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by codetrotter 2045 days ago
Yeah but sometimes it really is everyone else that is wrong. For example, when most people used to think the world was flat.
2 comments

'Everybody' thinks RMS is wrong. He has the worst case of Cassandra's curse I've ever heard of.

But I think it tends to not work like this. Incidentally, the flat earth thing is mostly a myth; literate people have know the earth is round since the ancient Greeks figured it out. Columbus was ridiculed for thinking the Earth was smaller than it really is (his critics were right) and the only reason his trip didn't end badly for him is shear dumb luck in running into another continent in his quest to reach Asia the looooong way around.

Doubly lucky because if not for that continent he likely wouldn't have made it all the way, a trip about four times further!
What is RMS?
Richard Stallman
That educated people believed that the Earth was flat is largely a myth. Not only people knew the Earth was round since antiquity, but they also had a good idea about its diameter.

Heliocentrism was a bit more debated but for good reasons. Early heliocentric models were actually worse than contemporary geocentric models to calculate the motion of planets.

All that to say that "everyone else is wrong" doesn't happen often in practice, at least not among educated people. And when that happens, either the evidence is solid and it is generally well accepted or it is not, and there is no reason for others to accept it. The burden or proof is for the one who makes the claim.

To go back to heliocentrism, the reason it is the prevailing theory right now is because the model has been refined and now, it matches observation better than older models based en epicycles. It is not because of some philosophical reason about our place in the universe.

> That educated people believed that the Earth was flat is largely a myth.

And this is one of those rarer times that everyone is wrong who believes this myth, although maybe they are uneducated too.

All this is to say go team iconoclasm.