[theaeolist]

If only. There's a nice flat-earth documentary on Netflix. Some scientifically-minded flat-earthers designed and carried out not one but two experiments to "prove" the earth is flat. Both of them came conclusively on the side that the earth is not flat, but is quasi-spherical with a radius and rotation rate consistent with the scientific consensus. Remember, these experiments were on their own terms. They repeated them several times and they declared them "inconclusive". This is not someone you can convince by any means.

[thrwawy12345]

Who are they hurting by believing that the Earth is flat?

[WillDaSilva]

The harm people cause by holding believing false beliefs is rather complicated at times, yet extremely important and impactful nonetheless.

For flat earthers in particular this video sheds some light on why their way of thinking is harmful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44

To be extremely reductive, allowing false beliefs into one's web of beliefs corrupts it. This typically gives rise to a multitude of other false beliefs. Flat earthers almost never only believe one obviously false conspiracy theory. They become epistemically susceptible, and worse still, they tend to spread these awful ways of thinking with great zeal.

In the more general case, I recommend you learn about the ethics of belief. The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy page on the topic is a good starting point: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-belief/

Maybe someone can come along and answer your question in a more succinct yet equally (or ideally more) convincing way. This request that you commit several hours to educating yourself is the best I can do at this time.

[deepnotderp]

Well said. I propose therefore that we ban Boltzmann for his crime of false belief in statistical mechanics. /s

[thereisnospork]

How do you inform a voter on the implications of say, tax policy, and expect them to make a rational decision if they can't even comprehend that the earth is proven to not be flat? Ignorance and its tolerance hurts everyone in a democracy.

[thrwawy12345]

What a curious argument against democracy.

[betwixthewires]

It's not that curious, it's pretty clearly self describing actually.

And what's wrong with arguments against democracy? We are in a thread explicitly discussing questioning anything and everything and talking about the virtues of being averse to dogma. What if democracy is not as good as it gets? What if there's an alternative that is not authoritarianism?

[johnisgood]

You may find http://anthonyflood.com/rothbarddemocracy.htm interesting.

[chana_masala]

There's no such thing as scientific consensus, strictly speaking