supertankers and Segways

Back when my frame of mind was incorrect yet complacent, the crucial factor wasn't impaired/lazy intelligence or a substandard education. It wasn't a lack of exposure to influences from outside the subculture. The stumbling block was an extensive set of comforting excuses and misconceptions about not sifting my own supernatural ideas very well for accuracy...combined with the nervous reluctance to do so. It was an unjustified and lax approach to the specific ideas I was clutching.

I wasn't looking, or not looking intently enough, at the ideas' supporting links. Like the springs around the edge of a trampoline, an idea's links should be part of the judgment of whether its definition is stable and sturdy under pressure. If it's hardly linked to anything substantial, or the links are tenuous, its meaningfulness deserves less credit.

This metaphor suggests a revealing consequence of the condition of the ideas' links. When the links are tight and abundant, the ideas are less likely to change frequently or radically. An idea that can be abruptly reversed, overturned, rearranged, etc. is more consistent with an idea that's poorly rooted. Perhaps its origin is mostly faddish hearsay. If it can rapidly turn like a Segway for the tiniest reason, it's not showing that it's well-connected to anything that says unchanged day by day.

However, if it turns in a new direction gradually like huge supertanker-class ships, it's showing that its many real links were firmly reinforcing its former position/orientation. Changes would require breaking or loosening the former links, or creeping slightly within the limits that the links permit. By conforming to a lengthy list of clues, an explanation places the same demands on all modifications or substitutions of it. This characteristic is what separates it from a tentative explanation. Tentativeness refers to the upfront warning that it isn't nailed down or solidified. The chances are high that it might be adjusted a lot in the near future in response to facts that are currently unknown.

Although revolutionary developments are exciting, such events call for probing reexamination of the past and maybe more than a little initial doubt. There might be a lesson about improving methods for constructing and analyzing the ideas' links. Why were the discarded ideas followed before but not now? How did that happen?

Amazing upheavals of perspective should be somewhat rare if the perspective has a sound basis. Anyone can claim to have secret or novel ideas that "change everything we thought we knew". The whole point is to specifically not grant them an easy exclusion from the interlinking nature of knowledge. Do their ideas' links to other accurate ideas—logic/proofs, data, calculations, observations, experiments, and so on—either outweigh or invalidate the links of the ideas that they're aiming to replace?

If their ideas are a swerve on the level they describe, then redirecting the bulk of corroborated beliefs ought to resemble turning a supertanker and not a Segway. Of course, this is only an expectation for the typical manner in which a massive revision takes place. It's not a wholesale rejection of the possible need for it. From time to time, the deceptive influence of appealing yet utterly wrong ideas can last and spread for a long time. So it's sensible that the eventual remedy would have an equally large scale. Paradigm shifts serve a purpose.

But they must be exceedingly well-defended to be considered. When part of an idea's introduction is "First forget all you think you know", the shrewd reaction isn't taking this unsolicited advice at face value. It's "The stuff I know is underpinned by piles and piles of confirmations and cross-checks. How exactly does your supposed revelation counter all that?" The apparent "freedom" to impulsively modify or even drop ideas implies that they were just dangling by threads or flapping in the wind to start with.