I’ve heard complaints that “people these days” (including kids) aren’t able to use reason, logic and just plain clear thinking to solve problems and discern truth. Celebrities like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, like Carl Sagan before him, are famous for making such complaints. So, I’ve decided to make my own modest contribution to the cause of lessening this problem, not by attacking specific dumb theories and beliefs, but by guiding the “misguided” to improve their aim at the bullseye of truth.
This quest began after reading online material posted by adherents of the “Flat Earth Theory.” Adherents have a checkered history, and contemporary “believers” fall into several categories, among them religious fundamentalists who wish to reconcile their literal interpretation of scriptures with some semblance of science, and others who have come to distrust All authorities who they’re convinced have agendas which include fooling the public to conceal secrets. Some of this group go to the extreme of believing that Everything that All authorities say are lies; what should be an obvious fallacy, pursued perhaps because of emotions of betrayal and anger.
My posts on “flat earth” websites and YouTube channels, I quickly realized from responses to these posts, were unlikely to convince any “true believers” of the errors of their ways. (As Mark Twain observed, “you can’t reason someone out of a belief that they weren’t reasoned into.”) I resolved to abandon such efforts as futile.
Recently, however, I encountered some flat-earth beliefs being promulgated by a smart person in the public eye who I greatly admired and respected. (I subsequently learned that, in response to negative feedback, he stopped speaking and writing publicly of this belief, without abandoning it.) “What’s going on here?” I wondered to myself. “How could this intelligent man go so far astray?” I set out to solve this puzzle, and I think I have found the key. It’s perhaps the primary argument of typical flat-earth proponents: the Earth looks flat. “Round-Earth theories” contradict the “common-sense” of our everyday perceptions, that we stand on a stationary earth, around which everything else moves. When a theory requires us to discard common perceptions, it seems (to “flat-earthers”) that it’s the theory which must yield, not our perceptions.
Apparently, many people of substantial intellect and sophistication are unwilling or unable to expand their conception of what’s real and true beyond the limitations of their perceptions. These limitations must not be allowed to become barriers to rational thought. Rather than a direct assault on the specific fallacies inherent in flat-earth theories, I decided to expose the limitations of our perceptions in general ways.
First, observe that while our “common senses tell us” that we perceive the world directly through our senses, this is provably not so. We do not really see with our eyes; they only project images on our retinas, which transmit signals to our brains, which decode them and form a mental construct of what we see. In the same manner, when we “touch” an object, we do not “feel” it with our fingers, we form a mental impression of the nature and locationof what we “touch,” through both visual interpretation and “mental mapping” of the spatial locations of our body parts relative to the object. (An excellent book by the late Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe, posits, among other things, that we perceive our own bodies in a holographic manner—which is how our finger can find our nose in the dark, and why amputees can sometimes feel itches in their missing limbs.)
Further, it cannot be said that we actually “touch” anything at all, in the sense of one solid object contacting another. On a submicroscopic scale, our nerve endings sense the proximity of “objects,” which are surrounded by electromagnetic fields which are repelled by corresponding electromagnetic fields outside our skin. Said another way, we neither touch nor see solid objects, because they do not exist as such; what we perceive as solid through our senses is, on a micro scale, almost entirely “empty space.”
An online search for “optical illusions” will quickly demonstrate how our visual apparatus can be completely deceived into seeing things that contradict our “common sense.” In a similar way, powerful microscopes or telescopes which permit us to see far beyond the limited scales of our unaided eyes reveal different aspects of reality that we could scarcely imagine without them. As an exercise in grasping the effects of scale, please view a video such as the one below, which allows us to travel in our imaginations to the very limits of the cosmos, both outwards to the edge of the observable universe and inwards to the smallest measurable distance (the “Planck length”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfSNxVqprvM
In this video, our virtual viewpoint moves “outward and upward” away from human scale, in powers of ten. As we zoom outward, our virtual speed also increases by powers of ten. (Morgan Freeman narrates the journey.) At the limit of the observable universe (a limit imposed by the speed of light, not the ultimate size of the universe itself), the journey reverses to reveal the smallest currently-conceived building blocks of all matter, Quarks. However, the journey inward actually continues to the smallest distance in quantum theory, the Planck length, far smaller than quarks.
