I think we overestimate the dichotomy between those two things. It's pretty common to see people react to ideas with "that's either obviously true or hereticall

I think we overestimate the dichotomy between those two things. It's pretty common to see people react to ideas with "that's either obviously true or heretically stupid, but it's definitely not accurate and groundbreaking." Galileo got in trouble over insulting his patron, but heliocentric theory more broadly was peacefully ignored, except when it became too visible and was persecuted. And the Catholic Church has maintained the same position ever since: into the 1800s, it was alternately publishing and banning works which accepted heliocentric theory. Even in the 1990s, we saw Cardinal Ratzinger rationalizing the Church's position as more rational than Galileo's at the time, while John Paul II was talking about "the error of the theologians of the time", as though the matter had consisted of a standard disagreement between scholars, rather than a heresy trial and a formal ban on Galilean ideas. One view says he was a foolish heretic who got lucky, the other an accepted part of the academy; neither concedes that his work was both controversial and correct. We see the same thing all over. Darwin was hesitant to publish because he knew the conflict he'd attract, but the Linnean society declared his work unremarkable even as sparked outrage in other quarters. Soviet science suppression is recent enough to be well-documented; we see for instance that cybernetics was a "bourgeois pseudo-science" until it was rehabilitated, at which point Kolman wrote a history in which suppressed thinkers like Glushkov were credited with inventing the science ahead of Westerners. Taleb's historical point is interesting, but I think he's wrong to portray those as conflicting reactions. Jumping straight from mockery to acceptance is a common approach for an establishment that doesn't want to lose face.