How truly skeptical is our skepticism?

[Chanakya]

So I was right.

No you were not. You simply ignored what I had very clearly explained to you, you apparently refused my invitation to look at the clearly laid out evidence, and you seem content to replay again and again your own unexamined bias. Which is ironic, given how many times it has been pointed out in this thread itself that going by the evidence, that being ready to change your mind basis evidence, is the keystone of skepticism.

your absurd verbosity

Perhaps I am unwise to let myself be distracted by your gratuitous offensiveness (do you reserve your unprovoked insults only to your online interactions, incidentally, or does this fascinating behavior spill on to real life as well?) into ignoring feedback, but hey, I’m human. Your views about my “verbosity” are less than worthless, as far as I am concerned, thank you very much. Especially since you seem completely oblivious of the absurdity of your own multiple posts containing nothing but offensively-worded drivel.

Being hypocritical on this

That “hypocrisy” is a product of your own fevered imagination and your unexamined presumptions.

undermines any other points you wish to communicate

Big fat ad hominem fallacy right there!

Drama Queen fashion

Wow! Seriously?! And I suppose your throwing hissy fits about absurdly contrived issues, frothing at the mouth and dropping unprovoked offensive insults left and right, isn’t acting “drama queen fashion”?

So? Do most people also complain about how they're being unfairly attacked while at the same time attacking back? Is that what most people do?

If so, then there's another good reason to ignore most people's poor reasoning skills.

(a) Ad hom
(b) Circular reasoning
(c) Special pleading (do you even realize how this is special pleading?)
(d) Playing victim : boo hoo, most people are nasty and unthinking, most people don’t understand precious me!
(e) Not to mention irony : the “poor reasoning skills” bit

If you want to insult someone, just do it and understand that's what you're doing.

It will be a pleasure to follow this prescription of yours in my interactions with you.

It has nothing to do with who "started it."

It does. As has been explained to you more than once. You seem unable to understand how you’re blithely indulging in special pleading for your own weird standards of (online?) behavior.

It's just hypocritical to say that insults are bad unless you're the one saying them

It is, yes. On the other hand, it is staggeringly stupid, to the point of being practically half-witted, to speak of this when no one has, in fact, said that “insults are bad unless you’re the one saying them”.

Go on, then, back that up : Who has said that? Where? When? Who has said that “insults are bad unless you’re the one saying them”?

What you’re doing here is putting up a big fat ugly strawman, then gleefully jumping on it and clawing and biting away at it.

How does “While unprovoked and egregious discourtesy I dislike, and the trope of the rude ill-behaved Internet troll something I abhor, nevertheless it may not always be inappropriate to reciprocate the unprovoked and repeated discourtesy of others with some small measure of snark.” translate to “insults are bad unless you're the one saying them”? Can you even read? What part of “unprovoked” did you not understand?

It's a double-standard

Only because you’re holding on to that strawman you’ve built up, and apparently grown to love and cherish.

Have the last word if you like, I'm done with explaining my point.

That’s right, feel free to flounce off, “drama queen fashion”.

 

[Chanakya]

Not sometimes. Not often. Always. Literally always.

There's always Woo. Sometimes it's a specific Woo; chem-trails or religious beliefs or Bigfoot or the Illuminati or whatever. Other times it is a vague Woo; "Science is too arrogant" or "You need (insert euphemism for Woo) to have joy in your life" or "Science is a religion" or whatever.

Ok, I read you. If that’s how pervasive you say you’ve found Woo, sure, that’s how it must have been.

Oh and the acknowledging the "I'm totally a skeptic but..." game is also part of the "I'm totally a skeptic but" game.

Astute of you to think of that meta angle. I agree, some scams do start out by first referring to other scams in apparently innocuous and disarming manner. You’re perfectly right to be on guard against this.

We've had countless "Are we skeptical enough" or "Are we skeptical of our skepticism" or "Is science a religion?" or "Is science dogmatic" threads. Countless. And they all go the same way.

I understand. This forum goes back a long way, and I’ve only been around for some time (although a bit longer than my modest post count might indicate), so I don’t think I’ve come across those threads.

I suppose I could always go search myself : but if you’re aware of any specific thread(s) that discuss the issues we’ve been talking of here, then could you link to them? I’m sure I’ll enjoy going through them.

