Comment Re: Whatever happened to scientific discussions th (Score 1) 770
In a perfect world, I would verifyâ"through experimentationâ"all facts I am required to base my actions on in order to verify their accuracy and be sure I'm making the best decisions possible. I don't have that kind of time, of course. Someone else may have the time and inclination to do what cannot, and the results of their experimentation can also inform me. However this introduces their biases and mistakes into the equation. To rectify this, I find as many people as I can that have performed the same tests and combine their results. This marginalizes the errors and presents a better representation of reality than a single external source could provide meâ"or even my own all-the-time-in-the-world self testing results, which also wouldn't be without bias or error.
It's not the authority or opinion of each expert (defined as the people that have actually done the experimentation) that provides the benefit here as it is the aggrigate of the results those experts share with us. The more sources that are collected, the more experiments repeated, the more methodologies used, the more accurate the aggrigate consensus is. But don't confuse fact with opinionâ"if you can't tell them apart, you aren't using rigorous thought. And to confuse the content (knowledge) with the containers (the experimenters) is a sure way to make avoidable mistakes.
I don't want a "consensus of opinion." Reality is not up for vote. It is the aggrigate of acquired knowledgeâ"a consensus of factsâ"that is needed to make informed decisions in a complicated world.
