Flat-Earth Argument Results in Rap Battle (npr.org)

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Flat-Earth Argument Results in Rap Battle (npr.org)

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @12:42AM from the of-course-it-does dept.

New submitter mjjochen writes: A little something to make you smile (or cry). NPR reports on astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson calling out rapper B.o.B. in a Twitter (& rap) argument over the status of the earth (are we round or flat?). Rapper B.o.B. references the usual conspiracy theories to support his case in his throwdown (music). Neil deGrasse Tyson responds (actually, his nephew does), on why B.o.B.'s points are not very well-informed (music). As Tyson puts it, "Duude — to be clear: Being five centuries regressed in your reasoning doesn't mean we all can't still like your music." Shall we start leeching the four humors from the body again to achieve balance? Hrm.

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Re:The earth is flat? by Coisiche · 2016-01-27 00:59 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'd expect the flat-earthers to have a stock reply for that one. Much like the believers of other ridiculous things have their toolkit of responses to use to deflect the truth.
Having said that, I would be really interested in their explanation of how it can be noon in Hawaii at the same time as it's the middle of the night in Paris. That's got to be a good one.
Time Cube by Major+Blud · 2016-01-27 01:01 · Score: 3, Informative

This rapper is in on the conspiracy himself and doesn't know it. Help spread the word!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... /s

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Why the fuck is this on Slashdot?! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-27 01:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

Holy shit. I think that Slashdot may have hit a new all-time low with this submission. Everything about this submission is dumb and irrelevant.
Come on! Can't we get some relevant submissions onto the front page, rather than total shit like this submission? It's not like they don't exist. They're sitting there in the goddamn queue, while donkey shit like this submission ends up on the front page.
Seriously, why the fuck is Slashdot reporting about a flat-earth argument of all things? Why the fuck is Slashdot reporting about a goddamn rap battle over some flat-earth argument? The people involved aren't even remotely important in any way.
What a fucking stupid submission! It's utterly stupid in every single way!
1. Re:Why the fuck is this on Slashdot?! by bfpierce · 2016-01-27 04:30 · Score: 2
  
  Because it's an awesome rap battle involving science.
  Sheesh you must be a fun dude to hang out with.
2. Re:Why the fuck is this on Slashdot?! by Shortguy881 · 2016-01-27 05:05 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Well, not only is the story amusing, Neil Degrasse Tyson in a rap battle with B. o. B., but this is also a great introspective of the country we now live in. Well known public figures can denounce something theorized over 2000 years ago (since then proven as scientific fact) and not be dismissed as completely idiotic. We as nerds tend to like science and uphold its tenants of observable phenomena. If you can't find something interesting in this story, you are just not looking.
  
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Re:The earth is flat? by CajunArson · 2016-01-27 01:12 · Score: 5, Informative

Actually, according to them the North Pole really isn't the issue. It's the South Pole that doesn't exist. Instead there's a wall of ice around Antarctica that's guarded by NASA employees to keep people from finding the truth (I'm not actually making that up, unfortunately).

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AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-27 01:12 · Score: 5, Funny

Well you sure typed some words on the internet
Re:The earth is flat? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2016-01-27 01:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

Having said that, I would be really interested in their explanation of how it can be noon in Hawaii at the same time as it's the middle of the night in Paris.
That's easy it's a combination of turtles with mirrors and sun blocker discs on their backs . . .
. . . all the way down.

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Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Sometimes.... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-27 01:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

I love a good conspiracy theory, I really do. I'm a big fan of the X-files... but... and I think this is a big reason why I only engage in them for entertainment purposes:
The Government cannot simultaneously be incompetent and engage in these "vast conspiracies", as the people who engage in the latter are always complaining about the former so often do. Just because a villain in a Bond flick can ensure the loyalty of silence of the hundreds or thousands of workers from Blofeld to the lowliest janitor in the underground complex does not mean that this is how the real world works. Even the Mafia can't (and isn't able to) do that.
1. Re:Sometimes.... by Farmer+Tim · 2016-01-27 05:11 · Score: 2
  
  The harebrained conspiracy nuts don't consider themselves idiots...quite the contrary, they consider their belief in conspiracies to be evidence that they're more clever than the scheming masterminds (not to mention the rest of humanity, hence the word "sheeple").
  Dunning-Krugery at its finest.
  