And I appreciate that if you’ve been through all of this already yourself, more than once, then these discussions about basic concepts you may find tedious. But you’ll have to try to appreciate in turn, Joe, how the fact that you are aware of and comfortable with some subject does not mean that everyone shares your particular knowledge base. We all need to learn whatever it is we wish to learn, in our own time and at our own pace.

Long story short. If you start a thread that question skepticism, you think skepticism is doing something wrong. Skepticism did something wrong or "too far" or "too much" or "in the wrong way" or some other variation.

Not necessarily. If you’re examining basic concepts of skepticism that you’re yourself not fully up to speed about, that does not necessarily mean that you’re saying skepticism itself is wanting.

And even if it so happens that you do end up examining whether skepticism itself is indeed wanting, so what? Why should that be a problem? I understand and appreciate that you value skepticism, but I don’t think skepticism is something you should be putting on an altar and genuflecting in front of and trying to enforce blasphemy rules against.

That thing? That's the woo.

You keep on using that word, Joe, but I don't think it means what you think it means!

No, seriously, I don’t think that’s what “Woo” refers to, at all.

Perhaps you’re strawmanning here? (No offense meant to you when I say that! Just trying to express my thoughts about why you might be thinking in this way. I'm not saying it's deliberate : perhaps this strawmanning is wholly unconscious.) Because it seems to have been your personal experience that questioning skepticism is followed by Woo, therefor you are, it seems to me, simply conflating those two wholly separate things.

So out with it. What is the scenario in which we aren't "skeptical of our skepticism" enough?

God, not again!

Joe, it seems from your comments that you’ve been following all of this thread. (It’s short enough I suppose.) You’ve seen yourself what all has been discussed here.

I’m not saying this to be mean to you, or to “gotcha” you, but again : do you not see how you’re attacking a strawman here? How you’re not only not producing any evidence yourself to back up your claims of Woo-peddling, but instead insistently ignoring all the evidence right there in front of you, in plain view?

What do you really expect me to answer to that question of yours, that you insist on asking me again and again?

 

[Chanakya]

It is better to think of skepticism as a process, not an attribute. We are all fallible and gullible when we hear something that seems to confirm or reinforce our preexisting worldview. People who identify as skeptics are not immune to this.

That’s a great way of looking at this. Thanks for pointing it out.

Although I suppose you do need a word to describe those who believe this process is a good idea, and who try, more or less, to follow it, and wouldn’t “skeptic” be as good a word as any for this?

But absolutely, I take your point. Skepticism is most definitely not an attribute. And explicitly thinking of it as a process, that keeps one on one’s toes, if nothing else.

Which is fine. Taking skepticism to an absurd extreme is frankly a ridiculous way to live. The trick is to learn who to trust and under what circumstances and about what matters, and what sorts of claims to be more skeptical about.

Makes sense. That’s part of what was troubling me to begin with, but having thought about this with the help of the others here, I do see this, yes.

Yes, basically the same thing. The key is to find the correct balance. Extreme skepticism is a philosophical dead-end as well as a practical impossibility if you want to live a normal life. Some philosophers have argued that we cannot trust our own senses because our senses can be deceived, and therefore we must reject all knowledge that comes to us via our senses. Obviously such extreme skepticism is impractical.

Here's where it gets ridiculous in practice: it tends to lead to things like flat-earthism or rejection of scientific knowledge. I tend to call such people "pseudo-skeptics" because they apply skepticism (disbelief) to the wrong things. They tend to believe in conspiracies. One such who I argued with on the internets said he didn't believe anything unless he had personally verified it. Hey, I've never been to Rome myself, so I've never personally verified that it exists and the maps are correct about its location, but why would I doubt that? It makes no sense to doubt that.

Right, agreed. I’ve read some of that apparently deep philosophic stuff, in snatches here and there. Although I wasn’t aware that rejecting science, or “flat-earthism” and things like that, can in practice, in real life, actually arise from this sort of extreme skepticism. In theory, yes, but people actually embracing those beliefs/non-beliefs basis some crazy philosophy? I’d imagined all these “conspiracy theorists” were basically religious, following received/imagined religious wisdom of some stripe.

So in practice it requires some common-sense judgment. You cannot personally verify every single fact that you need to construct a worldview. You just need to be able to distinguish between what categories of knowledge or claims deserve closer scrutiny before you accept them.

Sure, makes sense, that. In a way, like I was saying in an earlier post just now in response to another poster, in a way skepticism, unlike religion, isn’t really a big deal at all! (If you know what I mean? I know I haven’t really explained that well!)

