Before the Snowden leaks, it was generally considered to be a conspiracy theory, that the NSA hacks allmost everyone, ignoring any law.

But to technical people, it was a sound theory, that proofed out to be right.

That's the difference between a theory that lizard people invented Covid, or that Kubrick shot the moon landing. Those theories fall apart very quickly, if you apply logic.

So I am no fan of appeal to authority arguments. If the experts are real experts, then they can use logic, to simply show where the layperson's arguments are flawed, where it is missing context or deep understanding of the field and point in the right direction. But if they cannot - then maybe the layperson has a point.

Conspiracy theories make several bad assumptions that are easy to spot once you know what they are. Sure, that's knowledge, but arguably generic one.

What I'm saying is, "you don't know a thing 'cause it's not your field" is a good heuristic in absence of any extra information, but if the logic is sound, the author seems to have high generic skills in reasoning/logic/rationality and good model of the world, and no one closer to the field is raising any specific objections, then that heuristic breaks down, as it's becoming more likely that the author got the gist of it right.

I wouldnt rely nor use this approach at all, it is not only dangerous but feels useless

>logic is sound, the author seems to have high generic skills in reasoning/logic/rationality and good model of the world

What is good model of the world? The one that is coherent with yours?

Ive witnesses too many stupid ideas based on this "sounds logically" that Im fully against suggestions like this

But there is solution!

Just put effort into learning your stuff, so you aint gonna have to make a guess and waste time convincing yourself how rational your "not so educated guess" may sound

I think you two are collectively very close to describing “science”. It’s good to acknowledge what we don’t definitively know, but generating testable hypothesis or theories based on experiences and known phenomena is an important step.

There are topics we don’t know the truth on, so we have to theorize. For instance, dark matter, or origins of Covid, or evolution, even. We could throw our hands in the air and say “we don’t know anything”, but part of coming into knowledge is taking an educated guess on the answer, testing it, and being right or wrong. From there, we recalibrate.

The problem comes when people dogmatically defend their old, disproven hypotheses in the face of insurmountable evidence. Not situations where people have valid critiques or are skeptical, but situations which are pretty open-and-shut. For instance, flat earth has always seemed to me to be a very obviously wrong theory.

Of which many have turned out to be, surprise surprise, very real and true.