>I can understand what you mean. However, then I think "most of what most
>people know is based on hearsay, usually about five to ten layers or more of
>hearsay." I've never had direct observation of the U.S. Civil War, the
>continents of Africa, Asia, Oceania, South America, Australia, dinosaurs,
>atoms, electrons, my great, great grandmother,Babe Ruth, most Americans, the
>GDP for the year 2000, etc. Yet I feel alright talking about them. We
>humans are _highly_ social, which means having an enormous amount of trust
>and reliance on other humans, including trusting reports of their
>observations and experience as the basis for most of what we "know".
Of course you can't have first-hand experience of things in the past, and most of us can't have detailed experience of things distant in space either. But we can read about them and talk to people who know them. If people are going to offer opinions on the Civil War, I hope they'd be based on some research. If I were to start talking about kinship conventions in Borneo, I hope no one would listen, because I wouldn't know what the hell I was talking about.
Doug