 

[The Norseman]

No you were not. You simply ignored what I had very clearly explained to you, you apparently refused my invitation to look at the clearly laid out evidence, and you seem content to replay again and again your own unexamined bias. Which is ironic, given how many times it has been pointed out in this thread itself that going by the evidence, that being ready to change your mind basis evidence, is the keystone of skepticism.

Perhaps I am unwise to let myself be distracted by your gratuitous offensiveness (do you reserve your unprovoked insults only to your online interactions, incidentally, or does this fascinating behavior spill on to real life as well?) into ignoring feedback, but hey, I’m human. Your views about my “verbosity” are less than worthless, as far as I am concerned, thank you very much. Especially since you seem completely oblivious of the absurdity of your own multiple posts containing nothing but offensively-worded drivel.

That “hypocrisy” is a product of your own fevered imagination and your unexamined presumptions.

Big fat ad hominem fallacy right there!

Wow! Seriously?! And I suppose your throwing hissy fits about absurdly contrived issues, frothing at the mouth and dropping unprovoked offensive insults left and right, isn’t acting “drama queen fashion”?

(a) Ad hom
(b) Circular reasoning
(c) Special pleading (do you even realize how this is special pleading?)
(d) Playing victim : boo hoo, most people are nasty and unthinking, most people don’t understand precious me!
(e) Not to mention irony : the “poor reasoning skills” bit

It will be a pleasure to follow this prescription of yours in my interactions with you.

It does. As has been explained to you more than once. You seem unable to understand how you’re blithely indulging in special pleading for your own weird standards of (online?) behavior.

It is, yes. On the other hand, it is staggeringly stupid, to the point of being practically half-witted, to speak of this when no one has, in fact, said that “insults are bad unless you’re the one saying them”.

Go on, then, back that up : Who has said that? Where? When? Who has said that “insults are bad unless you’re the one saying them”?

What you’re doing here is putting up a big fat ugly strawman, then gleefully jumping on it and clawing and biting away at it.

How does “While unprovoked and egregious discourtesy I dislike, and the trope of the rude ill-behaved Internet troll something I abhor, nevertheless it may not always be inappropriate to reciprocate the unprovoked and repeated discourtesy of others with some small measure of snark.” translate to “insults are bad unless you're the one saying them”? Can you even read? What part of “unprovoked” did you not understand?

Only because you’re holding on to that strawman you’ve built up, and apparently grown to love and cherish.

That’s right, feel free to flounce off, “drama queen fashion”.

Thanks for proving my point, well better than even I would have guessed.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Joe, it seems from your comments that you’ve been following all of this thread. (It’s short enough I suppose.) You’ve seen yourself what all has been discussed here.

Yes and what I haven't seen yet is "the point."

"How truly skeptical is our skepticism" is not a question someone asks if they think the answer is "The exact right amount." If you ask that question you think the answer is either "Too much" or (much, much less likely) "not enough."

You seem to be getting frustrated because I'm asking you to basically finish your thought. As if me going into a thread entitled "How truly skeptical is our skepticism" and asking the person to please clarify what exactly they think we aren't being skeptical about the right way is some unreasonable action.

Again I've had this exact discussion, damn near word for word, including the sidejack meta discussions about the discussion where the person argues that having this discussion isn't exactly what they are doing, a good.... 50 times at least in some form. I don't know why this particular discussion has such a specific script that people just think they have to act out every scene of but I've already seen this movie, we can skip to the end.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Yes and what I haven't seen yet is "the point."

"How truly skeptical is our skepticism" is not a question someone asks if they think the answer is "The exact right amount." If you ask that question you think the answer is either "Too much" or (much, much less likely) "not enough."

You seem to be getting frustrated because I'm asking you to basically finish your thought. As if me going into a thread entitled "How truly skeptical is our skepticism" and asking the person to please clarify what exactly they think we aren't being skeptical about the right way is some unreasonable action.

Again I've had this exact discussion, damn near word for word, including the sidejack meta discussions about the discussion where the person argues that having this discussion isn't exactly what they are doing, a good.... 50 times at least in some form. I don't know why this particular discussion has such a specific script that people just think they have to act out every scene of but I've already seen this movie, we can skip to the end.

"How truly skeptical is our skepticism?"
#1: To much.
#2: To little.
#3: About right enough.

