“Why can’t I feel Earth rotate?” the perplexed asks.
“Who are you, a young Einstein asking what it would be like to be in freefall?” I ask.
“No, I’m serious. If I open a textbook, I see that the planet is supposed to be turning at about 1,000 mph at the Equator, less at about 40 degrees north latitude because the circumference for the turn is smaller. So, if I’m turning, why can’t I feel it? Obviously, hurricanes seem to feel it because they rotate under its influence according to the texts. I can see that. I can understand rationally that I’m moving, but I just can’t feel it.”
“Scenario: Perfectly smooth highway, luxury car, steady speed. Feel anything? You don’t do you? There’s no jerky motion in Earth’s turning. No way to feel any acceleration, and it is acceleration that makes you aware of movement. A roller coaster without acceleration is a Barcalounger in front of a TV. I think I would be more concerned if you said you could feel Earth’s turning. Even when it experiences a shift in speed because of its position at perihelion or aphelion, you don’t feel the motion—it is a very subtle change, a very gradual change as far as you are concerned.
“Where’s this coming from?”
“Well, I looked online and saw a YouTube video about a flat Earth, and I saw some similar videos about other scientific subjects. It’s all so confusing. How do I know what to believe? Especially when I know that some people in government, industry, and science have perpetrated hoaxes. Maybe the government is just trying to cover up the fact of a flat, stationary Earth just the way it is covering up those alien crash sites and microwave weather weapons. Lots of people believe that. They can't all be wrong, can they?" the perplexed poses.
“Ah! Conspiracies. You’ve been in a plane, right?”
“Yes.”
“Ever sat at a window seat and looked out?”
“Yes.”
“Haven’t you noticed a curved horizon, an arc in the distance indicative of a sphere-like structure?”
“Well, that brings me to another question. Why can’t I just hover in a helicopter in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, until Reno slips under me?”
“What’s the helicopter in?” I ask, knowing this conversation is going to jump from topic to topic.
“Huh?”
“Isn’t the helicopter in the atmosphere that Earth’s gravity holds? I know you know that the weather means the atmosphere moves, but in general it’s a motion in an atmosphere that moves with the planet. The whole kit and caboodle is moving. The helicopter is moving with the system. You want to travel from Reno to Slippery Rock? You’re going to have to move in a moving system, a bit like walking from the back of the train to the front and changing your position relative to the train that is changing its position relative to the ground. Reno is the back of the train; Slippery Rock is the front. They maintain their fixed distance from each other regardless of Earth’s turning.”
“Still, I bet the government is holding stuff back.”
“For what purpose?”
“That’s just it. We don’t know what they are holding back or why they are holding it back. I’ll bet they cause earthquakes with microwaves, and we wouldn’t even know. Hurricanes, too.”
“And ‘their’ purpose would be…? You know, the government is made up of people just like you. How good are you at keeping a secret? And what about the people that make up other governments, governments that are adversarial to yours? Think those people wouldn’t want to reveal whatever they could reveal? Or is this conspiracy so wide and deep that everyone who participates in government and science has decided that for whatever purpose they should keep some information from you? Don’t you think you’re better off just doing a little research to see that, for example, Earth revolves around the sun, rotates on its axis, and is an oblate spheroid whose gravitational pull differs according to its local mass and Newton’s laws?
“It seems that no amount of reasoning can convince you that Earth is a spinning ball and that the laws of Nature can’t be violated by government officials trying to withhold information from you. YOU! Specifically, you. Why? I don’t know. Did someone determine at your birth that the best course of action was to keep you in the dark by hiding aliens and covering up the planet’s flatness? Was that someone part of a select few who in each generation become guardians of the truth? And how was that someone chosen? How was the Keeper of the Secrets chosen? How could anyone know to trust the Keeper?”
“But what about all those fake moon landings?”
“I give up.”*
*Food for thought: Goodman, Noah D., et al. Intuitive Theories of Mind: A Rational Approach to False Belief. The authors write,
In everyday life we often attribute unobservable mental states to one another, and use them to predict and explain each others’ actions. Indeed, reasoning about other people’s mental states, such as beliefs, desires, and emotions, is one of our main preoccupations. These abilities have been called theory of mind (Premack and Woodruff, 1978); theory of mind has become one of the most well-studied, and contentious, areas in modern psychology. In particular, much research has focused on the phe- nomenon of false belief: the ability to infer that others hold beliefs which differ from the (perceived) state of the world.
Online at http://web.mit.edu/cocosci/Papers/pos785-goodman.pdf
See also Wimmer, H. and Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition , 13(1): 103-128.
