I'm sorry, I'm a little confused about the last few posts.
Ingsoc...
The only thing I can guess this relates to is the newspeak in George Orwell's 1984 of Ingsoc which means "English Socialism" - which has a few meanings and I guess in this context you're talking about the idea that what everybody believes is the truth. While that is certainly a theory put forward, I reject it. I think there is both a relative truth and an intrinsic truth. If everybody thinks something is the case then I'd call that relatively true, but equally I think science has shown us that everybody can think something that turns out to be false. For a long time everybody believed Newtonian physics, and indeed still do (and they are still useful) but not completely true. I think science is a quest for the intrinsic truths of the world and I think those truths don't change based on human perception - just our perception of them can change.
yes
So I assume you're saying that if everybody else believed something, and you had no reason to believe the same thing apart from the knowledge that everybody else believed it, you would automatically believe it as well - this is certainly the situation I postulated and you agreed with. I see this kind of blind faith that everybody is right as very dangerous and foolish. There are a number of times where the vast majority of the world has strongly believed a particular view and one or two people have stood up and disagreed and then time has shown that the minority is correct. While a majority believing something is clearly an indication that that view is more likely to be correct, simply accepting that to be the case without understanding why it is means you learn nothing and you could indeed be wrong. To give an example - DDT - people were so confident that it was safe that they were happy to spray it everywhere without any fear at all. It wasn't until Rachel Carson proved that this completely accepted view was wrong and that it in fact caused cancer that humans stopped spraying it on themselves. This is a clear example of the 99% majority being wrong on an issue - and a very serious issue too.
To bring it to a more relevant issue; How many people accept that the Earth is round without question and how many people can put forward a logical and reasoned argument (you could call it a proof) that the Earth is round? From my experience on this forum, and other members can attest to this, very few people are capable of putting forward strong scientifically reasoned arguments within the context of the FE postulate that contradict it and show that the Earth is round. Blindly believing something because other people say it is true is meaningless. Believing something because you understand why it is the case is very powerful.
they certainly are smarter than you
I was unsure who you were directing this comment to. I suspect it was me but I don't know. Are you inferring that what shape you believe the Earth to be has a direct relationship with intelligence? Do you have any evidence to back that up with? Under the same logic can we assume that everybody who incorrectly believes something has a lower intelligence? While studies definitely show that there is a direct link between religious belief and intelligence (the more intelligent a person is, the less likely they are to be religious), there are definitely plenty of examples of very intelligent people who are also religious. Former Archbishop Spong is a great example of both an intelligent person and a religious person. CS Lewis would be another good example. People who believe that the Earth is round may indeed be smarter than me, but I really doubt you can say that they are "certainly" say that they are.
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