How YouTube Created 'Flat Earth' 

You bet! Thanks for making that video - wouldn't have finished this one without it.

It's a simple experiment you can do with a friend who lives a distance away from you over video call

Marco Creen Yes, he can. Can he present any proof you couldn’t claim is fake? No, just as I couldn’t prove you I’m human with writing you couldn’t claim is bot-written, captchas you couldn’t claim were solved by some Indian, pictures you couldn’t claim to be deep-faked, mentions in newspapers you couldn’t claim to be homonyms, videos with friends you couldn’t claim to be paid actors and a CGI model. Because when you become so skeptical that no proof is more valid than your beliefs, the truth becomes fundamentally irrelevant. Regarding his methods, he found a well, into which the sun shone perfectly in one midday of the year, so that you could see its bottom. But, in the same midday, the sun shone at an angle in a well elsewhere. Thus he measured that angle of the shadows by the second well in the same day the sun shone dead into the first one and calculated the angle between the two, and used their distance to calculate the circumference. Similar calculations have been made with multiple points across the world whose different angles are completely incompatible with any flat Earth model. You can do this by yourself. You can just call any of your friends who live far enough away and ask them to measure the angle of the shadows the sun produces at the same time, and (provided their measurements are accurate) you should get an estimate reasonably close to the actual circumference. If you care to try, I could provide you with acceptably accurate ways to take your measurements, the mathematical formulas and the explanations behind them, and people around the world to test this with (which you can avoid telling your measurements too, in case you’re fearing they’ll send you false ones to comply with your data).

@@noahcaucasus look at this stupidity in its most pure state untouched by intelligence a crystal of pure bullshit

@Marco Creen just search the alexandria library files he was a the chief librarian of the place

It actually wasn't deliberate, it's just a painting I made. Thanks!

Thanks! I made it :)

Kurtis Baute How long did it take u?

It was like 6 years ago, so I can't remember...

Cool

Thanks! We're all in this together. Actually, Climate Adam and I are working on a video at the moment :)

Even Kurtis said that the Religion = Flat Earth is correlation, not causation.

But there were no dislikes yet when you commented

@@EvilTaco you have a point

Wow very original comment haha good one

I'll look that up.

That series is one of the biggest gems of youtube

Honestly I would even though I know that earth is round

Do you see how that is harmful? Do you see how bullying people (or watching people bully them) is harmful? Aside from how it makes people feel, the response is that it makes them distance themselves even more from reality, and the conspiracy grows.

It's ellipsoidal

They're low hanging fruit next to the non cashing in by monetisation channels but lets not make any mention of those.

That in fact works out very well with flat-Earthers, right?

Wish I had a good update. Over the last few months I did a bunch of planning to film a climate documentary this summer... and its looking like I'm gonna have to start over since the pandemic will still probably be shutting things down. Am gonna go back to the drawing board

I've noticed youtube putting banners at the bottom of videos about COVID19, linking people to relevant and reliable sources of information (Such as your country's government info), It would be good to see something similar implemented for stuff such as this, climate change info, flat earth, conspiracies theories, etc.

I'm not saying RU-vid needs to remove all content that is non-factual. I'm saying that it shouldn't promote or recommend content that is extremely wrong or potentially dangerous.

Which is round...

@@skylark.kraken No, the earth is not even close to round, it is close to spherical. Round is a 2 dimensional shape.

@@dogphlap6749 It's slightly ellipsoidal

I put some example bible quotes up on the screen in this vid that could fairly be interpreted as it being flat. At the time the bible was written, many people still didn't know the earth was a sphere.

Yup, just forgot to put it in the video description (its there now). Thanks!

That's great. I hope you also understand that the bible was wrote in a very different time from now and that while most of its principals are still decent today, not everything in it should be strictly practiced. You'll be a better human for it!

If only RU-vid could predict the future when it actually mattered.

@@ScopeofScience Right! That would be amazing.

