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> if it's correct, smart people will eventually be convinced of that. That's not how science has historically worked. Smart people won't be convinced, new peop
by mach1ne 5y ago
> if it's correct, smart people will eventually be convinced of that.
That's not how science has historically worked. Smart people won't be convinced, new people will. Status quo changes when the previous generation is laid to rest.
This is the result of the academia being just another human social system obeying the same laws of power as all the rest, thus inheriting all their flaws.
- mannykannot 5y agoThere are plenty of cases where things have moved much faster than that - e.g. the adoption of QM and relativity, dark energy becoming a respectable hypothesis, plate tectonics, dinosaur extinction via impact... In each of these cases, either new evidence or a new explanation for previously-puzzling evidence was key.
- monort 5y agoIt took 50 years for plate tectonics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#History_of_the_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#History_of_the...
- mannykannot 5y agoAre you not conflating continental drift with plate tectonics? The former was, for several decades, not widely accepted on account of the lack of a plausible mechanism. The latter is not the theory that the continents drift, but it provided the missing mechanism for how they do. Acceptance of both was swift once the distinctive paleomagnetic patterning of the oceanic crust was discovered. This scientific revolution was data-driven.
- pfdietz 5y agoScience has often worked like that. As an example consider Galileo's discovery of the phases of Venus. It immediately destroyed the Ptolemaic model of the solar system. Even supporters of that system overwhelmingly immediately abandoned it.
- ncmncm 5y agoMany substituted the hybrid model where everything but Earth and the moon went around the sun, and the sun and moon went around the Earth. But that was reaching, and they must have known it.