A few year back, there was a Netflix documentary about flat earther. They’ve done a couple of experiment to prove that the earth is flat which (Spoiler alert) demonstrated that the earth is round.
So now that these persons have demonstrated scientifically that the earth is round. How are they doing ? Still flat-earther ? or did they give up with the amount of evidence they collected ?
That if is doing a lot of lifting. One of the points of the movie is that people and media was laughing off the flat earthers and they grew in strength to have a national movement.
One of the indications the signals we perceive automatically regarding whether an idea is “truthy” is that something is either prevalent, common, worthy of considerations (2 sides), laughable, stupid, immoral.
Balkanized feed driven experience can help expose people to erroneous signals eg seeing pro flat earth things constantly because it was selected to be like previously engaging content and confusing that with it being commonly believed.
Treating an idea seriously in other venues only makes this signal problem worse not better. If they were capable of reasoned argument they wouldn’t be flat earthers to start with the only thing between them metaphorically or perhaps literally shoving pancakes up their ass is the type of social signals they are getting. I believe that ridicule is a net positive in deterring stupid beliefs because it deters SOME folks from believing whereas respectful argument is virtually worthless again when dealing with such folks.
Consider the same flat earther is all over the net speaking the same nonsense hundreds of times per year. Nonsense and ridicule is seen by hundred or thousands of folks whereas everyone is still talking to the one asshole. It’s pretty easy to see why it ought to be a net positive.