Lets take one of the biggest hullabaloos out their today. Flat Earth.
Today, we were raised up to believe that people who believed in Flat Earth were stupid. (they didn't have science, and rockets, and lived in caves) And it is one of the first responses seen when people first encounter people talking about the Flat Earth. (comment on X: "your stupid, you need to go to school and learn something")
However, go back a bit in time, and EVERYONE KNEW the earth was flat. It is in the Bible, it is in so many sacred/ancient texts, well, all of them. All of them described the earth as flat. So, people back then would have described the Ball Earth people as stupid, and unknowing.
Do you see how this notion of being right, and other ideas are just silly depends on where, and how you are looking at something.
Yesterday it was germ theory, today it is terrain theory. In the future it will be all about your aura, or spirit, or emotions.
This is a mental trap that we fall into, describing something as stupid. So, we must look at the structure that creates this kind of belief. Is it an innate human attribute? Or was it taught? And, how do we distinguish between something truly silly, like 2+2=5, and something that just seems silly because we do not know yet?
The belief that we are the most advanced…
"Our team is better than your team!"
So much of our modern theories and understandings are built on a premise that we, humans, on this planet right now, are the most advanced humans have ever been. This is in the way we talk in science, and history, and archeaology…
But where did we get this notion? Especially when there are signs all over the planet that there was a more advanced civilization here before this time. We say that Egyptian slaves built the pyramids, when their own texts say that the pyramids were there before them.
There are stone structures, from what we assume is the Mayan, but there could have been an earlier group, that are so precisely fitted, you can't get a piece of paper in between the stones. And these are not two flat surfaces, machined perfectly flat like we can make, they are warped in all direction, and join perfectly on all these curves.
There are giant stone spheres laying around. And they are VERY precisely ground spheres. We can make small spheres, but we have nothing to handle the sizes that these things are.
When you really look at all the things we have unearthed, we find that someone, back in time, knew how to do things that we don't know how to do today. Sure, you could argue that we might be able to build a pyramid like the one at Giza, but, could you imagine tuning it? That great big thing has a vibrational frequency. A very specific frequency, that says the thing was tuned. And it has resonating chambers in it. We found one by blowing up the ceiling.
In other words, we should be an awe of what they built in the past, and looking forward to a future where we can do that again. But, almost all of our science text books talk about how the people in the past were stupid, and didn't know anything.
Its like we must protect the pride of our team, although we are 1-15 for the season
We protect our boys
Einstein, Hawkins, Edison, Newton… are all above reproach in our modern science acadamies.
We can't speak bad about them, we cannot question their theories, we can't question their brilliance.
Einstein - plagiarized and stole all that he is known for. Being a patent clerk, allowed him to see the newly invented things. He is also known for his abuse to women, and using people. And the only relativity he should be known for his marrying his cousin. (after discarding his wife, the one he got to do all the math for the theories)
Hawkins - should be known best for beating a disease which puts most in the grave within 5 years. That he lasted decades with this disease is amazing, astounding. Or, was he just a puppet in a wheel chair? Where someone else could speak through his squawk box. His theories are beyond reproach, because they literally can't be tested.
Edison - should be known for electrocuting dogs and an elephant, in his attempt to save his DC empire. Edison wasn't the first to make a light bulb, and not the first to find a way to manufacture them. But, he is known as the mind that did it. The keyboard you are using is designed to slow down your typing, because he couldn't build the mechanism to work as fast as people could type. And, he bilked Tesla out of (what would be today, millions) that he promised if Tesla would design better DC dynamos. Which Tesla did.
Newton - Only known because he was THE high muckity-muck. He invented calculus, except someone he was writing to, also developed calculus. He has a theory of gravity "that works", except many other scientists of that time had similar theories, but they were all disproven, but Newton's was accepted. (there was no one who would go against him)
Some scientists would say that we do not question these theories, because they are perfect. But, they are not. In fact, they have all been disproven.
Still, we try to uphold them. We came up with "dark energy" and "dark matter" to shore up the holes in the dam.
Imagine if you came up with a theory that stipulates that there is something you can't see, or measure, and this is how the universe works.
You know, another group which postulated that the universe works because there was this unseen, unmeasurable entity that created it. And they are ridiculed for believing in such.
We humans really have to watch our hubris.
But, how did we get to a place where we talk like we are the best, the brightest, the most advanced?
We really should take equal doses of humility with our pride in our scientific advancement.
We really need to make scientific advancement not about a single person, but about a group, moving our understanding, together. However, our society (northern white people) has a desire to be the best, the MVP. Our society seems to revolve around superstars. And people dream about being the star… just so that they are recognized as a human. To be important enough to matter.
But, our society is very good at losing people in the cracks. Forgotten, overlooked, often misplaced. So, either you are a somebody, or you are a nobody. And nobodies often end up dying alone, in a chair, in their empty house, to be found weeks later.
Maybe it isn't just science we need to rework, it is society.