5 ms·

> also well-established scientific consensus is not an ideal goal post Genuinely asking, how should I evaluate truth in a subject matter that I myself don't ha

> also well-established scientific consensus is not an ideal goal post Genuinely asking, how should I evaluate truth in a subject matter that I myself don't have a doctorate in if the standard of "what is general consensus among the people with doctorates in the subject" isn't reasonable?

Zuider 5y ago
What evidence is there that a general consensus on a thesis indicates that it is necessarily true? Is it rational simply to accept a consensus, effectively taking something on faith?
- silverspoonin 5y ago
  That was not an answer to his question, and I am really curious for an answer to it because I think it's a valid and reasonable point. Also, as to whether believing scientific general consensus should count as "faith" or not, I invite you to read Issac Asimov's short essay "The Relativity of Wrong".
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Scientific consensus is just religious consensus with more advanced instruments of measurements. You're still prodding into the infinite. CERN and Yerkes Observatory are just peeling off the surface layer of the onion. To claim anything is objective truth is also claiming you know the universe in it's entirety.
  - Zuider 5y ago
    OP's question appears to invert the burden of proof in assuming that a consensus, even of experts, ought to be believed unless there are compelling reasons not to accept it. Where is the evidence that a consensus is a good metric for the truth of a matter? Has there been any work done to establish such a correspondence? Asimov seems to be arguing that there are degrees of wrongness, and one can become less wrong by a process of rational error elimination and criticism. How does the mere fact of a consensus have any bearing on this process?
    - silverspoonin 5y ago
      > OP's question appears to invert the burden of proof in assuming that a consensus, even of experts, ought to be believed unless there are compelling reasons not to accept it. Again, I pose the question, what is a reasonable alternative? >Asimov seems to be arguing that there are degrees of wrongness, and one can become less wrong by a process of rational error elimination and criticism. How does the mere fact of a consensus have any bearing on this process? The scientific process IS a process of rational error elimination and criticism. Scientific consensus is the result of the majority of experts in a field using the scientific process to agree on the "least wrong" information possible given the data available at that time. If you claim not to see the bearing on this process, you're being dishonestly obtuse. > Where is the evidence that a consensus is a good metric for the truth of a matter? Has there been any work done to establish such a correspondence? I think you have the causal chain backwards; the evidence of a good metric for the truth of a matter is what builds consensus. If the evidence is incompatible with consensus, and it holds up to scrutiny & reproduction, then the consensus changes to match. Either way, the end result is that consensus is an improving approximation to "the truth". If you have a better way of obtaining "the truth", I would be very glad to learn about it.
      - Zuider 5y ago
        >Again, I pose the question, what is a reasonable alternative? Again, this inverts the burden of proof. There is no obligation to provide any alternative, and no obligation to defer to a consensus in the absence of one. >Scientific consensus is the result of the majority of experts in a field using the scientific process to agree on the "least wrong" information possible given the data available at that time. If you claim not to see the bearing on this process, you're being dishonestly obtuse. I see no evidence that this narrative is generally true, and it is a very weak argument for taking consensus as a metric of truthfulness. >If you have a better way of obtaining "the truth", I would be very glad to learn about it. One does not require a better way of obtaining the truth in order to avoid committing oneself to accepting unjustified claims. Again, such a requirement inverts the burden of proof.
        5y ago
nickthemagicman 5y ago
A lot of parts of science and math are very different from the 60's while a lot of remains the same! How do you make sense of all of this and wrangle objective truth from the chaos? That's an epistomological question people have been asking since the dawn of mankind. IS there even objective truth that our limited monkey/human mind can grasp? I don't know the answer!...but I know censoring a multitude of opinions and claiming a monopoly on objective truth in an infinite world of chaos is not the way to do it.
- atleta 5y ago
  It's not about censoring the opinions in general. Again, it's about censoring fake news on social media. Nobody wants to censor research (I know it's more complicated, because of what gets funded and what not) or publishing in peer reviewed papers. Heck, as a result of the pandemic, peer reviews got even quicker and a lot of research gets publicity when they get on pre-print servers (i.e. pre-review)! That doesn't sound like claiming monopoly on the truth to me. You could argue that social media is an important outlet for new scientific ideas, results and discoveries but then you'd have to prove that not censoring there and letting the fakes run wild adds more value than the harm caused by the fakes. And the we know that the latter effect exists. I'd say that even if there is added value here (TBH, I don't see it at all), it's overwhelmed by the harm. Any scientifically valuable contribution that is only spread through the social media will be lost in the noise of nonsense.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Did you ever think to yourself maybe the reason so many people are anti-(Covid)-vaxxers is not that they're brainwashed? Its that the anti-vaxx people may have a point? Many major scientific breakthroughs were made outside of the 'institution of science' and peer reviewed papers. Joseph Lister discovered antiseptic theory during routine medical practice and was mocked at first by other doctors who didn't want to switch instruments between surgurys. Galileo was excommunicated for going against mainstream science. But both of their ideas won out in the end. If you need censorship and coercion of any sort to force your ideas on people, if to need to limit the avenues which ideas are shared .. you need better ideas.
kuraudo 5y ago
Try to understand as much as possible and make your call that way. Most of the scientific questions in this world don't require you to have an opinion (I don't much care which rocket fuel is better; I'll let others argue over that). Covid and Climate Change are interesting because certain conclusions related to them have a direct impact on you and I. The ruling class would certainly like you to believe one conclusion over all the others and that conclusion might even be 'correct' in terms of being beneficial to you or humans as a whole, but asking people to believe that conclusion because of some 'consensus' is fraught with both logical and mortal peril as history has shown us time and time again.