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Who? by alzoron · 2016-01-27 01:22 · Score: 2

I did some intertube searches for this guy and 95% of the results have to do with this rap battle thinger. Why is this guy getting attention?
1. Re:Who? by _merlin · 2016-01-27 03:00 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah, but both those songs were years ago now. He seemed to be a bit of a one-hit wonder who (thankfully) disappeared. This is probably all a publicity stunt to try and get people to notice him again.
Re:The earth is flat? by starless · 2016-01-27 01:24 · Score: 4, Informative

Well, there may be no NASA employees at exactly the south pole, there are certainly NASA
employees and contractors in Antarctica flying balloons...
http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antar...
Re:B.o.B. WTF by gstoddart · 2016-01-27 01:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

No-one could possibly believe the flat earth theory these days anyway when you can easily fly or sail around the world.
I have long since given up on making statements about the stupid shit people can or will believe.
I've met more than enough people who insist on believing the most outrageous things ... and even if they're doing it as an act, any sufficiently advanced attention seeking/denial of reality is indistinguishable from actually being an idiot.
I no longer differentiate between those who are idiots, and those who merely want to seem like idiots.

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Re:The earth is flat? by i.r.id10t · 2016-01-27 01:39 · Score: 4, Funny

Actually... only one turtle. And four elephants.

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Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
More than five centuries by azcoyote · 2016-01-27 01:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

Without reading TFA, I have to point out that if Tyson tweeted that the rapper was "five centuries regressed in your reasoning" in order to indicate that five centuries ago people all thought that the earth was flat, then Tyson's statement is ironically also uninformed. There's a common myth that Columbus "discovered" that the earth was round. In fact people had believed that the earth was round for centuries before Columbus, but nobody had ever demonstrated this fact to mainland Europe by means of sailing. I'm not talking about the ancient Greeks, either. Even Dante (13th c.) believed that the earth was round, but he thought that the other side was just filled with empty water--apart from Purgatory, which was on an island there. I believe I've even seen references to the earth being round in Christian writings from the first millennium AD. The past is not so simple as people often paint it. It's not as though people were all stupid before until the glorious age of Enlightenment. Hence the kind of fallacy that causes someone to deny the roundness of the earth today is of an entirely different character and magnitude compared to the innocent ignorance of those who imagined the earth as flat in the past.

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1. Re:More than five centuries by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-27 02:05 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  many people believed the Earth was round, they just thought it was a lot smaller
  Both that the Earth is round and a very good approximation of the size were known for centuries before Columbus. *Columbus* underestimated the size of the Earth and thought he could make it; other people refused to support him because they knew that he could not load his ships with enough provisions to survive the trip.
2. Re:More than five centuries by rmdingler · 2016-01-27 02:08 · Score: 2
  
  It seems incredibly likely the great thinkers of many eras privately challenged the reigning dogma,
  but much of the time, it would've been detrimental to mention those alternative theories publicly.
  Even today, you probably can't get elected president of the US if you're an avowed atheist.
  
  --
  Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
  Ernest Hemingway
3. Re:More than five centuries by Sique · 2016-01-27 03:13 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The christian churches never proclaimed officially that the Earth was flat. Only some quite obscure mysticists from the 3th and 4th century AD did, but they never got much attention. To most people, it didn't matter what size or shape the Earth had, as they never moved around very much, and for those, who did, they knew the Earth was round, and the more astute ones even knew the estimated size. Henry the Navigator, Infante of Portugal in the first half of the 15th century, organized many explorative expeditions around Africa and the Atlantic, which then mounted in a quite correct map of the coasts of Africa, the discovery of Madeira and the Azores, and during the time of Columbus, the discovery of the sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese of the 15th century definitely knew decades before Columbus that the Earth is round, and that its circumfence is about 26,000 mls. And there was no religious dogma hindering them to state so.
  
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  .sig: Sique *sigh*
4. Re:More than five centuries by TangoMargarine · 2016-01-27 03:59 · Score: 2
  
  Which is extremely silly
  20/20 hindsight
  
  because there are Central American ruins with old Hebrew wording etched into the stone
  Citation direly needed
  
