The moon.
have them find one of these towers and show it to you. then, have them watch a ship sail beyond the horizon or go up in an airplane.
or just don't argue with them, if they're in a position in life to believe flat earther "science" then they aren't likely in a position to influence anything. just let them believe whatever they like. your kids, though... focus on not letting them turn out to be morons. that's the best advice i got, just teach your kids not to be idiots rather than arguing with everyone you meet.
@719,166 (squeegee)
But they say if the ship sals over the horizon, if you get a telescope, you can see it again.
@previous (A)
...then have them get a telescope and prove it. if his claims can be disproven then take him up on the offer. what he suggests would be a valid experiment. of course it would fail, but that's all part of science skepticism. speculation and guesswork are not. so if nothing else just suggest to him that he try the experiments he proposes.
i mean, he won't do it. conspiracy theorists don't actually care about testing what they think, they just think it and say, "well obviously..." so it doesn't matter what you say, because he won't even bother to prove it to himself. he just likes a good story and is gullible, so let him be.
@previous (A)
actually one thing you can suggest to him is to get into Astrophotography as a hobby if he's even a little bit interested. He can quite literally (with cheap binoculars and a camera-phone) photograph everything from the milky way to various planets. even in the city, he'll just need to make a cylindrical shade for the camera to help block out light pollution. what he will learn doing this, is that everything up there is super predictable, trackable, and visible once you know what you're looking for.
everyone on this site has seen venus. i promise you, if you've looked at the stars at night, you've seen venus. it's very bright compared to most stars, and is visible low in the sky even when there's glancing twilight. most people just have no idea they saw it, because they don't watch it long enough or track anything. but you can see it move. you can also see satellites. they are harder to see, and you need to be in a low light area usually to see them, but they are fast, visible, and distinct from stars, planets, and even airplanes.
they twinkle. you can even go online and find information telling you where and when to look.
but back to venus.
and jupiter. jupiter requires magnification, and resolution will be super low. but it's there, and it's moving. you can see other planets too. and the you can track the procession of the constellations as well. every motion can be explained most easily through orbital mechanics. it does not work on a flat plane. that's why in "earther science" everything is some kind of hoax. the sky is a "projection" or some such nonsense to account for the motion of objects in the sky. planetary inclination, rotation, and orbit all have an effect on the apparent motion of objects in the sky. without those things there is no mathematical function that adequately
predicts where those objects will be in the future. this IS because those objects are not moving on a flat 2d plane, but instead, are orbiting within a 3d space. and since planets CAN be tracked continuously by different observers (as venus falls below our horizon i could be on the phone with someone in Australia who can now see it and track it continuously until i can see it again - a test that can be performed with internet friends) it proves that the Earth is a spherical object also within that same 3d space (if it was flat, then eventually there would be NO one capable of reporting they can see venus.)
So have him start to watch the night sky, and try to understand what people in science are describing. it's all right there, and it's not even hard to get into. if he wants to see venus, he can just use the web and it'll tell him where to look. he can literally observe the heavens for himself, and even perform super simple phone-call-experiments to prove what those objects ARE DOING when HE can't see them anymore.
but, like i said, none of this matters because he won't do any of that. he'll just try and explain how using "fake projections on a screen" as a basis for measurement is fundamentally flawed... and then i'd ask to see proof for a screen and not get any. it's impossible to argue with them, but the proof that they seek is right there in the night sky. they are literally just too ignorant to see it.
@previous (squeegee)
I wonder... Could my buddy Dave be a flat-earther?
@719,178 (squeegee)
He does say that. He also says the moon is a fake projection, and that all NASA photos are CGI, and that all photos of the curvature are using "fisheye lens".
@previous (Tranessa !HScHvkg6q2)
Ask them if anyone they know has traveled to the very edge of the planet and what happens if they just hop over the edge. If no one has tried this they need to use GoPro and live stream the hop.