My Parents Are Flat Earthers

It doesn't look like he's worried but IMHO he should be: while a lot of these flat-earther/conspirationist are just "having fun" like he said, crooks can target easily these people! They're telling the word: I'm a gullible person with faulty logic, imagine how an attractive target they represent to crooks!

I believe both you and the GP are correct. Moreover it generalizes even further and includes, for example, the identity politics dogma of the modern left. These beliefs about systematic injustice are more than just rational arguments, they are themselves an important component to an emotional identity, a key to understanding a complex, suffering world, and hence a way to see possible solutions to that suffering. (Also we aren't the first to note the interesting rise of various secular replacements for religion! Personally, my favorite is Buddhism because it is the most humane way to embrace the void that religion leaves when it goes. )

Part of the issue is that most of the arguments about flat earth are easy to me in layman's terms and hard to debunk without going deep mathematically.

And there are lots of them, see this famous example https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ax_YpQsy88

Now let's assume that a flat eaether believer is lacking the sort of knowledge required to instance why these "proofs" are wrong, how you going to debate them with the knowledge gap? You have to either fill that first or convert all your arguments into layman terms, making it extremely costly and time consuming.

And so their view goes unchallenged.

I have some clarification on this whole flat earth thing and it is insidious.

I have a father who is prone to believing conspiracy theories. When I grew up he bought me a thousand "unexplained mysteries" magazines. the topics ranged from spontaneous combustion to ghosts to Loch ness monster to the magazines primary focus.. aliens. I had an incredibly scary childhood. As I grew older i learned that the strange noises at night were not ghosts but the house settling or something like that. It took me years to find peace from his indoctrination.

Today, He doesn't care about any of those topics. They just seemed to slowly vanish from his radar. Today it is the invasion of "lesser" species trying to erode "Our" "Moral certainties"

- He believes Trump is the answer the world needs - He believes Global warming is a myth created by Al Gore so he could take billions from the government - He believes brown skin makes you less intelligent because your DNA prohibits you from excelling, "Nature has chosen white DNA" - He believes the Rockerfeller's control the world through manipulation and bribery. - He lives in South Africa, yet is obsessed with Palestinian Politics. - He has a programmer son, and a Scientist Daughter, but routinely sends conspiracy theories to both of us to the point where I no longer interact with him

I spent many hours researching why this could happen. Why would a person abandon all reason and persue his own beliefs so fervently? It turns out that people are prone to conspiracy theories via their personality. They don't understand the world, dont trust the government, and therefore latch on to an explanation that explains the whole world to them. Anybody trying to explain the difficulty of the situation to them is therefore an "attacker".

The reason Flat earth is so insidious is that it has brought 3 active communities together. 1) The conspiracy crowd who does't trust the government ("The man") 2) Religious Christians who interpret the bible literally. ("The four corners of the earth") 3) Muslim culture being exterminated by christian "integrity". Christians view the muslim community by default as heathens. 4) the obvious crazies.

so you have 3 powerful, emotional motivators steering this conspiracy. to the point where good science is being applied well, to poor premises.

I was listening to a pod cast about this where the scientist in question was impressed by the level of scientific control over the completely insane premise.

I have not solved this problem or re-connected with my father. It is ongoing and the misinformation is just horrific. Right now I feel that humanity is as divided as ever, with corporations taking their biggest cut.

I honestly expected a completely different outcome to the freedome of information we have today. I expected enlightenment, but instead got people doubling down on their own beliefs and researching points to support them because emotions at the end of the day are more important than truth.

If you look at the range of feasible activities in human existence, it is actually pretty small. In the modern era, a person can buy some quantity of a relatively small number of consumer goods, choose their place of residence, their work and their friends circle. In previous eras, choices were even more limited.

To say 'utilising the same brain space' carries implications that minds basically work except there is a little area open to corruption. I'd suggest on the contrary that minds _not_ working is the natural state of things, and most people either aren't intellectually challenged or aren't bold enough to go outside their areas of competence. Note that it takes a literal decade of schooling to be a functional member of society.

So, I would contend it is possible, with great effort, to create a little area in your mind that sees some level of truth in a given situation. Nothing to do with religion.