1,000 comments about whether or not people arrive at scientific knowledge by actually verifying every assertion critically and empirically or by simply accepting what has been established critically by others in whom they place trust and confidence. No chance.
This constant hijacking of interesting issues and ideas has got to stop!
These days you can't talk about cultural relations because everyone starts shouting about racial relations. You can't talk about about abortion because so many people polarize their opinion. Now we learn that you can't point out that 'faith' means pretty much the same thing as 'trust' and 'confidence' without 1,000 people letting rip about religion vs science.#
Next thing you know people will be going to libraries and blotting faith out of thesaurus entries for Trust and Confidence. It's a synonym, that's a verifiable FACT for you.
I think the OP raises a fair point. As a species we know too much to verify everything personally. We live in a time of hyper-specialisation. You focus on a very specific field of knowledge and trust that others will cover the rest. That's why we are learning so much and making so much incremental progress, as a species we trust each other. Can you imagine the disaster the scientific field would experience if scientists didn't trust each other enough to accept each others work and build upon it? Most of the 'checking' that gets done is to learn more about a phenomena, rather than simply to discredit or further establish the work of others.
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1,000 comments about whether or not people arrive at scientific knowledge by actually verifying every assertion critically and empirically or by simply accepting what has been established critically by others in whom they place trust and confidence. No chance. This constant hijacking of interesting issues and ideas has got to stop! These days you can't talk about cultural relations because everyone starts shouting about racial relations. You can't talk about about abortion because so many people polarize their opinion. Now we learn that you can't point out that 'faith' means pretty much the same thing as 'trust' and 'confidence' without 1,000 people letting rip about religion vs science.# Next thing you know people will be going to libraries and blotting faith out of thesaurus entries for Trust and Confidence. It's a synonym, that's a verifiable FACT for you. I think the OP raises a fair point. As a species we know too much to verify everything personally. We live in a time of hyper-specialisation. You focus on a very specific field of knowledge and trust that others will cover the rest. That's why we are learning so much and making so much incremental progress, as a species we trust each other. Can you imagine the disaster the scientific field would experience if scientists didn't trust each other enough to accept each others work and build upon it? Most of the 'checking' that gets done is to learn more about a phenomena, rather than simply to discredit or further establish the work of others.
What's this about cowardice? Ok, All sorted. I'd still like to know more...