I hope this helped you to feel more depressed.
It's like saying you use Hermeticism's Principle of Rhythm to build a pendulum-powered clock...
And unlike both Flat-Earth theory and Hermetics, Newton was actually demonstrably right. Flat-earthers and Hermeticists spin their theories out of whole cloth.
Scientific models are pragmatic at best. Useful for a particular purpose within some domain of applicability
When last did you take the curvature of the Earth into account when arranging your furniture?
Of course, you can always dismiss my perspective as "Just another nihilistic, depressed anti-realist"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation
I don't do that, but neither do I assume that the entire earth is flat just because my living room is. Saying that all theories are born equal is nonsense, some things are more correct than others.
It only matters how we use/apply those theories in practice.
Practical errors have consequences. Theoretical errors don't. It's just lip service without follow-through.
I can SAY that the Earth is triangular and nothing will happen. Q.E.D If you insist that it is in (some way) wrong or incorrect for me to say that the Earth is triangular. Well. The best I can do is to tell you to mind your own business.
I can't remember the last time the Earth's shape mattered to my practical, decision-making process.
Because strictly and Mathematically speaking, Earth is NOT round. It's NOT spherical or oblate either.
Why do you selectively reject some approximations (models!), but accept others?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Terrestrial_Reference...
All explanatory models are either an over-fit or an under-fit to the data. With the fine print being "acceptable error rate". "The Earth is flat" may be wrong, but it could be acceptably wrong to me.
This is tackled by model-dependent realism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism ) and by this paper "To explain or to predict" ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/1101.0891.pdf )
You can't charactierize your loacl approximation as a general theory because it will fail as soon as you scale up to horizon effects, and breaks completely when reaching planetary scale.
If you want to keep your flat theory in its applicable scale, fine. Just don't expect to project it outside of its useful scale.
Just like the Newtonian model works well until you reach the scales where relativistic effects demand the shift to relativity.
That's exactly what I said in my OP: "All scientific models are scale variant e.g contextual."
>You can't charactierize your loacl approximation as a general theory
The exact same criticism can be laid upon your local approximation.
You have chosen precisely the scale at which your 'general model' works. And you have ignored all other scales at which your 'general model' doesn't work.
You are chery-picking your scale - the domain of applicability of your model.
>Just like the Newtonian model works well until you reach the scales where relativistic effects demand the shift to relativity.
And what if you go the other way? At quantum scale neither Newton nor Einstein works.
>Just don't expect to project it outside of its useful scale
That's exactly what I said also: "Scientific models are pragmatic at best. Useful for a particular purpose within some domain of applicability."
So I don't see how you could possibly be appealing to any notion of a 'general theory' without also coming up with a 'general and objective utility function'. What may be a useful to a Quantum Physicist needs not be useful to a Cosmologist.
The only hope for a 'general theory' is the Theory of Everything. We don't have one of those. Well, physicists don't - theists do.
What theist theory is supposed to provide a theory of everything[1]?
To my knowledge, theology don't bring any light on such a model.
Did you use a GPS lately?
http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps....
Neither party seems to want to acknowledge that the other party's model works just fine within its domain of applicability.
There are two very different points here.
Yes you can make most of your daily actions with a "flat earth" model. Actually, this is even an overkill model for most daily actions. A first person video game generally don't include such a model, so you can extrapolate that a "sight sized box model" is enough, and that any concept of earth is superfluous.
Then you have the part of you that seek to find a model of the world through concordant items of evidence, be it for practical reasons or simply for the matter of trying to make sense out of them.
You can use a GPS without any specific opinion on physical models. But you won't even send a satellite in space with an attitude stuck into a "my flat earth model is true" belief. That doesn't mean physical models that are used to put satellite on orbits are true, but at least they proved accurate enough to lead to that kind of exploits.
In all the times I've used a GPS - the shape of the Earth mattered not one bit to me.
>some things are more correct than others.
On the relative scale of "very incorrect" to "very correct" descriptions of Earth's shape where does "real" start?
In relation to the geodesic systems (e.g ETRS89, NAD, WGS84 ) "round" is a very imprecise description of Earth's shape.
Is WSG84 more 'real' than ETRS89?
Flat-earthers are just biological computers like the rest of us. But there is no path to reconciliation because they were not imprinted with our axiomatic system early enough. They happily do their computing (aka thinking) like the rest of us, but their world view is wrong in our perspective, only because we subscribe to different axiomatic system.
And as I've gotten older I realize I have a pretty solid grasp on things and the sort of woo-woo model of reality you propose "everything is relative" is eminently ignoreable.