Responses to Comments on Witsit Debate

Edited 9/14 Scroll for several pertinent comments, which I’ll update periodically:

1) To saying I didn’t answer his question(s): If someone tells me, ‘Your position is this, now answer me this about your position,’ but what they said is NOT my position, it’s not a valid or honest question. And if you think it is, you fell into a trap, and are arguing a straw man, which I have found to be par for the course with these people 😊.

2) To Witsit being wrong/liar: Notice you said, “Lastly, just because someone has said something wrong in the past, it does not invalidate every future thing they say.” Yet Witsit’s position, as I clipped Witsit saying in the debate ironically, is that since the scientists were a little off on the eclipse prediction that they can’t really predict it, are waiting till the Moon gets close, and are just liars. I played that clip at 32:44. And then at 33:25 of this debate Witsit says that he totally stands behind that statement. Therefore, the sounder logic that you are applying to them does not apply with them. Witsit and every flat Earther I’ve ever seen or interacted with have this all or nothing thing to dismiss evidence, for instance, ‘Government has lied, therefore NASA lies since they are part of the government, and SpaceX and whoever else lies because they got government funding or work with government personnel on this or that, therefore all space pics are fake!’ They don’t follow the reasoning you present, so putting such reasoning on them is erroneous. If the scientists being wrong by meters on an over hundred-kilometer shadow makes them liars, as I clipped Witsit saying, then yes, Witsit being wrong about ANYTHING makes him a liar, too. This is something I meant to discuss, which is why I played that clip. However, I’ll talk about this in more detail on MCToon’s channel tonight. And if Witsit changes his point and later says you don’t have to be 100% right on everything, and him failing at having that model and prediction ready doesn’t mean we can just discount everything he says, then per his shucking and jiving comment he’s changing and he’s a liar! Either way, he’s a liar, according to himself. And with predictions of for instance the conjunction of Mercury, and the model for it that I challenged him on, he’s 100% wrong, not just a fraction of a percent wrong. He couldn’t do it AT ALL. Thus, it seems you’re letting the obfuscation of the shuckers and jivers like Witsit (according to his own characterization, which I clipped) derail you, which seems to be their intent… I’m a budding scientists. We understand sometimes we’re wrong or make mistakes. It’s Witsit who says if you change, you’re a liar. If you make an error, in so many steps you are a liar. You reap what you sow, seems appropriate.

3) To saying I addressed the person and not the topic: Witsit offered no evidence in his opening. He said a bunch of stuff and provided no references for what he said and referred to. If you think I’m wrong about that please timestamp in his opening where he did. I’ll be checking this thread. Therefore, to suggest there is any topic for me to address from his side is nonsensical. He presented nothing, literally – at least by scientific standards. All he presented is his word, and therefore it’s fair to address his word as there is nothing else to address – as I said during the debate. I am aware that the deluded who follow him believe him just rambling on, and declaring things to be so, is enough. In the wider world by far it’s not enough.

4) Bad paraphrase: “The debate was about relativity and Witsit knows it and talked about it and you don’t know relativity”: The debate was about geocentrism versus heliocentrism. Apparently you’re so upset or so looking for a gotcha that you forgot how to read or something or forgot that that was mentioned during the debate. Moreover, since Witsit doesn’t understand higher math – demonstratably, and according to him (watch the show on MCToon tonight), and I passed all my higher level college math, and I took a survey course that included relativity, that should mean that I understand it better than him.

5) You referenced fairly enough what you meant without needing timestamps:

“your world view was challenged, thats the core of debating, you brushed off many times questions of Witsit ; “its just words” ect. , because you got triggered pretty fast, thats not correct reasoning, you actually treated the debate more as a lecture, to reassure the status quo.”

