"I don't have much respect for authority in the first place." Really? Let me ask you a few questions, then. When was the American Revolution? What are the elec

"I don't have much respect for authority in the first place." Really? Let me ask you a few questions, then. When was the American Revolution? What are the electrically charged parts of an atom? How does central banking work? How do red blood cells bind to oxygen? If you will only accept as fact information that you have personally verified, you will know a very small collection of facts. The sensible thing to do in many cases is to appeal to authority: the collective opinion of experts in a field. Heck, even in one's own area of specialty, one can't know everything. I can't personally evaluate every possible programming language or database in the world before choosing something; I take a clue from common opinion and narrow my search from there. Really, this is one of the things that makes civilization possible.