So since you have done this 50 times in some form, you can answer the question and further answer what skepticism is. So please do so or point to the answer in another thread on the forum.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Thanks for proving my point, well better than even I would have guessed.

I like the huge amount of reasoning, logic and evidence you have put in to your well thought out argument. Close to none to be precise. Could you try again and this time use reason, logic and evidence.

 

[kellyb]

"How truly skeptical is our skepticism?"
#1: To much.
#2: To little.
#3: About right enough.

I think the answer depends on who the "we" is there.

I'm also not sure there really is such a thing as being too skeptical. I don't think the flat earthers are guilty of excessive skepticism, although they would argue that they're more skeptical than I am. I don't really care what they'd say about that, tho. LOL.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

I think the answer depends on who the "we" is there.

I'm also not sure there really is such a thing as being too skeptical. I don't think the flat earthers are guilty of excessive skepticism, although they would argue that they're more skeptical than I am. I don't really care what they'd say about that, tho. LOL.

Yes, depending on the "we" and how that connects to the assumption of what skepticism is, the answer depends to the "we's" skepticism.

 

[kellyb]

Yes, depending on the "we" and how that connects to the assumption of what skepticism is, the answer depends to the "we's" skepticism.

Touché.

 

[fuelair]

Best I can say is I am completely skeptical of any aspect of religion/religious texts.
But I am not at all skeptical of properly done and heavily peer reviewed science!!!!!

Outside of those two, I check things out myself.

 

[kellyb]

Best I can say is I am completely skeptical of any aspect of religion/religious texts.
But I am not at all skeptical of properly done and heavily peer reviewed science!!!!!

Outside of those two, I check things out myself.

I'd say you're not quite skeptical enough.

 

[The Norseman]

I think the answer depends on who the "we" is there.

I'm also not sure there really is such a thing as being too skeptical. I don't think the flat earthers are guilty of excessive skepticism, although they would argue that they're more skeptical than I am. I don't really care what they'd say about that, tho. LOL.

The only thing I'd say is "too much" skepticism is if it provokes some sort of decision paralysis; you cannot accomplish anything because you're needing some sort of logical evidence chain of causality or whatever for... everything. Or, I can see it being "too much" if you're essentially wanting to re-invent the wheel when it comes to... everything.

 

[kellyb]

The only thing I'd say is "too much" skepticism is if it provokes some sort of decision paralysis; you cannot accomplish anything because you're needing some sort of logical evidence chain of causality or whatever for... everything. Or, I can see it being "too much" if you're essentially wanting to re-invent the wheel when it comes to... everything.

But, see, even then, if you become even more skeptical, and apply it to your current application of skepticism, you can decide to tone it down some and find a more functional way of living your life.

 

[JoeMorgue]

People love to paint the imagine of skepticism as just a half hearted Doubting Thomas or Contrarian scheme so they try to paint some connection between skepticism and denialism.

Somebody denying the Earth is round or that vaccines aren't safe or that water isn't wet isn't somebody who's "taking skepticism too far." It's somebody who's just an idiot. We have enough "Oh I'll show those uppity skeptics by just denying everything that will teach them a lesson" folks around here as it.

"Skepticism" only exists as a concept and (to what degree it does) as a movement because there's so much commonly accepted nonsense in the world right now. Countering it, either directly or back handedly, by comparing it or linking it to denialism not only misses the point but proves why it is needed.

Gun to my head I don't even 100% like the term "Skepticism" because of that reason, it's too linked on a purely linguistic level to denialism and doubt and contrarianism but despite that I really can't bring myself to care about a concept or movement's branding.

 

[The Norseman]

But, see, even then, if you become even more skeptical, and apply it to your current application of skepticism, you can decide to tone it down some and find a more functional way of living your life.

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! SKEPTICS ALL THE WAY DOOOOOWWWWNNN!

 

[Craig4]

your absurd verbosity

Perhaps I am unwise to let myself be distracted by your gratuitous offensiveness (do you reserve your unprovoked insults only to your online interactions, incidentally, or does this fascinating behavior spill on to real life as well?) into ignoring feedback, but hey, I’m human. Your views about my “verbosity” are less than worthless, as far as I am concerned, thank you very much. Especially since you seem completely oblivious of the absurdity of your own multiple posts containing nothing but offensively-worded drivel.