His opening was literally just words. When I say all he presented was words that is just a simple statement of fact. Witsit presented no experiments or evidence or data. No references for the stuff he said others said. That’s by definition just words. That’s not a challenge to a world view, at least when discussing something objectively true or false. My presentation, that presented actual evidence and experiments and data, that’s a legitimate challenge to a world view. And every source that wasn’t my own work or voice was referenced. I gave an example for you of properly representing a position. It seems you’ve been indoctrinated into thinking the wrong way is the right way.

“For example you said that Witsit thinks every scientist was wrong for hundreds/thousands of years instead of answering, thats fallacious when it comes to logic reasoning and he rightfully pointed out some fallacies himself – at least do it for the audience man, im pretty disappointed when it comes to these “debating styles” of people, many guys(also on this channel) do this, especially when they got the mainstream position, hope that clears things up and you didnt meant that you need timestamps or something like that”

To say that the universe is geocentric, and the Earth is flat, when we – meaning the scientific community insofar as I’m barely a part of it yet but still – hold the solar system to be heliocentric and Earth a globe as just one planet in one solar system at the outskirts of one galaxy – to say it’s flat and geocentric is to say all scientists who say that the Earth is a globe and so forth are wrong. This should not be difficult. It clearly follows. If I say it’s raining outside, and you say not it’s not raining, then it means you’re saying I’m wrong. This shouldn’t be hard to follow. Also, if you’re referring to the fact that I didn’t answer Witsit’s trick questions, I stated very clearly that if someone tells me, ‘Your position is this, now answer me this about your position,’ but what they said is NOT my position, it’s not a valid or honest question. And if you think it is, you fell into a trap, and are arguing a straw man, which I have found to be par for the course with these people. Perhaps get him to be honest and ask an honest question. I doubt you’ll get that. Watch earlier on when I guess he mistakenly asked an honest question about how I know the Earth goes around the Sun or similar. Then he interrupted me answering to change the question and ask and lie and say he asked it the same. It’s all in the recording. 34:16

6) To people saying “You didn’t address any of Witsits points”: The issue here is that you’ve fallen for Austin Witsit’s deception. I’m not sure if he’s as delusional as he displays, are if he’s outright deceiving you all for whatever reason, but either way it’s clear that you all eat it right up. Witsit didn’t make any points. He just rehashed misrepresentations of famous scientists, and declared things to be the way he says they are, and latched onto whatever string he could possibly get away with grabbing onto to spin it like there is some issue with the science when one isn’t there. I caught most but missed some. I recall him only once or twice asking an honest question but those must have been unintended on his part, as one time he interrupted me answering to lie and say he’ll ask the question again. But then he asked a different question apparently designed again to try to lead me into some manipulated quasi-idea of what we understand so he can trip me up on a strawman type deal and pretend he got me. I called that out directly, and I didn’t go for it. Again and again, he tried erroneously telling me what my model is like, “this is your paradigm, you believe this, now answer me this”. I didn’t go for it. He couldn’t get me with the fake questions; therefore, he deceived you all into believing I didn’t answer his questions. So, it seems people like him have their deception over people like you so completely.

If they get us on a trick question, then it’s “Aha Witsit won, and the Earth is flat or geocentric” or whatever he’s feeding you all at the time. And if I don’t fall for that con then it’s, “Oh he didn’t answer any questions!,” even though he didn’t ask many honest questions. It’s amazing. By the way, I did answer that original albeit apparently unintended honest question more than once in the debate, as it was the same question of evidencing a heliocentric solar system. I can recall another one can say honest question he asked – it seems to be asked more as a gotcha. He asked me to name one technology from the space field that we use in everyday life, as I said that we use technology developed in the space sciences. It seems he only asked as a gotcha, as he seemed salty that I could answer it. Perhaps there are other honest questions that I can’t recall. But each honest question I caught I answered. And the dishonest ones I clearly pointed out that I am not going to believe what he tells me my model or position is. Perhaps if you step back and try LISTENING for yourself and THINKING for yourself rather than just believing and parroting what popular flat Earth people and other flat Earth people say and/or encourage you all to say and think. It’s ironic that so many of the bad thinking habits you all accuse scientists of you all do in spades.

