How would you differentiate this from someone just asking for additional evidence because they think you’ve made a false statement? E.g. If Alice tells Bob the earth is flat, its reasonable for him to ask for additional evidence, and doing so doesn’t imply he’s playing status games. But could equally reasonably be replied to by saying that Bob is only disagreeing because he thinks Alice isn’t high status enough to make cosmological claims.
I generally wouldn’t ask questions like “is his disagreement explained by status alone or by facts alone?”. I generally ask questions more like “if he saw the person saying these things as higher or lower ‘status’, how much would this change his perception of the facts?” (and others, but this is the part of the picture I think is most important to illuminate here). If a fields medalists looks at your proof and says “you’re wrong”, you’re going to respond differently than if a random homeless guy said it because when a fields medalist says it you’re more likely to believe that your proof is flawed (and rightly so!). Presumably there’s no one you hold in high enough regard that if they were to say “the earth is flat” you’d conclude “it’s more likely that I’m wrong about the earth being round and all of the things that tie into that than it is that this person is wrong, so as weird as it is, the earth is probably flat”, however even there status concerns change how you respond.
Coincidentally, just as I started drafting my response to this I got interrupted to go out to dinner and on the way was told about Newman’s energy machine and how it produced more energy than it required, how Big Oil was involved in shutting it down, and the like. This certainly counts as “something I think is false” in the same way Bob thinks “the earth is flat” is false, but how, specifically, does that justify asking for evidence? The case against perpetual motion machines is very solid and this is not what a potentially successful challenge would look like (to put it lightly), so it’s not like I need to ask for evidence to make sure I shouldn’t be working on perpetual motion machines or something. Since I can’t pretend I’d be doing it for my personal learning, what could motivate me to ask?
I could ask for evidence because of a sense of [“duty”](http://xkcd.com/386/), but it was clear to me that he wasn’t just gonna say “Huh, I guess my evidence is actually incredibly weak. Thanks!”, so it’s not like he was actually going to stop being wrong in the time/effort allotted. I could ask for evidence to make it clear to the “audience” that he has no good evidence, but there was no one there that was at risk of believing in perpetual motion machines.
Why should I ask him for evidence, if not for reasons having to do with wanting him to afford more respect to the things I think, less to what he thinks, and to punish him by making him feel stupid if he tries to resist?
How would you differentiate this from someone just asking for additional evidence because they think you’ve made a false statement? E.g. If Alice tells Bob the earth is flat, its reasonable for him to ask for additional evidence, and doing so doesn’t imply he’s playing status games. But could equally reasonably be replied to by saying that Bob is only disagreeing because he thinks Alice isn’t high status enough to make cosmological claims.
Good question.
I generally wouldn’t ask questions like “is his disagreement explained by status alone or by facts alone?”. I generally ask questions more like “if he saw the person saying these things as higher or lower ‘status’, how much would this change his perception of the facts?” (and others, but this is the part of the picture I think is most important to illuminate here). If a fields medalists looks at your proof and says “you’re wrong”, you’re going to respond differently than if a random homeless guy said it because when a fields medalist says it you’re more likely to believe that your proof is flawed (and rightly so!). Presumably there’s no one you hold in high enough regard that if they were to say “the earth is flat” you’d conclude “it’s more likely that I’m wrong about the earth being round and all of the things that tie into that than it is that this person is wrong, so as weird as it is, the earth is probably flat”, however even there status concerns change how you respond.
Coincidentally, just as I started drafting my response to this I got interrupted to go out to dinner and on the way was told about Newman’s energy machine and how it produced more energy than it required, how Big Oil was involved in shutting it down, and the like. This certainly counts as “something I think is false” in the same way Bob thinks “the earth is flat” is false, but how, specifically, does that justify asking for evidence? The case against perpetual motion machines is very solid and this is not what a potentially successful challenge would look like (to put it lightly), so it’s not like I need to ask for evidence to make sure I shouldn’t be working on perpetual motion machines or something. Since I can’t pretend I’d be doing it for my personal learning, what could motivate me to ask?
I could ask for evidence because of a sense of [“duty”](http://xkcd.com/386/), but it was clear to me that he wasn’t just gonna say “Huh, I guess my evidence is actually incredibly weak. Thanks!”, so it’s not like he was actually going to stop being wrong in the time/effort allotted. I could ask for evidence to make it clear to the “audience” that he has no good evidence, but there was no one there that was at risk of believing in perpetual motion machines.
Why should I ask him for evidence, if not for reasons having to do with wanting him to afford more respect to the things I think, less to what he thinks, and to punish him by making him feel stupid if he tries to resist?