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> Most of “what everyone knows” is true. Most of our knowledge as modern human beings is shared with many others. Everyone knows the capital of France is Paris,

> Most of “what everyone knows” is true. Most of our knowledge as modern human beings is shared with many others. Everyone knows the capital of France is Paris, and it is true. Everyone knows how many letters in the alphabet, the color of stop lights, the shape of a rainbow. What everyone knows is usually correct. However, sometimes what everyone knows is wrong. Everyone knew humans could not fly, or build 100 stories into the air, or run a company renting out your extra bedroom. Turns out what everyone knows is sometimes wrong. But it is very hard to tell the difference. The affirmative examples are all conventions. We know them to be true because it's within our power to make it so just by agreeing with each other. The negative examples are not conventions. They are about what will happen in the future. So it's not just "sometimes what everyone knows it wrong." More like, on topics involving observation, deduction, or prediction what everyone "knows" is more likely to be wrong than right. The history of science provides ample evidence. Those claiming that "the science is settled" are trying to manipulate the public.

karmakaze 4y ago
Thanks for saying. I couldn't even read the complete article based on the lack of consistency as I don't know what rules of logic apply given the examples. I did skim further and see something about a project at Google and another bad example COVID. The main point that's off isn't that we haven't built good communications for consensus but rather the dominant information flows we've built actively diverge from concensus.
zaik 4y ago
> Those claiming that "the science is settled" are trying to manipulate the public. This line of reasoning is also popular among flat earthers, perpetual motion machine builders and climate change deniers.
- RobertRoberts 4y ago
  Religious tyrants, crusaders and all sorts of dictatorial rulers down through history used this exact same logic. How are current leaders any different using the same reasoning and language?
  - andrepd 4y ago
    Because you can question science (and people do, that's how science progresses!), you just can't do it arbitrarily / out of your ass.
    - inkblotuniverse 4y ago
      Then who's talking 'arbitrarkily' is decided arbitrarily by a board at twitter.
- hammock 4y ago
  >This line of reasoning is also popular among flat earthers Yes, has been for centuries!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
swatcoder 4y ago
It also stands out to me that the negative examples are ahistorical. Even into modern times, plenty of people did indeed believe that flight was possible through spiritual practice or mechanical means, had no intuition about maximum construction heights at all, and well.. personally operated boarding houses across the world and throughout history. I think the article is trying to make an argument that’s worth attempting, but is relying on some examples that don’t help it do so.
lisper 4y ago
> Those claiming that "the science is settled" are trying to manipulate the public. No, they aren't. Settled != correct. But what most crackpots fail to take into account is that if you want to challenge the scientific status quo you need an actual argument, i.e. you need propose a better alternative to the current-best explanation, one that either accounts for data that the current-best explanation does not, or one that has fewer free parameters. You can't just say, "Science has gotten it wrong in the past so it probably has got it wrong now, and therefore you should pay attention to my crackpot theory." The status quo is the result of a lot of hard work. It may not be right, but you have to at the very least understand how it became the status quo before you can seriously challenge it.
- aynsof 4y ago
  This isn't what I saw happening during the pandemic. The (to use your word) 'crackpots' were proposing alternative solutions like Ivermectin and Chloroquine. The people who were shouting 'believe science' were trying to silence the debate. I offer no opinion on either of those two alternatives, I merely point out that 'believe' isn't the verb that goes with 'science'.
  - xorcist 4y ago
    The crackpot spectrum was unusually broad during the pandemic, far from the realm of vaccine deniers and flat earthers. One professor of virology from a world renowned institution was soft banned on twitter behind some sort of click-though warning for pointing to public data about what we knew at the time that closing schools would lead to. Apparently because it fed into some bizarre American debate which was going on at the time. Another is a professor of immunology that was heavily criticized for explaining why and how thoroughly a vaccine must be tested before mass vaccinations can occur, even if every day it can be deployed will save lives and labelled a "vaccine skeptic". Which is more than one kind of weird. Of course, the vaccine was tested exactly as described, and came out even better than most had expected. But that makes it more than clear that many people who demands us to "follow science" more often than not could not be bothered to actually find out what science has to say. It is the new "think of the children". Science exists on its own merits, and we should be careful when the mob demands otherwise.
_dain_ 4y ago
>Everyone knows how many letters in the alphabet Is é a separate letter to e? What about ñ to n? æ to ae? Is q a different letter to Q? Or m and m?
- cromulent 4y ago
  I smiled at this when I read it also - I knew for a fact there were 26. Until I moved to another country. I think it kind of helps make Kevin's point though.
- andrepd 4y ago
  Here "the alphabet" is assumed to mean the English alphabet.
  - q-big 4y ago
    > Here "the alphabet" is assumed to mean the English alphabet. OK: 1. Do we include the ampersand as last letter of the English alphabet? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&oldid=1091252135#Ampersand https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&... 2. Do we include arachaic letters? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&oldid=1091252135#Archaic_letters https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&... 3. Do we consider diacritic letters as own letters? 3a. Do we include diacritic letters that only appear in loanwords? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&oldid=1091252135#Loanwords https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&... 3b. Do we include diacritic letters that were used in older English writings to indicate the syllables? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&oldid=1091252135#Native_English_words https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&... 3c. What about diacritics that appear in orthographies of regional dialects? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_terms_with_diacritical_marks&oldid=1087705949#Regional_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_terms_wit... For 3, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_terms_with_diacritical_marks&oldid=1087705949 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_terms_wit... 4. What about ligatures that were in use in English until the 19th century, but are today much more rarely used? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&oldid=1091252135#Ligatures_in_recent_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&...
Blahah 4y ago
> everyone knows [...] the shape of a rainbow In my experience very few people know that the shape of a rainbow is a complete circle [0]. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow#Full-circle_rainbow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow#Full-circle_rainbow
- swayvil 4y ago
  Every rainbow I've seen is a half circle or thereabouts
  - Blahah 4y ago
    Yes, because you're only seeing half of it. Seen from above (or some other perspective in some cases), it's a full circle. This was my point. Most people don't objectively know the shape of a rainbow.

