I find it odd that in many discussions, most people have a preconceived notion of what is correct, and then they come up with arguments to conform to their view of what is right.
The problem then is that you have people on both sides of an issue deeply convinced that they are correct, and the other side is not.
But both sides simply cannot be correct (if its a binary issue).
And in most cases, neither side of the issue ever relents, and both frequently resort to attacks against the person rather than the argument.
This doesn't seem like a sensible way to debate things, as it doesn't appear to accomplish too much other than making both sides angry.
What's strange is that it occurs at all levels of intelligence. You find it in Youtube comments all the way up to websites like PhysicsForums. In fact, I'd say academia may even be quicker to dismiss the opponent than other fields.
However, when you get to the most intelligent people, you find that they do *not* quickly dismiss other's ideas, no matter how outlandish they sound.
I forget the exact scenario, but I remember reading in some book recently that a graduate student (decades ago) had come up with some sort of model for quantum electrodynamics. When he presented it to his peers and the faculty where he studied, all of them dismissed it immediately as "ridiculous" -- except Richard Feynman. He gave the theory some serious thought and then kindly explained to the student later why he didn't think it was workable.
And Feynman never had a problem admitting he was wrong either -- you can see videos of him pausing midway through a sentence just to say "No, I take that back actually".
Anyway, the reason I brought this topic up is because I saw the announcement for the Nobel prizes this year, and the award in chemistry was particularly intriguing to me.
The person who won the award was Daniel Schechtman. (You can see an interview here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZRTzOMHQ4s
).
His discovery was the concept of quasicrystals - lattice structures with rotational symmetry but no translational patterns. When he discovered it though (in the 80's), all of his colleagues immediately dismissed him without giving much thought at all to what he had found. They told him his discovery would violate well-known principles on the structures crystals can take on. One even dropped an elementary book on crystal chemistry by his office and told him to read it.
In fact, the leader of his research group fired him from the group for persisting in his "ridiculous" claim. For years he was considered a crackpot until eventually more evidence started to emerge that he was indeed correct.
It troubles me that what should be so many smart individuals that think "outside the box" would quickly dismiss an idea that runs counter to a commonly accepted paradigm.
Thoughts?