[tzs]

> If all we ever did was listen to the experts, the earth would be flat still

That's mostly a myth. In almost all cases, at least in objective fields, the people who establish a new understanding that replaces the old expert consensus are themselves experts in the old understanding.

The people who established a round earth in any given culture were experts in that culture's flat earth view.

Copernicus was an expert in geocentric cosmology.

Galileo was an expert in Aristotelian physics.

Einstein was an expert in Newtonian physics.

[bthornbury]

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