Just a thought experiment, let’s say the earth is flat, looks like many professionals would know, including

  • Pilots/ATC/sea captain

  • Land surveyor and civil engineers

  • Astronomers and Geologists, at least the one dealing with experimental data

  • Militaries, at least radar operator and artillery

Just these categories are already a lot of persons, I assume I miss a lot of others. So how many person does it make in total ? 10 % of the population ?

  • Deestan@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Add the entire population of Denmark. Country is dead flat yet you can’t see one city from another one. Nor can you see the mountains of neighboring countries.

  • Omnificer@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The guards that patrol the ice wall.

    Entirety of NASA. Entirety of NOAA. Meteorologists. Cartographers. Everyone who works on Google Earth. Every engineer who works on satellites, rockets, and planes. Physicists.

    However, I do think 10% is probably too high an estimate. While these are a lot of people in a lot of areas, they represent pretty small demographics each.

    • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      Wouldn’t you assume that their family would know and be in on it? I was gonna suggest it has to be more than 10 percent. Since it’s not a life or death conspiracy like the Manhattan project I would assume a lot of those people ‘in on it’ would tell spouses, best friends or even older kids. If you knew a huge secret like that would you want your close loved ones to be lied to and indoctrinated into a false truth?

      • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        If you’re in on the biggest conspiracy in the history of the world, you don’t tell anyone about it. There are CIA agents who live their entire lives without their spouses knowing they work for the CIA. How much more powerful must the round earth agency be than the CIA to maintain such a conspiracy for thousands of years? I don’t want to say illuminati, but it sounds an awful lot like the illuminati.

  • Conyak@lemmy.tf
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    11 months ago

    More than just people. Some form of greater intelligence has to be at work since anyone can run a simple experiment to prove it’s round.

    • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      The ending of the Netflix documentary where the flat earthers prove the earth is round is hysterical.

      • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        Is that the one where they use the lighted poles at night and a board with a hole in it to prove the earth is flat? In that one they seemed a bit baffled and said they’d need to do the experiment again. To their credit, when they ran it again with the same results, they said they’d need to reevaluate their beliefs.

        • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          during the credits the guy was making excuses for why it failed, did he come out later saying he was wrong?

          • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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            11 months ago

            In the one I saw, he was definitely contemplating his beliefs after the second failed test. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t justify and explain away the results later. It is very difficult for people to change core beliefs, even to the point of being painful for some people. In the case of this guy, idk what he eventually decided on, because the show didn’t show it.

            • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              It wasn’t the main guy but one of the guys on site doing the pole experiment. I recall him saying “that’s interesting” after confirming the test worked, proving the curvature. It sounded like he was questioning his beliefs, but during the credits he’s on a podcast or radio show making some bs up about how the test was wrong.

              • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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                11 months ago

                I must have shut it off before then. That’s too bad. I kind of wondered if he would later explain it away. What a dummy.

        • kogs@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Stealing this from OP, it’s called “Behind the Curve” and it is hilarious.

          They do an experiment with a navigation unit from an airliner and it consistently proves them wrong too.

    • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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      11 months ago

      That is unironically part of it. When people do experiments that show the earth is round they get told to pray and do it again. This suggests that their rationale is that the devil is tricking you into seeing bad results and if you pray hard enough you will eventually see five lights.

  • neidu@feddit.nl
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    11 months ago

    Anyone who lives near the sea an can see ships disappear behind the horizon.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    This is a bit extreme, but maintaining a conspiracy with lots of “insiders” isn’t impossible. Just think of how many people worked on the Manhattan project.

    First you compartmentalize, so that only a core few know the whole picture. Then you threaten everyone involved with serious jail time for informing. (This is why we know Bob Lazar is full of shit, where he telling the truth, he’d be in prison)

    It’s true that secrets can’t be kept forever, but they can be kept for a while.

    The flaw in flat earth is not the number of conspirators, but the purpose of the conspiracy. It all falls apart when we ask why the government wants to keep flat earth from the public.

    • cynar@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Manhattan leaked before they even started work.

      From memory, a sci-fi magazine seller figured it out, just based on address changes. He even figured out it was likely an attempt to make an atomic bomb. The USSR also had it completely compromised. The first soviet bomb was basically a direct copy of the American one.

