&gt; I agree, but I also know that Martin Luther King got the same response;<p>It&#x27;s funny you bring up MLK Jr. Here he is on Malcolm X:<p>&gt; I met Malcolm X once in Washington... but I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views... I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve <i>our</i> problem... I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice.<p>Emphasis mine there. MLK Jr. clearly understood he and Malcolm X were aiming towards solving the same problem, but with very different approaches to it (and MLK Jr. disagreed heavily with Malcolm X&#x27;s approach clearly).<p>&gt; From the perspective of the challangers, our status quo beliefs and approach aren&#x27;t delivering.<p>That&#x27;s a perspective of many people. Again, many people agree that problem XYZ is <i>our</i> problem. We can disagree on many other things besides that.<p>&gt; From the perspective of many social theorists, nothing really changes until you up end the current order.<p>I suspect that&#x27;s a contentious view point. There are certainly many recent historical examples that would be evidence against that theory on both fronts: Both significant changes occurring gradually, and upheavals that ended up with results similar or worse compared to before the upheaval.<p>&gt; As long as the status quo can sit comfortably at their desks and on their sofas, they won&#x27;t be motivated to change.<p>I assume the &quot;status quo&quot; here means the general populace, and again I think there are plenty of examples of change occurring even though the general populace wasn&#x27;t affected much.<p>Same-sex marriage in the US is a perfect example: The general populace didn&#x27;t do much other than agree that it was time to end the silly prohibition on same-sex marriage. Certainly a minority of the populace was very active in making sure that it became a reality (and vice-versa), but the general populace really didn&#x27;t do much to effect that change other than perhaps do their civic duty in voting.<p>(Even then, a small influential body unaffected by the populace had the largest effect)<p>&gt; I&#x27;m just not going to reject them because they are disruptive to my ideas.  In fact, no matter what I end up thinking about them, it&#x27;s a good opportunity for me to re-examine my own beliefs.<p>Sure, and similarly it&#x27;s worth evaluating whether thimerosal causes autism. Might as well be safe. But once we&#x27;ve evaluated it and decided that it&#x27;s not a valid concern, it&#x27;s perfectly appropriate to reject the idea that vaccines cause autism.<p>I would further argue that it&#x27;s appropriate to be angry at those espousing the idea that vaccines do cause autism, because there are detrimental effects involved if that idea were to take hold at large.<p>My point being: Not all disruptive ideas are necessarily worth being evaluated over and over again, and some disruptive ideas are harmful and it&#x27;s appropriate to call them out as such.<p>It&#x27;s also hard to disentangle a disruptive idea from its agents, and it can also be appropriate to call out those agents acting inappropriately even if we agree with their disruptive idea (as MLK Jr. did to Malcolm X).