[LarryEt]

It seems many people have a completely unscientific view of reality in that they have absolute certainty in what they believe to be true.

I think there are people who are looking for North Korea level approval ratings on things. If you have zero uncertainty in what you think is true then anything contradictory is naturally "misinformation".

[anigbrowl]

If you wanna go around arguing the Earth is flat, you need to have something more persuasive than 'do the research.' Not that you personally believe in a flat earth, but it's a good example of why we shouldn't treat epistemological uncertainty as the starting point; there is so much evidence for Earth being round and so little offered in favor of it being flat that its roundness should be treated as a fact unless extraordinary new evidence to the contrary is produced. If someone comes along insisting on its flatness without overcoming that bar, then it's OK to treat them as either a fool or a troll and reject their opinions.

[incrudible]

Do you believe this is an appropriate analogy, given our very limited understanding of the COVID situation?

If so, I would implore you to ponder the shape of the surface that we inhabit without the hindsight of 1000 years of R&D.

[anigbrowl]

I'm responding to a general point of the grandparent post; we are not talking about the specifics of one area of scientific inquiry.