My point here is that I was sceptical (which would have been identified in the survey, had I taken part) but that isn't a bad thing and doesn't mean that I was ever a flat earther.

Kurtis would not approve. If you could publish (or find) a SINGLE, peer-reviewed, paper saying that the earth is flat, I would "convert".

markksargent ok, *explain how we can jump if apparently the earth is going upwards 35 feet per second*

markksargent How do I know it’s flat without a space agency?

Okay, it's not really that hard. I've done a lot of my own research on this channel: I actually went out and did an experiment (with my bike and two sticks), and discovered it was curved. I spent 36 hours watching a Foucault pendulum, and it acted as you would predict if the world were a sphere. I tested if the sun was distant or local, twice, and found evidence that it is indeed far away, as scientists claim. Mark, I know I'm not about to change your mind. Honestly, I sincerely doubt that there is anything that could change your mind on this - and that is a risky position to be in, because if you are indeed wrong, you will stay wrong forever. Something to ponder the next time you type 'long live flat earth'. All disagreements aside, I sincerely hope you're doing okay.

Wow, thoughts. Me: What would take its place?

I think this RU-vid video is a partial answer to that - RU-vid has a preference for misinformation, and educational videos perform rather poorly on the platform, especially those that are environmental in focus. So yeah, not expecting to go Trending any time soon.

Kurtis Baute thats the best answer ive ever gotten on a question haahh keep it up ( you were in my youtube recommended tho) ( watched tom scott, think thats why)

@@ScopeofScience piggybacking off of this question; why have you removed ads from your videos? Was that RU-vid as well?

Nah, that was me - I removed the ads because I don't want my videos to help sell things that people don't need that will end up as trash that the planet can't handle.

@@ScopeofScience Thats really wholesome of you, a respectful decision. Do you have a Patreon or any other indirect medium through which these videos can actually financially benefit you?

I'm not religious but it sounds like you're having a crisis of faith. Why does the earth need to be flat for God to exist? It's only very recently that true biblical literalism has been a thing. Early Church Fathers and Christians seemed to agree that large parts of the Bible were allegorical much like the Jewish Torah that it grew from. I don't share your faith but flat earth isn't a good reason to keep or lose it. If God exists then it created you with a brain to think for yourself and the evidence is clear that the Earth isn't flat.

This is exactly the type of content that I think is harmful. The attitude of: lets make fun of flat earthers "because they're stupid" makes the situation worse.

@@ScopeofScience really? Have you watched the video at all, it never even calls flat earthers stupid, it goes over many claims and points out how they are wrong in a comedic fashion. So are you saying any critique of flat earthers is by virtue wrong to do or was it just you not watching Hbombs video and making incorrect assumptions that made it sound like that?

He does though (link to time below). I get that it's tongue and cheek, but in general the whole thing has a "I'm smarter than these people are vibe" sarcastic vibe. Giving something a pass because its 'comedy', thats not something I do. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2gFsOoKAHZg.html

@@ScopeofScience that was literally a joke he says in the next ten seconds that it was a joke. 45 minutes and the only time he says it is half way through after making many points against flat earthers, and even then he says they are not stupid and what he said was a joke. His entire opening was him being self deprecating and you think he was saying he was smarter than everyone else... When did I give it a pass because it was comedy?

It does correct for that. Here's a graph for the searches just for "Earth", and *that* is flat... like, the graph is flat: trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all_2008&geo=US&gprop=youtube&q=earth

:~~~~0)))))))))))

Donut shaped is called a "Torus", if you wanna sound smart when talking to people haha.

This makes me think there is a huge missed opportunity for non-alt-right political community building on RU-vid.

You mean... except for the film photos from every Apollo mission (like this famous one: www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1249.html ) , and from countless photos taken from the ISS, and from many distant space probes?

No

Roger C it’s not just a “best guess” it’s proven over centuries that the earth is round

ok