Sythe Users: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things?? Lets Find Out! #3

If i close my eyes, the problem goes away. Case closed.

 

no u cant

 

You can't alter the intellect of your fictional characters to suit your purpose, there's no point in arguing in that case because it's not real-world logic, it's sythe-is-the-admin-and-a-college-graduate-logic.

For example, you discount the method Eratosthenes used to accurately measure the Earth's circumference because you choose to have your fictional characters believe the big ball of death that's impossibly far and impossibly hot be a regular old spot light a few meters off of a flat surface.

Not to mention, by the time Eratosthenes provided this evidence that the Earth is round rather than flat, the time was between 300 and 100BC, and they knew full well that the sun wasn't a lamp of some sort near the surface of the earth.

Additionally, there was no such thing as a spot light back then. Their main source of artificial light was torches, and flames can't produce a steady or focused enough light source to match the sun.

Yes, maybe with fairly-land scenarios, real world logic can ignore a perfectly valid observation, but then the point isn't worth arguing because you'll just make up whatever little nuance or rule as you go until we telepathically pick your brains for the exact answer you yourself would've provided.


In short, gtfo

 

When I said the words "impossibly..." it was actually a joke about your fictional character's level of ignorance, I would have figured you would have picked up on the tone when I also said "big ball of death", but the humor was apparently lost so I digress.

I didn't say the inability to make spot lights invalidated your argument. What I'm saying is that you expect me to explain every aspect of my argument leading up to my final argument, and yet you're not held to the same standards, such as explaining to me why your characters are ignorant to astronomy facts to which they were historically privy to in the timeframe that I suggested in my last message. My point isn't that your argument is invalid, but that you're attempting to assert your logic as the supreme logic to this scenario without support of your own, and I believe this is fallacious. It's an appeal to authority, and more egregiously, you're asserting yourself as the authority. You're basing your dismissal of my facts on an alternative reality which you've made up on the spot, where somehow it WASN'T known at the time of this hypothesis that the sun isn't simply a spotlight. Historically, if someone were to hypothesize the earth is flat, and given what they should already know of astronomy, their hypothesis would fail in experimentation because the sun is NOT a spotlight, and the shadows would NOT support evidence of a flat plain.


I am glad that you will say your answer isn't the only one. I truly believed that you were dismissing all answers as wrong if they weren't your own answer.

 

Refresh, I've made some changes

 

free jim

 

Support

 

bus369

that copy paste game is so weak lmaooo

 

Thanks to all the valleys, mountains, etc., the earth is not in fact round. Thus, Jim is doomed.

 

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I take a look at my life and realize there's nothin' left

 

I know that's how logic works, and I'm saying it's one-sided in this argument. You're not explaining reasoning for why these characters are so ignorant other than "alternative universe, sun might be a spot light". Being historically accurate, I have the advantage of prima facie, and the burden shifts to you to prove why that which has already been proven isn't conclusive and must be reproven to support my claim

I understand what you're saying about my point of view being indoctrinated, you're right there. I'm going off general knowledge from school as taught by someone who was taught by someone who learned it from a book that someone wrote, all of whom weren't alive during the suggested timeframe. Plus the thesis studies I've searched where several sources have shown that people of that age SHOULD known commonly the few facts about the sun which I've presented as facts myself. This is true, but I don't think it's entirely inaccurate. You can assume all is naught and nothing we ever believed is reliable, so I should also be able to appropriately assume history was recorded accurately, and these people were educated on the properties of astronomy in these areas which affect the outcome of your character's situation, primarily that the sun has distance and is not a spot light, and can resolutely predict the curvature of earth.


What I'm arguing is that the burden of proof shouldn't be on me to reprove what we understand of history, but for you to prove why we may be mistaken about what people of that age did already understand correctly about the sun as it pertains to this situation. Common knowledge in rhetoric must be proven false if claimed to be false, as I've always learned in my debate classes. I assert the claim that it's common knowledge and widely accepted that astronomy was advanced enough for people of the suggested age to know those facts about the sun which I've stated earlier, validating my experiement

 

But Jim is so dumb he has yet to know that the Sun is not a spotlight. Why do we get to assume he knows about the "fictional forces produced by a rotating spherical body?"

Like MohtasaUnique was saying, you seem to give yourself the power to dictate this world to fit your answer while with that same power denying that the evidence for others argument is sufficient.

You say the burden of proof is on the 2nd party making the opposing claim which in this case is that the world is round. But by answering this question, as you have, you put yourself in the 2nd party and have to play by the same rules. So you can no longer use your power as the "God" of the world who gets to say what Jim knows, doesn't know, can do, and can't do.

So now prove how Jim knows about "fictional forces produced by a rotating spherical body" and any other assumptions your answer uses to base its claim.

How does he know the Earth is rotating? Where's the proof of that?
How does he know the effects of North and South on a pendulum? Proof?
Etc

The way you use your power, continually adding parameters and rules, makes this a potentially impossible question to answer. Because we aren't answering the question. We are playing your game in which only you are allowed to be right.

You need to pose the question in its entirety and with all of its rules in the first post of the thread. And then your answer must also conform to those rules. Also in your answer you got to use information that we didn't know was available. The fact that they have access to both hemispheres. Yes we could have taken the liberty of guessing, but you as the "God" could say that Jim's country is only in the north or south after we made a legitimate argument. So all information resources also need to be made available at the start. Otherwise the whole thing is unfair and you get to make your remarks about how remarkably stupid we are.

But it is the Spam Forum, so it's not like it matters. No productive debate/argument/conversation ever took place in Spam Forum.

 

I'm not shifting burden of proof with respect to a textbook or because someone said so, there's primary sources to prove the level of education people of the age had about astronomy. These aren't appeals to authority, these are reasonable conclusions I've gathered and can be supported with original documents from those of that time. Again, my point isn't proving myself from the viewpoint of a person of that time. My point is proving they had their own beliefs that are accurate enough to the truth that it's more reasonable to assume your character's opposition is aware that the sun is in fact a star, and its known properties can in fact prove surface curvature, as opposed to hypothesizing that one could possibly believe the sun was an electrical light, bright enough to illuminate the entire country, located a few meters off the ground.

The alternative hypothesis is discredited with present proof that the sun is not a spot light.

 

I'm not stating whether the astronomers of the time are correct based on their publishings, which as you say would be a fallacy. I'm saying that they are correct, as proved many times over in the thousands of years since, and that since it was the knowledge of their time, there should be no problem convincing your character's opposition that the sun's shadows are a conclusive observation for curvature.

I've repeated this multiple times. Your characters SHOULD be privy to enough astronomy to know the sun isn't a spot light, so there's no point in arguing further because you are intent on maintaining that your alternative universe unreasonably believes the sun is a spot light. If that's the case then you win, and your earth is flat, and the sun is a spot light

 

You never said they weren't a western world, you said they were equitorial, and on top of that, many astronomers of the time weren't western either.


Again, you're altering your reality to suit the argument in your favor