I presented several pieces of evidence and observations that anyone can verify for themselves. You can get pictures of the Sun. You can get spectra of the Sun. You can see that the Sun and therefore other stars are not just “lights in the sky” or “electromagnetic something behind a screen” or whatever other nonsense these ignorant, deceptive, or delusion people have people such as yourself believe. You can honestly test, evaluate and confirm gravity and related equations. You can do some research (not just watching flat Earth videos and memes as I’ve found globe deniers mean you say “research,” but really learning valid information) about the history of our understanding of the solar system. Witsit is the one who avoided simple questions, like predicting a specific positioning of Mars. This is simple for people who really understand how the solar system works, evidenced by the fact that we have predictions for centuries. First, Witsit tried to derail me from the question, and then when that didn’t work, he put up some out of left field link that he seemed to just google on the spot to pretend he knows what he’s talking about. You’ve been fooled.

7) “In this entire debate, can anyone find a single instance in which Witsit spoke, then Darryl spoke, and what Darryl said beared any logical resemblance to what Witsit just said or asked?”: The debate is right there. If someone can’t answer that for themsleves it seems the person is either a liar or an idiot. I guess I’m not compelled to find those timestamps in either case.

8) “You couldn’t give Witsit a specific reference of quotes he took out of context!!”: It’s very simple. One way of putting it is: Witsit said all my quotes of him, even quotes I GOT FROM A CONVERSATION I DIRECTLY HAD WITH HIM EARLIER THIS YEAR, he said they are all out of context. So therefore, quotes he takes of scientists, who he has never talked to or even seen since some have been dead for centuries, are clearly out of context, especially since the service he wants those words to do contradict the resulting physics and technologies and laws and cosmology we have today. Doubled by the fact that, as I showed more than once, he doesn’t understand the basic math necessary to even APPROACH these subjects properly. It’s amazing that you harp on this. It’s clear that flat Earth and all it’s subsets of globe denial deminish the ability of you all to think and reason – if you had that capacity to begin with.

P.S. This is typical of flat Earth, that you have one set of rules where you can just dismiss anything you don’t like or that shows you wrong, and no justification given is ever accepted anyway. But when it comes to something you like or thinks makes you right no such rules are needed and are ignored for what you want to believe.

9) “‘You leave out the m (mass) you prove my point’ .
 which is true.”:

You’ve been fooled. Witsit has fooled you, and whether it’s just his ignorance or delusion or he’s purposely stringing you all along for money or attention or whatever. You’ve been fooled. I’ll stream a video this week to detail on this (9/4).

Flat Earth Comparison 1

This article is a continuation of my Earth Measurement 1, where I used the method of Eratosthenes, as taught in my introductory astronomy class, to measure the circumference of the Earth.

We can calculate both the height of the Sun and the angular height of the Sun for a flat Earth, given the information from Earth Measurement 1. Simply, sunsets demonstrate that the Earth is a globe.

References:

DateandTime.info, https://dateandtime.info/distancenorthpole.php?id=3675443

McToon, Sun Minimum Angular Elevation, https://mctoon.net/febs6/

Copyright (c) 2024 Darryl E Berry Jr

Chat Replies for “DEBATE: Flat Vs Globe | Alan & Toby Vs PhD Tony & Darryl | Podcast”

Copyright © 2024 by Darryl E Berry Jr

Live on 3/2/24

Last updated 3-10-24

Hey you all. Here are some of my answers to a few repeated questions / challenges / attacks / critiques / observations throughout the video comment threads. I may update this periodically, including adding timestamps, etc:

