Refuting something wrong in only useful when there are identifiable failures of local validity (which often only makes it stronger). Refuting something as a whole in better thought of as offering an alternative frame that doesn’t particularly interact with the “refuted” frame. The key obstruction is unwillingness to contradict yourself, to separately study ideas that are clearly inconsistent with each other, without taking a side in the contradiction in the context of studying either point of view.
So a flat Earth theory might have a particular problem worth talking about, and hashing out the problem is liable to make a stronger flat Earth theory. Or the “refutation” is not about the flat Earth theory, it’s instead an explanation of a non-flat Earth theory that’s not at all a refutation, its subject matter is completely separate. The difficulty is when flat Earth conviction prevents a person from curious engagement with non-flat Earth details.
Refuting something wrong in only useful when there are identifiable failures of local validity (which often only makes it stronger). Refuting something as a whole in better thought of as offering an alternative frame that doesn’t particularly interact with the “refuted” frame. The key obstruction is unwillingness to contradict yourself, to separately study ideas that are clearly inconsistent with each other, without taking a side in the contradiction in the context of studying either point of view.
So a flat Earth theory might have a particular problem worth talking about, and hashing out the problem is liable to make a stronger flat Earth theory. Or the “refutation” is not about the flat Earth theory, it’s instead an explanation of a non-flat Earth theory that’s not at all a refutation, its subject matter is completely separate. The difficulty is when flat Earth conviction prevents a person from curious engagement with non-flat Earth details.