You’re right, it is mostly a question of minority views, but I’ll defend my use of “bunk” a little bit.
Not every bunk view is a minority view; the majority of Americans believe in ghosts, for example. What makes me initially estimate it unlikely that ghosts exist is not that it’s a minority opinion (it’s not) but that it contradicts the entire framework I have for understanding the physical world. I start off, therefore, with a really low prior for ghosts. So low, in fact, that it’s potentially not worth the effort of further investigation.
In the case of ghosts it doesn’t take very much effort to investigate enough to toss out the claim; ghosts are an easy case. Other topics, though, take a lot of effort to investigate, and my initial low prior isn’t based on much evidence. Misclassifying them as bunk can be costly. But classifying nothing as bunk would break the bank, in attention and effort terms. Bunk is anything which, for whatever reason (being a minority view, requiring large realignment of our worldview, etc) is too unlikely to be worth checking.
And the problem of bunk is this: if it isn’t even worth it to do a preliminary check, how do you know how unlikely it is?
What I worry about is that, given that investigation takes effort, and given that we decide whether or not to investigate based on prior estimation of how likely a claim is, there are potentially claims that we’re disbelieving for no good reason. Perhaps individuals with limited time and energy are doomed to disbelieve some claims for no good reason.
You’re right, it is mostly a question of minority views, but I’ll defend my use of “bunk” a little bit.
Not every bunk view is a minority view; the majority of Americans believe in ghosts, for example. What makes me initially estimate it unlikely that ghosts exist is not that it’s a minority opinion (it’s not) but that it contradicts the entire framework I have for understanding the physical world. I start off, therefore, with a really low prior for ghosts. So low, in fact, that it’s potentially not worth the effort of further investigation.
In the case of ghosts it doesn’t take very much effort to investigate enough to toss out the claim; ghosts are an easy case. Other topics, though, take a lot of effort to investigate, and my initial low prior isn’t based on much evidence. Misclassifying them as bunk can be costly. But classifying nothing as bunk would break the bank, in attention and effort terms. Bunk is anything which, for whatever reason (being a minority view, requiring large realignment of our worldview, etc) is too unlikely to be worth checking.
And the problem of bunk is this: if it isn’t even worth it to do a preliminary check, how do you know how unlikely it is?
What I worry about is that, given that investigation takes effort, and given that we decide whether or not to investigate based on prior estimation of how likely a claim is, there are potentially claims that we’re disbelieving for no good reason. Perhaps individuals with limited time and energy are doomed to disbelieve some claims for no good reason.