Monozigote

Once we make peace with the fact that some of our beliefs are based on relatively little evidence, and that's okay, the thought that we are entitled to believe without evidence in certain cases may seem lossless shocking. I think we do have such a right, '''subject to two strict requirements.''' First, the issues must be ones we can't decide on the basis of the evidence and arguments (even when evidence includes what the experts say). Second, our adopting the belief in question must present no significant risk or harm to others.<ref>One could also say where the promise of benefits outweighs the expected burdens. The choice between these formulations raises some tricky questions about whether we should treat harms and benefits symmetrically in ethics: roughly speaking, should benefits count as much as harms when we construct our moral principles?</ref> Some might take these conclusions as an endorsement of intellectual laziness. But they're not. I'm just being honest about the fact that few of us have the time, energy, need, or capacity to carry out [[:en:w:Socrates|Socratic]] missions of investigation and [[:en:w:maieutics|maieutics]]. This is not to say we don't need more people like Socrates (or [[:en:w:The Emperor's New Clothes|the child who declared the emperor naked]]). The world is rife with charlatans, cheats, flimflam artists, incompetents, scammers, unscrupulous careerists, and fools in high places (often with big egos). In addition, the intellectual world is not immune to politics of fashion. At times it stampedes and at times it circles the wagons. As a result, bad things happen. So we need our [[:en:w:skeptic|skeptics]] and iconoclasts, our unmaskers and our sticklers for the truth. We should build monuments to these [[:en:w:whistle-blower|whistle-blowers]] in the fields of knowledge and create an annual holiday in their honour. Above all, we should listen to what they say (without losing sight of how often our trusted sources also get things right).