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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>In this case it is about accepting the idea that we do not know the absolute truth and inviting others to challenge our beliefs.

Empirically, does it seem we're in more open times where we're more "inviting others to challenge our beliefs"?

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I suspect the issue is the separation of academia and the mainstream discourse.

In academia, these days, you can probably question anything and everything - revisionism is rampant in all sorts of areas.

In the mainstream, though, that is not necessarily the case.

Is it "revisionism" if we find that previous conclusions were just plain wrong?

The degree of wrongness is often overstated, because nobody will get promoted for admitting that the subject matter cannot be improved on.

The first thought that comes to mind for me is the study of psychoactive drugs. I think its pertinent because of the relation to psychological and behavioral research. Cannabis was demonized for quite some time and people were producing research that backed up those claims, but most of that research was done extremely poorly, the best example of which is where monkeys were essentially suffocated with cannabis smoke (lack of oxygen kills neurons) and then they claimed that cannabis was the cause. There is a ton of research along these lines, especially when it comes to drugs of abuse. Most of the research that gets funded is specifically looking for downsides because that's the line that the regulatory agencies depend on and it produces crap like this.

The degree of wrongness is quite intense in some fields of research, at least the perception of the body of work is so skewed and biased by not only what gets funded, but by the studies that are just plain wrong and people need to be aware of that.

>In academia, these days, you can probably question anything and everything

I don't think so. It seems more like you are encouraged to question a specific set of beliefs but simultaneously heavily discouraged to question a different specific set.

Do you want to be more specific?

You can't even mention the things you can't criticize without getting an earful of why not being able to criticize them is making our society better and then suffering a withering attack on your moral character.

In other words, the sacred cows cannot even be named.

Phrenology for example, most other veiled excuses for one person to feel superior over another. Stuff like ZPE is not taken seriously either and if you do, you are mocked. There are hundreds of such examples, which to my mind are ridiculed for good reasons.

I think perhaps there was just a greater general acceptance of the output of academia in the past, if the so called models or 'scientific process' were followed.

Now it is much easier to come across the material, opinions and research that challenges the previous academic output.

I think it is more that established facts have been shown to be only true within limits. Newton has been correct enough for centuries, but now we know more. So we hedge our bets.

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