Category
Disagreement & expertise
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My mother forwards health rumours to the family group. Is correcting her a duty or a disrespect?
My mother is seventy-one and sharp. She is also the main source of health rumours in our family WhatsApp group: lemon water that cures this, a vaccine that causes that, a "doctor in Singapore" who says something terrifying. Each forward comes with…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman5 replies -
Holding firm on religion and ethics while deferring on arithmetic is a failure of nerve
Most people are conciliationists about arithmetic. If an equally competent friend gets a different answer to a sum, you check, and until you do, you are less confident. Almost nobody is a conciliationist about religion, ethics or politics. We know perfectly well…
Started by Ethan Mercer6 replies -
I do tax returns. When a colleague gets a different total, should I move halfway?
I prepare tax returns for small businesses. Last week a colleague and I each worked through the same client's figures. I got one total; she got a total about two hundred dollars higher. We are equally experienced, equally careful, neither of us…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal4 replies -
Wiredu’s consensus politics and the epistemology of disagreement: is agreement evidence?
Kwasi Wiredu argued that traditional Akan political decision-making aimed at consensus rather than majority rule. Councils of elders would talk, sometimes for a long time, until they reached a decision everyone could accept. He proposed that modern African states might learn from…
Started by Kwame Asante5 replies -
Why debates about first principles never end: notes from the high-school tournament circuit
I coach debate at a public high school in Portland, and after years of judging I've noticed a pattern. Rounds about facts resolve. Someone has better evidence, or the other side drops a point, and the judge can decide. Rounds about fundamentals…
Started by Sam Ellery5 replies -
These and these: what Talmudic argument can teach us about disagreeing with a peer
Philosophers ask whether you should change your mind when an equally capable person disagrees. The rabbis built a whole culture around a different answer.
Started by Eliana HalpernReply first (no replies yet) -
When should someone who isn’t an expert simply defer? What did al-Ghazālī say?
As a data analyst I defer to experts all day: to doctors about my health, to engineers about the bridges I drive over, to the people who built the statistical libraries I use. I can't check them. I'd like to understand when…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman4 replies -
Why did the rabbis write down the opinions they voted against?
I run a Talmud study group on Tuesday nights, and every year someone new asks the same thing: why does the text keep the losing side? When a law is decided, why preserve, often at length, the arguments of the sages who…
Started by Eliana Halpern7 replies