Robin,
I agree that the difficult issue is defining the set of experts (although weighting expert opinion to account for known biases is an alternative to drawing a binary distinction between appropriate and inappropriate experts). I would think that if one can select a subset of expert opinion that is representative of the broad class except for higher levels of a rationality-signal (such as IQ, or professed commitment in approximating a Bayesian reasoner), then one should prefer the subset, until sample size shrinks to the point where the marginal increase in random noise outweighs the marginal improvement in expert quality.
What is your own view on the appropriate expert class for evaluating creationism or theism? College graduates? Science PhDs? Members of elite scientific societies? Science Nobel winners? (Substitute other classes and subclasses, e.g. biological/geological expertise, as you wish.) Unless the more elite group is sufficiently unrepresentative (e.g. elite scientists are disproportionately from non-Christian family backgrounds, although that can be controlled for) in some other way, why stop short?
On Verizon, I agree that if all one knows is that one is in the class of ‘people in a dispute with Verizon’ one should expect to be in the wrong. However, one can have sufficient information to situate oneself in a subclass, e.g.: a person with 99th percentile mathematical ability applying well-confirmed arithmetic, debating mathematically less-adept representatives whose opinions are not independent (all relying on the same computer display), where concession by the reps would involve admitting a corporate mistake and setting a precedent to cut numerous bills by 99%. Isn’t identifying the optimum tradeoff between context-sensitivity and vulnerability to self-serving bias a largely empirical question, dependent on the distribution of rationality and the predictive power of such signals?
We will often have independent information about relative rationality, and/or one model may predict the statements of the other, so that the conversation has minimal information value on the acual topic of disagreement.
I’ll skip dreamers for the moment.
Schizophrenics may claim to possess a detailed self-model, but they can neither convincingly describe the details nor demonstrate feats of superintelligence to others. The AI can do so easily, and distinguish itself from the broader class of beings claiming superintelligence.
Creationists show lower IQ, knowledge levels, and awareness of cognitive biases than their opponents, along with higher rates of other dubious beliefs (and different types of true knowledge are correlated). Further, creationist exceptions with high levels of such rationality-predictors overwhelmingly have been subjected to strong social pressures (childhood indoctrination, etc) and other non-truth-oriented influences. Explaining this difference is very difficult from a creationist perspective, but simple for opponents.
I’d also note the possibility of an ‘incommunicable insight.’ If creationists attribute conscious bad faith to their opponents, who do not reciprocate, then the opponents can have incommunicable knowledge of their own sincerity.
The Verizon customer-service issue was baffling. But relatively low-skill call center employees following scripts, afflicted with erroneous corporate information (with the weight of hierarchical authority behind it), can make mistakes and would be reluctant to cut the size of a customer’s bill by 99%. Further, some of the representatives seemed to understand before passing the buck. Given the existence of mail-in-rebate companies that are paid on the basis of how many rebates they can manage to lose, George could reasonably suspect that the uniformly erroneous price quotes were an intentional moneymaking scheme. Since Verizon STILL has not changed the quotes its representatives offer, there’s now even more reason to think that’s the case.
Combining this knowledge about Verizon with personal knowledge of higher-than-average mathematics and reasoning skills (from independent objective measures like SAT scores and math contests) George could have had ample reason not to apply the Modesty Argument and conclude that 0.002 cents is equal to $0.002, $0.00167, or $0.00101.