The norm for us seems to be to assume what the experts/masses say is conclusively right by virtue of how established the authority is, depending on the subject. If the world maps say North America is on top of South America, or the historical textbooks say we didn't discover America until after the first one thousand years AD, or Stephen Hawking says we have a black hole in the center of the galaxy, we typically think "yes, alright", and I don't doubt those examples. "What reason do people have to lie" people ask, often naively because those who have a reason to lie probably wouldn't want to disclose that they have one. To think, for example, that the Earth's shape is a matter of cover-up, is seen as the ponderings of a surrealist.
Anyone who knows me knows my biggest fear, if it could be called that, is quicksand. Often when talking about it, I get a set of reactions that have become the norm. They split the conversation into wet quicksand, dry quicksand, and sinkholes, and say that wet quicksand won't kill you if you stay still, dry quicksand is either a myth or exceedingly rare, and sinkholes are the opposite of the first thing where you must move to survive. They often ask if my fear is "for show". But I have seen this to be a wrong approach with my own eyes, often making the "inherently known knowledge" seem like it was implanted into people matrix-style. Then one day, poof, it happened, after two decades people realized that their disbelief was itself an accidental cover-up. An example of something I held onto because I knew enough to.
What's something where your personal experience gives you confirmation about something that puts you at odds with the "researched world"?
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