This makes me think of a fun Feynman essay, "What do you care what other people think?" I believe that the common response to that is to assume that it's meant

This makes me think of a fun Feynman essay, "What do you care what other people think?" I believe that the common response to that is to assume that it's meant to be snarky or something, but I view it as an honest question. Therefore I often find myself asking myself, "what do you care what other people think?" Sometimes the answer is "nothing really" and sometimes it's more like "well this group of other people have a higher level of expertise or experience than me so if they disagree I want to know why." Mostly though I am quite comfortable being outcome independent with respect to other people's opinions. It's nice if they like me or what I have to say, but mostly it really doesn't matter if they don't. It's also an observably necessary trait for paradigm shifting scientific progress, since advancing a new paradigm requires defending the claim that every other subject matter expert is actually wrong, and human nature being what it is they will never react kindly to that assertion.