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🧵 Flat earth

Tyson No. 16249088

I'm looking for help trying to reason with extreme flat-earthers on the subreddit r/globeskeptism. This subreddit is devoted to denying scientific realities by asserting that the Earth is flat, and sometimes even delves into more dangerous conspiracy theories. They have a habit of banning anyone who disagrees with them, asks questions or points out inconsistencies in their hypotheses. Their sub propagates fake news and extreme misinformation, which can lead gullible people to believe them. In fact they accustom those who believe them to believe without proof and to be uncritical, while accusing others of doing so. Some of them are huge swindlers who try to demonize traditional medicine in order to sell their own.

Anonymous No. 16249098

>>16249088
You can’t reason with them. I remember when flat earth was first taking off and it was mostly secular. Nowadays it basically always goes with some religious justification.
The truth is that none of the Bible verses they think prove flat earth do so at all, whether you like the Bible or not.
They are so retarded they think the phrase “ends of the earth” means “ice wall.”
If you were to point to the verse where Jesus says the Queen of Sheba travelled from the ends of the earth to Jerusalem and ask
>Did the Queen of Sheba (Southern Arabia) come from the ice wall?
You might piss them off enough they’ll think about how retarded they are.
All flat earthers are paranoid schizophrenics btw. They’re not psychotic but they have a psychological investment in a delusion. They know when they’re wrong and they choose to rationalize that they’re right instead.
Maybe stupid people are more vulnerable to paranoid schizophrenia. I don’t know. Some flat earther mouthpieces are such smooth talkers I suspect they were “professionally trained,” if you catch my drift.

Anonymous No. 16249103

>>16249088
Don't waste your time. Here's two reasons you should do literally anything else besides argue with flat earthers:
1) People who are convinced by the kinds of nonsensical arguments that end up in flat earth communities won't be convinced by pointing to science no matter how much you try.
2) It doesn't actually matter whether they believe the earth is flat. Random strangers on the internet believing something untrue in some random subculture doesn't actually impact you in any way. Spend your time on something more meaningful than correcting delusional randoms on some subreddit.

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Anonymous No. 16249166

>>16249088
just ask them to coordinate among themselves to plan and watch together online the following celestial observations in real-time from the north and south hemispheres:

1) All celestial objects (Sun, Moon, planets, stars, comets, asteroids, and Messier objects) rotate daily in opposite directions around each visible pole: counterclockwise in the north, clockwise in the south. I such a way, east and west are themselves in different L/R directions in the north and south when looking at either the visible celestial pole or towards the ecliptic plane, implying that everything is rotated 180 degrees in the sky from north to southern hemispheres, but is it really? Why not check for ourselves...

2) Celestial object sequences along the ecliptic plane are directionally inverted L/R when seen from different hemispheres. For example, a sequence of planets seen in the north from left to right as planets A, B, and C, will be seen in the southern hemisphere from left to right as C, B, and A. Any other sequence of Sun, Moon, and planets inverts in that same way when crossing and distancing sufficiently from the equator.

3) The direction of comet tails will also be seen inverted from different hemispheres. If a comet tail points upwards in the north, it will point downwards in the south. If it points left in the north, it will point to the right in the south.

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Anonymous No. 16249167

>>16249166
4) Likewise, the direction of travel of a satellite visible in both northern and southern hemispheres will point in opposite directions. If travelling down towards the equator in the North, it will appear travelling up from the equator in the south, etc.

5) The moon too appears "upside down", rotated 180 degrees, when observed from the northern and southern hemispheres, including having its dark area switched L/R.

just those will fuck up their minds because there is no flat earth model that can explain all that

I have a long list of about 40 other phenomena, but those alone will mess them up, if they actually put in the work

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Anonymous No. 16249171

>>16249167
>I have a long list of about 40 other phenomena
I always destroy them, they keep running loops around them and not addressing any of them, or calling it fake, etc. A bunch of lazy assholes, that's what they are, blinded by city lights, never seen a constellation other than the Big Dipper in their lives, pathetic generation

here's two more, for fun:

16. Depending on how distant from the path of totality a total solar eclipse is observed, the occlusion of the Sun by the Moon varies from 0% to 100% and back to 0%, as predicted as if on a sphere.

