(I’m aware I don’t have a conclusion. I ran out of time.)
Prompt: “should people weigh all opinions equally or place more weight on informed opinions?”
As renowned physicist and inventor once said Nikola Tesla once said, “It is often the most unlikely of circumstances and people that give the most revolutionary ideas.” Our nature sometimes lets us come up with the ‘erstwhile’ absurd ideas but these very ideas turn out to be original and avant garde. Regardless of his or her scientific and artistic proficiency, every individual’s opinion must be taken into consideration as one’s potential in a field is equally important as his or her achievements. This notion is corroborated by Galileo’s radical heliocentric proposal and Einstein’s denial of quantum mechanics.
Galileo’s revolutionary heliocentric model is the epitome of this notion. In his time, people viewed the Church’s values as the absolute, and as a result, they subscribed to geocentrism, the belief of Earth as the center of the universe. This is a proven fact and the basis of modern astronomy and astrophysics; however, Galileo’s proposal was taken as heretical as it directly opposed the Christian doctrine. He was also met with opposition from 16th century astronomers, who doubted him due to the absence of an observed stellar parallax. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, and they concluded that it could only be supported as a possibility, not as an established fact. Although his proposal is proven to be true, he met his demise while under arrest for heresy simply because the opinions of the “informed” astronomer’s and Christian preachers clashed with those of “average” Galileo.
Another stellar piece of evidence supporting this notion is Einstein’s rejection of quantum mechanics. He abhorred this discipline as he was vexed by the uncertain, random nature of the universe it implied (hence the famous quote “God does not play dice with the universe”) and held condescension for anyone supporting it. This drove Einstein to develop a unified theory that would circumvent what he saw as quantum mechanics’ flaws, although he met his demise before doing so. However, the Large Hadron Collider at Geneva attempted to exploit the laws of quantum mechanics and showed that 2 particles at light years distance from each other could influence each other, a major blow to Einstein’s theory that information could not travel faster than light. Contemporarily, physicists like Michio Kaku and Brianne Greene support the notion that it is indeed quantum mechanics and not relativity that will lead to a unified theory. This shows that although Einstein “informed” opinions repudiated it, quantum mechanics eventually would lead to what he wanted to make up in the first place.