The author makes some good points, although it seems ironic to me that he invokes the authority of The Great Feynman to re-enforce them. A couple of thoughts:

The author makes some good points, although it seems ironic to me that he invokes the authority of The Great Feynman to re-enforce them. A couple of thoughts: > Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts It seems a stretch to use this to justify "nobody knows anything". Its seems to me that Feynman wasn't saying that he believed that experts are ignorant, but that part of his belief system included the possibility that experts are fallible. > Receive science as a set of facts. We are sometimes given advice and told that it comes from “the science”, as if it settled anything. In principle yes, but in practice you often just have to learn some stuff and accept it. Almost no-one can verify a scientific domain from first principles - there just isn't time in a person's career or life. Instead you understand things to a certain level of abstraction and trust that the stuff below that is well-founded. But yes, good scientists stay curious and sceptical about the stuff they don't know. There was a lot "follow the science" during the pandemic w/r/t vaccination and masks and, while in principle I appreciate the author's point, attempting to create a more facts-based public policy will necessitate trusting that some facts are true without demonstrating the validity of the stuff upon which they rest. > Paul Graham puts it well: To be a successful scientist it’s not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong. Conventional-minded people can’t do that. I'd argue that pg's definition of "successful" here is something like "famous" or "paradigm breaking". But there are very, very many scientists who are being successful by grinding away at expanding the frontiers of knowledge, piece by piece. They're not being "right when everyone else is wrong", but they're doing successful science.