17. Likewise, the shape of, and the land surface area covered by, the shadow of the Moon on the surface of the Earth at any given moment during a total solar eclipse varies according to the geometry of shadows projected on a sphere as lit from a source of light whose light rays arrive practically parallel.

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Anonymous No. 16249174

>>16249098
>You can’t reason with them.
Yeah you can, you call out their laziness and challenge them go observe it themselves. Make it very clear not to trust you, because you might be lying, and challenge them to coordinate and observe all those phenomena themselves, it's not hard, they have a community, let them get to work:
>>16249166

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Dave No. 16249191

flat earth grifters are taking massive L's

especially now with the Antarctica trip

Anonymous No. 16249206

>>16249174
They're paranoid schizophrenics though. The shape of the earth is easily observed and they simply, consciously choose to delude themselves every time they observe it.
I think people have a hard time understanding how someone like that could exist, as that style of thought is basically opposite of autism.

Anonymous No. 16249304

>>16249088
Reminds me of every space on redit. What is your complaint? Go be with the jabcattle.

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Anonymous No. 16249310

>>16249206
>They're paranoid schizophrenics though
okay, those are exceptions. But I know flat earthers, or knew, they're not anymore, that were just average, lazy, ignorant people. Not everyone is like us, born curious about the cosmos and craving understanding about what we observe. Some just want to paint, write poetry, play football, talk about shakras, etc.
As a scientist, I have a social duty to enlighten them as best as I can. It's also fun, teaching.

Anonymous No. 16249389

I wonder when will flat earth die out completely. When space tourism gets to a price point where upper class can afford it? When there are permanent scientific space bases? Extraction facilities? Orbital infrastructure visible to the naked eye? Average Joe can book a trip to Mars? Or will those retards presist even if we have space elevators, dyson spheres and intergalactic colonies?

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Anonymous No. 16249457

>>16249174

Or the sun can be close.

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Anonymous No. 16249532

>>16249088
A flattie brought up picrel in a thread earlier today, suggesting that it shows we can see too far and that the earth is flat. it was taken by a guy called JTolens using an IR camera. He does man such things.

Anyway, after telling the flattie that the earth curves at about 0.0145 degrees per mile and that this means round about a single degree of curvature over the 70 miles, he never did reply again.

it might be worth being prepared for these kinds of image being given to you.

but yeah, as others anons say, its a pretty high likelyhood of 99% of them ignoring everything you say anyway, but for the rare 1% and the lurkers its worth it.

Anonymous No. 16249628

>>16249167
>there is no flat earth model that can explain all that
sure there is: those lights in the sky, which you gaze in wonderment at to infer all these things, are used by satan to deceive us. allegory of the cave an sheeit.
so you have to prove earth is round without resorting to the light show in the sky. and you can't use ships disappearing over the horizon because that's explained by mirages (satan can distort light to deceive you).

Anonymous No. 16249634

>>16249532
This is a meaningless rebuttal because the case is not sufficiently stated.
Did he include plane headings / altimeter readings?
Any additional information on the camera and lens?
Location of the plane?
It also doesn't help that the distance is based on driving distance instead of straight line.
Varying the above around can give cases where the proposed picture is absurd or predictable in a given model.
Plotting a known distance over an image is just not the way to do it. Consider if you had a picture from a mountain overlooking a valley. The lines drawn across the mountain side or the valley do not determine landscape curvature, basically none of them unless your perspective offers a cross-sectional view of the scene.

Anonymous No. 16249684

>>16249634
>Did he include plane headings / altimeter readings?
no, but it doesn't really matter does it? it certainly appears to be the location it claims, which is somewhere south of colorado springs.
>It also doesn't help that the distance is based on driving distance instead of straight line.
how do you know this? is it not really 70 miles between the two cities?

The whole reason they offer these kinds of images is because they think there should be a visible curve of the earth over that distance. This is not correct. They also think we shouldn't be able to see so far, which is again incorrect, since the distance to the horizon when you're 10km up is about 350km.

