The idea that the Earth is a sphere was all but settled by ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 BC), who obtained empirical evidence after travelling to Egypt and seeing new constellations of stars. Eratosthenes, in the third century BC, became the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth. Islamic scholars made further advanced measurements from about the 9th century AD onwards, while European navigators circled the Earth in the 16th century. Images from space were final proof, if any were needed.
Today’s flat-Earth believers are not, though, the first to doubt what seems unquestionable. The notion of a flat Earth initially resurfaced in the 1800s as a backlash to scientific progress, especially among those who wished to return to biblical literalism. Perhaps the most famous proponent was the British writer Samuel Rowbotham (1816–1884). He proposed the Earth is a flat immovable disc, centred at the North Pole, with Antarctica replaced by an ice wall at the disc’s outer boundary.
The International Flat Earth Research Society, which was set up in 1956 by Samuel Shenton, a signwriter living in Dover, UK, was regarded by many people as merely a symbol of British eccentricity – amusing and of little consequence. But in the early 2000s, with the Internet now a well-established vehicle for off-beat views, the idea began to bubble up again, mostly in the US. Discussions sprouted in online forums, the Flat Earth Society was relaunched in October 2009 and the annual flat-Earth conference began in earnest.
Letting people believe what they want to believe gets people killed, unfortunately. You cannot just make up alternatives to chemistry, medicine, and physics.
Mixing brake fluid and bleach isn’t magic, but it does produce a lot of magic smoke. It also can permanently blind or kill you. People have turned shit like this into real products, take Radithor for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor
This product led to a revision in medicine after the patient died due to alternative medicine. Another example for flat earthers is flying.
Planes fly routes based off fuel calculations, because fuel is heavy and it takes fuel to fly with fuel. If you are a flat earth pilot, and you fuck up your fuel calculations because you don’t account for the curvature of the Earth, you and the 300 other unlucky bastards on the plane might crash into the ocean before reaching your destination. God forbid a flat earth programmer mess with fuel calculations for entire fleets of planes. It might be a one day mistake, but there are tens of thousands of flights all over the world.
I never advocated for people to develop useless or harmful products. I merely suggested that the average person will do exactly 0 (zero) developments in their life which require them to know that the earth is a sphere. So that’s what i meant with “let them believe what they want”, as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody.
The antivax movement is a very good example of how unscientific beliefs and credulity can harm others. Flat earthers, antivax, etc are all symptoms caused by the same reasons.