What do I mean by “pessimistic about our ability to create a collective map”? Maybe I should not have said “pessimistic,” but instead used “cynical.” There are lots of places where we claim to have consensus and I think that those claims are false. I gave lots of examples of very small scale failures to communicate, like one department of a medical school lying about the work of another medical department. If we revere certain people as experts, it behooves us to find out what they claim. Finding that out would count as promoting a collective map.
What do I mean by “pessimistic about our ability to create a collective map”? Maybe I should not have said “pessimistic,” but instead used “cynical.” There are lots of places where we claim to have consensus and I think that those claims are false. I gave lots of examples of very small scale failures to communicate, like one department of a medical school lying about the work of another medical department. If we revere certain people as experts, it behooves us to find out what they claim. Finding that out would count as promoting a collective map.