Oh, I think you'd know. No pretence, please, no ego.
:-) It looks like you're the one who "knows" me more than myself. How marvelous! But you should consider the possibility that I might say what I exactly think. It would be less "marvelous" from you, I agree, but a lot more "natural" from me. After all at 77 I'm not a "kid" anymore and don't care much of what people think of me.
There is something interesting about "knowing". And it's applicable to everything, even science.
You can "know" something without understanding anything about it; all you have to do is "memorize" and repeat what you've "learned". This is what is mainly asked in our schools. You have to "memorize" whatever "other previous people" interpreted as the "reality". So we all must do it to get "grades".
This started a long time ago, when a "sage" explained that thunder and lightning was the expression of the wrath of an invisible "super-being". The explanation looked acceptable at the time, so it was thought to people and they memorized it, adopting
the habit of accepting everything these "sages" affirmed. They didn't have to
"think" by themselves anymore.
Much later on, a "Genius" came with the explanation regarding the cosmos. He was an alchemist
but a real "genius". He proposed that "
all masses attracted themselves" and that this "
force" of "attraction"
was universal. Each masses was attracting every other masses even if they were at the end of the universe. But this "force" diminished proportionally to the square of the distance between masses.
He, himself, wasn't convince of a "force" acting through space
without any material support, but, like he said: "It works so...". And this explanation was thought in our schools for 300 years. We learned it without questions because our "teachers knew" and this "knowledge" was originating from a "genius". So who could have the nerve to oppose this explanation.
200 years later, one such person came along and explained that this "force"
didn't exist. The "reality" was that the "space" around a massive object was
geometrically deformed which
sent all trajectories towards the center of this deformed space volume depending of
the speed of an object traveling through it.
Today, this is thought in schools but without replacing the original 300 years old explanation. But people aren't use to "think" against the trend so we learn both explanations without confronting them. Logically, both cannot be "reality" simultaneously.
This explains the questions you're asking me today. You're not considering what I proposed with you intellectual faculties; you're simply comparing the genius of actual "scientists" to my ordinary intellectual aptitude. Which is not the subject at all. This is exactly what I meant by "religious dogmas" previously.
You are trying to defend, in a somewhat dishonest way, what you "believe" because you accepted "in good faith" without questions, and not what you could "understand" if you had questioned that "knowledge".
I'm not devaluing what you're doing; I'm just underlying an habit that everyone has adopted naturally.
You said:
I mean, anyone can get some crazy ideas, can't they?
And you are right. Our individual job is to sort out the craziest ones from the others.
Have another look at my explanation without prejudice. Maybe it will come out differently.