Wikipedia:Galileo complex

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article or a Wikipedia policy, as it has not been reviewed by the community.

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This page in a nutshell: Users facing repercussions for saying or doing unacceptable things might act as though they are being unfairly persecuted. They might fail to learn the right lessons from their interactions with other users, as they perceive attempts to correct them as silencing tactics intended to uphold a status quo they consider problematic.

When proponents of unpopular viewpoints on matters of contention such as climate change, medicine or politics face backlash for what they say or do, they may frame themselves (or be framed by their supporters) as dissidents who are being silenced by authority figures merely for disagreeing with them on such topics, just as Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was punished for promoting a worldview that the authorities of his own time disapproved of. When one exhibits this type of victim mentality, they may be said to have a Galileo complex.

In an attempt to accomplish a noble goal, such as ensuring Wikipedia's coverage of topics they care about is accurate or unbiased,^[a] a user might engage in disruptive battleground behavior such as edit warring, sealioning, and casting aspersions against those that try to get in their way. When blocked for persistently engaging in such behavior, that editor might play the victim and complain about being singled out by a small group of power-wielding editors. A Galileo complex would make it difficult for them to understand that their behavior was wrong, so they may not be able to properly address it when appealing blocks or other sanctions.

Galileo and the Roman Inquisition

In the early 17th century, Galileo published multiple works and theories via which he promoted the Copernican model, which the Roman Catholic Church had rejected as heresy at the time. After Dominican friar Tommaso Caccini denounced Galileo, his associates and other mathematicians and astronomers in a 1614 sermon, one of his fellow Dominicans, Niccolò Lorini, acquired a copy of Galileo's letter to Caccini and brought it to the attention of the Roman Inquisition, which ordered Galileo to stop promoting heliocentrism in 1616. That same year, the Congregation of the Index placed Copernicus' De revolutionibus and Diego de Zúñiga's In Job commentaria on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum and had them withheld from publication "until corrected".

Galileo later authored the 1632 book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems which portrayed its geocentrist character Simplicio as intellectually inept.^[b] This negative representation of geocentrists caused Galileo to lose the support of Pope Urban VIII (who succeeded Pope Gregory XV in 1623) and others in Rome who had defended him up to this point. In 1633, Galileo was found guilty of heresy, ordered to renounce heliocentrism, put under house arrest for the rest of his life, and was banned from having any more of his works published.

Modern contexts

Like Galileo, many people have been (or are perceived to have been) punished for denying or questioning widely-accepted scientific and historical propositions and presenting misinformation as factual. If the offending information seems to imply something negative about any marginalized or protected class of people, institutions may regard the dissemination of that information as a form of hate speech that is insensitive at best and harmful at worst.

If online platforms implement rules that prohibit their users from promoting false or misleading claims about certain topics (e.g. vaccines, COVID-19, U.S. elections) and those rules are enforced against violators, a person with a Galileo complex may consider those cases to be clues that the prohibited information could be true and may be tempted to violate (or continue violating) said rules themselves. They may argue that, if any given set of statements are false, moderators shouldn't perceive a need to punish those who promote them, as the public will realize on their own that such statements are inaccurate regardless of whether or not any mainstream institution says so.

Whenever people face repercussions for what they have said, those that deplatform them may be accused of violating their freedom of speech and compared to the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. When a person or organization tries to hinder the spread of content or information they either personally dislike or don't want others to see, their efforts often backfire, even if the information they're trying to prevent the spread of is false or sensitive.

Examples of incidents that could cause someone to develop a Galileo complex include:

A researcher being fired, discredited,^[c] and banned from speaking at universities after casting doubt on widely-accepted propositions in their field of study
A social media influencer having their accounts suspended across multiple platforms after promoting pseudoscientific and/or pseudohistorical claims about certain ethnic groups
A news outlet or commentator being sued for defamation and avoiding harsh remedies by admitting that a conspiracy theory they have promoted about a recent event is false

What to look out for

On Wikipedia, users who exhibit poor conduct can end up in similar circumstances to Galileo, and many have. Users who assume that their side of an argument is right would engage in disruptive behavior in certain topic areas, get topic banned, violate their topic bans, get temporarily blocked, continue to violate their topic bans after their temporary blocks expire, get indefinitely blocked, and even lose talk page privileges after multiple failed attempts to get their way.

When it affects a given editor, a Galileo complex reinforces their perception that they themselves are right and that the users they get into disputes with are wrong. It causes that editor to affirm that their preferred versions of articles are more accurate or less biased than the status quo, and to assume that whoever reverts, criticizes or blocks them for their edits must be trying to keep certain articles inaccurate or biased as part of a conspiracy to suppress the truth and promote a narrative. When policies or guidelines are cited to explain to an editor how their contributions are flawed, they might complain about how complicated the rules are and accuse administrators of exploiting such complexity to deter them from attempting to challenge the status quo.

If an editor is reported to ANI for their behavior and others express support for imposing sanctions on them—such as a topic ban or an indefinite block—that editor may recognize that their own actions have made others uncomfortable, but they can't consider their critics' points about how they have acted because they perceive themselves as merely speaking truth to power. They may regard fighting for a just cause^[d] and refusing to back down in the face of adversity as manifestations of heroic virtues such as bravery, perseverance and determination, so their tendentious editing may be motivated by a desire to present oneself as exhibiting those virtues, even though their determination is misplaced whether they realize it or not.

But I am being silenced for my views!

If it seems like a cabal of rouge admins is trying to kick you off of Wikipedia because of your personal views, it may be because of how you have behaved:

If you've been accused of edit warring or POV pushing, stop trying to reintroduce your preferred versions of Wikipedia articles, even if you think your versions are more accurate. Instead, discuss what you want to do on each article's talk page, and be civil. Keep in mind that Wikipedia articles are supposed to reflect what is said in reliable sources, and that user-generated content is considered generally unreliable due to the fact that anyone can publish it themselves with little to no editorial oversight. Some sources have a reputation for publishing false or misleading information and may be deprecated. If other users still don't approve of your revisions and you aren't able to compromise with them, it would be best for you to concede the dispute and move on.
If you've been accused of bludgeoning, avoid repeating points you have already made. Once you've presented an argument, you don't need to repeat the same argument over and over again, no matter how many comments express agreement with the points you have argued against. If your arguments don't work the first time, repeating them over and over again won't persuade people to agree with you, just like how we can't persuade you to agree with us.
If you've been accused of incivility; making personal attacks or casting aspersions against other users, take a look back at your own comments and try to recall the mood you may have been in when you made them. If something puts you in the mood to leave a snarky remark about someone, you should give yourself time to think it through before you decide whether to publish it or not. That way, if you conclude that your potential comment might hurt your standing or reputation with other contributors, you can be glad that you hesitated and saved yourself from getting into further trouble.
If you've been reported to ANI and/or blocked for expressing that you're a neo-Nazi or a Confederate revanchist, or saying/doing things considered racist, queerphobic, ableist, or hateful in any other way, you may be out of luck. These views are unwelcome because the point of each of them is that people of certain ethnicities, sexual orientations, gender identities or other classifications are unwelcome. If you personally have such views, you should avoid disclosing them on-wiki and not let them affect your decision-making as you edit. Just because you legally have the freedom to say something doesn't mean that you can say it without fear of consequences.

If you try to garner people's sympathy by equating adverse on-wiki consequences (e.g. getting reverted or blocked) with a witch hunt, a kangaroo court or a purge, you would be making a false equivalence. Wikipedians in some countries have been imprisoned or executed by governments for their contributions to Wikipedia. The sanctions you may face on-wiki for your behavior are nowhere near as bad as what some Wikipedians have had to deal with offline.

If an arbitration case is opened against you, the guide to arbitration says that arguments opposing Wikipedia's basic principles, suggesting a massive cabal of rogue admins, or holding the process to be an end in itself will not work. Arguing about flaws in the arbitration process is usually a waste of time and will make arbitrators look dimly upon you.

Accusing others of having a Galileo complex

If you think a user might have a Galileo complex and you're considering telling them so, be careful. They may regard the phrase as just yet another pejorative term invented to help their opponents disparage them or dismiss their beliefs, as with older words like pseudoscience, denialist, quackery and crackpot. At worst, fringe theorists might take the complex part of the expression literally and assume that they are being pathologized, even though Galileo complex is just a figure of speech.

Notes

^ Their idea of "accurate" may differ substantially from what is verified in reliable sources, and their idea of "unbiased" may involve false balance.
^ Although Simplicio was named after Simplicius of Cilicia, the name Simplicio also sounded like the Italian word semplice ("simpleton"), so in the Church's defense, what Galileo did could have been interpreted as a personal attack against geocentrists and regarded as uncivil.
^ If they are a licensed professional in a field such as law or medicine, they may be revoked of their license to practice in that field.
^ A just cause being whatever the editor personally believes is right, no matter what others think.

[1] Their idea of "accurate" may differ substantially from what is verified in reliable sources, and their idea of "unbiased" may involve false balance.

[2] Although Simplicio was named after Simplicius of Cilicia, the name Simplicio also sounded like the Italian word semplice ("simpleton"), so in the Church's defense, what Galileo did could have been interpreted as a personal attack against geocentrists and regarded as uncivil.

[3] If they are a licensed professional in a field such as law or medicine, they may be revoked of their license to practice in that field.

[4] A just cause being whatever the editor personally believes is right, no matter what others think.

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