New ideas should be given a hard time.

The good ideas survive it. That's how we find out they're good ideas.

A lot of people seem to take what I consider to be completely the wrong lesson from the history of science, technology, and medicine. They see ideas like airplanes, general relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes, the germ theory of disease (and the related idea that doctor's should wash their hands and sterilize their instruments), all of which may have been resisted or even laughed at at one time or another, and reach a conclusion something like this: Oh, what fools those people were who resisted these breakthroughs, what fools they were to laugh!

How should we avoid such foolishness-in-hindsight in the future? Apparently by showing how "open minded" we are about embracing new ideas, being nice to people with new ideas -- where "nice" apparently doesn't just mean giving others a chance to speak, but an uncritical chance to speak, a warm and cheery reception of love and smiles just for "sharing" their supposed "insights" and "views". Or if there is any (gasp!) questioning or criticism, it should be done in such a careful, gingerly fashion as to be practically apologetic for the dire risk the critic is venturing to pose to the delicate flower of a new idea.

God forbid anyone jeer, laugh (risking becoming the one who is laughed at in the future) or utter those crass, hateful words, "Do you have any evidence?"

Related to the above kind of thinking is the flawed logic that since good ideas have been laughed at and resisted, if your new idea is laughed at or resisted then it must be a good idea. In fact, as some would seem to think, the harder your critics scorn your idea, the better it must be. There is apparently an evil force that fights all good ideas, and if that evil force turns its attention on you, it clearly means your insight and ingenuity have threatened it.

What horseshit.

For one thing, many bold new ideas weren't really as resisted and scorned as romanticized, spectacularized versions of history might have you believe. Among the educated, a round earth was a well-accepted idea long before Columbus set sail. For all of the (still lingering in the scientifically illiterate US) controversy surrounding Darwin's theory of evolution, the idea caught on very quickly in the scientific world in spite of religious resistance. Maybe someone, somewhere did once say, "If man were meant to fly, he'd have wings", but well before the Wright Brothers first airplane briefly took flight at Kitty Hawk, many scientists and engineers already considered powered flight an eminently achievable technology, merely waiting for the right design.

Some particular aircraft designs might well have been laughed at. Well they should have been -- many were ridiculous.

Darwin may have had to face criticism and tough questions, but so did Lamarck.

If only when doctors were still resisting the simple idea of washing their hands more of them had questioned blood letting and dangerous tinctures of arsenic and mercury.

For every good idea that survives, dozens if not hundreds fail, most of which die (and rightfully so) so fast that they aren't recorded in history -- although a few failures like N-rays and phlogiston theory make enough of an impact before dying that we can still read about them and laugh about them today.

We can't, and shouldn't, let fear that we might accidentally be laughing at the next great breakthrough hold us back from giving so-called "new ideas" (many of which are just old ideas that call always find a fringe following and just won't die) a hard time. Maybe every once in a while we'll slow the progress of a good idea that might have done more good if it were accepted sooner, but mostly we'll be blocking a lot of garbage, and the truly good ideas will survive the crucible of criticism and questioning, emerging stronger in the process.

Why am I bringing all of this up? Because of the craziness I've seen in many of these moon "bombing" threads, and the hurt and offended reactions of people proposing "new ideas", like that moon might split into pieces, that we're risking disrupting the tides, risking offending goddesses, that we're attacking "star visitors" living in craters of the moon.

Don't you understand that when you post in a public forum that you're entering the "marketplace of ideas", and that this isn't always going to be, and really shouldn't be, just a feel-good session of "sharing", all nicey-nice, where everyone gets a hug and a gold star just for saying something, anything?

And if you're at least cynical enough to expect getting a hard time, are you so sure that it's because everyone else is wrong? That all who would say one harsh word to you must therefore be part of some malevolent scheming force of oppression trying to "shut you down", or that they must be "threatened" by your ideas?

Has it ever occurred to you that when you have (what a large number of other people think is) an outlandish claim or idea, that the best thing to do would be to consider that...

(A) Maybe it is outlandish, and that maybe you don't know what you're talking about?

(B) You should have to work hard to defend what you say and not get a free ride and a pat on the back just for "participating"?

(C) If you claim you don't care whether other people believe you or not that you shouldn't act offended when they don't?

If what someone believes is crap, it should be challenged, refuted, mocked, and ignored, in that order.

...when an idea has clearly failed, like worrying that the moon will shatter and we'll lose the tides.

That would be gratuitous. :)