How Not to Talk to a Flat-Earther
What to say when there's nothing you can say to convince them
Welcome back to Glass Half Full, and thanks for reading!
Quick update on last week’s reader survey: I didn’t receive a statistically significant number of responses (one vote for 3 chapters per week, two votes for 1 chapter per week), so I’m going to leave the schedule as is: two chapters and one essay each week. It’s a bit of a relief, really, because if I went to one chapter per week, I’d still be posting chapters from the current novel around this time next year.
Today, we’re back to considering conspiracy theories and false beliefs as background to my satirical novel, Ship of Fools. Specifically, what if anything, we can do when we encounter flat-earthers and other conspiracists, whether on the Internet or IRL.
In the Prologue to Ship of Fools, two philosopher-cowboys discuss how the dominant worldview maintains its hegemony:
“Well,” said Shorty, “say I told you that rock over yonder is actually a dehydrated pink elephant, and if you added water to it, it would get up and lumber off down this canyon?”
It didn’t take Slim but a second to come up with a response. “I’d say you were plumb loco.”
“Right. And if I said the world was flat?”
“Same.”
“That’s right. We all police the boundaries of the consensus reality through in-group/out-group dynamics, not by logical reasoning and discourse.”
“Lotta fancy words.”
“What I’m sayin’ is, no one spends time persuading by facts and reasons, they just use some name-callin’ to keep people in line.”
There’s probably no better place to see this policing of the boundaries of reality than in the comments section of Facebook’s space-related groups. Every time someone posts a photo of Earth and/or the moon, like the one above1, a flame-war breaks out between the flat-earthers and the “globies.”
Obviously, the flat-earthers don’t have any serious arguments against a photo like this, other than “Fake!”, “What makes you think that’s real?”, “Ain’t AI great?” and the like. Sometimes they’ll question the proportions of the two orbs, which is about the best they can do.
But let’s look at some of the globers’ arguments in response. Here’s a representative sample:
The thing is, poor Stephen Jones is a glober himself, and had made this subtly sarcastic comment (he’s since deleted the whole thread):
By now everyone should have learned that you can’t use sarcasm on the Internet without applying the /s tag. And one terrible use of social media is to pump up our own self-concept through virtue-signaling and dunking on those perceived as fair game. Still, I can’t help thinking the globies in these exchanges could have acquitted themselves better. Are they really any smarter than the flat-earthers?
No committed flat-earther will be dissuaded from their belief by an exchange on social media, no matter how reasoned, factual, and polite. But how would a random person with no opinion on the matter view this back-and-forth? In a time when no picture can be taken at face value, it’s not a stretch to think this one might have been manipulated. (And every photo is manipulated in some fashion.) Plus, a lot of these globers sound like assholes. Maybe there’s something to this flat Earth!
This is a good model for how flat-earthism grew before it exploded on YouTube around 2015. In the early 2010s, the Flat Earth Society website became the forum for debate about the shape of the Earth, with some smart globers coming up with flat-earth arguments for a lark. When another random globie would wander into the discussion, bringing arguments like “pictures from space” and “ships disappearing over the horizon,” they would quickly lose the debate to people who had been thinking about the topic far more deeply than they had.
This is the first rule of talking to a flat-earther: If you come into the debate with shallow arguments like those you probably learned in grade school, you will lose. Committed flat-earthers have simply been honing their arguments longer than you have.
Because 99% … 97% … 92% … some large majority of the public knows the Earth is round, simply using derision against flat-earth arguments will probably work to keep them on the fringe. But what happens when the same type of persuasive technique, or lack thereof, moves into other areas? How about public health? Did derision for the maskless keep them in line during the pandemic? Or how about the germ theory of disease? At a time when the authority of science is getting just a tad frayed around the edges, maybe we should all be better educated.
But what if I have the best arguments?
There are many proofs that the Earth is a globe beyond photos from space and ships disappearing hull-first over the horizon, and I’ll provide several in a future post. You’ll also find them in this video from StarTalk and in this video by Professor Dave Explains.