Zuider 5y ago

What evidence is there that a general consensus on a thesis indicates that it is necessarily true? Is it rational simply to accept a consensus, effectively taking something on faith?

silverspoonin 5y ago
That was not an answer to his question, and I am really curious for an answer to it because I think it's a valid and reasonable point. Also, as to whether believing scientific general consensus should count as "faith" or not, I invite you to read Issac Asimov's short essay "The Relativity of Wrong".
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Scientific consensus is just religious consensus with more advanced instruments of measurements. You're still prodding into the infinite. CERN and Yerkes Observatory are just peeling off the surface layer of the onion. To claim anything is objective truth is also claiming you know the universe in it's entirety.
- Zuider 5y ago
  OP's question appears to invert the burden of proof in assuming that a consensus, even of experts, ought to be believed unless there are compelling reasons not to accept it. Where is the evidence that a consensus is a good metric for the truth of a matter? Has there been any work done to establish such a correspondence? Asimov seems to be arguing that there are degrees of wrongness, and one can become less wrong by a process of rational error elimination and criticism. How does the mere fact of a consensus have any bearing on this process?
  - silverspoonin 5y ago
    > OP's question appears to invert the burden of proof in assuming that a consensus, even of experts, ought to be believed unless there are compelling reasons not to accept it. Again, I pose the question, what is a reasonable alternative? >Asimov seems to be arguing that there are degrees of wrongness, and one can become less wrong by a process of rational error elimination and criticism. How does the mere fact of a consensus have any bearing on this process? The scientific process IS a process of rational error elimination and criticism. Scientific consensus is the result of the majority of experts in a field using the scientific process to agree on the "least wrong" information possible given the data available at that time. If you claim not to see the bearing on this process, you're being dishonestly obtuse. > Where is the evidence that a consensus is a good metric for the truth of a matter? Has there been any work done to establish such a correspondence? I think you have the causal chain backwards; the evidence of a good metric for the truth of a matter is what builds consensus. If the evidence is incompatible with consensus, and it holds up to scrutiny & reproduction, then the consensus changes to match. Either way, the end result is that consensus is an improving approximation to "the truth". If you have a better way of obtaining "the truth", I would be very glad to learn about it.
    - Zuider 5y ago
      >Again, I pose the question, what is a reasonable alternative? Again, this inverts the burden of proof. There is no obligation to provide any alternative, and no obligation to defer to a consensus in the absence of one. >Scientific consensus is the result of the majority of experts in a field using the scientific process to agree on the "least wrong" information possible given the data available at that time. If you claim not to see the bearing on this process, you're being dishonestly obtuse. I see no evidence that this narrative is generally true, and it is a very weak argument for taking consensus as a metric of truthfulness. >If you have a better way of obtaining "the truth", I would be very glad to learn about it. One does not require a better way of obtaining the truth in order to avoid committing oneself to accepting unjustified claims. Again, such a requirement inverts the burden of proof.
      - 5y ago

nickthemagicman 5y ago

A lot of parts of science and math are very different from the 60's while a lot of remains the same! How do you make sense of all of this and wrangle objective truth from the chaos? That's an epistomological question people have been asking since the dawn of mankind. IS there even objective truth that our limited monkey/human mind can grasp? I don't know the answer!...but I know censoring a multitude of opinions and claiming a monopoly on objective truth in an infinite world of chaos is not the way to do it.

atleta 5y ago
It's not about censoring the opinions in general. Again, it's about censoring fake news on social media. Nobody wants to censor research (I know it's more complicated, because of what gets funded and what not) or publishing in peer reviewed papers. Heck, as a result of the pandemic, peer reviews got even quicker and a lot of research gets publicity when they get on pre-print servers (i.e. pre-review)! That doesn't sound like claiming monopoly on the truth to me. You could argue that social media is an important outlet for new scientific ideas, results and discoveries but then you'd have to prove that not censoring there and letting the fakes run wild adds more value than the harm caused by the fakes. And the we know that the latter effect exists. I'd say that even if there is added value here (TBH, I don't see it at all), it's overwhelmed by the harm. Any scientifically valuable contribution that is only spread through the social media will be lost in the noise of nonsense.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Did you ever think to yourself maybe the reason so many people are anti-(Covid)-vaxxers is not that they're brainwashed? Its that the anti-vaxx people may have a point? Many major scientific breakthroughs were made outside of the 'institution of science' and peer reviewed papers. Joseph Lister discovered antiseptic theory during routine medical practice and was mocked at first by other doctors who didn't want to switch instruments between surgurys. Galileo was excommunicated for going against mainstream science. But both of their ideas won out in the end. If you need censorship and coercion of any sort to force your ideas on people, if to need to limit the avenues which ideas are shared .. you need better ideas.

kuraudo 5y ago

Try to understand as much as possible and make your call that way. Most of the scientific questions in this world don't require you to have an opinion (I don't much care which rocket fuel is better; I'll let others argue over that). Covid and Climate Change are interesting because certain conclusions related to them have a direct impact on you and I. The ruling class would certainly like you to believe one conclusion over all the others and that conclusion might even be 'correct' in terms of being beneficial to you or humans as a whole, but asking people to believe that conclusion because of some 'consensus' is fraught with both logical and mortal peril as history has shown us time and time again.