There are exactly zero people who believe the earth is flat. Some join conspiracy groups because they are social outcasts who enjoy being part of a tight-knit group, while for the most part they are being isolated and rejected (sometimes, admittedly, because of faults of their own, unrelated to being flat-earthers).
They aren't insane, they are desperately lonely.
I don't think this is true. At any rate, if it is true, there are certainly a significant number of people who are giving an extraordinarily convincing imitation of believing that the Earth is flat. So convincing that it's hard not to allocate at least some probability to the hypothesis that they actually believe what they say they believe and aren't giving an imitation at all.
I'd be more inclined to follow this line of thought if this was about anything else. "The earth is flat" is not a claim that's false upon closer inspection of the available data, it's a claim that's prima facie false, it's in the same category of "the moon is made of cheese" rather than "we didn't land on the moon".
No, it isn't. We view the claim as absurd today only because we have the benefit of millennia of collection of evidence and arguments and theory that has established "the earth is round" beyond a reasonable doubt. But for a person who either does not have access to all that evidence and arguments and theory, or who simply refuses to believe them (and, as someone else upthread noted, it can be a valid heuristic strategy for some people to refuse to believe claims by other people that they can't understand for themselves, in order to avoid being taken advantage of), the claim that the earth is flat is not absurd, which means it's not prima facie false.
This premise is just historically false. Ancient civilizations knew full well the earth was not flat. More people in the history of mankind have known the earth is round than how to multiply.
Some did. Not all of them. The first one I'm aware of is the Greeks. Do you know of any earlier ones?
Also, the fact that particular intellectuals knew the Earth was round in a society does not necessarily mean it was common knowledge in that society, much less that it was such common knowledge that the average person would think it absurd to question it and would be able to explain why. The books we have from the ancient Greeks that give good arguments for the Earth being round were probably not read by more than a tiny fraction of the population. The earliest example I can think of of the roundness of the Earth being taught in a widespread fashion is the Christian church after it accepted the roundness of the Earth as dogma and taught it as such.
There's evidence in some Sanskrit texts that early Indian civilizations did, but they are probably contemporary to the Greeks.
But again, even superficial observations are sufficient. You don't really have to "trust" anybody or research anything. If anything, it's the belief in flat earth that requires extremely convoluted and unintuitive rationalizations.
Again, I understand this stuff is frustrating, because unwillingness to change one's mind in front of overwhelming contrary evidence is one of the worst possible behaviors.
They might believe the claim in the sense they'd pass a lie detector test, but I doubt it's because they find the argument genuinely convincing.
> early christians
This isn't true, either. Some early Christians might have stuck to a literal interpretation of the sacred texts, but the Church has strongly opposed that belief since the very beginning. I don't have any particular axe to grind, but this is really just a myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth
That depends on what you consider to be superficial observations. The fact that there is plenty of evidence for ancient civilizations before the Greeks believing the Earth to be flat (for example, descriptions in their mythology) indicates to me that the observations needed to figure out that the Earth is round are not superficial. Sure, it seems like they are if you live in a society that already has the belief and can teach it to you. But that doesn't mean they actually are.
> this is really just a myth
The myth referred to in that Wikipedia article (which I fully agree is a myth) has nothing whatever to do with what I said, or with early Christians. You are attacking a straw man.
What I said, in fact, is stronger than the statements made in that Wikipedia article. The article only says that "scholars have supported" the view that the Earth is round since the 600s AD. I said that the Christian church had taught it since it accepted it as dogma, and that, AFAIK, was several centuries earlier than the 600s AD.
Of course it's possible that they are trolling or something more or less equivalent. I find it hard to believe that anyone is that good at trolling, but I admit I find it less hard to believe after spending years on the Internet. :-)
People can 'come to believe' what benefits them.
If an idea is truly exciting or engaging, or makes people feel special, or part of a 'group' esp. of 'special people' - it's just more likely we believe those things as 'factual'.
So in a way - though they would 'pass a lie detector test' and 'truly believe in a flat earth' - it's predicate upon all those things - it's an impassioned or subjective kind of belief.
They would act almost perfectly rationally if you asked them about some completely mundane subject like rocks rolling down a hill.
Our egos tend to believe it when we're told we are good, and tend to be dismissive when we are told we're bad at something, that right there is evidence we're not very objective about taking in data to begin with.
I would suggest that it's possible this need is subconscious, and if they're believing nonsense because that need is so great, I'd consider that a mental illness.
It's definitely possible. I'm saying I'd be more inclined to believe the "need" in question is a social need, rather than bad media/"fake news" influence.
Works for a while, not forever.
Interesting. I'd like to read that study, if you ever figure out which one it was.
Meanwhile, I wonder if this was a case of people figuring out what the testers wanted to hear, rather than actually altering the beliefs they held.