It feels insidious that "harmless" ideas like flat eartherism and creationism have crept to include broader conspiracy theories that actually do harm people. We know that at least one think tank[1] has had extensive effects on American policy by casting doubt on science -- starting with the fact that smoking is harmful.

That creates a large population of people primed to expect scientists to be lying to them. Flat eartherism is harmless in itself, but I suspect that the OP's father also believes several other conspiracy theories -- and votes according to them.

That doesn't change the OP's problem, or your observation that you can't fix it. But if you can't even solve the readily-demonstrable fact that the earth is round (just phone a trustworthy friend a few timezones away and ask where the sun is), how are you going to get people to agree about things that actually cause harm?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_Institute

> Instead, love your father for his other qualities and allow him to have his harmless ideas.

The problem starts when some ideas are not harmless. For example idea that covid is dangerous. Some people don't see evidence of this around them (myself included, I don't personally know anyone who had covid), so they don't believe experts, so they don't protect themselves and others. Some people even have idea that they are in the right, experts are lying and they need to actively prove that experts are lying in any way they can, even misrepresenting facts.

> I didn't figure this out until I was in my 50's.

What changed your mind? :)

I must have read something - maybe on hacker news. :-)

“Figured out” was a poor choice of words because I didn’t have an epiphany, “learned”would be more accurate.

I was curious, but it was more a joke :)

Aah, I see what you did there. :-)

Plenty of people have their mind changed by facts, they're called scientists. The rest are usually uneducated laymen. How do you change their minds? You don't, you educate their children to prevent the entrenchment of idiocracy.

This comment is so incredibly smug. People change their minds all the time, even "uneducated laymen". You just may not know the foundation of their belief and show evidence against something peripheral. It takes time, effort, and understanding in order to change someones mind and a level of openness and vulnerability that may end in you changing your mind yourself. Also, if you think that scientists or highly educated people are somehow immune to holding onto a false belief in the face of opposing evidence, you're deluding yourself.