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5. Re:More than five centuries by Chris+Mattern · 2016-01-27 04:53 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  many people believed the Earth was round, they just thought it was a lot smaller
  Nope; it was Columbus who thought it was smaller, and was wrong. The Earth's size was first accurately estimated by Eratosthenes around 200 BC by using the shadows cast by the sun in different locations, and his figure (which was in fact only 0.16% off from the true figure) has been the generally accepted one ever since.
6. Re:More than five centuries by thoromyr · 2016-01-27 09:17 · Score: 2
  
  yeah... hebrew wording. Uh huh. You know, there was a cute time-traveling RPG called Time & Time Again that played on that sort of nonsense, although they used Ogham which -- if you believe things asserted without evidence -- is found in places humans have never been.
  The "Nordic naval expanse", depending on what you mean by that, is partially true. Eric the Red sailed west from Greenland and landed around Newfoundland, IIRC. They called the indigenous people "skraelings". We know this because there was a return trip so it was recorded. There was at least one more trip out west, but the attempted settlement had been destroyed.
  OTOH, there are plenty of made up things about the Norse, including supposed runic inscriptions made before European settlers arrived, around Virginia.
  The whole business about Columbus "discovering" the earth being a sphere is pretty much American propaganda. GP was correct, but Columbus did find someone gullible enough to fund his venture (though not as well as he would've liked).
Re:The earth is flat? by Dr.+Evil · 2016-01-27 01:56 · Score: 3, Funny

"Having actually been to the south pole, I can definitely say that there are NO NASA employees there."
Clearly you're involved.
Re:The earth is flat by vtcodger · 2016-01-27 02:06 · Score: 2

Of course the Earth is flat. However it creates a field that warps time and space to give the illusion of being (roughly) spherical. The math is too complex to reproduce here, but I'm sure it is available somewhere on the internet.

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Flat Earth? by Gennerik · 2016-01-27 02:11 · Score: 2

As a submariner, one of the most important thing you can do is get ranges to other vessels. You do this by using their visible height and your height of eye, allowing you to calculate how much is hidden by the horizon. As the range decreases, you can watch the visible height increase, something you wouldn't see with a flat earth. This happens until the vessel is at the horizon, and you can see the entire thing (which happens at roughly 5100m for a 2 meter tall person, or 5600yd/3.16 miles for a 6 foot tall person). Perhaps flat-earthers just need to spend some time on a boat to get the real picture.
God dammit slashdot. by truck_soccer · 2016-01-27 02:25 · Score: 2

This is not someone who actually believes what he is shit posting. B.o.B was relatively unknown in mainstream media, that is until he started posting crackpot memes and videos on twitter. Now he is a trending topic. Do you see how this works? Tila Tequila did the EXACT SAME THING last week. She fucking trolled all of her followers, and her name climbed up the trending list. It gets you publicity to do and say outlandish things. This is the new marketing.
1. Re:God dammit slashdot. by Ol+Olsoc · 2016-01-27 02:35 · Score: 2
  
  Actually, this isn't even a new marketing technique. The old adage still stands : there is no such thing as bad publicity.
  Tell that to Jerry Sandusky.
  
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  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Speed of Light by Roger+W+Moore · 2016-01-27 02:32 · Score: 2

Having said that, I would be really interested in their explanation of how it can be noon in Hawaii at the same time as it's the middle of the night in Paris. That's got to be a good one.
Simple it's the incredibly slow speed of light. That way when the sun rises over the rim it takes hours for the dawn to reach the hub. Of course now you have to add all us physicists to the conspiracy theory.
1. Re:Speed of Light by tibit · 2016-01-27 03:54 · Score: 2
  
  That's correct. The place is filled with such a strong magical field that the light travels through it like a fly through molasses. Just this day I had to pay to renew the countercurses on my PC's motherboard; the communication delays prevented it from even booting. Alas, the wife's iPhone is suspiciously unaffected. I wonder what kind of pacts did late Mr. Jobs sign, and when do they expire.
  
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Kansas by Cro+Magnon · 2016-01-27 02:50 · Score: 3, Funny

I live in Kansas. All you have to do is look around and you can see the earth is flat.

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Re:Five centuries? by operagost · 2016-01-27 03:12 · Score: 2

And that's precisely what they did a few thousand years ago.

Wow. Google Earth has been around a long time. Must have been hard using it with IP over smoke signal.

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Re:The earth is flat? by Infiniti2000 · 2016-01-27 04:58 · Score: 2

True enough... but the folks I knew flying baloons there for cos-ray experiments were not nasa employees...
That's not quite as interesting as NASA employees in cosplay experiments.
Best way to deal with this: IGNORE HIM by almostadnsguy · 2016-01-27 10:58 · Score: 2

1. Make crappy "music" 2. Struggle to get famous (I've never heard of the guy until TMZ picked up his stupid comment) 3. Get famous for neglecting science and getting into a "battle" with someone who really is famous. 4. You become Infamous which to some is as cool as being famous. Why do so many people get famous for being stupid these days?