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Isn’t that still circular though? Knowledge of the mainstream research isn’t the same as “knowledge of what’s correct”; the person who holds the non-consensus

• ssivark 4y ago
  > It’d be interest to compare the knowledge level the person holding the consensus view has about the non-consensus view to vice versa. That's a great question -- harking back to the idea that for the best incarnation of debate one should be able to argue one's opponent's case to their satisfaction, and then make one's own counter. The unfortunate problem is that it's often far easier to cook up BS than to bust it, so the anticipated effort tilts the scales massively. But in cases where there are specific/highlighted competing alternatives, it would be very interesting to study this.
• mlyle 4y ago
  > Isn’t that still circular though? Knowledge of the mainstream research isn’t the same as “knowledge of what’s correct”; the person who holds the non-consensus view may have equal or higher levels of knowledge about the path that got them to non-consensus. No, because the things they're asking about are middle school level science stuff. The list of questions are in the supplemental PDF, or in my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32379920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32379920