this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
134 points (89.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35931 readers
911 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Just a thought experiment, let's say the earth is flat, looks like many professionals would know, including

  • Pilots/ATC/sea captain

  • Land surveyor and civil engineers

  • Astronomers and Geologists, at least the one dealing with experimental data

  • Militaries, at least radar operator and artillery

Just these categories are already a lot of persons, I assume I miss a lot of others. So how many person does it make in total ? 10 % of the population ?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago (5 children)

This is a bit extreme, but maintaining a conspiracy with lots of "insiders" isn't impossible. Just think of how many people worked on the Manhattan project.

First you compartmentalize, so that only a core few know the whole picture. Then you threaten everyone involved with serious jail time for informing. (This is why we know Bob Lazar is full of shit, where he telling the truth, he'd be in prison)

It's true that secrets can't be kept forever, but they can be kept for a while.

The flaw in flat earth is not the number of conspirators, but the purpose of the conspiracy. It all falls apart when we ask why the government wants to keep flat earth from the public.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Manhattan leaked before they even started work.

From memory, a sci-fi magazine seller figured it out, just based on address changes. He even figured out it was likely an attempt to make an atomic bomb. The USSR also had it completely compromised. The first soviet bomb was basically a direct copy of the American one.

That was also with most/all the workers in 1 location. They also had a very good reason to maintain security (grunts on the ground, not just leadership).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Wasn't the Manhattan project compromised from within because of communist sympathizers, or even outright communists working on the project?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Depends what you mean by compromised.

Some of the scientists there were communists, or at least sympathetic to the communist cause. Since the USSR was currently an ally, they leaked information to them.

Other scientists didn't follow security rules, either because they didn't care, they hated the lockdown, or they wanted a challenge. Information slipped out because of that, even if it wasn't a deliberate attempt to compromise the security of the project.

I wish Oppenheimer had spent less time on the trial, and more time on some of the really interesting scientists on the project. People like Richard Feynman, who was famous for playing bongos, trying to learn throat singing, and cracking the safes on campus just for fun. And, although slightly after the war, Louis Slotin and the Demon Core incident would have been an excellent scene for a movie.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Since the USSR was currently an ally, they leaked information to them.

This is what I mean by compromised.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Correct, though that wasn't the only leak, just the most serious.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

To sell more globes, obviously.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

But if the flat earth goes on, what can be assumed to be, infinitely past the ice wall (since no one really gives an answer for what's past there), think of how big maps would be! They would have to sell giant maps and make a fortune.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Flat earth is just a variation on the "It's the Jews!" bullshit that's existed forever. See Folding Ideas youtube video for details.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

When they gobble up one bullshit conspiracy, the next ones go down easy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

They're protecting the turtles. If people like Bezos knew that it's turtles all the way down, they'd certainly harvest the turtle shells to make fancy hair combs. That would spell the end of the earth.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

the government can't afford to let the plebs know they live on a giant pizza. that would destabilize everything!