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 -
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