have been wondering recently what my blind spots are, what are beliefs I have that are unexamined or based on too little evidence for how much I believe them …
maybe there are common patterns, that people commonly believe false things and I might be challenged in my own beliefs this way
Basically everyone has little knowledge about the vast majority of things. People who have strong beliefs generally think they have good evidence for them (even if what they think is clearly untrue and their evidence is nonsensical).
I’ve heard of “appeal to authority” and such, but at the end of the day I think that it’s generally sensible to just believe the mainstream expert consensus on something until you’re given good evidence otherwise, especially if you’re dealing with hard science.
Of course it’s ideal to know more about a topic than basic things you were told and took as fact and this should be paired with some level of media literacy and critical thinking, though.