As I have written before, flat-earthers cognitively live in a strange and bizarre world which is akin to the Bronze Age with modern technology. In other words, even though we have super-advanced technology that can, for example, measure distances to the nanometer accuracy, locate your exact position on Earth to the millimeter accuracy, measure the strength of gravity at any given point to parts-per-million accuracy... we still don't know how far for example Cape Town is from Buenos Aires, much less what's beyond the sky, or how the universe works beyond just a few kilometers up, and all that scientists do, just like the philosophers and religious leaders of the Bronze Age, is make completely wild unjustified guesses about that stuff and, for some unfathomable reason, all the millions of scientists from all around the world, from different countries, cultures, backgrounds and sociopolitical beliefs, believe one unified guesswork belief system with no doubt, no skepticism, no corroboration, nothing.
Flat-earthers just can't think and realize how utterly impossible that is. They never think how impossible it would be to have literally millions of scientists all around the world become convinced of such things without any of them even trying to test if those claims are true or not, just blindly believing it without any corroboration, without any skepticism, without any criticism, without any experiments. Not to talk about the hundreds of millions of amateur astronomers and physicists who have the knowledge and equipment to test all those things as well.
Take this rather peculiar example:
While probably not every single flat-earther in existence, a good chunk of them have swallowed this narrative that if you zoom enough into stars with a high-enough zoom lens, they look like this:
They just took some random footage from the internet of someone who zoomed into a star with some unspecified camera, and genuinely believe that this is what stars actually look like.
What they never stop to think about, nor even try to explain, is why millions of astronomers with their highly advanced equipment, and why millions and millions of amateur astronomers with their telescopes, are not publishing these photographs and videos, and why this is not being shown and discussed in astronomy discussion forums and scientific journals and textbooks.
Flat-earthers just don't stop to think how and why exactly are millions of astronomers, professional and amateur, from all around the world, from different countries, cultures and backgrounds, not talking about this, how this is not just common knowledge and why the internet and textbook are not stock full of images of zoomed-in stars like this. These flat-earthers are seriously basing this belief in just a few videos out there, and nothing else, completely ignoring the millions and millions of photographs and videos of stars that look like bright dots, not this.
Of course those videos that show a star like the above screenshot are from a camera that has very poor definition and is out of focus. The above is essentially just a bokeh effect caused by the camera optics, because of the bright star being out-of-focus. The constant shimmering and shifting "plasma-like" shapes are caused by the atmospheric disturbances. (Even in-focus video of stars will of course show this same atmospheric disturbance, but when the star is in-focus, it only causes it to shimmer slightly and perhaps very subtly shift.)
You can get the exact same effect by filming any small and bright light against a dark background, anywhere. A distant light bulb against a dark background, when enough out-of-focus, will cause the same bokeh-effect. It will not change shape so much because there's less atmosphere in between, but it's the exact same effect.
But these flat-earthers are not interested in the actual physics. They just want to believe what they want to believe, and never stop to think how impossible it would be, if they were right, for it to not be common knowledge. They don't even want to find out what the actual explanation is. They want to believe their own preconceptions and shut down everything else.
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