To quote myself above, I think arguing with any true believers is akin to walking down the street and encountering a disheveled unhoused person in a heated argument with an invisible foe.
Do you stop and try to explain to that person that nobody is standing in front them and they don’t need to wear the tinfoil hat? Would you ridicule them as morons?
Some people with mental illness are can be law abiding functioning members of society. As long as they aren’t a threat to themselves or others we begrudgingly let them go about their business. If it’s a loved one we might try to suggest getting help.
If an employee is known to have nonsensical conspiracy theory but keeps quiet about it except occasionally on lunch break I’d probably let it slide. If they interrupted project meetings with it, I’d fire them. If I come across it on the internet I ignore it. I mostly come across the concept on meme web sites and it’s always a joke making fun of the flat earthers.
There is no way a moderately curious person can look at the world and arrive at the conclusion it is flat.
A flat earth model does not adequately predict anything. There are whole lists of trivial observations you can make with only a watch and a tape-measure that disprove a flat earth.
There is a small group of people that really enjoys their attention they are getting with their “flat earth” bullshit. Flat earth is their hobby, they don’t actually believe any of it.
I think what sets flat Earth apart is that it is so easy to disprove and anyone can do it. I can’t prove myself we went to the Moon, I have to rely on photos that others took. I can’t disprove that there was a shooter on a grassy knoll or that GWB paid bin Laden for 9/11. But I disproved flat Earth yesterday morning because as the Sun was rising only the bottoms of the clouds were illuminated. QED.
Since when do people base their beliefs on observation? People chose their beliefs based on how they want to define themselves. The only facts they care about are the ones that justify what they already believe.
Flat Earthers believe the world is flat because they want to be Flat Earthers.
Over half of the world’s population believes in some flavor of Abrahamic religion which posits an astonishing number of miracles and supernatural interventions that “a moderately curious person” should recognize are at best metaphorical narratives and in many cases are just baseless stories fabricated as a measure of social control and manipulation for financial yield. And yet, many of the adherents of these practices refuse to consider the physically plausible explanations and validated science for natural events, in many cases harming themselves, alienating or doing emotional and physical harm onto family, giving away substantial amounts of income or savings to already very wealthy self-identified prophets, rejecting evidence-based life-saving medical treatments and preventions, and engaging in mass violence and bloodshed at the behest of leaders invoking their invisible deity. Compared to all that, a bit of ‘Flat Eartherism’ is, as they say, “mostly harmless”.
The majority of the Flerfs I’m aware of are science denying, YEC, Christians. They’re Flerfs because they are Biblical literalist Christians not in spite of it.
It’s a mistake to regard flerfers as being mentally ill or trolls. Theirs is overwhelmingly a belief structure (tottering edifice of loonery though it is) in which “proofs” seem unassailable to them, while contrary evidence is dismissed with a hefty dose of imagined conspiracies.
As noted earlier, we live in an age where experts are regarded with suspicion and dismissed with the encouragement of leading politicians (RFK Jr. has just expounded on the need to stop trusting experts). Flat earth belief is just another way to show that you’re a fReE thInKEr and BoLd mAVeRicK.
Covid was a hoax, the moon landing was faked, viruses don’t exist and purebloods will inherit the (flat) earth.
I’m not sure all FlatEarthers are sincere believers. I suspect many of them have found a profitable hussle – merch sales, YouTube royalties, a perverse fame. One source might be the merely gullible, or maybe they all feed upon themselves. It tends to be self-perpetuating.
Pretty much only Globe Busters and David Weiss’ flat Earth clock app, papa Flerf Austin Witsit is following the Alex Jones model of selling supplements.
Yeah, they are aggressive, obnoxious and persistent trolls - they have refined the art of drawing attention to themselves (even when/if their belief is earnest, it’s the same effect as trolling)
If you just look at the world, it looks flat locally. And they have tons of explanations about why you ships vanish bottom first. Understanding why predictions are important is well above their level of scientific understanding.
I know a flat earther. A fundamentalist Christian, though I doubt she has read the Bible all the way through. Also believes in all kinds of CTs. She is not insane. It appears logical reasoning ability is not evenly distributed in the population, and she has almost none of it. Not just in CTs - her book was full of plot holes and inconsistencies.
This is all very interesting but it’s not exactly what I asked. Let me put it a different way: Why do normal, rational people who are NOT flat earthers care what flat earthers think?
Non-FE like to try and change everyones opinion on everything.
And there is a certain constituency of smart, knowledgeable persons who think it’s their job, or maybe a mission, to just try and to teach away wrong thinking. To those dummies.
They never consider that FE person is reverse playin’ them. To get a rise or a click.
I agree with Stranger that Abrahamic religions, peoples of the book, are responsible for centuries of malign presence and his short listing could be expanded into a book.
Yet those religions also have centuries of history of creating, preserving, and advancing knowledge, much of it scientific.
Flat-earthers do none of that; they are entirely negative. As @crowmanyclouds said, inerrant Biblical belief fuels the most ardent proselytizers. The Bible can be read as saying that the sky is a dome attached to the four corners of the Earth. Anything that can be said to backfill to that absolute truth must therefore also be an absolute and inarguable truth. (Why are their maps now circular in that case? Because the corners are metaphors. Ha. Gotcha. Admittedly, some heretics insist upon them.)
Much the same way that hundreds of millions of normal, rational people find the extremes fascinating places to visit even if they don’t want to live there. Fear Factor, the Jackass crowd, Mr. Beast, Jean Pormanove, whose violence caused him to die live while streaming. Fire eaters, lion tamers, flagellant priests preceded them: the urge to stare seems to be basic in humanity. Wanting to feel superior works in both directions.