There are a small but growing number of people that believe that the Earth is not a ball (technically an oblate spheroid, apparently). ‘Flat earthers’ argue that we live on a flat disc with the north pole in the centre and Antarctica around the edge.
This post is not going to defend or debunk this view. Rather, I will attempt to understand how the view is developed and maintained by those who hold it. I will argue that debating the scientific details alone is fruitless and suggest ways to approach flat earthers.
I will base my discussion on a presentation by Dave Murphy, aka Allegedly Dave. He is not an ‘official’ spokesperson for the position, but has a relatively high profile. A useful summary of a number of the mostly non-technical arguments can be seen here from an appearance Murphy made on a television talk show. The first Flat Earth International Conference was held in 2017, some examples of which can be seen here.
How Not to Argue with a Flat Earther
At the outset, it is important to address the most common negative comment offered by the YouTube audience: abuse. People who believe the earth is flat must be idiots, they must have a mental illness or are religious nuts. Close inspection reveals their arguments to be detailed and well developed. The examples used are modern and current and the explanations are finely tuned. While some hold the belief for religious reasons, it does not follow that they are religious nuts. They are not dumb or stupid.
This criticism is not actually an argument against the position, but rather the informal fallacy, ad hominem. It is an attack on the individual, avoiding engaging with the actual arguments by dismissing the individual. They may take a sophisticated form, but remain a personal attack and not an argument against the position. Besides, would anyone imagine that this would be effective? Of course not. I believe it actually has the reverse effect and entrenches the individual in their beliefs, reinforcing elements of their presuppositions.
How Not to Argue with a Flat Earther
At the outset, it is important to address the most common negative comment offered by the YouTube audience: abuse. People who believe the earth is flat must be idiots, they must have a mental illness or are religious nuts. Their arguments of flat-earthers are detailed and well developed. The examples used are modern and current and the explanations are finely tuned. While some hold the belief for religious reasons, it does not follow that they are religious nuts. They are not dumb or stupid.
This criticism is not actually an argument against the position, but rather the informal fallacy, ad hominem. It is an attack on the individual, avoiding engaging with the actual arguments by dismissing the individual. They may take a sophisticated form, but remain a personal attack and not an argument against the position. Besides, would anyone imagine that this would be effective? Of course not. I believe it actually has the reverse effect and entrenches the individual in their beliefs, reinforcing elements of their presuppositions.
The Role of Facts and Evidence
The second element is how to approach the facts and evidence. Facts in and of themselves tell us little about the world. It is the theories and frameworks we put them in that provide context and give facts explanatory power. This is no less true in the flat/glove debate. Facts come in two forms, evidential and experiential. Experiential facts go deeper and will be treated as the third element of the approach.
Evidential facts consist of what we might call individual facts such as observations, measurements and things that are said to be or not be the case in the world. The first part of Murphy’s discussion has many of these: what should be the case if the earth was a globe, but he argues is not the case.
There are certainly things here that would appear to be inaccurate or are partially acknowledged but minimised (a phenomenon not unique to this debate). For example, Murphy argues ‘we know’ that GPS does not work in the Southern Hemisphere and that there are no direct flights between points in the South. The first would be possible to demonstrate in real time by streaming a GPS signal. I refuted the second claim by flying direct to Johannesburg from Perth on 29 July, 2004.
Murphy stops just short of calling people who make these claims liars. It is possible that these are a form of zombie facts, introduced into the debate in the past, now shown to be ‘dead’ (inaccurate) but persist nonetheless.
“We Should Trust Our Senses” – The Role of Experience
The third element is that many flat earth arguments are experiential, grounded in lived experience. Arguments begin with what we see in the world with our own eyes and draw conclusions from this starting point.
We can’t see a curvature; we cannot feel the earth spinning; if we jump up, we do not land some distance from our starting point; we can see things in the distance that apparently should be below the horizon. Murphy notes at one point that we have experience and scientists will offer calculations and theories to explain away our experience.
I suggest that counter arguments based on genuine lived experience that presents a contrary perspective may be useful. I say genuine meaning from your own actual experience. This is especially true for those of us that live in the southern hemisphere and have made trips thought to be impossible. Another strategy might involve optical illusions where there are clear and agreed examples where perception misleads us. Are there smaller parallels of the larger phenomena?
Underlying Thinking Processes
Possibly what can be most difficult to understand and negotiate are the underlying beliefs about how the world operates. These beliefs provide key assumptions central to the maintenance of the beliefs.
A view frequently heard within the community is that they have ‘awoken,’ they are no longer asleep, they have taken the ‘red pill.’ The phrase ‘taking the red pill’ refers to a scene from ‘The Matrix’ where Morpheus offers Neo a choice between a blue pill and a red pill. Taking the red pill is an offer of ‘the truth’ and a realisation of how the world really is. For flat earthers, the rest of the world – those that do not hold the flat earth position – are blind and sleeping peacefully. Taking the red pill is not exclusive to flat earthers, but common to many views that would not be considered to be in the main stream.
One of the key assumptions is that ‘we are being lied to.’ It is not clear which comes first, the lie or the subject of the lie, but they are certainly self-reinforcing. There are elites, the powerful, the Illuminati, the government, Freemasons, a few in corporations, those who are in control. For flat earthers, NASA are the ones who maintain the ‘lie’ because they make a lot of money, they represent the elites. They are also lying about the Moon landing, UFOs and the various Mars explorations.
An interesting shift occurs. Up to this point, the emphasis has been on the experiential nature of the ‘facts;’ what we see, hear, what we would expect to happen or not happen if the earth was actually a globe. We find various religious interpretations, symbolism, and understandings of what is ‘really’ going on. These interpretive contrivances were ruled out of court in discussions about evidences, it is only the observed facts that are allowed. An ‘eating your cake’ dilemma.
The Consistency Principle
I am going to offer two strategies for discussions. The first is what I will call the consistency principle and the second is a version of Ockham’s Razor.
The consistency principle states that the same evidential and interpretive rules apply in all phases of a discussion. Essentially, interpret all data in the same way and with the same tools. A common flat earth example is when a particular object is visible at a distance beyond what the calculations say it should be. The ‘glober’ will offer an explanation as to why this is the case. The explanation is frequently rejected as going beyond the observations. Consistency requires some flat earth interpretation to be discounted. For example, lines drawn over a map indicating a pentagram formed by these roads or the Eye of Horus in this city plan. Were they actually placed there? The look like roads and a park; the interpretation goes beyond the observed evidence.
I think Ockham’s Razor is more often used as a club rather than an intellectual principle. However, a mild version would be useful here. The principle is frequently summarised along the lines of not multiplying causes beyond necessity. It argues that we should start with the minimum causal explanations and only add them where essential to account for phenomena. The classical understanding of tolerance requires fairness and equity. When Party A’s intellectual contrivance is ruled out, Party B can expect its intellectual contrivances to be ruled out.
Conclusion
This post is not about whether the Earth is flat, a globe or like a two-sided record. Rather, it is some suggestions on how to approach a topic like this with civil discourse. It does not preclude fiery debates that are on topic but off individuals; abuse is never fruitful. Facts and assumptions are important as are the interpretive frameworks people adopt. Fair argument means rules and criteria are consistently applied to all involved.
An equitable, fair but potentially still intense debate is much more likely to produce interesting conclusions.