Let’s say you’ve studied all these proofs and counter-proofs. Will these facts enable you to persuade a flat-earther away from their false beliefs? The answer, sadly, is still no.
The reason: a key feature of any false belief is the strength with which it can be held despite all the evidence. This is what makes it a belief. And a belief like flat-earthism isn’t just a belief, but a crucial part of the believer’s self-identity. This identity is further reinforced through being a part of a community of like-minded believers. The same in-group/out-group dynamics that reinforce the dominant view that the Earth is round also work to reinforce the flat-earth belief among flat-earthers.
No matter how cogent and irrefutable your evidence that we live on a globe, the flat-earther must reject it to protect their self-identity and their position within the flat-earth community. (And they say the same about us — that we’re just brainwashed sheep, too afraid of scorn to admit all the irrefutable evidence that Earth is flat.)
The rejection of evidence takes many forms, from believing all pictures from space must be fake, to conducting experiments and then explaining away the evidence, to denying the very existence of Antarctica.
So no, engaging in any sort of debate with a flat-earther is highly unlikely to persuade them. If your debate has onlookers, you might persuade some who are on the fence, but that’s the best you can hope for. (But not if you engage in the type of derision displayed by the commenters on that Facebook post, or by Professor Dave in his debates with flat-earthers.)
So how can you talk to a flat-earther?
Whole books have been written on this topic, including How to Talk to a Science Denier by Lee McIntyre. First, you should refrain from laughing at them, since this will just drive them further into their belief. (Don’t be like flat-earther CC’s wife in this video from 2019. CC continues to release flat-earth videos to this day.)
Second, don’t try to overwhelm them with facts and evidence. No one likes to admit when they’re wrong, especially when their self-identity has become bound up with their beliefs.
Instead, start by taking their doubts about the standard worldview seriously. McIntyre writes:
“If you listen to the stories of science deniers who have altered their beliefs, they universally report the positive influence of someone they trust. Someone who built a personal relationship with them and took their doubts seriously, then shared the evidence.”
Science journalist Liz Dare takes a similar approach when she meets flat-earther Clive Cuddleshanks in Chapter 5 of Ship of Fools, “Astroanamorphoscope”:
Dare was looking at him with a wry smile now. “I’d love to explore your… interesting… ideas about electromagnetism, but first, why don’t you tell me more about yourself? Where are you from? Where did you develop the math skills to do something like this?”
But I’m the last person to provide advice in this area, since I’ve never encountered a flat-earther in real life. The one time I met a guy who boasted of having attended a COVID party, I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say. And one close friend recently revealed his skepticism over the moon landing, but we didn’t get into it — partly because I wouldn’t want to damage our friendship. So my only real advice is, tread carefully!
In my novel, one of Liz’s biggest challenges is resisting her impulse to persuade flat-earthers to give up their false belief. This isn’t usually a problem when she’s conducting a short interview, but circumstances in the novel will ensure she spends plenty of time with one particular flat-earther. Her commitment to journalistic objectivity will be sorely tested.
In the end, maybe all we can do is trust to hope that anti-science beliefs won’t bring the end of civilization, whether through resurgent polio and measles outbreaks, a recommitment to burning coal while scuttling renewable energy efforts, drinking raw milk to provide herd immunity against the bird flu, or a combination of these and any of a countless number of other possible scenarios.
Thanks so much for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll give it a like or a share, or even subscribe or buy me a coffee.
What do you think? Do you have any flat-earthers or other “truthers” in your life? How do you deal with them? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments!
Come back on Friday for Chapter 10 of Ship of Fools, “On Deadline,” in which Liz Dare gets a threatening message from a mysterious stranger.
This photo has an intriguing provenance.
I really enjoyed this article. Science denying baffles me, but you had some great insights here.
Interesting that so few folks responded. How many are reading it?