There's a large segment of the human population that has, for the lack of a better term, an outright "phobia" towards math.
Like all phobias, the severity varies a lot. Many of these people have no problems with most basic arithmetic, such as addition, subtraction and multiplication, and may even be quite adept at doing those things in their head (for example, summing up the result of throwing multiple dice). However, any mathematical subject that goes even slightly more advanced than the four (or even three!) basic arithmetic operators not only goes beyond their comprehension, but they have an outright aversion towards even trying to understand it. Even something as "advanced" as division, or understanding multiplication by negative numbers, might cause them problems (yes, that happens. I have witnessed it first-hand.) Not to talk about "rocket science" level of advanced mathematics, like elementary algebra!
Then there are the more severe cases for whom even the four basic operators of elementary arithmetic seem to be a problem. Maybe they will know, barely, what 2 plus 2 is, but give them anything even slightly more complicated than that (like 10 plus 12), and they completely lock up. Not only do they apparently not know how to approach the problem, but they outright refuse to approach it, or even wanting to understand it.
In some cases there may actually be a form of genuine phobia involved: A fear of embarrassing oneself by giving a wrong answer, by showing ignorance. And, thus, particularly when other people are present to watch them perform the monumental task of adding two-digit numbers together, or calculate how much 200 times 1 is, they completely lock up and refuse to even try, probably largely driven by the fear of embarrassment, of showing ignorance. They retreat into their highly-fortified castle of "I'm not good at math", which they stubbornly refuse to leave, no matter what. They are "not good at math", and that's it, end of discussion! They for all intents and purposes plug their ears with their fingers and shout "lalala I can't hear you!"
(Like most phobias, it's an irrational fear, and in this case part of the irrationality is that by trying to avoid showing ignorance they are achieving the exact opposite, ie. blatantly showing ignorance. Ironically, trying and failing would probably have been better than just stubbornly refusing to even try.)
Then there are those who might not have the IQ necessary to even understand what mathematics actually is. Maybe they know how much 2 plus 2 is, but not much more than that. With these people, however, the difference to the previous is that they don't lock up and refuse to even try anything more complicated due to fear of embarrassment. Instead, they don't do it simply because they outright can't, and they aren't even embarrassed about it. They just don't get it, it all completely flies over their heads, and they are completely oblivious about the subject. It's all like a foreign language to them: It's strange, it's esoteric, and absolutely incomprehensible cryptic gibberish. They don't even really understand the nature or reason for "mathematics" to exist, what it's used and useful for, what it's based on, and how it works. It's all just like strange cryptic magical incantations in a foreign language that they don't understand, and don't even know what it's really for, or how people come up with all those strange runes that they write.
Many of these people are probably incapable of even paying exact sums in cash at the cash register of a grocery shop for the simple reason that they don't understand how to sum up monetary quantities, and they always rely on giving a bigger bill and trusting that the cashier gives them the correct sum back. (Of course in the modern world they rarely need to even do that, as most of them likely just pay with a debit card.) It's actually incredible how these people can operate in society. Most of them even get driver's licenses and drive cars about, without even knowing how to add 10 and 12, or what that even means.
It seems to me that most flat-earthers are of this third kind of people. Most of them don't understand math, and they don't even understand the nature of math, and seem to think that it's all just some random gibberish gobbledygook that some people come up with, pretty much at random and at a whim, and which has no real meaning to it.
Indeed, many of them seem to genuinely think that if we take for example a formula of physics (say, Newton's law of universal gravitation), it's just something that someone (in this case Newton) just came up with at a complete whim, and this is taken by the scientific community as gospel and The Truth, just because the Big Prophet Isaac Newton said it, and that's the law, but which ultimately is just random gibberish that's based on nothing but someone's wild imagination, pulled out of thin air, with no connection to reality. The flat-earthers don't understand the formula, don't know what it's supposed to describe, don't know how to use it, particularly they don't know how to use it correctly, and most of them wouldn't even be able to calculate anything using the formula even if their lives depended on it. To them it's just some kind of random magical incantation in a foreign language that's just nonsense and doesn't really mean anything. The very nature of mathematics and the foundations of mathematical rigor goes beyond their comprehension.
No wonder they have no understanding whatsoever and a huge amount of misconceptions about "complicated" things like how gravity should work, or the geometry of the Earth and how it would affect things. To them even basic geometry is completely beyond their comprehension, and just random meaningless gibberish.
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