“Who are you, a young Einstein asking what it would be like to be in freefall?” I ask.
“No, I’m serious. If I open a textbook, I see that the planet is supposed to be turning at about 1,000 mph at the Equator, less at about 40 degrees north latitude because the circumference for the turn is smaller. So, if I’m turning, why can’t I feel it? Obviously, hurricanes seem to feel it because they rotate under its influence according to the texts. I can see that. I can understand rationally that I’m moving, but I just can’t feel it.”
“Scenario: Perfectly smooth highway, luxury car, steady speed. Feel anything? You don’t do you? There’s no jerky motion in Earth’s turning. No way to feel any acceleration, and it is acceleration that makes you aware of movement. A roller coaster without acceleration is a Barcalounger in front of a TV. I think I would be more concerned if you said you could feel Earth’s turning. Even when it experiences a shift in speed because of its position at perihelion or aphelion, you don’t feel the motion—it is a very subtle change, a very gradual change as far as you are concerned.
“Where’s this coming from?”
“Well, I looked online and saw a YouTube video about a flat Earth, and I saw some similar videos about other scientific subjects. It’s all so confusing. How do I know what to believe? Especially when I know that some people in government, industry, and science have perpetrated hoaxes. Maybe the government is just trying to cover up the fact of a flat, stationary Earth just the way it is covering up those alien crash sites and microwave weather weapons. Lots of people believe that. They can't all be wrong, can they?" the perplexed poses.
“Ah! Conspiracies. You’ve been in a plane, right?”
“Yes.”
“Ever sat at a window seat and looked out?”
“Yes.”
“Haven’t you noticed a curved horizon, an arc in the distance indicative of a sphere-like structure?”
“Well, that brings me to another question. Why can’t I just hover in a helicopter in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, until Reno slips under me?”
“What’s the helicopter in?” I ask, knowing this conversation is going to jump from topic to topic.
“Huh?”
“Isn’t the helicopter in the atmosphere that Earth’s gravity holds? I know you know that the weather means the atmosphere moves, but in general it’s a motion in an atmosphere that moves with the planet. The whole kit and caboodle is moving. The helicopter is moving with the system. You want to travel from Reno to Slippery Rock? You’re going to have to move in a moving system, a bit like walking from the back of the train to the front and changing your position relative to the train that is changing its position relative to the ground. Reno is the back of the train; Slippery Rock is the front. They maintain their fixed distance from each other regardless of Earth’s turning.”
“Still, I bet the government is holding stuff back.”
“For what purpose?”
“That’s just it. We don’t know what they are holding back or why they are holding it back. I’ll bet they cause earthquakes with microwaves, and we wouldn’t even know. Hurricanes, too.”
“And ‘their’ purpose would be…? You know, the government is made up of people just like you. How good are you at keeping a secret? And what about the people that make up other governments, governments that are adversarial to yours? Think those people wouldn’t want to reveal whatever they could reveal? Or is this conspiracy so wide and deep that everyone who participates in government and science has decided that for whatever purpose they should keep some information from you? Don’t you think you’re better off just doing a little research to see that, for example, Earth revolves around the sun, rotates on its axis, and is an oblate spheroid whose gravitational pull differs according to its local mass and Newton’s laws?
“It seems that no amount of reasoning can convince you that Earth is a spinning ball and that the laws of Nature can’t be violated by government officials trying to withhold information from you. YOU! Specifically, you. Why? I don’t know. Did someone determine at your birth that the best course of action was to keep you in the dark by hiding aliens and covering up the planet’s flatness? Was that someone part of a select few who in each generation become guardians of the truth? And how was that someone chosen? How was the Keeper of the Secrets chosen? How could anyone know to trust the Keeper?”
“But what about all those fake moon landings?”
“I give up.”*
*Food for thought: Goodman, Noah D., et al. Intuitive Theories of Mind: A Rational Approach to False Belief. The authors write,
In everyday life we often attribute unobservable mental states to one another, and use them to predict and explain each others’ actions. Indeed, reasoning about other people’s mental states, such as beliefs, desires, and emotions, is one of our main preoccupations. These abilities have been called theory of mind (Premack and Woodruff, 1978); theory of mind has become one of the most well-studied, and contentious, areas in modern psychology. In particular, much research has focused on the phe- nomenon of false belief: the ability to infer that others hold beliefs which differ from the (perceived) state of the world.
Online at http://web.mit.edu/cocosci/Papers/pos785-goodman.pdf
See also Wimmer, H. and Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition , 13(1): 103-128.
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