'Mad' Mike Hughes, flat-Earth theorist, dies in rocket mishap

And definitely more of an experimentalist than a theorist in any case.

What sort of publicity stunt leads to your almost certain death? What was he publicising, because it wasn't himself

All these people dunking on the guy out of imagined intellectual superiority. Guy was a marketing genius, decent engineer/fabricator and had giant brass balls.

aren't they afraid they'll fall through?

Ask questions and don't make it personal. It's annoying and the answers are rubbish, but it's the only way to break these people out of their shell.

> The earth is flat? Why do people in Japan see the moon and a dark sky while I see the sun?

With enough of these types of questions that don't have sensible answers you may be able to get the person into a "maybe this is all bullshit" mindset. It's hard though. Especially with global warming skeptics.

> Is there any research on how to talk to these people?

Treat them like people, not specimens. Part of that means recognizing that each is an individual and there is no universal formula for how to effectively relate and communicate with individuals.

Talking is easy. Convincing them to rethink their position or even abandon it is much harder and takes a lot of time, patience, persistence and friendliness.

The friendship part is probably the hardest. But what's the success rate of shaming someone into changing their mind? Pretty low to zero. It makes them dig in more.

The best example I know of is Daryl Davis (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis). He's a black man that befriends active Klan members. He invites them to bars and his home and gets to know them.

He intelligently refutes their nonsense but he never asks them to change their mind or leave the Klan. He simply waits until they want to do it on their own accord.

The problem is sometimes people get stuck in a group or culture for various reasons. The key is to give them a safe, friendly alternative rather than a violent disagreement.

The key to understanding these and many other flagrantly irrational "beliefs" is that these things are believed for social or political reasons not simply rational ones.

There is an interview floating around with a flat Earth dude saying exactly this: that even if he were convinced the Earth were round he would stick with it because they have a community.

Humans are not rational robots. We are hyper-social emotional beings. The classical wire monkey experiment shows that primates will prioritize affection over food to the point of near starvation. It's not much of a leap to consider that humans may also prioritize affection over truth to the point of folly.

We see circumstantial evidence of this constantly. Most people would rather be wrong and have friends than right and alone.

If rational ideas look like they are failing, perhaps it's because we have failed to construct positive and lasting communities around them. If anything it's the opposite: the rational worldview is linked culturally to isolating sterile social orders with sterile objectives like GDP maximization or abstract political goals. These may be rational but they are not human.

If the rational can't rationalize community and culture we will continue to see a popular flight from reason.

> how to talk to these people?

listening is far more important than talking to.

To reinforce one of the other replies: asking questions is pretty good, as long as one takes it slow and actually listens to the responses.

I've (very lightly and positively) engaged with flat-earth folk for years now, and it's been fairly interesting. Many are 'cranks', many are trolls, but many have something like an honest desire to really know and understand, though with some pretty big blind spots.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that fringe beliefs like flat-eartherism, young-earth creationism [EDIT: not to be confused with creationism in general], lunar landing denialism, etc. are not subscribed to for logical reasons but emotional ones. It's a club that you can join whose rules are very clear -- all you have to do is to profess to subscribe to the belief. Once you're in you get to feel special, like you are part of a small elite group who knows a Deep Truth that no one else does. As such, no logic is going to convince them. The only thing that will extract a person from such a belief system is emotional support, something to fill to emotional void that giving up the belief and hence the membership in the group will leave.

Good luck.

Steve Hassen has done a lot work in this area. He has written several books on the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hassan

When someone is brainwashed or otherwise influenced by propaganda, you cannot argue them out of the position or trap them in a logical contradiction. There is some literature out there on it, but they have to work there way out of it on there own. The best you hope for is to state someone that tricks someone into questioning its validity - creating a seed of doubt.

You'd probably have to state something about flat earth "ideas" that has such an obvious flaw that they can't rationalize it. But not in a confrontational way.

Also, understand that it's not about flat earth. It's filling some other psychological need or some deeper issue.

edit: I had come across https://www.culteducation.com/ a while ago and found it useful. I don't think flat-earthers are a cult, per se, but some of the same techniques could still apply.

I was having a “conversation” with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook once, while simultaneously having a backchannel conversation about it with a friend. He made a point that resonated with me: If someone hasn’t used logic and reason to arrive at a conclusion, you’re not going to use logic and reason to get them to change it. I think that’s the crux of the issue here.

I have another, somewhat related, observation: there are a number of these issues, such as anti-vaxx, flat earth, climate change denialism, and the existence of a “deep state”, where the central premise is that there is some vast conspiracy to mislead the public, with huge numbers of people involved in perpetuating the lie. Once someone believes that these conspiracies are real, any attempt to provide evidence to the contrary is rejected as fake news/lies by big pharma/etc. I honestly don’t know how to reach someone like this.

Beliefs like this used to be a rare thing, something you’d only see in the tin foil hat crowd, but it has spread in recent years to a much wider segment of the population. I’m not sure what is to blame for that.

Socratic method?

It seems like an entirely harmless belief system, so I'm not sure why you'd want to try and talk them out of it, unless it's leading to dangerous behavior on their part.

It reminds me of Sherlock Holmes, on being told that the Earth goes around the sun:

"Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it." [...] "What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

Better a flat-earth obsession than getting into colloidal silver or those shoes with the little toes.

No more so than any casualty of extreme sports like climbing, biking, paragliding etc. It's cliche but I'd like to think the man died doing something he loved: piloting a home-made rocket. The world is a richer place for people like him following their passion.

Comp Sience is loaded with people who need to compensate there insecuritys by making other people look stupid or incompetent.

Why shouldnt somebody refuse a "broadly" accepted theory. If science, then he/she will only proof it in the end. It should be embraced, not discouraged. Attacking science with rigor, is the best you can do for science.

Some may be gloating, but I think the majority are simply pointing out the tragic irony of someone losing their life over a demonstrable, undisputed fact that has been known for several hundred years. Conspiracy theories and the anti-science thinking behind them are dangerous, both to society and to individuals, as this case sadly demonstrates.

Agreed, it is sad to see people making jokes at the expense of someone’s death.