The Things You Can't Say

At http://johnlawrenceaspden.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/scott-alexander-speaks-to-us-of.html

PG is vair sensible; I came to his blog late, so have never read that one. But his "would have gotten me in big trouble in most of Europe in the seventeenth century, and did get Galileo in big trouble when he said it—that the earth moves" is probably wrong. G was stomped on for a variety of complex reasons; e.g. https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/galileo-the-church-and-heliocentricity-a-rough-guide/. And he loses points for linking to Crichton, of course.

Is Galileo a side issue or not? Maybe; but people using him as an example and getting it wrong deserve correction. scottaaronson also gets him badly and naively wrong. Note that Galileo's only "firm" proof of the Earth moving (as opposed to a Tychonic system), the tides, was bollox.