(For a more-comprehensive view of the scale of the total universe, see the websites and videos of Nassim Haramein.)
You may also see, in the right-hand column of “related” YouTube videos, an occasional “flat earth” promo. I recommend you wait until you finish this article before exploring any of those.
Now that you have some perspective on the vast scale of objects in the universe (if, indeed, they can be considered “objects,” which poses a slightly different question), and seen that our senses don’t tell us what we usually think they do, let me show you a local example of some of the illusions we commonly think of as “real,” and some productive ways to view these illusions that, I hope, will give you a different view of “common sense” than you had before.
Stay with me as I guide you astray, then reveal my misdirections. As I live near the ocean, I aimed my iPhone (on the Ventnor boardwalk) South for the start of the video.* What do your eyes seem to tell you? How did you answer the questions I posed? (Incidentally, the way I phrased my first question, "Which side is darker, the side towards the ocean or the side towards the land?" is in the form of a sneaky misdirection known as "begging the question,"** wherein a question is phrased such that a foregone conclusion is embedded within it; the questioner hopes you will take that conclusion for granted.) In this case, the “foregone conclusion” I sneak in is: “One side IS darker than the other.”
With the second question, the deceptive conclusion is removed, and the answer (left or right) seems correct regardless of the direction faced by the observer, a logical impossibility. However, the phrasing is still deceptive. By saying "Which side IS darker?" I ask you to accept what your eyes tell you as something “real,” rather than merely observed. If ANYTHING you see is "real," how does the "dark side of the boardwalk" change sides depending on the direction in which you look?
The answer to my final question, "What's happening here?" should now be apparent. Neither side of the boardwalk IS darker at any time; it's only your perception of the boards which changes, without the boards themselves changing in any way.
Now, consider the skeptic who has learned the many times and ways our government officials have lied to us (deceiving us with false-flag operations to garner public support for offensive wars, for example). He's learned that our media and our schoolteachers have, knowingly or not, supported these lies, and that every major-media outlet is monitored and controlled by CIA operatives (at least in all matters relating to "national security"). Why not be skeptical that the moon landing was real, and that it might not even be possible to orbit the earth? Suppose all that footage from the moon was faked, shot in a studio by Stanley Kubrick?
(Note that it's also possible for both scenarios to be correct: could it not be that some of the moon footage WAS fake, shot in advance as a "plan B" if our brave Astronauts didn't succeed in landing on the moon and/or returning safely, but the mission WAS successful, so the footage wasn't needed.)
Imagine this skeptic observing a rocket launch. He expects to see the rocket rise straight up and disappear into space, but instead it gradually curves to horizontal flight, then appears to dive toward the ground! Without comprehending or taking into account scale or perspective, what his eyes tell him makes no sense to him--unless space travel really IS impossible, because the earth is flat, and he's being deceived again?
What he's seeing when it looks like the rocket is diving into the ground is, of course, the rocket disappearing "over the horizon." From the point of view of the person in the rocket, the "skeptic" disappears under their horizon, while the rocket’s passenger sees the earth "turning underneath him." An observer on the moon might see rocket man's capsule going into earth orbit. All three views are "correct," from those different points of view.
Our "reality" is that we are always being "deceived" by our senses, if we take our sensory input at face value. So, let's not, and get a little smarter.
Anyone care to solve the puzzle I posed in the video, that is, why some of those identical boards LOOK (not ARE) darker? Here's a clue. "Shadows."
Can a flat surface cast a shadow? Is the boardwalk flat? (Imagine a level placed on it.) Now, take a camera with a macro lens on it, lie on your belly and get very close to that boardwalk. (The resulting picture may look like a mud flat that's been attacked with a rake.) Now, is the boardwalk flat? It's a matter of scale. From an unaided humans-eye view, yes. From a baby mouse's perspective, no. Which view is "right," and which is "wrong?"
Is the earth "flat?" Depends. Are you a man or a mouse?
**In true Orwellian fashion, the phrase "begs the question" is now being used as synonymous with "raises the question." In 5 years, will anyone remember that the phrase once described a sly mask for semantic deceit.
*Here’s the video URL from my original Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/macaddictjay/videos/10210359172998475/
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