Anonymous No. 16249702

>>16249684
It doesn't matter what they think. What the argument states is all there is. A picture like this is worthless. Consider a thought experiment where the same image is captured over an ocean instead. What exactly does it tell you? All of the perspective variables apply to any number of ocean states, but because the ocean is homogenous it is obvious such a picture means nothing.
What happens here is distinctions are seen and then niggers on both sides assume their model into the data and just run with it.
For reference, distance is approximately 64 miles, but that also has variation depending on exactly which point between the cities is being measured. Again, it is all muddled. In such a situation, the charitable case would be to use the minimum possible distance between the two.

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Anonymous No. 16249707

>>16249174
No, asking flat earthers to do experiments doesn't work. They always either botch the procedure or reject the results. They believe the Earth is flat just because they want to believe the Earth is flat. They're anti-authoritarians who'll double down the more you push them. It's not about the truth or evidence, it's about being a contrarian and feeling outside the herd. These people aren't only flat earthers, they usually come with an assortment of other conspiratorial beliefs that allure their anti-authoritarian ego (moon landing hoax, anti-vax, space is fake).

>>16249389
Flat earthers don't care about evidence. You could fly one to space and he'll assume it's a hologram or drug-induced hallucination or that the windows are screens. They just want to believe in flat earth. Space elevators, Martian colonies, asteroid mines, etc.. are all satanic NASA hoaxes and they're conspiring against the cattle normies to hide the truth.

Just like there are still uncontacted tribal people on Earth today, there will always be contrarian hicks thinking it's all fake.

>>16249103
>Random strangers on the internet believing something untrue in some random subculture doesn't actually impact you in any way.
I disagree, the internet is inundated with conspiratorial and other types of counter-culture morons. It ruins the quality of online discourse which degrades your mood and capacity to have sincere discussions. /sci/ itself is unusable now because of these people. But yeah, the best response is to not engage with them. If you are in the same room as flat earthers then you are in the wrong room. Ignore these people who are just trying to start arguments.

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Anonymous No. 16249708

>>16249171
>never seen a constellation other than the Big Dipper in their lives
start with that; ask why its never seen in Australia or Argentina. on a flat earth it would be visible

Anonymous No. 16249744

>>16249088
There's no convincing but there are two understandings I had that proved earth wasn't flat before i ever heard of flat earth:
Celestial timelapses in northern vs southern hemispheres and at the equator, and time zones. The sun rises everywhere at once on a flat plane. Maybe they have some goofy geographical explanations like mountains are ackshually 70 thousand feet tall or something idk
(yeah i googled it and one guy says it's like a spotlight that shines around lol)

Anonymous No. 16249754

>>16249702
>It doesn't matter what they think.
well, in the context of arguing with flat earthers it does. Jtolens material is quite popular amongst them.
>niggers on both sides assume their model into the data and just run with it.
what are you going on about? im not sure where you're coming from.

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Anonymous No. 16249800

>>16249088
Have you tried paying them more than the CIA does?

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Anonymous No. 16249806

>>16249206
They're not stupid. They're being paid to pretend to be.

Anonymous No. 16249872

>>16249708
nice image, thanks, it goes well with my 40+ observed phenomena list

Anonymous No. 16249880

>>16249103
>It doesn't actually matter whether they believe the earth is flat.
It absolutely does: it increases the overall disbelief in science and institutions in general. It breeds paranoia and disdain for intelectual merit, fostering further conspiratorial belief.
Our societies run on common trust, not just democracy, but the fabric of all societies. If that fabric becomes to weakened, or eroded, society itself becomes corrupted and inefficient, its citizens cease to contribute and participate, and instead become saboteur agents, and society might even unravel, or experience a schism.
This is not a joke. We are scientists, we have a duty to help guide these people towards proper knowledge. I didn't study my brains off for a degree and money only, I did it to make this a better society.

also, this:
>it ruins the quality of online discourse which degrades your mood and capacity to have sincere discussions.
>>16249707

Anonymous No. 16249970

>>16249880
>it increases the overall disbelief in science
science is a method.
>institutions in general
good
>It breeds paranoia and disdain for intelectual merit, fostering further conspiratorial belief.
it doesnt do these things because there isn't any intellectual merit in modern humanity.
I just hate flattards because they are schizophrenic narcissists who disbelieve their own eyes. The shape of the earth is easily proven; or at least, the flattard model is easily disproven*.

