Whenever you have a question, find out what the consensus view is. Then see what the contrarians are saying. Then see what the consensus people are saying about what the contrarians are saying. See how the contrarians respond. Then make up your own mind.
I solved vaccines and cryonics this way.
By “mainstream consensus view”, I don’t mean what your average man on the street thinks. I mean what the experts (usually the “right” scientists) are saying on a topic. So creationism isn’t the consensus view. Evolution is.
Sometimes there isn’t really a consensus view. In that case start with what the contrarians are saying. Cryonics is like that.
Some people say they trust “hard sciences” but not “soft sciences”. But I think that isn’t right. When I’m trying to decide who to believe, I use something like the following, from most trustworthy to least:
Mathematicians, physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists, climatologists, economists, anthropologists, historians, medical doctors, philosophers, people who write self-help books, people who write parenting books.
This is when I don’t have specific information about the person or group making the claim. The best philosopher is more reliable than the worst physicist.
Here is my general heuristic:
Whenever you have a question, find out what the consensus view is. Then see what the contrarians are saying. Then see what the consensus people are saying about what the contrarians are saying. See how the contrarians respond. Then make up your own mind.
I solved vaccines and cryonics this way.
By “mainstream consensus view”, I don’t mean what your average man on the street thinks. I mean what the experts (usually the “right” scientists) are saying on a topic. So creationism isn’t the consensus view. Evolution is.
Sometimes there isn’t really a consensus view. In that case start with what the contrarians are saying. Cryonics is like that.
Some people say they trust “hard sciences” but not “soft sciences”. But I think that isn’t right. When I’m trying to decide who to believe, I use something like the following, from most trustworthy to least:
Mathematicians, physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists, climatologists, economists, anthropologists, historians, medical doctors, philosophers, people who write self-help books, people who write parenting books.
This is when I don’t have specific information about the person or group making the claim. The best philosopher is more reliable than the worst physicist.
I’m very interested as to why climatologists rank behind psychologists. I’m a little less surprised as to how low you rank medical doctors.
Edit: I’m not being snarky, I really would like to know the reasoning there.
When I wrote that I was thinking of people like Kahneman and Tversky. But you’re right. As a group, psychologists are less trustworthy.