[extropy-chat] Origin of The Sourcebook Project [Part 1 of 2]

[Brett Paatsch]

Hal Finney wrote:

> Rejecting scientific consensus on the basis of personal investigation
> of the facts and evidence is likely to fail, paradoxical as it may seem.
> That's just how the world works.

But this statement is a truism. Of course the scientific consensus is
going to be right more often than not and so rejecting it is more
likely to result in failure than accepting it.

Yet all progress in science depends on some scientists being willing
to take the opposite view. 

I think there is a difference between rejecting a scientific consensus
having understood it and rejecting it without understanding.  

If lay folk (and practising scientists) make errors its far more likely to
be in failing to understand the basis for an existing scientific consensus.

Brett Paatsch