Rather an odd way to defend one's self from the accusation of absurd verbosity.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Rather an odd way to defend one's self from the accusation of absurd verbosity.

Sometimes to few words is to simple. I know Ockham's razor, but sometimes simple is to simple. So to unpack reality and skepticism might require more than just claim as a simple slogan/meme: "Just do reason, logic and evidence!" What if that is to simple and it overlooks something else, which can't be reduced down to reason, logic and evidence? What if there is a limit to rationality and natural science?

Now here it is as simple as I can put it. You are a human and if you are not handicapped when it comes to mobility, you can move around, right?!! Now that mobility is limited, because you can't move around just as you please. That can be explained, described and predicted using natural science. So we have one example of a limitation to human behavior. Now treat reason, logic, evidence, rationality, natural science and so on as human behavior. So we do those as a process just as we walk around as a process. Running is not a thing and what if reason, logic, evidence, rationality and natural science are not things, but processes and human behavior.
Then ask if there are in practice limitations to these processes, just there are limits to mobility.

Pick one!

• Reason, logic, evidence, rationality and natural science are without limits.
• Reason, logic, evidence, rationality and natural science are not possible at all.
• Reason, logic, evidence, rationality and natural science have limits and are only possible in a limited sense.

What if skepticism in the general sense is the realization that:

• Reason, logic, evidence, rationality and natural science have limits and are only possible in a limited sense.
• No one so far in the record history of human kind have been able to do a life only using reason, logic, evidence, rationality and natural science, because nobody have been able to reduce away subjective evaluation as it comes to how to live a life in practice.
• You and everybody else with a sufficiently functioning brain use subjective evaluation to live a life.

There is nothing new in this: "Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not." From Protagoras.
The operative word is measure and means subjective evaluation of right and wrong, good and bad and so on.
All of these case of what works, makes sense, is useful and meaningful are all cases of what is to somebody. How gravity works are for all, but how your life works is not how my life works. Works is in this case in part subjective and not matter how much you bring up gravity, gravity is not all of reality. Gravity is a part of reality, not nothing and not all of reality. The same is true of you as long as you are a part of reality. The same goes for me and everybody else.

So no matter how much you try, you can't just use reason, logic, evidence, rationality and natural science. Even if you deny it, you confirm it by deny it, because you subjectively deny subjectivity as relevant.
"Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not."
If subjectivity doesn't matter to you, it is subjective and a measure you subjectively use.

Yeah, that is absurd verbosity. But I rather do that, than doing it to simple: "Just do reason, logic and evidence!"

Skepticism is in practice finding the limitations in the human condition for the words of: Reason, logic, objectivity, evidence, facts, rationality, science, knowledge and so on.
Not just how they work, but also their limitations and what is left out: Subjectivity!!!

With regards

 

[Logan38]

I self-describe as skeptic. On the other hand, my skepticism is of fairly recent vintage. That is, while I’ve always been skeptical of very many things, a generally skeptical outlook (towards everything, not just some individual things) is something I’ve ‘converted’ to not very long back.

Here’s one stumbling block I seem to have come up against, and I was wondering if any of the more seasoned skeptics here might have thoughts about this. (And while this occurs to me only now, perhaps this has already been discussed elsewhere, in which case you could just point me to those discussion/s.)

I was, just now, reading this article about some studies that turned out to be rigged by pharmaceutical companies. The article went on to talk about how “evidence-based medicine” is sometimes, in specific instances, not really “evidence-based” at all. It was a newspaper article, which I read in today’s (physical) paper, and I’m not attempting to search the article out online and link to it here, since the article itself is only incidental. I mention it only because it set me thinking : how truly skeptical is our skepticism? Or are there limits to (individual) skepticism?



Our overall (rational) worldview comprises so many elements that we take simply on trust. Our trust in medication that research apparently pronounces beneficial is one egregious example of this. Similarly, our trust in certain dietary and lifestyle choices that research apparently validates (and which research could be vitiated by junk-food manufacturers, for example, or tobacco manufacturers, or cell phone manufacturers, just as medical research is sometimes subverted by pharmaceutical companies). But these examples are very focused, very specific. What I’m talking about now, in this post and thread, is in a more general sense, and this applies to most things that make up our worldview.

