Time Slips And Joan Rivers.

From HN: Bold is my original post. Italics is HN's response. And in plain text is my response.
A few questions...

If you have an understanding of the laws of physics, you can identify some of the serious mistakes in many claims. If you are rational, and think logically (and objectively) you can see flaws in logic.

What you consider rational and logical depends on what you have been taught to. Some lunatics and schizos might think they are rational and logical.

It isn't what I consider logical. Logic is math.It either works or it doesn't. Logic is an exact process.

The "credible source " can be mistaken (I can't imagine the reason for lying though) . Fortunately, with a background in science, at least the area of science discussed, it's fairly easy to spot the nonsense.

If you want to make billions selling milk, wouldn't you lie about it being healthy? There probably isn't any need to lie about the age of the Earth of the distance of the stars, but I was referring to just physics.

I suppose there are examples of lies in scientific discoveries, But these misrepresentations are usually immediately discovered. Scientific thinking is the right tool to uncover these lies.

It's rare that a wrong idea, fits all the facts, and yet is still completely logical.

How about the standard atomic model or the theory of evolution? They fit all the facts.

The debate about the Standard Atomic Model is beyond my knowledge.... But I know a lot about evolution. And I agree, it fits all the facts.

And if a new idea (that I hear) is completely logical, I'll accept it as fact, until I find a flaw.

What if idea can seriously harm you by the time you find the flaw? Let's talk milk. The easily accessible idea is:
Milk has a lot of calcium, we need calcium -> milk must be good for us. This is the primitive logic.
If you do some research you'll find out that milk is actually harmful. My question is, is it reasonable to accept the idea until you find the flaw?

This isn't logic. You are talking about the accumulation of knowledge. Logic is how it all fits together to make a conclusion. I lack the knowledge about milk to answer this.

I said "credible" source, out of habit.

I know. I was messing with you. However, what do you consider or how you determine whether the source is credible/trustworthy/reputable?
Is it the diploma, degree, consensus, the time one has spent on research, whether or not someone is getting paid for the research, how expensive lab and technology one uses, etc? Define credible/trustworthy.

I give less credibility to degrees than you might imagine. Accumulating knowledge in the form of education, is different than having a rational mind. So, I usually accept the information given, because they are a better source than I am... and then look at how they arrived at their conclusions. In other words. It's easier to learn facts, than use them to form rational conclusions.

For example, there are intelligent, educated people here, that know their subjects well. But their conclusions are nonsense. Their logic is hugely flawed. So, I may assume that their facts are right, but draw a very different conclusion from their facts.

I pretty much stick to the immutable laws of physics. I can count on them. Physics is like math. So is logic. Mistakes are obvious to the trained eye. But...It doesn't take much before I'm out of my depth, with some speculative ideas. If it's a report by a research scientist, I will assume it's true, unless I see mistakes in reason. So....I can easily be wrong. But usually not because my reasoning was off. And in my experience, wrong ideas contain mistakes in logic. I cannot even remember an exception.

I'm a fan of science shows on the Science channel. But I watch Through The Wormhole, and I see huge mistakes in reasoning. And I have to separate the speculation from the facts. I have to be careful, because I really want some things to be true.