Old Wisdom, Young Foolinsness.

Yes. Of course, "if true" is the crucial element.

This is key. 

How interesting that I the past few days I received from you a type of helpful warning that I was perhaps a bit too wish washy in my opinions, the general message being that we should have strong convictions about things we ‘believe’ to be true. Part of my response was to show that I have made public many of my opinions, and I have lived my (practical) life acting on those opinions. So I’m not as wishy washy as I may appear to be. 

The point being that indeed we must get through life choosing which things we deem practically important as well as merely our deeper ‘thinking’. 

So in this case your objections seem to be ‘is what he’s saying true’. You seem to be asking...Can I prove to myself, to the standards that I hold, that the gist of what this man is saying passes the threshold I set? To me your emphasis is on facts, whereas my own is more about the individual himself. I vibe largely with the man, as well as the gist of what he says, less than I do with hard facts. I have opinions on the ‘facts’ he states, some I think are arguably less accurate than others. For example your earlier one about agreement being necessary during peer review. I think that is at least worthy of discussion. Don’t you? 

However, I think it is crucial not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Not to discard all of his testimony because of one or two statements he may make being ‘factual’ but we may doubt that they are.

I think we have to take nearly all of what we take in through the media and books largely on faith of some sort. How much of what we discuss here can truly be proven, in both the hidden forums or the more esoteric? None. It is all subjective. Facts, no matter their ‘truth’, can easily be discarded.

Maybe its our own biases that direct us down a different path, hoping to find truth?

Yes, there will be some truth in your final thought above, that most of us are simply guilty of blaming ‘kids these days’, but maybe deeper thinking about these kids and the modern education system is one requirement to get closer to truth in this topic.