      That was also with most/all the workers in 1 location. They also had a very good reason to maintain security (grunts on the ground, not just leadership).

      • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        Wasn’t the Manhattan project compromised from within because of communist sympathizers, or even outright communists working on the project?

      • TheActualDevil@sffa.community
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        11 months ago

        But if the flat earth goes on, what can be assumed to be, infinitely past the ice wall (since no one really gives an answer for what’s past there), think of how big maps would be! They would have to sell giant maps and make a fortune.

    • ashok36@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Flat earth is just a variation on the “It’s the Jews!” bullshit that’s existed forever. See Folding Ideas youtube video for details.

      • ours@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        When they gobble up one bullshit conspiracy, the next ones go down easy.

    • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      They’re protecting the turtles. If people like Bezos knew that it’s turtles all the way down, they’d certainly harvest the turtle shells to make fancy hair combs. That would spell the end of the earth.

    • homain@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      the government can’t afford to let the plebs know they live on a giant pizza. that would destabilize everything!

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Literally everyone with eyes and a functioning brain who has ever charted the stars, flown in a plane, or looked out to sea. I’d wagers that’s far more than 10%.

  • chaogomu@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    Since flat earth nonsense is just rebranded creationism, the only being who really needs to be part of the conspiracy is satan.

    Then anyone who tells you that the earth is round is either deceived by satan, or is a satan worshiper.

    This makes it super easy to dismiss anything that would hint at reality, like ships sailing over the horizon.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    GPS is in on the hoax, too. Think about how much they had to hide the fact that those satellites can’t “orbit” a flat disc…

      • astraeus@programming.dev
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        11 months ago

        The way the disc works the center is the South Pole and the North Pole is actually a huge ice wall, it’s all very logical and easily validated by scientific evidence obviously

        Just the other day I was able to demonstrate how gravity works by spinning a disc covered in toothpaste very fast, all the toothpaste stayed on the disc

  • MNByChoice@midwest.social
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    11 months ago

    I was going to add other groups that would have to be in on it, but it is only required that you are all not real.

    I am real. My family is real. But outside maybe 30 miles from my house, no one else needs to be real.

    Sure, I can and have driven farther, but the trackers alert the actors. This has the advantage of the Earth’s population can be just a few hundred thousand total.

    Why? Clearly, I am the last truly important person, for reasons that are not yet clear.

    So … 50,000 people are in on it at least. And they are… 40%+ of the Earth’s population.

    Edit: to finish the thought. OP’s 10% puts those in on it at 800 million people. My 50 thousand is a much smaller number.

    • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Your family isn’t real either. Neither is your house. This is all a product of your nascent consciousness.

  • s38b35M5@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    You’re forgetting that with the microchips in vaccines, they can control our thoughts, so most of the participants don’t need to be willing or aware. Cuts it down to just a few people in control of the 5G vaccine chip program.

    You’re welcome.

    • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      And the “few people in control” are members of which out-group…? All aboard to Q-land, everyone. Final stop, domestic terrorism.

  • denast@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    I’ve always wondered how the Soviet Union and the Cold War fit into the NASA conspiracy. Did Korolev receive paycheks from across the ocean to fake Gagarin’s spaceflight too?

  • Ryru Grr@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Mathematicians. On a sphere, you can make a triangle that consists of three 90 degree angles, adding up to 270. A flat triangle will require that all angles add up to 180, i.e. 60, 60, 60.

    Edit: I’m not a mathematician, and yet I know this. So this one could probably include anyone who has ever had a math teacher that covered spherical geometry.

    • meco03211@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I’m not sure that works though. For it to have all three angles at 90 degrees, wouldn’t it need to cover a full 1/8th of the planet? Flat earthers would at lest understand that much. They would just deny anyone had measured that accurately. After all, anyone could go up in a spaceship to see the true shape of the earth, but only bigger governments and a few shitty billionaires have the means to do so.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Anybody who has ever flown far enough Eastwards or Westwards and saw how the time of day changed either much faster or slower than the time their clock said it was.

    (Which can’t be mathematically explained for a flat Earth but is a pretty simple effect to explain with a round Earth)