The new Flat-Earther with the T-Shirt proclaiming that the Earth is Flat attracts much attention. When every anyone brings up the shape of the Earth (it is a Tetrahedron), he GishGallops (spews rapidly many claims about the Earth being flat). My coworkers do not know how to handle a GishGallop. I just could not take it any more:

I asked him to explain the austral circumpolar stars. He made weird noises for about a minute and said that he would have to get back to me. I got applause from my coworkers.

The trick to debunking Flat-Earthism, Creationism, et cetera is not to try to debunk the hundreds of horseapples they make all at once in a GishGallop (one could do that, but it takes over an hour to research all of the claims in a minute of GishGalloping and and over an hour of debunking after one has done the research), but instead to go straight for 1 of the myriads (10s of thousands) of holes in their half-baked conjecture. It boils down to debating hard versus debating smart.

6999722
Can you help me fight gishgalloping conservatives?

6999801

> "Can you help me fight gishgalloping conservatives?"

• Do not let them GishGallop; insist that they hit you with their best argument.
• Find a big hole in their argument.*

Let us suppose that they argue that the high rates of gunsuicide and gunhomicide is solely because of mental illness, point out that it is unlikely that ASmericans are hundreds of time more crazy than people in England and that America having soi many more guns than England probably has something to do with it.

Whatever you do, do not let them GishGallop. Insist on them hitting you with their best argument, instead of hundreds of poor arguments.

Also, they may bring up some point where they are right. You can either concede that point gracefully, or make a fool out of yourself. Here is an example:

Conservative:
"Free markets work better than commandeconomies."

Super Trampoline:
"True, but free markets tear themselves apart with booms and busts; so now, a countercyclic monetarypolicy is a good idea."

That is much better than this:

Conservative:
"Free markets work better than commandeconomies."

Super Trampoline:
"¡No way! ¡Commandeconomies are the bestest things evar!"

In the former example, you conceded the point gracefully; but in the latter example however, you made a fool out of yourself.

6999722

I asked him to explain the austral circumpolar stars

Could you expand on this? I’d like to add it to my rational toolbox.

7000109

Basically, on a flat earth, one can only see half the celestial sphere. We should all see the same stars everywhere and they should all see to go around the same celestial pole because the other half of the celestial sphere with the other celestial pole is one the underside of the plane of the flat earth. One could also ask things like "¿where is the south magnetic pole?", ¿why do the Sun and Moon seem to rise and set when their model always have them above the plane of the earth?", et cetera. The GishGalloop of horseapples is just a distraction from these fundamental flaws.

Also one can use theories, which are models, to make testable predictions. ¿why can HelioCentric RoundEarthism make testable predictions which turn out to be right?, but ¿GeCcentric FlatEarthism only makes failed testable predictions?