Should Flat-Earthers be debated or ignored?

[Yonadav]

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.

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You just exhibited the borrowed knowledge thing that I was talking about. During 12 years of school, we are taught over and over that the earth is round. So we absolutely believe that it is round because that's what we've been taught and we've seen pictures. Our understanding of the earth being round is basically like the caveman's delusions of sophisticated knowledge about metal after being given a stainless steel knife. We modern folk have our heads packed with borrowed knowledge, and this gives us delusions of sophistication. And like I said earlier, there is nothing wrong with borrowed knowledge, but there is a bit of a problem with the delusion of sophistication.

Now, there are articles that say that there are simple experiments that can be done by grade school children which prove that the earth is round. And you googled them. And you didn't discuss any of them. And that's sort of amusing.
 
There are some fairly simply ways by which a person can gain real experience and knowledge of the earth's globular shape, but most people who are making fun of flat earthers don't really know them. While being titillated at how ignorant flat earthers are, they frequently reveal their own ignorance. And that's the joke.

Incidentally, the shadow down the wells thing that is often taught as proof that the earth is round is a good example of teachers teaching things wrongly. That didn't prove that the earth was round. It proved what the circumference of the earth is if the earth is round. The guy who calculated the circumference of the earth from shadows down wells already pretty much knew that the earth was round.