Might as well ask me “imagine gorgokanakawommbledorks were a real thing, who would have motivation to hide it?” WTF is a gorgokanakawommbledork and what does it have to do with a civilization that never even acknowledged them?

Frankly though from your responses I think your real position is more that you are particularly weary of this topic and/or don’t feel the need to retread topics with new people if previous conversations have been unproductive.

I actually haven't had many interactions with flat earthers but the answers tend to follow one of two patterns: giant conspiracy in history or giant conspiracy in physics.

I feel like the former can be dismissed out of hand because the provenance of any evidence they present is suspect - if they had the qualifications to even know why provenance is important, they probably wouldn't be flat earthers [1]. Conspiratorial thinking is so popular now that you're right, I just don't have the energy to engage (which makes for some boring Thanksgiving dinners, thank god)

The other response is far more rare and interesting... and most people who hold this view are either trolls or come back around to reason really fast. The only time I've ever run across this kind of flat earther, all it took was to remind them that one of their family members - sitting right next to them in a permanent state of cringe - circumnavigated the globe in sailboat.

[1] +1 for circular reasoning

Maybe there are societal cycles. I read that witch trials were gripping the public attention a couple centuries ago.

I remember a decade ago when r/conspiracy was all about Area 51, Orwellian surveillance, and the X-Files born from the cultural zeitgeist of the 90s. Now it's a bunch of closet pedophiles trying to distract us with QAnon MAGA bullshit.

And sure, I think your view point is fair, but I also think you muddied the top level waters a little because the topic at hand was the ability to reason abstractly past a point of contention and your point seems to be that there are signals where you don’t believe the juice is worth the squeeze. Which, yeah, fair.

To relay a related experience I once listened to this guys MLM pitch. The things that seemed to reach this guy the most were conversation points past ‘is there any indication this works that survives a cursory inspection’, like ‘given that this is good and everyone should do it, what happens to the half of humanity that joins and has no one to recruit?’.

>> The only time I've ever run across this kind of flat earther, all it took was to remind them that one of their family members - sitting right next to them in a permanent state of cringe - circumnavigated the globe in their sailboat.

Side note: glorious