Refuting flat earthers: where's your map?

If I had to debate flat earthers, which thankfully I do not, I wouldn't try to "reason" with them. Instead, I would bring in several maps using different kinds of projections and ask these questions:

1. Where's your map?
2. If they are the same as my maps, what happens at the "edges" of my maps?
3. If your flat map is finite, what happens at the edges?
4. If your flat map is infinite, where is the boundary between the known and unknown worlds?

These questions would form the basis of my engagement. Unless flat earthers provide answers to all these questions they aren't actually saying anything at all.

Discussion

The first question disposes of the "moving goal posts" problem. The second refutes attempts to use "real" maps. The last two questions make it impossible for flat earthers to ignore the boundaries that must exist in a flat map.

This strategy avoids getting bogged down in what I call "bozo epistemology". Instead of attempting to prove that facts are facts (which is impossible!), we merely insist that flat earthers be clear about what they would have us believe.

It would also be reasonable to take a globe, and demand that flat earthers explain where it is in error. The globe represents distances, directions and areas. It is up to flat earthers to "falsify" the globe.

Summary

The question, "where's your map, and what does it mean?", poses an impossible problem for flat earthers.

The "Where's your map" challenge might apply to other bogus ideas and the crackpots and liars who espouse them. Alas, it's much easier to assert that the earth is flat than it is to refute it. In other words, the ideas presented here have little or no practical value.

Edward

Response to George Will, part 2

Let's step back and look at the overall effect of Will's opinion piece.

Does any knowledgeable historian seriously doubt the following facts?

1. That slavery existed in the American colonies from 1619 and continued until the end of the Civil War.

2. That non-plantation slavery started during reconstruction and continued in various forms into the 20th century.

From the Wikipedia: "[The book, Slavery by Another Name] explores the forced labor, of prisoners, overwhelmingly African American men, through the convict lease system used by states, local governments, white farmers, and corporations after the American Civil War until World War II in the southern United States."

3 That the 1619 project accurately describes the effects of both forms of slavery. These effects continue to this day:

- Innocent non-whites such as Ahmaud Arbery continue to be murdered on a regular basis.

- The rights of non-whites to vote are under continual attack, as illustrated by the debacle of the recent elections in Wisconsin.

These are the inconvenient truths Will seeks to discredit. He does so in the usual way:

An accurate title would be, "Some statements of the 1619 project are debatable." Instead, Will smears the entire project. 

Alas, those who want to discredit the 1619 project can now just say, "George Will, writing in the Washington Post, demonstrates that the 1619 project has an ax to grind". The actual content of this article hardly matters. The smear will make the usual rounds, reinforced by those who never read the original. In the process, it will likely morph into "Everyone knows the 1619 project fake news."

In short, it is regrettable that the editors of the Washington Post have chosen to publish this piece. It would be more appropriate in the New York Post :-)

Response to George Will re the 1619 project

 In an opinion piece in the Washington Post, George Will professes to have a problem with The 1619 project. Here is my response to his nonsense, first published as a comment:

The 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary cited Nikole Hanna-Jones of the New York Times as follows:

"For a sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America's story, prompting public conversation about the nation's founding and evolution."

When I first read the articles of the 1619 project, I kept exclaiming, "Wow." I consider myself an educated person, but I simply had no idea that the effects of slavery are still so widespread and pernicious.

Here are some titles from the 1619 project:

- If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.

- Myths about physical and racial differences were used to justify slavery—and are still believed by doctors today.

- America holds onto an undemocratic assumption, that some people deserve more power than others.

- Why doesn't the United States have universal health care? The answer has to do with policies enacted after the Civil War.

- Slavery gave America a fear of black people and a taste for violent punishment. Both still define our prison system.

- The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the 'black gold' that fueled slavery.

- A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining and evictions and exclusions, separates black and white America.

- Most Americans still don't know the full story of slavery.

And there's more, including poetry and photography.

Against all this, Will desperately tries to change the subject, objecting to quotations out of context. He simply ignores the respected historians who consulted on the project.

Indeed, when I first read Will's "critique," my first reaction was "Huh?" Is he talking about the same nuanced, graceful, powerful history that won the Pulitzer Prize?

In short, Mr. Will's essay is itself ideological, slovenly, and dishonest.