Should Flat-Earthers be debated or ignored?

[EgoDeath]

There is ignorance everywhere. That's what makes flat earth pranksterism so much fun for so many. Give a caveman a stainless steel knife, and he will almost immediately become convinced that he is more sophisticated than other cavemen, because they don't understand metal the way he does. Does he understand metal? No, not at all. But he will think that he does, and that cavemen without metal are more ignorant than him.

Flat earth frequently brings out the same thing. I have laughed my ass off at some of the 'understandings' that people have about the earth being round. For most people, the fact that the earth is round is a matter of borrowed knowledge. They 'know' that the earth is round because they have been taught that it is, and have seen pictures from space, and that sort of thing. But borrowed knowledge isn't sophisticated or intelligent. It's simply borrowed. It's not wrong to have borrowed knowledge. All of us modern folk have our heads packed full of borrowed stuff. But the delusion of sophistication is wrong. And when people are challenged about that delusion, the result is frequently entertaining.

I agree that we have to pick and choose our battles.

There are simple experiments that any person can perform that will prove the Earth is round. I do agree that more people should be skeptical and seek out information on their own, but if you're not convinced the Earth is round, you didn't pay attention in your 12+ years of school.

The issue there, of course, is that not everything you learn in school is factually accurate. The amazing book Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen is testament to the fact that not everything we're taught in school is the total truth. Some of it is just outright lies and we can chalk this up to things like American History being taught from, well, the American people of view. Plenty of things are simply left out.

So maybe teachers in grade schools can start performing these simple experiments with their students so kids can see for themselves that the Earth is in fact round. Just a thought.

I answered as much as I know about pranksters and that is that I only know that Shaq joked once about it, but for the rest of them I can't say that they're joking. Especially since flat Earth is something that is present in holy books like Quran and Bible and we all know that people are ready to believe in anything, no matter how stupid it is, as long as it is in the holy book they worship.

For instance, here an art critic Waldemar Januszczak explains how Muslims adopted Quranic worldview of flat earth into architecture and how Muslims consider that shape to be super holy.

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I agree that it's a very serious thing for many people. I'd argue that most of the FE movement is seriously uninformed/misinformed people who actually believe the nonsense they're espousing.

However, plenty of them are trolls. If you're honestly not aware of this, you probably haven't interacted with many Flat-Earthers one-on-one. And if so, you're not missing much.

But I think it's a little naive to dismiss the idea that there are plenty of trolls in the movement without actually having seen said trolls.