Take, for instance, the ‘fact’ that nothing can go faster than light. Even schoolchildren ‘know’ this. But you and I, ordinary individuals, how sure are we of this after all? If we wanted to make sure of this, at the individual level, then what would we do? Read up a bit. Browse through the Internet. Read some books. Talk with friends and acquaintances who happen to be physicists. Perhaps laboriously work our way through some research papers. And yet, these are only words written online, talks delivered by someone online, or words written in a book or paper. How ‘true’ are they?

If we’re really really determined, we could educate ourselves, get the necessary training in physics and mathematics to be better able to evaluate this question. Perhaps we could go even further, and get ourselves the qualifications, perhaps even the jobs, that would give us direct access to actual experiments, and we could then actually verify this for ourselves. Yes, then we could really and truly verify this!

But doing this would take up years and years of our life! And what we’d have verified would be only one single thing/idea, or at least, one single class of things/ideas. That would still leave unverified all of the other things that we think we know about the world. To take a random instance, the veracity of, say, evolution. That’s a wholly different subject altogether, a wholly different disciple. And these two (the speed of light, and evolution) were just two random examples, there are so many other things the “knowledge’ of which we simply take for granted, isn’t it?



My point is, all of our skepticism notwithstanding, it seems to me that we are still, at the individual level, reduced to taking most of the elements of what we know simply on trust.

Had we been born five, six centuries before today, perhaps a couple of millennia before today, then could our skepticism (assuming we could have somehow, magically, been equipped with an uncompromisingly skeptical outlook back then) have led us to reject the nonsense that made up the worldview of people back then? We could have read, and ‘researched’, and still gone round and round exploring the minutiae of theology and philosophy. But could we have broken out of the system, into realization that we don’t actually know anything at all? Back five hundred years ago, or a couple millennia ago, I mean?

Can we really do it now, today? At the individual level? (And after all, for true skepticism, the “individual level” is ultimately the only/truly meaningful level, right? Or am I wrong in assuming that?)



Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!

I read what you said and I like your viewpoint on this. It is indeed an issue, between people also skeptics, who sometimes seem to take popular viewpoints from others as facts. Not all of these viewpoint have been proven, some are just all over the place. When people then do not take the time to really look into things, incorrect viewpoints will become the norm. Well, actually, if you look through history, it has happened many times before, that the general consensus of thing was completely incorrect, only to be corrected later. You only know, what is told to you, available to you to look into to. A person 500 years ago could have broken out of the system, it probably happened, but was very rare. It seems to be happening more nowadays, as you can found more information countering generalized views of things which are currently still unproven. Give you an example, people can attack me about it if you want, or you can go reading about it. Black holes, I have asked and talked to many people about it who a lot of them seem to think they exist, really only exist in certain mathematics, starting with general relativity. There are examples enough, were general relativity fails completely. You could already assume that there is something really wrong with that theory. But, in the mean time, I have spoken to many people who are convinced they exist. How is that possible? It really has never been proven without a shadow of doubt. And there are many more examples like that, not only in science. I can keep on going with this, but I will leave it here. Anybody can start looking in to what I said here and find out that mainstream ideas are in no way as rock solid as some people claim. In other words, I have broken out of the system a long time ago.. Really a long time ago..

 

[StackOverflow]

I read what you said and I like your viewpoint on this. It is indeed an issue, between people also skeptics, who sometimes seem to take popular viewpoints from others as facts. Not all of these viewpoint have been proven, some are just all over the place. When people then do not take the time to really look into things, incorrect viewpoints will become the norm. Well, actually, if you look through history, it has happened many times before, that the general consensus of thing was completely incorrect, only to be corrected later. You only know, what is told to you, available to you to look into to. A person 500 years ago could have broken out of the system, it probably happened, but was very rare. It seems to be happening more nowadays, as you can found more information countering generalized views of things which are currently still unproven. Give you an example, people can attack me about it if you want, or you can go reading about it. Black holes, I have asked and talked to many people about it who a lot of them seem to think they exist, really only exist in certain mathematics, starting with general relativity. There are examples enough, were general relativity fails completely. You could already assume that there is something really wrong with that theory. But, in the mean time, I have spoken to many people who are convinced they exist. How is that possible? It really has never been proven without a shadow of doubt. And there are many more examples like that, not only in science. I can keep on going with this, but I will leave it here. Anybody can start looking in to what I said here and find out that mainstream ideas are in no way as rock solid as some people claim.

Please disprove Sagittarius A*.

I have broken out of the system a long time ago.. Really a long time ago..

Aaaaaand here we have the whole purpose of your post.