Anonymous No. 16250379

>>16249880
science and scientific community has been getting progressively more corrupt and stagnant for the past 3 decades and pharmaceutical industry in particular holds majority of doctors and scientists in it's pocket
I dont have to be flattard schizo to not trust modern "experts" and institutions

Anonymous No. 16250401

>>16249707
> I disagree, the internet is inundated with conspiratorial and other types of counter-culture morons.

Have you ever had conversations about anything that matters with normal everyday people? I would bet you that you could find at least a dozen people that believe something even dumber and more conspiratorial than your typical internet tinfoil hatter just by chatting to random people in your local supermarket.

Superstitions and unscientific woo woo beliefs are the norm, not the exception. The internet isn't making more of these people, it's making you aware of them. This stuff is old enough that we have multiple generations of tv shows making fun of these people (take a look at the early seasons of the x-files as an example) predating the modern internet, and it hasn't gone away yet and it likely won't any time soon.

>>16249880
> It breeds paranoia and disdain for intelectual merit, fostering further conspiratorial belief.

I'm an academic and I have a pretty significant "disdain for intellectual merit" at this point too. Not because I disagree with the fundamentals of scientific inquiry, but specifically because so many fields are so full of bullshit.

Climate change, as an example, is a case where we have both an overall trend of post-industrial warming that is indisputable and an academic/political institution that is constantly putting out untrustworthy bullshit based on junk science and poorly understood modeling with biased historical baselines and arbitrary and opaque "adjustments" made. I don't blame people who don't have an education for throwing their hands up in the air and trusting whatever easy lies feel right when the "science" is being yanked left and right by activist charlatans and people rent seeking funding even when they can't produce results.

Anonymous No. 16250420

>>16249880
Fuck that. I'm sick of constantly trying to drag retards into the realm of common fucking sense kicking and screaming. Scientists need to go back to hoarding technology and knowledge from the peasantry.

Anonymous No. 16250631

>>16250401
>Have you ever had conversations about anything that matters with normal everyday people? I would bet you that you could find at least a dozen people that believe something even dumber and more conspiratorial than your typical internet tinfoil hatter just by chatting to random people in your local supermarket.
The average person will say conspiratorial tier things about topics they know little about, but that comes from their ignorance. I've only met one 'space is fake' guy in real life meanwhile there are thousands of 'space of fake' posts on 4chan. There are people who believe conspiracies purely to be anti-authoritarian, not just because they're ignorant.

I know unscientific beliefs have always been widespread but /sci/ in the past few years has been swamped by these people. Look at the archives from 2014 and you'll see how all threads are genuine and about science and maths opposed to 2024's bait and science skepticism.

>>16249970
>science is a method
It's also a body of knowledge which is the victim of distain and paranoia. Criticism from educated people is good and helps us progress but criticism from morons on social media helps nobody and fuels conspiracies.

>>16250420
The peasantry also includes people who shill for science yet don't actually know anything. Youtube science channels are great examples of amateurs who can only regurgitate google results and wikipedia articles. It's the opposite end of the spectrum where they instead blindly trust information labelled as 'science'. I watched a Kyle Hill livestream the other week and to debunk Terrance Howard he used an old paper from 2008 claiming neutrinos and our distance from the Sun affect isotope decay rates on Earth. "Science communicators" also spread misinformation.

https://youtu.be/KGL8WLI-yFw?t=4310 1:11:52

Anonymous No. 16250705

>>16249389
Elon musk will have 10,000 people on Mars and they will claim it's a different pit in an infinite ice plane, or that they were all killed and it's all AI

Anonymous No. 16250712

>>16250631
> I've only met one 'space is fake' guy in real life meanwhile there are thousands of 'space of fake' posts on 4chan. There are people who believe conspiracies purely to be anti-authoritarian, not just because they're ignorant.

I know that they are wrong about the facts, but I personally would rather deal with a skeptical but incorrect "space is fake" guy than a literal onions chugging Kyle Hill type who has a moral averaion to the idea of critically assessing whether something labeled Science™ has merit.

