I think you’ll find that no matter what you find out in your personal investigation of the existence of dragons, that you need not be overly concerned with what others might think about the details of your results.
Because what you’ll invariably discover is that the people that think there are dragons will certainly disagree with the specifics about dragons you found out that disagrees with what they think dragons should be, and the people that think there aren’t dragons will generally refuse to even seriously entertain whatever your findings are relating to dragons, and the vast majority of people who aren’t sure about the existence of dragons will dismiss the very idea of spending time thinking about the existence of dragons, reasoning that the existence or non-existence bears little influence on their lives (otherwise they likely would have investigated the issue and landed in a respective camp).
So investigate dragons all you like, and shout it from the rooftops if you please. The void will hear you and appreciate it as much as the void can, while everyone else is much more concerned with their own feelings about dragons than whatever your thinking or reasoning on the subject might offer.
The only real tragedy is that if you come away thinking there might be dragons, but the dragons you find are very different from the dragons people expect dragon-believing people to believe in—well that’s somehow the specific niche where both the dragon believers and non-believers find rare common ground to roll their eyes and think you’re nuts.
So maybe do your rooftop shouting to the sole listening void anonymously?
It’s also possible that an opposing effect happens where your shouting into the void about dragons connects in some vague way with my belief in the Ilithids, which I then end up coopting your dragon evidence into my own agenda. Especially if you find anything close to material evidence. Heck, your material evidence for dragons now gives all kinds of creedance to Ilithids, beholders, gnomes, and all sorts. So the gnome people and everyone else is now coming out of the woodwork to amplify your work on dragons. And I think this would be regardless of the specific nuances your attribute to dragons. I would expect those nuances to get smooshed in the fray to cite your once-and-for-all-proving-dragons strategy.
I mean, if Pons and Fleischmann was true, for example, I bet it would get trotted out with all kinds of half-baked theories on free energy, along with Tesla’s name. And the reason I’m making this bet is because these already do get trotted out into such discussions.
(Not that I would ever read those reports or have done any such research into repressed Pons and Fleischmann evidence or Ilithid conspiracies)
Honestly that sounds a bit like a good thing to me?
I’ve spent a lot of time looking into the Epicureans being right about so much thousands of years before those ideas resurfaced again despite not having the scientific method, and their success really boiled down to the analytical approach of being very conservative in dismissing false negatives or embracing false positives—a technique that I think is very relevant to any topics where experimental certainty is evasive.
If there is a compelling case for dragons, maybe we should also be applying it to gnomes and unicorns and everything else we can to see where it might actually end up sticking.
The belief that we already have the answers is one of the most damaging to actually uncovering them when we in fact do not.
I think you’ll find that no matter what you find out in your personal investigation of the existence of dragons, that you need not be overly concerned with what others might think about the details of your results.
Because what you’ll invariably discover is that the people that think there are dragons will certainly disagree with the specifics about dragons you found out that disagrees with what they think dragons should be, and the people that think there aren’t dragons will generally refuse to even seriously entertain whatever your findings are relating to dragons, and the vast majority of people who aren’t sure about the existence of dragons will dismiss the very idea of spending time thinking about the existence of dragons, reasoning that the existence or non-existence bears little influence on their lives (otherwise they likely would have investigated the issue and landed in a respective camp).
So investigate dragons all you like, and shout it from the rooftops if you please. The void will hear you and appreciate it as much as the void can, while everyone else is much more concerned with their own feelings about dragons than whatever your thinking or reasoning on the subject might offer.
The only real tragedy is that if you come away thinking there might be dragons, but the dragons you find are very different from the dragons people expect dragon-believing people to believe in—well that’s somehow the specific niche where both the dragon believers and non-believers find rare common ground to roll their eyes and think you’re nuts.
So maybe do your rooftop shouting to the sole listening void anonymously?
It’s also possible that an opposing effect happens where your shouting into the void about dragons connects in some vague way with my belief in the Ilithids, which I then end up coopting your dragon evidence into my own agenda. Especially if you find anything close to material evidence. Heck, your material evidence for dragons now gives all kinds of creedance to Ilithids, beholders, gnomes, and all sorts. So the gnome people and everyone else is now coming out of the woodwork to amplify your work on dragons. And I think this would be regardless of the specific nuances your attribute to dragons. I would expect those nuances to get smooshed in the fray to cite your once-and-for-all-proving-dragons strategy.
I mean, if Pons and Fleischmann was true, for example, I bet it would get trotted out with all kinds of half-baked theories on free energy, along with Tesla’s name. And the reason I’m making this bet is because these already do get trotted out into such discussions.
(Not that I would ever read those reports or have done any such research into repressed Pons and Fleischmann evidence or Ilithid conspiracies)
Honestly that sounds a bit like a good thing to me?
I’ve spent a lot of time looking into the Epicureans being right about so much thousands of years before those ideas resurfaced again despite not having the scientific method, and their success really boiled down to the analytical approach of being very conservative in dismissing false negatives or embracing false positives—a technique that I think is very relevant to any topics where experimental certainty is evasive.
If there is a compelling case for dragons, maybe we should also be applying it to gnomes and unicorns and everything else we can to see where it might actually end up sticking.
The belief that we already have the answers is one of the most damaging to actually uncovering them when we in fact do not.