Indeed, but even objective facts like the rotundity of the earth can’t be absolutes. The scientific method grasps this, but humans often panic at the idea that nothing is an absolute, and they then can’t see how there can be any objective facts.
Oh hell yes, not just fell for it, but even created it on occasion. Youth has many aspects that are appealing to those who have left it behind, but hubris isn’t one of them. I often cringe at how sure I was, because I wasn’t smart enough.
Ah yes, motivated reasoning, a form of selection bias. All we can do is “fling poo at each other’s ideas” until we eliminate irrational ideas, and disbelieve unevidenced claims, but without prejudice.
I sometimes think if I had a thousand years instead of a few decades, I wouldn’t know more, I’d just have more undvidenced ideas to doubt. It’s in our nature to seek quick answers, slow answers would have got our ancestors killed quickly.
Since the agricultural revolution, and especially the industrial revolution, humans simply have much more time to examine ideas, new and old. Some people think this is bad, and some think it is good, I don’t think it’s either, but we may use it to help reduce and avoid unnecessary suffering, that seems like a start, and a more laudable goal than pleading a capricious cruel deity from antiquity that no one can demonstrate any objective evidence for.
