But you've got to do both. Doubting oneself is "critical thinking". Doubting other sources of authority is "independent thinking".

The thing is, nobody has enough expertise to be an independent thinker in every area. So you essentially MUST delegate your ideas in some areas (variable between people) to external authorities. At which point what you "believe" depends on which authorities you choose.

A related question is "how firm is that belief?". This also tends to vary wildly with little apparent (to me) reason behind it. This is one feature that *can* be related to IQ, but isn't always.

It's not just widespread, it's universal. What varies from person to person is the domain that they apply thinking to, and how they validate the authority they choose to trust.

Nobody is an "independent thinker" on every topic. Wherever one is an expert, one tends to be an "independent thinker" in that domain. Where you don't feel knowledgeable, you tend to accept an authoritative source...possibly after doing some amount of checking to see whether others think it reliable.

I don't think it's directly related to IQ. I also don't think it's restricted to chatbots. A lot of people are willing to accept the opinion of any authoritative source that they've accepted. Think religion or political party. Once they accept it, they stop questioning it's proclamations.

Note that this also applied to those who accept the proclamations of scientists or compilers. Once you accept an authoritative source, you pretty much stop questioning it. It's been multiple decades since I really argued with a compiler...unless it was a known bug from a source I trusted. I generally just assumed that I misunderstood what the language meant by that construct. (Of course, the few times I really didn't accept it, I eventually turned out to be wrong. Oh.)

This, however, is far from that point. ... But I *do* prefer LibreOffice. However my use case is different.

Not necessarily impossible...but almost always inadvisable. They can be sure that all their actual competitors already have copies before they get the takedown issued.

In this case I don't think a takedown will even limit the damage...it might well exacerbate it.

Well, he did say "for some imaging tasks". That's probably a reasonable goal...but you've got to be *very* selective.

Muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments...
The all need exercise to develop properly.

It won't be that way, at least for the first several decades. Bodies need to be exercised to grow properly. After that, I suppose we might be able to slip an AI operated control inside the brain cavity, and have it exercise the body properly...but this opens the door to other problems.

You seem to be assuming no accidents.

Would that be an explosion powerful enough to disassemble a satellite? I think it's more likely that a battery blew up. Those can be powerful.

If it's pushed higher (or lower) in the orbit, that makes the orbit more eccentric, and at the other end of the orbit it will be lower (or higher). It's the ones pushed ahead that will end up in a slightly higher orbit, but I thing still more eccentric. Every piece will have an orbit that passes through the "point of disassembly" once or twice per orbit. (Usually twice.)

That requires that you be able to measure the momentum of the individual pieces. Velocity is a lot easier to measure. "Indicated" is probably the correct term. It's a reasonable guess that most of the pieces are pieces of metal...but metallized plastic would probably reflect radar the same way.

Fiction is a poor guide to reality, and the Andromeda Strain is worse than many. (Because it hides fallacies in techno-babble that looks vaguely reasonable.) Even Jurassic Park was better.

This is NOT a criticism of fiction. But the purpose of fiction is to consider plausible human reactions in simulated environments. There's no requirement, and frequently no desire, that the simulated environments be realizable. (I like many stories that invoke magic...but the magic better not be the point.)

I don't think low earth orbits can generate an actual Kessler syndrome, because thing in low earth orbit tend to fall out of orbit in a few years. The real problem happens higher up where there's essentially no friction.