- Provisionally rely on trusted expertise
- Necessary & unavoidable: not pragmatic to personally verify everything
- Encourage skepticism, open to challenge
- Not
- Blind belief: unquestioning
- Dogmatic: suppress dissent / contrary evidence
- Cynicism: the other extreme, blindly question everything
We all carry some blindly believed knowledge because we cannot realistically test every statement uttered by others. When I tell you that the proton has an antimatter counterpart (the antiproton), you would need $ 1 billion worth of laboratory apparatus to verify my statement. So it’s easier to just believe me and trust that, at least most of the time, and at least with regard to the astrophysical world, I know what I am talking about. I don’t mind if you remain skeptical. In fact, I encourage it. Feel free to visit your nearest particle accelerator to see antimatter for yourself.
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