Groups > sci.physics.relativity > #618989

Re: How can highly intelligent people wind up believing foolish things?

From	Physfitfreak <Physfitfreak@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	sci.physics.relativity, sci.physics
Subject	Re: How can highly intelligent people wind up believing foolish things?
Date	2023-08-26 17:41 -0500
Message-ID	<ucdv2l$jcgs$1@solani.org> (permalink)
References	<04ff2fde-8e36-4746-961a-311f8a45ebb7n@googlegroups.com> <kktmekF4s46U1@mid.individual.net> <64EA5156.3073@ix.netcom.com>

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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On 8/26/2023 2:24 PM, The Starmaker wrote:
>>
>> On 25-Aug-23 1:15 pm, Laurence Clark Crossen wrote:
>>> By being indoctrinated in an ideology.
>>>
>>> Why can't they defend that with reason?
>>>
>>> Because they weren't persuaded by reason.
>>

Star, let me borrow your post so I can respond to Crossen. Thanks. He 
makes a valid point.

I have two points to make which might help you.

1. Reasoning to persuade you to give importance to a physics theory can 
come in various ways. Sometimes it is directly comparing its predictions 
with measurements in experiments. But that's for scientists in that 
field, not the fresh students or scientists of other fields. Sometimes 
the reasoning made is deriving the theory from other theories that you 
are comfortable with. That, also, is for scientists. But sometimes, when 
nothing else seems to have worked, one could at least bring you 
_analogies_ from weirder assumptions made elsewhere in physics which you 
have accepted without complaining, so that you could put the situation 
in perspective and become more comfortable with the weird assumptions 
made in the theory of relativity.

I forged through like two hours a couple of days back in 
sci.physics.relativity to get a picture, and more or less saw what was 
happening. You are asking your questions from individuals who cannot 
help you. They know their relativity, but they cannot help you with your 
questions in any way other than throwing the books at you. In fact, they 
do not make any of the three forms of reasoning that I just mentioned 
above. They may even be thinking they're helping you (if they're not 
that bright - a few of them are plain stupid), but they're not helping you.

That's one point.

2. Second point is that, it's not their job to help you. You're alone in 
this and all the work required is on you. Even in institutions where you 
pay professors to help you, they never go all the 9 miles! Because the 
rest of the job is on you :) If they spoon-feed you too much, it will 
work against you in fact. It will leave holes in your understanding of 
your own abilities.

You either find some way to convince yourself about this theory all by 
yourself, or, you fail to do that, in which case no harm is done because 
it means it was not a field that would work for you anyway, so now you'd 
know you should pursue other fields.

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