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Your nature is to trust the consensus, whereas flat-eathers' nature is to distrust it. Overall I'd expect this to lead to you having more accurate beliefs than

Your nature is to trust the consensus, whereas flat-eathers' nature is to distrust it. Overall I'd expect this to lead to you having more accurate beliefs than them, since even though the consensus is sometimes wrong it's usually right.

raverbashing 8y ago
While there are issues with blindingly trust the consensus, I think that for most things you're better at least not being far from it (Not to say the 'science' people are always right, but vaccines were a revolution, GW/CC relies fundamentally on a few, very verifiable premises and FE makes as much sense as saying the sky is red)
toasterlovin 8y ago
For the record, I believe the earth is a sphere and that evolution explains the origin of all life on this planet. That being said, in my opinion, being distrustful of the scientific consensus in a given field is a reasonable stance, in and of itself (though possibly not, once you start weighing evidence). The fields of nutrition and exercise science are both fields where distrusting the scientific consensus is, in my opinion, the best epistemological stance. The reason being that researchers in these fields are making diet and exercise recommendations that cannot possibly be supported by the research they are doing. If you dig into these fields, you’ll find that the reason this happens is that scientists are just as susceptible to groupthink and politicization as any other group of people.
- aaron695 8y ago
  > evolution explains the origin of all life on this planet. Not true. Cows are breed intelligently. They are intelligent design. Culture has changed the human genes. Humans have molded the environment/life on this planet. It's "possible" life on Earth came from Mars or vice versa. There seems there might be evidence parents can pass on traits to children outside of "evolution". There are other theories outside of Darwins evolution theory, like "Jump theory", although unlikely. To be honest, we seem to be re-defining evolution like we do what is AI.

raverbashing 8y ago

While there are issues with blindingly trust the consensus, I think that for most things you're better at least not being far from it (Not to say the 'science' people are always right, but vaccines were a revolution, GW/CC relies fundamentally on a few, very verifiable premises and FE makes as much sense as saying the sky is red)

toasterlovin 8y ago

For the record, I believe the earth is a sphere and that evolution explains the origin of all life on this planet. That being said, in my opinion, being distrustful of the scientific consensus in a given field is a reasonable stance, in and of itself (though possibly not, once you start weighing evidence). The fields of nutrition and exercise science are both fields where distrusting the scientific consensus is, in my opinion, the best epistemological stance. The reason being that researchers in these fields are making diet and exercise recommendations that cannot possibly be supported by the research they are doing. If you dig into these fields, you’ll find that the reason this happens is that scientists are just as susceptible to groupthink and politicization as any other group of people.

aaron695 8y ago
> evolution explains the origin of all life on this planet. Not true. Cows are breed intelligently. They are intelligent design. Culture has changed the human genes. Humans have molded the environment/life on this planet. It's "possible" life on Earth came from Mars or vice versa. There seems there might be evidence parents can pass on traits to children outside of "evolution". There are other theories outside of Darwins evolution theory, like "Jump theory", although unlikely. To be honest, we seem to be re-defining evolution like we do what is AI.