A reasonable person is the peer of a reasonable person just like a researcher who is careful in their methods is the peer of another researcher who is careful i

A reasonable person is the peer of a reasonable person just like a researcher who is careful in their methods is the peer of another researcher who is careful in their methods. But how do you know who is careful in their methods? The only researchers who really know who are the researchers who are careful in their methods are the researchers who are careful in their methods. They recognize each other, but they cannot necessarily communicate what they know to the larger public. This is peer review. To protect peer review as it applies, in a practical sense, to specific professions, we normally follow a complex social process whereby institutions are established with the express goal of transferring knowledge from the older generation to the younger generation. The institutions themselves are subject to a separate process of gaining or losing the social capital necessary to be seen as legitimate in the task of transferring the knowledge. The institutions are entrusted with the task of gatekeeping the professions, weeding out a large number of people who might want to join the profession. However, the institutions themselves are not seen as able to force someone to recognize someone else as a peer, except in a superficial and prima facie sense. Actual peering is done between peers, and no institution can control it. In that sense, peering is the absolute opposite of democracy. It is a social process of a particular elite, who may not be seen as an elite by anyone but themselves. (Albert Einstein may or may not feel that Werner Heisenberg is a great physicist, and vice versa, Michael Jordan may or may not regard Kobe Bryant as a great basketball player, and vice versa, Isaac Abendana may or may not regard Jacob Abendana as a great Sephardic scholar, and vice versa.) The gatekeeping performed by the institutions is a first step towards establishing a peer group, but the gatekeeping does not itself establish the peer group. Only the peers themselves do that, in their own private thoughts, which no one else might agree with. Likewise, with reasonable people, though there is no institution gatekeeping the overall group of reasonable people, so the process is even more intensely personal than it is among the recognized professions. Yet people outside the peer groups do understand actual achievement, so occasionally members of each peer group develop public recognition, and then they go public with their own private ideas of who is a peer. This can influence who non-peers think of as peers. If Michael Jordan said that Kobe Bryant was his peer then few people would be surprised, but if Jordan insisted that Karl Malone was his peer, a few non-peer people who had previously disrespected Karl Malone would then re-evaluate the career of Karl Malone.