karmakaze 4y ago

Thanks for saying. I couldn't even read the complete article based on the lack of consistency as I don't know what rules of logic apply given the examples. I did skim further and see something about a project at Google and another bad example COVID. The main point that's off isn't that we haven't built good communications for consensus but rather the dominant information flows we've built actively diverge from concensus.

zaik 4y ago

> Those claiming that "the science is settled" are trying to manipulate the public. This line of reasoning is also popular among flat earthers, perpetual motion machine builders and climate change deniers.

RobertRoberts 4y ago
Religious tyrants, crusaders and all sorts of dictatorial rulers down through history used this exact same logic. How are current leaders any different using the same reasoning and language?
- andrepd 4y ago
  Because you can question science (and people do, that's how science progresses!), you just can't do it arbitrarily / out of your ass.
  - inkblotuniverse 4y ago
    Then who's talking 'arbitrarkily' is decided arbitrarily by a board at twitter.
hammock 4y ago
>This line of reasoning is also popular among flat earthers Yes, has been for centuries!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

swatcoder 4y ago

It also stands out to me that the negative examples are ahistorical. Even into modern times, plenty of people did indeed believe that flight was possible through spiritual practice or mechanical means, had no intuition about maximum construction heights at all, and well.. personally operated boarding houses across the world and throughout history. I think the article is trying to make an argument that’s worth attempting, but is relying on some examples that don’t help it do so.

lisper 4y ago

> Those claiming that "the science is settled" are trying to manipulate the public. No, they aren't. Settled != correct. But what most crackpots fail to take into account is that if you want to challenge the scientific status quo you need an actual argument, i.e. you need propose a better alternative to the current-best explanation, one that either accounts for data that the current-best explanation does not, or one that has fewer free parameters. You can't just say, "Science has gotten it wrong in the past so it probably has got it wrong now, and therefore you should pay attention to my crackpot theory." The status quo is the result of a lot of hard work. It may not be right, but you have to at the very least understand how it became the status quo before you can seriously challenge it.

aynsof 4y ago
This isn't what I saw happening during the pandemic. The (to use your word) 'crackpots' were proposing alternative solutions like Ivermectin and Chloroquine. The people who were shouting 'believe science' were trying to silence the debate. I offer no opinion on either of those two alternatives, I merely point out that 'believe' isn't the verb that goes with 'science'.
- xorcist 4y ago
  The crackpot spectrum was unusually broad during the pandemic, far from the realm of vaccine deniers and flat earthers. One professor of virology from a world renowned institution was soft banned on twitter behind some sort of click-though warning for pointing to public data about what we knew at the time that closing schools would lead to. Apparently because it fed into some bizarre American debate which was going on at the time. Another is a professor of immunology that was heavily criticized for explaining why and how thoroughly a vaccine must be tested before mass vaccinations can occur, even if every day it can be deployed will save lives and labelled a "vaccine skeptic". Which is more than one kind of weird. Of course, the vaccine was tested exactly as described, and came out even better than most had expected. But that makes it more than clear that many people who demands us to "follow science" more often than not could not be bothered to actually find out what science has to say. It is the new "think of the children". Science exists on its own merits, and we should be careful when the mob demands otherwise.

_dain_ 4y ago

>Everyone knows how many letters in the alphabet Is é a separate letter to e? What about ñ to n? æ to ae? Is q a different letter to Q? Or m and m?

cromulent 4y ago
I smiled at this when I read it also - I knew for a fact there were 26. Until I moved to another country. I think it kind of helps make Kevin's point though.
andrepd 4y ago
Here "the alphabet" is assumed to mean the English alphabet.
- q-big 4y ago
  > Here "the alphabet" is assumed to mean the English alphabet. OK: 1. Do we include the ampersand as last letter of the English alphabet? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&oldid=1091252135#Ampersand https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&... 2. Do we include arachaic letters? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&oldid=1091252135#Archaic_letters https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&... 3. Do we consider diacritic letters as own letters? 3a. Do we include diacritic letters that only appear in loanwords? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&oldid=1091252135#Loanwords https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&... 3b. Do we include diacritic letters that were used in older English writings to indicate the syllables? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&oldid=1091252135#Native_English_words https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&... 3c. What about diacritics that appear in orthographies of regional dialects? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_terms_with_diacritical_marks&oldid=1087705949#Regional_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_terms_wit... For 3, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_terms_with_diacritical_marks&oldid=1087705949 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_terms_wit... 4. What about ligatures that were in use in English until the 19th century, but are today much more rarely used? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&oldid=1091252135#Ligatures_in_recent_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_alphabet&...

Blahah 4y ago

> everyone knows [...] the shape of a rainbow In my experience very few people know that the shape of a rainbow is a complete circle [0]. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow#Full-circle_rainbow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow#Full-circle_rainbow

swayvil 4y ago
Every rainbow I've seen is a half circle or thereabouts
- Blahah 4y ago
  Yes, because you're only seeing half of it. Seen from above (or some other perspective in some cases), it's a full circle. This was my point. Most people don't objectively know the shape of a rainbow.