I'm not here referring to the "big" famous flat-earthers and their debunkers, but about the average follower and believer of those big flat-earthers having discussions with the average person.
If you read the comment section of big flat-earthers' videos (warning: this may cause loss of brain cells), among the thousands of comments that are nothing but ego-stroking and d**k-sucking of the author, and the comments that just present completely asinine and incoherent claims, you'll sometimes find comments written by people who, at least according to their own words, have tried to convince people (such as family members) of the "truth" of the Flat Earth and how they either rejected it dogmatically or presented asinine counter-arguments.
That part about the average person presenting asinine counter-arguments I actually believe, at least at some level, and here's why:
The average person is not an expert on physics, particularly astrophysics, geology, and so on. Most will have had some extremely rudimentary basic knowledge taught at secondary school, and most of them will have just a very faint memory of even that very basic and limited knowledge, and most of them will not have studied these subjects as a hobby and out of interest, as these are some rather niche topics that only interest some people (ie. nerds).
Unlike some other conspiracy theory advocates, the average flat-earther believer isn't any sort of expert either, not even in his favorite topic of discussion, ie the "flat earth". He will just regurgitate part of what he has seen in flat earth videos, usually not even understanding much of it, and remembering even less of it. Thus what he presents will be some incoherent mishmash of random ideas and claims. He will talk about "buoyancy", and "electrostatic forces", and "vacuums", and "torrs", without actually understanding any of it, and present random questions like "if gravity is able to hold an ocean why it isn't able to hold a butterfly?"
The problem is that even though the claims, terminology and questions are asinine and an incomprehensible jumbled mess, the average person does not have the experience, education and knowledge to respond properly, nor the experience nor skills to have an actual rational discussion about such topics.
Thus, the conversation overall will become a complete mess. Completely chaotic and asinine. One side presenting completely incoherent and random claims, arguments, terminology and questions that he doesn't even understand, out of ignorance and too much self-confidence (Dunning-Kruger to the max), while the other side will struggle to respond with the extremely limited knowledge and experience he has about such complex subjects as astrophysics, having also an extremely basic and limited secondary-school education on the subject (often decades prior) and not remembering or understanding even half of it.
And if there is more than one person present in the conversation, that's a guaranteed chaos! It's a topic of discussion where everybody just absolutely must butt in and present their random arguments and answers (even if they, too, have very little knowledge about the subject, and zero experience on this particular topic). You will have everybody talking over each other all at once, in a completely chaotic mess, with none of them being able to give good answers or counter-arguments to anything, jumping around different subjects completely at random and in quick succession. That's guaranteed.
Then, of course, the flat earth believer will come out of it thinking that they had no answer to his assertions. Which, in a somewhat ironic way, is actually true in a sense. But that's not because there are no answers, but merely because they were too inexperienced to give those correct answers, or didn't know how to present them properly due to lack of experience and knowledge.
The only way to have a reasonable conversation with such a person is that it absolutely must be a one-on-one conversation, with nobody else present (because, as mentioned, this is a subject that just compels others to butt in, no matter how little actual knowledge they have about the subject, and they will do so even if you ask them not to, because the compulsion is just too strong), and only if you are acquainted with the flat earth claims, and the physics involved and the actual explanations, and you have the knowledge and ability to present those explanations in a succinct, clear, simple and understandable manner (remember: most flat earth believers are not exactly geniuses, and anything even slightly complicated will go over their heads.) If you try to have such a discussion without the proper preparation, knowledge and experience, it will just become once again a chaotic and useless mess.
It's unlikely that you will be able to convince the flat-earther (it's a dogma, after all), but at least the conversation might be somewhat fruitful, if you are prepared for it.
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