David Kyle Johnson

I think that generally is the case within certainly my academic experience, with the exception of the term authoritative.

We say that's an authoritative resource or source of information.

And what we mean by that is that's a top-level expert, basically.

They're the definitive expert.

There's no higher, really, source to go to.

But I don't really, yeah, don't you think, but I don't think we are in the habit of using the term authority to mean expertise.

Yeah, but Steve, what if it's not authority, but what if it's authoritie?

In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the core elements of the scientific revolution was saying, we're not going to base what we know on authority anymore.

We're going to base it on process, right?

On logic and evidence, facts and observation.

And so, yeah, science is explicitly not relying on authority for information.

Oh, to mean denialist, yeah.

Right.

Yeah, we've been talking about the Galileo Gambit since the 90s, since I've been involved in skepticism.

Yeah, that is an old tried and true pseudoscientific game that they play.

I also find that the farther they have to go back in time for their example, the worse they are.

Usually they're using as an example the transition from pre-scientific thinking to scientific thinking and conflating that with later modifications of scientific thinking.

As you say, they're not the same thing.

He was a link in a chain.

And we just boil it all down to this one guy, you know?