Should Flat-Earthers be debated or ignored?

[bennyboy]

Wherever there's ignorance, it should be confronted.  Always.

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.

You'd think that with the internet available, "borrowed knowledge" would be pretty close to true knowledge.  But it isn't, is it?  Trolls pump out a disproportionate amount of content, and dumb people recognize it as the kind of easy-won information that they like to adopt.