* ​ For those looking for it, I have challenged Witsit to a debate already, through MDD and directly. The vid of it is on my channel in a ‘Challenge to Witsit’ playlist, vid ‘FE Challenge & Response #17 – Challenging Witsit to a Debate – 5-26-24’. We already had a debate planned for Sunday 5/26/24. We were told the flatties pulled out, Witsit and the other. I found Witsit that same day in a discord server and he claimed he never agreed to the debate due to Tony being there. I challenged him personally to a one-on-one debate. This was streamed live and I have a clip in the above video. It seems since we were scheduled already that evening, we could have used the same slot for a debate one on one. My challenge still stands. I challenged him in a recent MDD stream as well, in the live chat. Check when McToon smashed the fake Moon landing guy a day or two later, near the very end of the vid.

* The flat Earthers were caught in a despicable collusion (1:02:33 and screenshot), including the dishonest tactic of trying to get us upset rather than discussing the topic, and getting preempted for and fed super chats to pad their responses. Let it be known that Tony and I had no communication before the debate, nor during except for the debate itself. No one was feeding us information or tactics, nor deceiving the other side and the audience by sending us prepared super chats. There was no plan to derail the conversation by psychological attacks, but to address the topic at hand. We have facts and truth on our side and therefore we have no need for dishonest tactics. Are we talking about NASA who was engaging in and interacting with dishonesty and deception? No. It’s the flat Earthers.

*To people criticizing that I deferred to experts: Since it’s bad for me to defer to experts, then please explain why flat earthers are basing their arguments on the experts through the scientific papers of the experts? Moreover, why do they pick and choose? They accept surveyor measurements when they want to show their black swan image for instance, but then say the science and methods are fake or lies or whatever when the same surveyor techniques (for instance, by the Maine Surveyor) show that the Earth is a globe. They reference and base their position upon the Michelson–Morley experiment (apparently abbreviated MMX) paper. However, they don’t even read the entire thing, and/or only just word search or focus on FE echo chamber highlighted sections, and/or ignore that the paper itself says the Earth and solar system moves. They bring up other scientific papers too, such as by Wang, but then say the expert they invoked to support themselves is wrong when the paper disproves their claims. It’s amazing.

*To people saying I asked random qotcha questions: I didn’t ask random questions of the flat Earthers. I asked specifically about what they presented themselves as experts on. There’s a difference. Relativity. “MMX”. Probabilities. Evidence. Etcetera. They failed again and again. It’s all in the debate. Truth be told, they tried to gotcha me by trying to turn it back on me, when they claim to have read and, in some sense, taught “MMX” and other papers for so many hours at a time. I only read it and the other papers I addressed once quickly the day or so before. However, with even my meager base of genuine understanding of math and science, I could debunk and expose their misunderstanding. I suspect this is why flat Earthers don’t go to universities or space agencies to have honest conversations with the experts. They would be even less able to get away with misrepresenting science than with Tony and I – with me of course being less knowledgeable on things than Tony and other experts.

The Importance of Education

Darryl E Berry Jr

Several years ago, someone I knew announced that the world was flat. I had heard of people who believed that the Earth was flat. It seemed so fanciful that I accepted it as satire. However, this person presented me with someone sincere in their belief.

I listened as he explained his reasoning, all the “evidence” he had found, and all the “flaws” with the globe he had also found. Then, he encouraged me to watch flat Earth videos to learn more, and they were fascinating to watch. It was easy to see the threads that weaved through every logical fallacy and incorrect notion.

Perhaps had these folks had an education, they would be knowledgeable enough to recognize the emptiness of the flat Earth position. Perhaps with authentic scientific training, they would have developed the critical thinking, reasoning, and investigative skills to research sufficiently, draw valid conclusions, and appraise claims about the world properly.

That people believe the Earth is flat is perhaps one of the most profound indications of the importance of education. Not everything ever taught in college has indeed been accurate. The flat Earth position was the established position at one point. However, while there may be things we soon learn are incorrect or can use some development, the Earth’s spherical shape is one of those things with a myriad of overwhelming evidence to support, and the flat Earth is something that has been unequivocally disproven many times over.

