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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

> Another Flat Earth believer on the trip, Austin Whitsitt, was also eager to get in front of the blowback he knew he was about to receive from his fellow believers. He assured them he tracked the hourslong journey from Punta Arenas, Chile to Union Glacier, Antarctica with a compass to ensure they were actually going south.

> “We have to go back to the drawing board to address the preponderance of evidence,” Whitsitt said of the 24-hour sun observation.

Why does it matter whether you're consistently going south or not? Even if you're not in Antarctica because the Forces-That-Be fooled you somehow, you're still somewhere on Earth with a 24-hour sun.

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What would "south" even mean to flat earther? I can't envision a model in which any sane definition wouldn't lead to a contradiction.

>>>Why does it matter whether you're consistently going south or not? Even if you're not in Antarctica because the Forces-That-Be fooled you somehow, you're still somewhere on Earth with a 24-hour sun.

If you're somewhere on Earth with a 24 hour sun, but it's not anywhere near where the scientific establishment says the 24 hour sun should be, I don't think you'd jump to the conclusion that the standard scientific model of a round earth is correct...

No, you can. There is not another shape that fits.

Think of it philosophically.

If you suddenly discovered Mexico had a 24 hour sun, wouldn't that mean that most of what we've been taught in school was a lie?

The heliocentric model, our shared astronomic model, it's all a lie. Someone has been intentionally printing these globes all around the world that do not match observable reality, and telling kids in school that it does.

So you cannot say "there is not another shape that fits" because you would know nothing about how the universe works.

I like how the article ends which gives the perspective of someone with facts trying to convince the hypothesizing of conspiracy theorists' explanations.

> Whitsitt and Campanella were right to assume they’d be under attack from their community for confirming the existence of the 24-hour sun. For days, Whitsitt has been arguing on social media[0] with conspiracy theorists who are accusing him of faking the entire trip.

They are trolling the flerfs. 1. He literally had a green screen on when he was initially broadcasting. 2. He was caught vaping to try and mimic vapor breath. 3. His shadows were all over the place like doubled in length in 3 feet walk. 4. The times were wrong the direction of the sun was wrong. 5. They were saying the place is empty when there are a load of people down there recently. 6. They are walking on the ground not leaving footprints in the snow. 7. They have studio lights all around the place where they walk. 8. When recording the 24hr sun a tractor literally teleports into view. Thye also got the overlay wrong. 9. He could not pick up snow on the ground where he was talking. 10 The sun literally changed shape in the sky. 11. They kept to this tiny area with no exploration whatever the audience asked they would not do. I don't know whether they went down there but it sure felt like a staged stuidio production.

It's like an inside meta joke with more people in than out. I'd like to think there would be some fall-out but it might not change anything. Ultimate irony would be if the participants were coerced/bribed and still don't know what to believe.

I think the flat earth model they use allows for a 24hr sun near the North Pole.

Although even their model should not allow for a 24hr sun during the Northern Hemisphere winter, in December.

The big deal about a 24hr sun is that almost every flerfer is on the record saying that a 24hr sun is impossible in Antarctica, and making up conspiracy theories about governments preventing people from going to Antarctica, etc.

According to the article,

> Flat Earthers stress that the 24-hour sun does not exist, as in a model where the Earth is flat, the sun must rise and set each day.

But I'm sure that between any three flat earthers are four different theories, and the article could have easily gotten that slightly wrong.

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