I think that there’s a spectrum between treating someone as a good source of conclusions and treating them as a good source of hypotheses.
I can have thoughts like “Carol looked closely into the topic and came away convinced that Y is true, so for now I’m going to act as if Y is probably true” if I take Carol to be a good source of conclusions.
Whereas if I took Alice to be a good source of hypotheses but not a good source of conclusions, then I would instead have thoughts like “Alice insists that Z is true, so Z seems like something that’s worth thinking about more.”
Giving someone epistemic tenure as a source of conclusions seems much more costly than giving them epistemic tenure as a source of hypotheses.
I think that there’s a spectrum between treating someone as a good source of conclusions and treating them as a good source of hypotheses.
I can have thoughts like “Carol looked closely into the topic and came away convinced that Y is true, so for now I’m going to act as if Y is probably true” if I take Carol to be a good source of conclusions.
Whereas if I took Alice to be a good source of hypotheses but not a good source of conclusions, then I would instead have thoughts like “Alice insists that Z is true, so Z seems like something that’s worth thinking about more.”
Giving someone epistemic tenure as a source of conclusions seems much more costly than giving them epistemic tenure as a source of hypotheses.