skepsci comments on Rationality Quotes April 2013 - LessWrong

6 Post author: Vaniver 08 April 2013 02:00AM

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Comment author: skepsci 19 April 2013 07:45:43PM 3 points [-]

Exactly. In fact, it was well known at the time that the Earth is round, and most educated people even knew the approximate size (which was calculated by Eratosthenes in the third century BCE). Columbus, on the other hand, used a much less accurate figure, which was off by a factor of 2.

The popular myth that Columbus was right and his contemporaries were wrong is the exact opposite of the truth.