In other words, is it epistemologically wrong to rely on an authority that has produced a number of correct statements (that I could and did verify) to be more or less correct in the future?
At a first cut, you want confidence that it’s the same type of question you’re asking now that they’ve asked in the past.
I am not sure I got that. Is “the question I am asking now” referring to a theory whose truthfulness I am evaluating? And “the asked in past” the ones whose truthfulness I have verified? It’s confusing because chronologically it’s the other way around: most of these theories are old and were accepted by me on faith since school days, and I could only verify a few of them as I grew older.
At a first cut, you want confidence that it’s the same type of question you’re asking now that they’ve asked in the past.
I am not sure I got that. Is “the question I am asking now” referring to a theory whose truthfulness I am evaluating? And “the asked in past” the ones whose truthfulness I have verified? It’s confusing because chronologically it’s the other way around: most of these theories are old and were accepted by me on faith since school days, and I could only verify a few of them as I grew older.
Yes and yes.
Asking now = not yet verified. Asking in the past = already verified.
It would have been better for me to say: