Theories being ultimately all we have, there is (or should be) no “chosen” one. People are free to believe whatever—this is a pre-requisite for theories to evolve.

There may be a theory that enjoys better predictive success for a while, but if everyone always believed in a singular “chosen” theory then we’d get nowhere: to evolve a better theory, you have to come up with and believe in something other than the preexisting one. Thus, it is normal for multiple theories to coexist at any given time.

Crucially, a theory is all map no territory, always and necessarily. It describes something we do not understand in terms of something that we do understand. At its core, it is a metaphor—and more than one metaphor can be useful, each in a slightly different context.

There is no need to believe a theory, but when it comes time to make an irreversible choice; you better pick the strongest theory. No belief necessary. Sometimes you do have to choose, and you have to accept that your choice will have a degree of uncertainty.

The point is that there is no “strongest” theory. Different theories are different maps. There is no perfect map, at that point it is no longer a map but territory.

Better not use a bad map, but there can be more than one good map depending on what you need it for.

The chosen explanation should be held to be contingent and corrigible but that doesn’t mean all explanations should be held to the same regard particularly when some can be harmful as well as contradictory.

"Harm" is essentially circular logic. Assuming we are acting logically, the only harmful theory is a wrong one. And so when speaking of harm, you are assuming the correctness or incorrectness of some theory. This is why having a free and open society where any theory can be comfortably pursued to its natural limits is absolutely critical. Everything should be being constantly challenged to ensure that we aren't just falling into a new dogmatic cycle, as history shows we ultimately always do.

Beyond this I'd also add that many 'rock solid' theories do contradict each other. The obvious example being relativity and quantum mechanics which have mutually exclusive things to say on countless topics ranging from black holes to the nature of time itself. Both work phenomenally well and have abundant evidence in their own bubbles, but side by side - they can't both be true in their current state.

"Assuming we are acting logically"... which a lot/most/all of people don't at any given time which is largely the issue at hand.

I can't think of any examples where this is the case currently. A historic example would be genetics. There's little doubt that genetics influence near to every aspect of our competencies. And that's extremely useful information that can help improve life and society in countless ways. It only became harmful when a man decided to take it to an illogical extreme, predictably creating a very real dystopia in his fanciful efforts to create a very distant utopia.

It is not abnormal for multiple theories or hypotheses to contradict each other. In strictly natural sciences it is usually possible to experimentally rule out some of them, but not always so (for example, sometimes the technology is not there). In philosophy it is often not the case (no experimental means available where concepts like “objective reality” are involved).

For sure but that should change how much regard we hold them in right? The example given by your sibling comment is a great one because we know that there is something we're missing in the explanations given by General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and that's okay. It doesn't mean that neither are useful just that we understand their explanatory limits. In comparison flat-earth theory is basically completely contradictory to vast swathes of evidence and explanations.

Flat Earth is more of a sign of protest masquerading as a theory rather than an actual theory. It appears to be more focused on finding elaborate ways to deny other theories rather than seeking truth. It is inelegant, illogical, and cannot be stated without involving a host of conspiracies of low probability. (The fact that one can only adopt it given values/traits/issues that let one seriously believe in those conspiracies may also make it useful for social signaling.)

What I find tragic is that STEM-inclined crowd might have sort of triggered that defensive reaction by supplanting religion directly with natural sciences. Sometimes when you point out something similar to this thread (that physics does not make statements of absolute truth, there are only models of which none can be fully provably correct and complete, etc.) you encounter vicious insistence that the world is literally the way it is described in physics textbooks or Wikipedia—and it will stay that way until we are blessed with a new explanation for how things really are. You can notice how to a religious person this might feel indistinguishable to a competing religion, rather than an orthogonal aspect of worldview (it is completely possible to be both religious and a natural scientist).

Come to think about it, even your comment sounds slightly off to me in this way, primarily due to the mention of “explanatory limits”. I would prefer another term (possibly “predictive limits”). Again, “explanatory limits” makes it sound as if GR or QM (or X or Y) is capable of “explaining” something. Taking a model, just one metaphor that fits how some aspect of apparent reality behaves in response to input or another observation, and using that metaphor to explain how things are in some objective sense (which is what I take “explanatory” means) is, to me, a misuse of the model. The fact that the model works for some of our purposes makes it useful, but does not grant it explanatory powers.

I wish more of us techies resisted the urge to see in natural sciences explanatory powers that they do not possess, and instead branched a bit into philosophy—which can actually provide some grounds for meaningful discussions on topics that are out of scope of natural sciences per se. (As a side-effect, this might also make us more understanding and bearable to talk to for someone on a different bandwagon than ourselves.)

> Because the only thing you can ever have is a theory.

Here's mine: there is a "correct" set of theories (or truths) that the universe adheres to, we're just nowhere close to even guessing at them yet. But current theories can be closer or farther to them