That something in today’s world so established can be mistaken demonstrates how far afield from logic, reason, and facts we can stray without proper knowledge and ability to think and reason. As I pursue my college degrees, it is apparent enough that any thinking person who attends a college physics class, or astronomy class, cannot help but learn enough to think and investigate at a level high enough to establish the shape of the Earth. Furthermore, beyond that, what we can do with education is extend our knowledge and ability.

For years, I have noticed that flat Earth believers have been stuck in the same place, having the same arguments based upon the same baseless positions – well, almost the same. At one point, they made explicit enough claims that they could be disproven. Now, most flat Earth believers make amorphous claims, and even then, they deny and try to avoid admitting that they made a claim. Perhaps with an education, they would appreciate the principles of honesty in discourse and research and the falsifiability of claims. Perhaps they would understand and appreciate the role and establishment of evidence and not fall for delusions that others or they concoct.

I remember an instance of telling this person that I saw the International Space Station (ISS) come around twice in the same night. I asked him to explain that. The information was new to him and took him aback. However, he very quickly countered with, “They could have airplanes that are landing and taking off one after another to make it look like the ISS is coming around like that. We don’t know what they have.” So, to clarify, all of space technology is a conspiracy per the flat Earth believers.

I informed him it seemed he just made that up just then. He acknowledges that. I asked him if he had known that the ISS came around at that pace. He did not. I asked if he had any evidence of this series of airplanes conspiracy – which would have been odd given that he had just made up the scenario as an ad hoc refutation of new evidence. As expected, he did not have any evidence of it. However, for flat Earthers, if they can make something up that they can believe refutes evidence against their position, then in their mind, they have refuted that evidence. Imagine where the world would be today if we accepted whatever we wanted to imagine about a situation as fact.

Consider boarding an airplane that the engineers and manufacturers decided was viable without designing, calculations, or testing. Moreover, consider a future without educated people, still citing flat Earth believers as an example. People have asked flat Earthers for a working map of the supposedly actual flat Earth. However, of course, they cannot present this. Usually, they do everything they can to change the subject.

Nevertheless, here we are, with people believing the Earth is flat for years and having no progress in any practical way. If most people were as uneducated as flat Earth believers, we would have no maps, no electricity, no cars, no airplanes, and no phones. There would be no technology whatsoever. We would be living like cavemen, while also blabbering to ourselves about inane absurdities while imagining we are geniuses.

By and large, the world’s educated people have moved the world forward. Nevertheless, we know that even today, college-educated folks have not made all discoveries and inventions. However, even those intellectual titans who did not earn a college degree had the necessary knowledge and analytical skills to discover what they discovered and invent what they invented, and in that sense, they were well-educated. Sans natural talent and ability in these skills and fields, it seems that a college education is among the best ways to develop these skills.

Having interacted with several flat Earth believers over the years, I have found that they target the ignorant and uneducated in their recruitment. The basis of their recruitment tactic is sowing doubt and distrust through exploiting the ignorance of the person to whom they are speaking. They make claims that they know to be false. When this is addressed, they might acknowledge the falsity before trying to approach with something else. It became clear then – and from seeing recordings of other conversations they had – that they were presenting a known inaccuracy that had I not known better, they would have continued with me none the wiser. It occurred to me to consider what the flat Earthers who fell for these cons thought when they found the dishonesties. However, it seems they fall easily into the template and forward such inaccuracies themselves. The flat Earth “movement” seems very much like a cult, based on my experience with and research on cults.

A solid education is a potent inoculation against charlatans and misinformed people who would push notions like flat Earth on the ignorant and unsuspecting. It seems certain that education-inoculated youth have less chance of falling prey to such nonsense and, through education, are better prepared to understand the world and contribute to our understanding and progress.

Copyright (c) 2022 Darryl E Berry Jr