Also, try talking to women. "Crystal ladies" believe just about every pseudoscientific conspiratorial thing under the sun and are totally normal and probably something you don't even group into the same basket (for entirely cultural reasons despite their beliefs being rooted in a lot of the same motivated reasoning).

It's better to believe "space is fake" after trying and failing to scrutinize "the science" than it is to uncritically believe something scientifically valid because some guy with a lab coat on the internet/tv told you to even though you don't understand any of it.

Anonymous No. 16250728

>>16250712
All motivated reasoning is morally wrong. One way or another, we can’t be unthinkers.

Anonymous No. 16250731

>>16250712
>It's better to believe "space is fake" after trying and failing to scrutinize "the science" than it is to uncritically believe something scientifically valid because some guy with a lab coat on the internet/tv told you to even though you don't understand any of it.
no it isn't. why is it better to be completely wrong about something while believing you've accurately assessed the evidence, when in fact you're just an arrogant retard? This is exactly what flat earthers are like.

Anonymous No. 16250735

>>16250728
I am not trying to make a pun here, but why would someone reason with motivation? Isn't this akin to saying reasoning is a morale wrong?

Anonymous No. 16250741

Flat earthers don't really matter. They are an extremely fringe group of retards.
Creationists are the actual problem. They are a substantial percentage of humanity.

Anonymous No. 16250752

>>16249088
>trying to reason
Useless, on a flat earth you cannot observe sundown (or sunrise if you on opposite side of that disc) caused by directional atmosphere thickness. But i have similar easy arguments against bigbang etc and everything is ignored by "science" too.

Have read a sailing blog were the sail around the world man meets a flatearther in Tahiti who did the same. It's hope and meaningless.

Anonymous No. 16250755

>>16250735
"Motivated reasoning" happens when some parts of one's worldview are based on what the person wished to be true rather than what actually is true.

As an example, if a lot of your beliefs about the world hinge on your belief that "people are mostly good," and this "people are mostly good" is something you WANT to be true, then it will impact your thought process and conclusions.

Anonymous No. 16250770

>>16250731
> why is it better to be completely wrong about something while believing you've accurately assessed the evidence, when in fact you're just an arrogant retard?

Because the arrogant retard has at least tried to come to grasps with something challenging and come to a conclusion based on that effort. This person tried to do something like a scientific approach and failed.

To contrast this, the "trust the science" crowd simply takes it as dogma and doesn't even know where to begin with a scientific approach to problem solving.

Anonymous No. 16250783

>>16250770
>doesn't even know where to begin with a scientific approach to problem solving.
neither do the flat earthers. there's no virtue in being utterly wrong and arrogant about it after doing 'research' which consists of watching some youtube videos about flat earth.

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Anonymous No. 16250804

>>16249088

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.08541
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.01521

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Anonymous No. 16250845

I'm yet to see flatters rationalise how the moon's appearance changes based on whether you view it from the northern hemisphere, Southern hemisphere, or the equator.

Anonymous No. 16250965

>>16250845
:
>>16249166

Anonymous No. 16250984

>>16250741
>Creationists are the actual problem. They are a substantial percentage of humanity.
A lot of the people who created influential scientific theories were religious, e.g. Georges Lemaître (big bang), Galileo, Newton, Linnaeus (species taxonomy), Mendel (genetics), etc. Mature, intelligent people can reconcile faith and science.

Anonymous No. 16251009

>>16250984
In some cases yes. But there is no way to reconcile literal biblical creationism with evolution. The best you can get is like that youtuber Inspiring Philosophy's interpretation but his ideas are really weird and not accepted by the vast majority of abrahamics. The whole point is sin because of the fall of Adam. That never actually happened so the entire foundation of Judaism Christianity and Islam is destroyed, and by direct consequence so are those religions.
It's best to just accept reality and stop coping: the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran aren't real words of God and no one should care about them anymore. In fact, the quran directly says that the earth is sprawled out like a carpet i.e. its flat (2d flat surfaces are not homeomorphic to the surface of a sphere so there is no interpretation that you can make that the quran says the earth is a sphere. This directly proves the quran can not be the word of god). Creationism is false, the flood never happened, Jesus wasn't real, and Muhammad wasn't a prophet (he also might not have existed). I don't understand the point of following any of these religions.

