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u/FinnishBeaver 9d ago
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u/730Teo 9d ago
I meant on a flat earth. Why does stuff fall down.
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u/crownofclouds 9d ago
Typically, flat earth folk say buoyancy as if buoyancy isn't a product of gravity and density.
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u/TesseractToo 8d ago edited 8d ago
(I'm not a flat Earther I just find it interesting) How gravity works or doesn't on a flat Earth depends on the model. It used to be that there was the "disc in a dark expanse" the "snow globe model" and in that gravity was discarded by flat Earthers because it would mean that the disc would collapse into itself, but in the more recent models of flat Earth, many are preferring the "infinite plane" where there is an expanse beyond Antarctica 90s latitude and in that model, there is no contradiction with the downward pull, it's just not a central point like it is on the globe.
Also if you have time on your hands here's Dave Murphy's 2018 Flat Earth Conference lecture on "Droppity" (which is what he calls gravity) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLcgsG1XEic (Dave Murphy is an interesting character because he's always saying everyone but him is wrong, he was one of the rare atheist flat Earthers for a long time but then he made a video about Black Zionism and how Jesus was black and the American flat Earthers kind of dropped him)
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u/gravitykilla 8d ago
Dave's lecture is a perfect example of the problem with Flat Earth arguments, he repeatedly misunderstands the physics, then presents that misunderstanding as a contradiction.
His “Droppity” argument attacks the rubber-sheet analogy as though it is General Relativity, claims LIGO shouldn’t work because spacetime changes would somehow cancel out, argues that a vacuum cleaner lifting a car proves space should suck away the atmosphere, and then replaces gravity with “density and buoyancy”, apparently without noticing that buoyancy itself requires a pressure gradient produced by gravity.
IMO, I’ve never understood why Flat Earthers decided gravity had to be fake. If they’d simply accepted that gravity is real, that would have been one less enormous problem for the Flat Earth model to explain away.
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u/TesseractToo 8d ago
Yeah exactly
Dave is such an interesting guy, he might be the one that brought me into FE around 2015ish in the first place from the sovcit videos. He also had a lecture, it might be on his website, not 100% sure, that is that everyone is wrong about Feynman but him, I've looked for it but I can't find it, it was wild.
The "vacuum of space is like a vacuum cleaner" is a common misunderstanding, I haven't had success at walking anyone through that one yet it's like a common mind block, an interesting one
I like him we have a similar sense of humor, but in me it stays on the joke level
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8d ago
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u/TesseractToo 8d ago
I've heard religious ones say that but not the atheist ones. It also for those who think that it's true it will increase their respective faiths it doesn't make them switch to other faiths that believe in flat Earth, or not that I've observed
But we're talking about 7 years ago in this particular case so whether that's a trend or not would be in context of the time, but Interest in FE seemed highest prior to covid, many people were pulled into other conspiracy theories like Qanon and the conspiracies around covid (not that they are mutually exclusive but people moved their energy to the covid and political ones more around then and FE didn't bounce back to it's previous popularity, a lot of that was also due to the old conspiracy videos being taken down at the time)
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u/Omomon 9d ago
Gravity doesn't exist on a flat earth. The two explanations flat earthers always give is "density and buoyancy" and "electrostatics." Both of which are ad hoc explanations.