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This is reddit level meming. You pretend that the flat earth claim has nothing to do with NASA's earth curvature calculation and how objects should be hidden beneath the curvature at certain distances.

With your meme logic, I can take a picture of a pizza and tell you the earth is flat.

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I think this has a lot more to do with the behavior of light in an atmosphere that features a density gradient, together with the nature of visual perception.

I think it is possible, under the right conditions (the very sort which are deemed necessary for "flat proofs"), that you are seeing "further than you're seeing". Of course, that's a bit misleading since all that's really happening is you're seeing something that is beyond the horizon. [How is that possible?](https://c.tadst.com/gfx/600x337/atmospheric-refraction.png?1)

The experience of visual objects does not always correspond (from the standpoint of the subject) to what is objectively the case. For example, you see a stick in water that appears bent. Objectively, there is no bent stick. But the mind projects the features of the experience based on the incoming visual sense data. And it can "model" that data incorrectly.

The light reflected from something beyond the horizon takes a curved path through the atmosphere based on the Lagrangian function (this actually predicts the path light will take very successfully, as things always "attempt" to minimize their own energy). But the human eye cannot resolve the curvature at that scale, that is, the eye has no way of telling that the data in this packet of photons is "behind a horizon". The reflected light (from the thing beneath the horizon) still enters the eye at a relatively straight vector. This has more to do with the way your own eye filters for light in a particular phase. Basically your eyes are filtering that reflected light in such a way that what the brain models suggests the object is straight ahead of you (when it isn't).

This is how mirages happen as well. This is how you see the sun even for a moment after it is objectively beneath the horizon. It's a combination of light behavior in a density-gradient and the biases of the human brain/visual system.

I'm not an expert in physics by any stretch, but this explanation seems plausible to me, and I've not seen it dealt with adequately by any flat-earth "guru". I have no stake in this and would have no personal qualms if someone could refute it.

We wind up with two extremes in these arguments. There are people who will say that we can never trust common sense. Then there are people who will say we can always trust common sense. Neither of these groups is correct. We should always trust common sense until we have a reason to doubt it. Failures of the visual system under certain conditions give us reason to doubt that we can always trust our common visual sense. People need to understand that things are usually good within specific ranges. At a small enough scale, human vision ceases to be reliable. At a large enough scale, human vision ceases to be reliable. At the scale of 3 or 5+ km. around a curve, human vision is not reliable at resolving curvature in the same plane as the incoming light. Imagine being a 2-D creature that was walking along the circumference of a circle, and the proportions are roughly the same as you:earth. What would the line you were walking look like from your perspective? My notion is that it would appear always to go out straight in front of you.

@CarlosMatos

Talmudcucks will tell you the formula is more complex, and that you're doing it wrong. Or will change the shape of the earth. Why can't they just use video from the Artemis rocket? Oh because it's all just short video clips where you can't tell if it's CGI or not?

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NASA wasn't the one that figured out the earth is round. People knew that way WAY before NASA ever came into the picture. So no, that is not a good argument. The roundness of the earth has nothing to do with NASA whatsoever. It's basic common sense.