• tygerprints@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    Never suggest common sense to people who are raised in ignorance. Too much of a new idea will always be a huge threat to them, though nobody knows why.

    • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      If Semmelweis’ s theories were correct, it would have meant that many deaths of their patients would have been easily avoidable. So those other doctors could either ridicule the theory and continue living + practicing in ignorance, or accept the theory and also accept that they had (unknowingly) caused the deaths of many of their patients.

      I’m not surprised that they chose the route of ridicule. I’m also not surprised that 20 or 30 years later, when the assistants of the old doctors had become the new generation of doctors, that the theory was then more easily accepted.

      • tygerprints@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        IT’s the Dunning-Kruger effect - people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria. And they tend to only value the criteria that validate their own points of view. What we really lack is the eagerness to know all sides of an issue and take them into account.