People who are merely stupid don’t question things at all. And if they have to, they’ll accept the first answer anyone gives them (which is still, almost all of the time, “the Earth is roughly spherical).
Flearthism isn’t about stupidity, it’s about ego. Flearthers don’t care if the Earth is flat. They just see that mainstream science is ultimately made up of people, and think they have as much right to be believed as those people. And they do sort of have a point – it’s not scientific to believe someone just because they work at MIT, or disbelieve them just because they work at Wendy’s.
To some extent, Flearthism is a person complaining that society has no use for their intellectual gifts. We should feel sympathy for that. But to some extent it’s also a person choosing to reject consensus reality rather than admit that they’re not the smartest person in it.
