"Your post is self-defeating. First you claim no one is an authority on what he or she knows, then you claim to know something "
No it isn't self defeating, there are people who CAN reason through natural unconscious superiority, not that they are able to take credit for that. Because smart people are unable to justify why it is they know what they know because it simply takes too much time. i.e. our brains simply do not work like we think they do. Consider if I asked you how much a given representation of really boring bits of your everyday visual field cost in biological terms (how much does it cost to perceive a door, a car, etc). You would have no fucking answer, yet you are able to do it. So we are capable of knowing things and not being able to explain why we know them. The hard part is trying to explain to OTHER PEOPLE not because they are stupid but because they are unaware that they are flawed (aka it's a time vs resources vs what is that animals modus operandi problem). Human beings are locked in their brain circuitry, you search whats in your memory to make a judgement, the problem is you can't see the contents of your own memory. Most of the information you're using to make judgments is not available to your conscious awareness.
I'm interested in truth for no political reason, I just want to know how the universe works, but for others they see it as an attack on their religion, politics, etc.
The problem is to find truth you have to take the attitude to rip it apart all the time (how can this be wrong? etc?). The problem is you wouldn't be able to know if you were in a position to do this unless you already possessed that unconscious superiority. Now this doesn't mean it's impossible for you to learn, it just means you'd have to spend an inordinate amount of time with a fine tooth comb going over what it is you know to find the contradictions.
Most of this is really just a lack of time in one's life to ferret out one's own hidden false premises that are just beyond the edge of your conscious awareness.
And I know you've never done it, to really find what is true requires unreal dedication few people have and you have to do it not in an argumentative environment or mode of operation because you want to not deceive yourself. When you're trying to "win" you're not trying to understand. The natural world is an unfolding process and that is the approach you have to take.
