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At pretty much every point in time prior to today, in essentially every field, a large portion of the broad academic consensus was either flat-out wrong or miss

At pretty much every point in time prior to today, in essentially every field, a large portion of the broad academic consensus was either flat-out wrong or missing a large amount of vital nuance, and eventually a fringe idea developed prominence and replaced it to make academic consensus closer to the truth (we hope). We'd be daft to think the same is not true today. It is very likely that there is some fringe position right now that is far more accurate than whatever passes as consensus, but we may not find that out for some time still. Don't get me wrong; the majority of fringe positions are even wronger still. Ideally, we should have fringe positions branching out from consensus in every direction, serving as the filopodia of academic thought.

deleted 7y ago
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roenxi 7y ago
> Don't get me wrong; the majority of fringe positions are even wronger still. Which goes to a real problem that is easy to overlook - using a rational method to make decisions is extremely risky. If you get any of your assumptions wrong, it will cause a cascade of stupid-but-logical decisions and conclusions. And basically everyone believes something that is untrue in some sense, so it seems almost pot luck whether the untrue things are relevant or irrelevant in practice. There are a lot of geniuses in history who also believed some clearly stupid things. Decisions made via social pressure are very tolerant of bad assumptions. If people don't understand why they are doing things but follow the crowd, they probably aren't going to end up anywhere too scary. If they try and make rational decisions from bad assumptions they could end up doing things that are profoundly foolish.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  But every other method of reaching conclusions has the same flaw: reaching entirely false concliusions. Rationality paired with empiricism offers not a foolproof alternative, but at. least one with verifiable checks at evert stage of observation and reason along the way. If it's been found that either (evidence or reasoning) are flawed, then the entire derived chain of conclusions is called into question. And we cannot dispense entirely with reason, observation, or trust in participants and process. Reason allows leaps beyond (but hopefully eventually validated by) observation, and trust enables a provisional belief to be extended to that which our eyes or minds have not, or can not, seen or grasped. Groupthink's many failures are merely proof that truth is not a popularity contest.

deleted 7y ago

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roenxi 7y ago

> Don't get me wrong; the majority of fringe positions are even wronger still. Which goes to a real problem that is easy to overlook - using a rational method to make decisions is extremely risky. If you get any of your assumptions wrong, it will cause a cascade of stupid-but-logical decisions and conclusions. And basically everyone believes something that is untrue in some sense, so it seems almost pot luck whether the untrue things are relevant or irrelevant in practice. There are a lot of geniuses in history who also believed some clearly stupid things. Decisions made via social pressure are very tolerant of bad assumptions. If people don't understand why they are doing things but follow the crowd, they probably aren't going to end up anywhere too scary. If they try and make rational decisions from bad assumptions they could end up doing things that are profoundly foolish.

dredmorbius 7y ago
But every other method of reaching conclusions has the same flaw: reaching entirely false concliusions. Rationality paired with empiricism offers not a foolproof alternative, but at. least one with verifiable checks at evert stage of observation and reason along the way. If it's been found that either (evidence or reasoning) are flawed, then the entire derived chain of conclusions is called into question. And we cannot dispense entirely with reason, observation, or trust in participants and process. Reason allows leaps beyond (but hopefully eventually validated by) observation, and trust enables a provisional belief to be extended to that which our eyes or minds have not, or can not, seen or grasped. Groupthink's many failures are merely proof that truth is not a popularity contest.