So there must be some more subtle heuristic involved. Some sort of synthesis between personal experience and social consensus. Which is what you’d expect — but there does seem to be a lack of integration with regard to scientific knowledge. As was discussed at length recently with regard to the Congressman and geology, the vast interconnections between science and technology imply that contesting something like the age of the Earth also is contesting huge swaths of things that people like that Congressman already think they know and don’t find suspect. This is partly a failure of science education, but also partly a failure of general education — the interconnectedness of knowledge and how that intersects skepticism is something that is generally assumed to form the foundation of a liberal education. Yes, far fewer people receive or internalize this educational core than we’d wish, but I fear that the shortfall is getting worse and the gap between what’s thought to be known and a trained intuition about what it means to know something is increasing.

If scientists were doing science their way, we would basically stop any progress, since we wouldn’t try to see things we don’t already see… And what’s the point looking for something we already know to be true?

And, BTW, Bill-O’s only salient talent seems to be looking like an idiot. Kudos, though–he’s very good at that.