Anonymous No. 16251057

>>16249088
Who cares? Just fuck with them until they kill themselves. They're mostly mentally ill genetic trash. Get them to believe increasingly batshit nonsense and ruin their own lives.
>All flat earthers are paranoid schizophrenics btw. They’re not psychotic but they have a psychological investment in a delusion.
100% this. A lot of them seem like clinical narcissists as well but I'm just some retard on the internet.

🗑️ Anonymous No. 16251064

>>16249880
>It absolutely does: it increases the overall disbelief in science
Nigger if you're going around demanding people "believe in science" you're part of the problem. Disturbing (to normies) cult-like pop-science culture, liberal-left cultural Marxism (I dont mean the bogeyman), and new atheist zealotry did more to fuel anti-scientism than anything else. You turned yourselves into evangelical atheists, that's dorky as shit and doesn't even have heaven as a 'carrot.' Also the deep tie ins to objectively corrupt dishonest institutions which couldn't be avoided did a lot of damage.

Anonynous No. 16251173

>>16249191
>especially now with the Antarctica trip
It's illegal to travel more than a few miles in Antarctica by yourself.

But you knew that already.

Anonymous No. 16251257

>>16250984
He said Creationist, not religious.

Anonymous No. 16251293

>>16251064
>demanding people "believe in science"
imagine thinking that's what was argued for, kek
IQ 65 detected

Anonymous No. 16251310

>>16250755
Truth? Science doesn't care about truth, only utility. Believe whatever truth is most beneficial to you.

Anonymous No. 16251336

>>16251310
>Believe whatever truth is most beneficial to you.
no, believe that which most closely corresponds to reality

Anonymous No. 16251395

>>16251293
The first issue he brought up was "belief in science" and it's clear that his core issue is other people not revering the things he loves. Don't larp.

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Anonymous No. 16251521

>>16251395
>it's clear that his core issue is other people not revering the things he loves
it's clear to me the anon meant that people oppose even looking at the evidence and stubbornly stick to their guns instead of actually looking for themselves.
In the case of flat earthers, many are lazy about it, as said up there:
>never seen a constellation other than the Big Dipper in their lives
>>16249171
Others are stubborn. And others are just thick:
>Some just want to paint, write poetry, play football, talk about shakras, etc

It's true, I have to deal with those types everyday. They're absolutely clueless about the universe, but then go around spewing nonsense.

Anonymous No. 16252217

>>16251009
>I don't understand the point of following any of these religions.
God made the world, and the devil the religions. You have to follow like you have to obey to any self acclaimed "authority". As in modern world, Marx science ... the mentioned books are crazy, illogical, contradictory etc. by design. It is made to confuse (YOU) deliberately. Flat earth is just a part of it. There are always morons who believe any BS possible. But they only count as disciples to "spread the word"..

Anonymous No. 16252752

>>16249088
>Falling for the flat earth bait.
Ngmi

Anonymous No. 16254401

>>16251257
>He said car, not automobile.
>He said water, not H2O.
>He said two-legged, not bipedal.
>He said boat, not ship.

Anonymous No. 16254527

>>16249088
Why don't you just let them believ tgat? It's wrong, but it's an innocuous belief.

>bu-but they will in other more dangerous beliefs
Slippery slope

Anonymous No. 16254615

>>16254527
obviously they believe whatever they want to believe but it starts becoming a problem when they shit up threads with it and keep seeking to convert others to their retarded cult. The deliberate spread of nonsense is to be opposed.

Anonymous No. 16254649

>>16254615
>The deliberate spread of nonsense is to be opposed.
ditto

Anonymous No. 16254784

>>16249088
>I'm looking for help trying to reason with extreme flat-earthers on the subreddit r/globeskeptism
1) if you need help, why do you want to argue with them? do you ask for help if you want to play chess against someone?
2) there are no true flat-earthers. they are all low intelligence trolls
3) since your aim here is to trigger a flat earth discussion, you too are a low intelligence troll.

Anonymous No. 16254830

>>16254784
have to disagree on point #2. i've met one and he was low intelligence but definitely believed the earth was flat. spent some time explaining phases of the moon to him using a flashlight and a tennis ball. still didn't get it.